Regional Rep of the Year Fleur Patten is a rep at Ely College in Cambridgeshire. At this year’s conference she won the prestigious Rep of the Year Award for the Eastern Region. We caught up with Fleur to see how she did it…
Despite having been an English teacher and NUT member for over 20 years, Fleur only became a school rep two years ago. “Staff morale was very low,” says Fleur. “I went to a meeting where the divisional secretary came to talk to us and said ‘you can’t do anything without a rep’ and all these poor washed-out NQTs looked at me. “I didn’t think I was capable, but the NUT assured me they’d send me on training courses and there would be someone on hand to help me. This was really true. Honestly, the foundation course I went on changed my life. To be in a room of people with similar stories, with the same mindset, who just wanted to look after teachers and the profession, blew my mind.” In the last two years, Fleur has had her fair share of battles with management. The first thing she tackled was directed time. “Our directed time was massively over the statutory 1,265 hours,” she explains. In fact it was 32 hours over – a full working week. Fleur spent a term putting together spreadsheets and evidence to prove her case and, when management refused to listen, she and her colleagues withdrew their attendance from morning briefings. “We broke them down in the end. That was a major psychological victory for us.” Fleur also had to fight the sudden introduction of performance management. The NUT gave notice for a strike, which resulted in the withdrawal of numerical targets before industrial action took place. However, that hasn’t stopped teachers still being refused pay progression in the school. “In both years I’ve been rep, there have been some people who have been rejected for pay progression. We have always helped every NUT member go to appeal and we have a 100% success rate.” Because of her successes, Fleur managed to increase NUT membership in the school from 22 to 46 members in the space of 18 months. “We were a school with a moderate NUT membership and massively anxious and downtrodden staff who felt they couldn’t do anything, and we’ve turned that around. “Things are now hopeful” says Fleur. “We’ve got a new head, and have transferred to a new local academy chain and they seem reasonable. We’re all hopeful. And, personally, being a rep has given me a new lease of life.”
“We have always helped every NUT member go to appeal and we have a 100% success rate.”
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September / October 16 | The Teacher