Union people

Union people Fighting for equality and diversity

THE former National Union of Teachers established the Blair Peach Award in March 2010.

It is given in honour of Blair Peach, a former president of East London NUT, who was murdered during an anti-racism demonstration in London in 1979. The award recognises members who have made exemplary contributions to the work of their school, association or district on equality and diversity.

Blair Peach award winner 2020 Doug Morgan, Birmingham district

Doug has spent his life campaigning for equalities. Fighting tirelessly for others, his calm, passionate determination is an inspiration to all.

Recently he has been central to the campaign in Birmingham around relationships and sex education (RSE) teaching. He has encouraged an atmosphere of considered and purposeful mediation in an environment that has been difficult for both the LGBT+ and Muslim communities. He has campaigned within Supporting Education of Equality and Diversity in Schools (SEEDS), a group set up to end the protests in Birmingham schools and ensure people understand the reality of RSE teaching. Doug relentlessly promotes the message “No to Islamophobia, no to homophobia”, which has encouraged members of both communities to unite and fight for equality in education.

For many years Doug has worked with Stand Up To Racism and Unite Against Fascism, organising local and national events. In 2017, he wrote an open letter to Ofsted opposing the ban on the hijab in schools.

Doug says: “No matter what their background, ethnicity, sexuality, gender or religion, every student and every staff member matters. Schools should be places where we celebrate each other and not hide who we are. Classrooms should encourage understanding, debate and learning about our many communities.”

Nominee Curmiah St Catherine

Curmiah has worked hard to contribute to the understanding and importance of equality and diversity in her school. She has created lessons which are integrated across the curriculum and include topics such as refugee journeys, voices of migration and a range of World Book Day activities.

“I found that many of my students in diverse inner London classrooms did not see themselves in what they were being taught and found it difficult to appreciate the curriculum without questioning it.

“They often became disconnected or felt that school was simply one big memory test. In embedding cross-curricular and personal development projects, I’ve found that this encourages students to collaborate.”

Curmiah’s school said: “Curmiah has made a permanent impact on equality and diversity in our school.”

Nominee Alex Kais

“I think the fight for equality and diversity in schools never stops. As a member of the LGBT+ and BAME community, it is even more apparent to me how much inequality and diversity there is in schools. It is up to us as educators to continue the fight for more inclusive education.”

Alex is a champion for the rights of LGBT+ members and an active district member. He organised a teacher training and CPD event for more than 120 LGBT+ teachers and allies. The event was a huge success and led to many LGBT+ teachers joining the NEU.

“I was inspired by the NEU LGBT+ organising forum and all it does to promote diversity and equality. It was extremely supportive of my efforts at my school and of a large teacher event that celebrated diversity and equality through the arts.”

Nominee Emma Mort

“As educators and trade unionists, it is incumbent on us to be at the forefront of the fightback against the rise in racism and fascism that we’re seeing in our communities, nationally and globally.”

Through her work with charity Care4Calais and Warwickshire NEU, Emma has shown that you can tackle injustice. She is making a real difference, as part of the union, in standing up for refugees and providing practical aid and solidarity, and has engaged with members who hadn’t been active in the union.

On the last delegation to France, she took eight teachers from her school to Calais and organised a school collection.

“One of the highlights was when a year 11 student brought me a big bag of his T-shirts to donate, with the plea to ‘tell the refugees that one day I hope it will be better’. That’s what keeps me going!”

Thank you for all you do

Every year, we celebrate activists who have done outstanding work to grow the union, making us more diverse and visible. Emily Jenkins speaks to the NEU rep and officer of the year.

Officer of the year Sheila Jones

Sheila Jones is very active as supply teacher officer within her district of Caerphilly. As well as vigorously promoting the union and its benefits, she has worked tirelessly to improve the pay and conditions of supply teachers in Wales who, up until recently, could sometimes be paid as little as £85 a day, while the agencies employing them took a large proportion of the daily fee charged to schools.

A former supply teacher, Sheila began by submitting a petition to the Welsh Assembly which stated that stand-in teachers were exploited and “leaving the profession as they cannot afford to be supply teachers”. She raised the campaign’s profile via rallies, marches and meetings, and wrote hundreds of letters drawing attention to the injustice of the situation.

In April 2019 the Welsh Assembly finally brought in a new framework agreement for supply teaching, and the education minister made a point of noting the impact of Sheila’s campaign group. The framework imposes a minimum daily pay rate and schools have been told they can hire teachers directly, avoiding fees altogether.

This is still only applicable to agencies that have signed up to the new framework so, for Sheila and her colleagues, there is still a long way to go.

Angela Sandles, who nominated Sheila, said: “Sheila is relentless in fighting for better supply pay and conditions. She spends many hours talking members through specific difficulties and has been instrumental in resolving many situations.

“She continually inspires members to become involved in union activities and is also an excellent teacher. She uses any opportunity to promote equality.”

Sheila said: “I am overwhelmed to receive this award. I am sharing it with Angela and a wonderful small team of activists who have been relentless in pursuing fair pay and conditions.”

Sheila Jones speaking at the NEU Welsh conference PHOTO by Carmen Valino

Rep of the year Alex Boyce

Alex Boyce is a teacher and rep in Yorkshire and Humber district. In October2018 Alex started the Save the Pupil Referral Service campaign to protect his school, The Grove Academy Pupil Referral Unit (PRU) in Harrogate, from devastating cuts of up to 83 per cent proposed by the council. Alex’s school is one of a few PRUs in the country to be consistently judged Outstanding by Ofsted.

In order to save his school, and the vulnerable children who attend it, Alex galvanised fellow teachers, parents and other unions to support the campaign.

Alex has fought for the future of his school through petitions, social media campaigns, strike action and writing an article for Educate (see March/April 2019). He organised a ‘funeral’ for North Yorkshire County Council’s children’s services, in which staff took part in a procession from Northallerton to County Hall, complete with a fake coffin covered in the names of all the services being cut.

His tireless work led to the campaign expanding its focus to defending not only The Grove Academy PRU, but other schools and children’s services in the area being threatened with similar cuts and closure.

The council responded to the campaign by delaying the cuts. It has also agreed to provide more per pupil funding than initially proposed and said that this money will be paid upfront to each PRU.

Paul Busby, who nominated Alex, said: “It was a joy to be able to celebrate Alex’s achievement on the nomination form. He has surpassed the expectations of a rep and has demonstrated a level of campaigning more worthy of an officer. Indeed, it was queried as to whether he actually was an officer!”