Daniel is an SEN teacher in the north. Conference, let’s go back 12 months. We were gathered in Cardiff for NUT conference, Theresa May was storming ahead in the polls, and in her arrogance, she called a snap general election. The snap election put those of us who believe in a fair and just society into a panic, at the thought of a Tory landslide. But we and I mean we, stopped them. It is something we should all be proud of. We should be proud of this union and the intervention it made in the election calling for a vote for education. We should be proud of the miles walked by activists leafleting houses. We should be proud of the conversations we had engaging with the public. We should be proud of the school cuts website which was able to cut through the spin and lies from government. We should be proud of the stop school cuts rallies, that happened in city centres up and down the country – From Newcastle to Southampton. We should be proud of the parent’s campaigns, Fair Funding...

Imagine a world where the actions of a 4-year-old go on to determine their worth for years to come. I’d like you to picture Tom. Tom spent every day crawling on his hands and knees in a circle before he sat on the carpet. He liked to hide under chairs and had a fondness for running up behind people and sniffing them. Tom did not like sitting still for very long; at 4 years old, why should he? Give him an adult led task and he would not give you his attention. Why? Because you’d stopped him from doing what he loved: being a dog. Asking Tom to sit and answer test based questions on an iPad was an absolute waste of time. I knew that Tom could blend and segment simple CVC words and recognise most tricky words, I knew he could count to 50 and I knew he was starting to be able to write recognisable words. I did not need a baseline test on an iPad to tell me that. And neither did Tom. Tom was exactly where he needed to be. He was making progress and was having a successful ...

The crisis in SEND has reached epidemic proportions; children and their families are in crisis. There is no money, there are no places, there is no support. In the Statement of SEN and ECH plans published by the DFE in May 2017 it was reported that over 8000 children currently do not have a place in an educational setting. I believe this is just the tip of the iceberg. What about the children who are on reduced timetables, what about the children who are receiving 2 hours a week of tutoring. These children are not counted in these number, these children also deserve a full and balanced curriculum where they can thrive. I recently carried out a survey of parents with children with SEND and the facts are shocking; within 30 hours of posting the survey on a SEND support page on social media I had received over 100 responses of those responses 59% of parents stated their children where not in the type of setting they wanted. Over 39% of parents reported that it had taken over 2 ...

A Nursery teacher, a Maths teacher, an English teacher and a Physics teacher walk into a pub… Sorry it’s not a joke, although often hilarity ensues and inevitably someone falls over. These are my union colleagues, my support network and my friends. Most teachers are in a union. If you are reading this and you are not- stop reading and go join one immediately and then come back and read the rest. I have been in the NUT since 2003 when I started my training. I’ve used the union benefits to get cheap home insurance and discounted vouchers but other than that my union membership was always an insurance policy just in case something terrible happened a work. I did join the call to strike way back in 2008 but other than that I was not an active union member. This changed about 2 years ago when a Young Teacher Officer got in touch to suggest I became the rep in my school. It sounded interesting and I decided to meet up with her at a division committee meeting. This meeting h...