With the wholly unacceptable and intense pressure being placed on teachers through poor and abusive management practices, including using the fear of Estyn and the Consortia and the abuse of the capability process, teachers at the Annual Conference of NASUWT Cymru, the largest teachers’ union in Wales, have today called for the stress and anxiety caused to be treated as an industrial injury.
Chris Keates, General Secretary of the NASUWT, said:
“The constant change and excessive workload heaped onto teachers in Wales is clearly taking its toll with high levels of teachers reporting stress and anxiety.
“However, the situation is being compounded by the climate of fear that is being generated through appalling management practices where the fear of inspection or consortia challenge is being used to justify unacceptable and unrealistic demands being placed on teachers.
“Placing teachers on capability procedures is now being viewed as a measure of management challenge.
“Teachers are not opposed to being held publicly accountable for the work they do, as long as it is collaborative and constructive and recognises the realities of their working environment.”
Rex Phillips, NASUWT National Official for Wales, said:
“The health, safety and welfare of the school workforce should be of paramount importance to those charged with management responsibility.
“Teachers should not be in fear of going to work, and their health and well-being should not be placed in jeopardy by managers who can only manage through a command and control approach and the abuse of process.
“Treating the break-down in health that is suffered by those subjected to such practice as an industrial injury will assist in holding those that indulge in such practice to account.”
Jane Setchfield, NASUWT National Executive Member, who proposed the motion said:
“It isn’t simply the accountability regimes themselves that create pressures for teachers and school leaders, but also the way in which their requirements are used, or abused, in schools and colleges, to justify working practices that are abusive, unnecessary and that create severe pressures on teachers in schools.
“Threat of consortia and capability are the biggest sticks which are being used to beat teachers with.
“Until stress, whatever its cause, is regarded as an industrial injury, teachers and school leaders will continue to be at unacceptable risk, and too many employers will continue to fail to take this issue seriously.”
