'Facts wanted' says teachers' leader

By Sean Coughlan
BBC News Online education staff

Whenever the Association of Teachers and Lecturers is mentioned, the phrase "traditionally moderate" is never far behind.

Mary Bousted wants to strengthen teachers' arguments with thorough research

But in terms of teachers' unions, the ATL's new leader, Mary Bousted, is not particularly traditional - and she wants the reputation for moderation to be given a more incisive, research-based edge.

The new general secretary, who started in the job last week, is not traditional in a number of ways.

Even though a growing majority of teachers are women, Mary Bousted is the first woman to become general secretary of a TUC-affiliated teachers' union.

And she is not a career trade unionist, but has come in from the outside, having previously worked as a classroom teacher and an academic, most recently as head of the education department at Kingston University.

This academic background could help in her intention to give the union's campaigning a sharper focus, depending more on research than rhetoric.

Professionals

And she applauds the ATL's tradition of "measured responses in debate" rather than a headline-grabbing swapping of insults.

Teachers' unions, whether fairly or unfairly, have collectively gained an image of relentless negativity, caricatured as being against everything put forward by the government. And Mary Bousted wants to make sure that any criticism is delivered with credible evidence.

"I want us to be professional, where policy is based on research, where we put forward alternatives as well as criticism. We'll try to avoid a dialogue of the deaf."

This phrase could describe much of the six-year shouting match that has been the bruising relationship between the teachers' unions and the Labour government.

Even when the education secretary was Estelle Morris, a former teacher who made no secret of her sympathy for the profession, she still faced a mauling at the teachers' union conferences.

And as an aside, education commentators might see similarities in style between Mary Bousted's arguments in defence of the importance of education and Estelle Morris's own commitment to the subject.

Mary Bousted says that she has already been to the House of Commons to meet the current Education Secretary, Charles Clarke, and that he "made it clear he wanted a good, constructive relationship".

The ATL is one of the teachers' unions which, along with the government, has signed the "national agreement" on reducing workload - and she says that this could present a framework for a greater sense of partnership.

Funding crisis

"This has given teachers greater leverage and it's shown the government that it has to learn to listen."

But there have been deep tensions between the teaching profession and the government - with the latest row sparked by the budget shortfalls faced by many schools and the "blame game" that followed.

When the political battles are rejoined in the autumn, this question of school funding will once again return. But she is reluctant to get drawn into the guessing game about the scale of any teacher redundancies.

"The picture is very unclear," she says, preferring to wait until the evidence on budget cuts is more certain. But she says that so far the government's efforts to resolve schools' financial difficulties have been "too little and much too late".

Another big issue which she wants the government to address is the problem of too many young teachers opting to leave the profession.

She says that she recently met one of her own former students, who she described as an "outstanding teacher" who had quit the classroom.

Creative

The reason why this former student and others like her have left teaching, believes Mary Bousted, is because they are constrained by a "narrow and restrictive" culture of "micro-management", where teachers are not allowed to exercise their own professional judgement.

Another issue on the horizon will be how the government intends to implement its changes to the curriculum - and she warns against undue haste.

And in challenging schools in deprived areas, where education has the potential to be such a positive force, she says that teachers need to feel that they are being supported, rather than blamed for the social ills around them.

She has taken over the teachers' union at a time when education policy appears to be undergoing a sea-change, with the government retreating from its more aggressive stance on targets and testing.

And she welcomes the move towards making the primary school curriculum more creative.

Describing what she will bring to the job, she says that she is both a pragmatist and an idealist, who wants to see teachers properly paid and professionally valued.

And in exchange, she says that the government could improve its relationship with teachers, with a willingness now and again to "admit that they're wrong and to be willing to change their mind".