Dear all
Thank you all for your continued and very valued support. This is a joint battle for the future success of St Ivo School and both the staff and students will benefit if we succeed in persuading Astrea to soften their approach and make it more suitable for your school.
Astrea have said that they are willing to talk. However since the final meeting before half term they have not reached out to us. In fact they cancelled a planned meeting with representatives from the union on the 2nd November the day before it was scheduled to go ahead.
There are multiple people at Astrea who have my contact details including the CEO, the COO, the Regional Director and the Interim Principal at St Ivo but at the time of writing this statement I have not heard from any of them.
We have asked Rowena Hackwood, Astrea’s CEO, to attend meetings with us but she has refused. The CEO has said that this is a local issue and therefore she does not need to intervene despite being in charge of a MAT that is enforcing draconian rules for both students and staff.
As I have said before, striking is not something that the teachers at St Ivo do lightly. NASUWT members felt that they had no choice but to strike. As part of this statement I wanted to give more context to how we reached the decision to strike so I want to take time to outline the different meetings that I and my colleagues have attended with Astrea.
On the 27th April 2023 I attended a meeting with my colleagues at St Ivo (I was on Zoom). This was before we had decided to strike or even call a ballot to strike as we wanted to avoid this and speak with Astrea to try and resolve the issues early on. Instead Astrea spoke badly about my colleagues and would not offer any compromise to their approach. We did not make any progress.
In June 2023 I attended another meeting with my colleagues at the regional NASUWT offices. The COO, Regional Director and a Trust Executive Principal were also present. In this meeting we established working groups in St Ivo for staff. However, we tried to gain some small concessions, one of these being about staff being allowed to have the student’s desks as they like within their classroom. We were told that nobody in that room was able to make that decision. Very little progress was made at that meeting.
At the beginning of this academic year in September 2023 I attempted to set up another high level meeting at a neutral venue, with the COO and CEO. This venue change was at the request of Astrea. This meeting was cancelled by them.
During this time I also had contact with the COO to try to deescalate the situation. I repeatedly stated that it could only deescalate if members’ concerns were addressed through effective negotiation. Still no concessions were made. This was also the same time that I was told by the CEO that our dispute can be dealt with at a local level.
After I received this message from the CEO meetings were set up with the Interim Principal, the Regional Director, the NASUWT Representative at St Ivo and myself. In the first two of these meetings, talks were constructive to the point where we felt that we could call off the first strike day. We really thought that we would be able to end the dispute through these talks at this point.
At the third meeting, the week before half term, Astrea’s attitude had changed. The Regional Director could not attend this meeting so Dr Craig, the Vice Principal took their place. I had been quite hopeful that this could be another positive meeting but it was very quickly obvious that if Mr Menaugh had any authority to make decisions in previous meetings this had been removed. There was a noticeable hardening of their stance and no concessions given – only those that were correcting previous Astrea mistakes (e.g. advertising for TAs they had failed to replace).
I think it is also important that you understand that during all of these meetings and conversations Astrea were still treating the staff and students poorly.
When staff went back to school in September they had a visit from Richard Tutt who told them that this is how Astrea is and life is too short so if they don’t like it then staff should leave. Some staff have given over 20 years to the school and to be told this on the first day back was heartbreaking for them. In addition to this the Regional Director visited the school to instruct teachers to take all posters down from their rooms. This was followed up by SLT reinforcing the message. At this point staff were threatened with disciplinary action if they had their bins in the wrong place or some lined paper on the desk. We have got a concession that small posters can be up, that small bins can be near the front of the room but not under the board and that lined paper can be on a teacher’s desk as long as it doesn’t disrupt learning.
Astrea have also announced that they would rigidly enforce a new staff dress code which is strict, old fashioned and potentially discriminatory in nature. Members were not aware this code existed. It will be expensive for many staff, particularly women. The only concession given here is a pause to spread the cost for the staff.
In October, on the very day of the withdrawn strike day Astrea introduced a new coaching policy with unannounced observations with grading for staff that will be recorded.. There was no consultation on this, there was no ground to be given in negotiations.
On the strike days last week Astrea conducted potentially illegal strike breaking by bringing in staff from other schools. Our General Secretary has written to Astrea managers and Governors to inform them of a recent legal case that was won in this area. I have seen the emails that the Interim Principal has sent to you and staff members. To imply that striking staff do not care about the students is false and couldn’t be further from the truth. The fact that they care too much about the students and the school is the very reason why they are doing this.
The NEU have also supported us in this action and are concerned for the welfare of their members. We are meeting their senior representatives next week to discuss the potential to work together toward the common goal.
So in the face of the failure of Astrea to effectively negotiate, members feel there is no alternative but to strike. Despite this lack of success in the past myself and NASUWT members are willing to negotiate. Members want the best for their students and they want to teach. However, they want to teach in an environment that they have the autonomy to make the decisions about how to teach, manage behaviour and set out their rooms based on their training and experience. Astrea do not want this, they want compliance without question from the students and the staff and the members of the NASUWT have decided that enough is enough.
Teachers and myself hope that Astrea will reach out and begin to treat staff as professionals. The staff and students are human beings and it is time Astrea treated them both as such.
Yours
Mark Burns
NASUWT
National Exec for Cambridgeshire
St Ivo Parents Forum 