Developing Effective Strategy

Week #7 Meeting #16

At lunchtime today, I met with members at Henley College. We discussed the current ballot of school teachers (sixth form college teachers are not part of the current ballot group, although we intend to ballot them in the autumn term) and the NUT's ongoing tactics in the campaign.

The following points were raised in discussion:

• We must carefully balance our industrial action strategy with building wider support amongst all potential allies, including Conservative councillors and MPs.
• We need to be honest with ourselves about the success or otherwise of individual tactics, particularly in terms of media response and public awareness raising.
• We need to find ways of showing the depth of support that is out there, amongst teachers, parents, students, community members, especially when certain groups, such as sixth form college teachers, are not being called out on action initially.
• We must take advantage of the strategic opportunity presented to us by the deep unpopularity of the White Paper to have a deeper impact on the direction of travel in education policy over recent decades.