Question: You have recently taken over as general secretary of the PAT - given the current political climate for the education sector has it seemed like a baptism of fire?

Philip Parkin: It has been quite an eye opener coming from a school environment into this job, because up until December I was deputy head of a junior school.

I am now seeing everything from a very different viewpoint.

Those of us who work in schools sometimes wonder whether the people in Whitehall and Westminster understand the impact of everything they do on schools.

I know colleagues in other unions have talked about initiative overload, but unless you’re down there on the chalkface and at the receiving end of initiative after initiative and understanding that each of these has to be put into place, it often feels like there is no appreciation of how that feels.

One of the things I’ve noticed in the last few weeks is that there seems to be no let up in the amount of initiatives being produced.

From a school point of view that is actually quite difficult because you need time to bed things in, to let them settle and work them through.

Often in my last couple of years at school it felt as if we were always running to keep up. If we had been allowed to breathe a little we might have actually implemented things a little better.

Question: What lessons would you like the government to learn from this?

Philip Parkin: I would like them to listen to the people out there in the schools. Take time to pause; take things more gently even. Let’s implement new initiatives but let’s do them properly and do them well.

We won’t achieve our aims by doing everything at double speed and in too much of a rush.

Question: How does that then apply to your vision for the PAT?

Philip Parkin: In terms of PAT as an organisation, I obviously wanted to continue the work of my predecessor.

We are one of the smallest of the teachers’ associations, but that certainly doesn’t mean we aren’t effective.

We are big enough to make our voice heard in the right places and we are small enough to provide our members with a personal service.

Now clearly every trade union leader would like to have more members, so we will be looking to recruit more members, but alongside that making sure we maintain and improve the quality of service we give to members.

Question: The PAT is famous for being the teaching union which does not strike - do you ever see a time where this would change?

Philip Parkin: It was our reason for being and to some extent it remains our reason for being, although in terms of the number of strikes that there have been in the last 10 to 15 years it has become less important.

It certainly remains our sacred cow and there is no way this association will move away from that.

On the other hand we do have other characteristics which I think are important to our new members. Our personal service is vital, as is our independence. We are the only teaching union now that is not a member of the TUC or controlled by another body and we intend to stay that way.

Question: How do you feel the national agreement was implemented?

Philip Parkin: This union is a supporter of, and has signed up enthusiastically to, the national agreement and we will continue to support it.

That doesn’t mean that there are things about the national agreement, particularly in its implementation in some institutions and local authorities, which couldn’t have been done better.

One of the most important aspects of the national agreement and one we have drawn attention to in the last few weeks is the issue of teaching assistants and nursery nurses and what they are being asked to do in terms of covering lessons in schools.

It was always understood from the inception of the national agreement that teaching assistants and nursery nurses could be asked to provide short-term cover, which we understood to mean up to a day.

It was also understood that they could only be asked to cover if they agreed to do it themselves - they couldn’t be forced to do it - and head teachers had to make an assessment on the competence of those people before they were allowed to cover.

However the evidence from our members and the reports we are getting suggests that some teaching assistants are being coerced in to taking classes and taking classes for longer periods of time than we imagined.

We are very concerned about that.

Question: How important is nanny registration?

Philip Parkin: Nanny registration is very important; we have been calling for a long time for registration of nannies. Within the child protection procedures, it is still not clear yet what the new legislation is going to say.

As a result of the furore in the last few weeks over child protection, sex offenders and List 99, the government has produced some proposals and we wait to see what the details of the vetting procedures are.

We would like to see registration of all those who work with children, young people and vulnerable adults.

Question: The government’s education white paper has proved controversial, what is the PAT’s view on the reforms?

Philip Parkin: Well, it is still not clear what the content of the final Education Bill will actually be, because we keep hearing of revisions and government backing down on some of the issues, so it is a little bit difficult to say for sure.

We felt the white paper was a bit of a curate’s egg - there were proposals within it that we were clearly very happy with and would be happy to support.

Given that I was member of the Steer group on behaviour and discipline and that the discipline proposals in the white paper are taken from the recommendations in the Steer report, we are very happy about that.

We have got concerns about the implications of the admissions procedures; although it looks as if this may change.

However, the recent proposals to strengthen the roles of local authorities and the schools adjudicator and the review of admissions procedures, although welcome, are minor tweaks rather than major changes.

We understand that the admissions code may not be written into primary legislation because that would be ‘unworkable’. That does not inspire confidence in the code or how it would be work in practice.

The concessions do not go far enough. Many of our concerns remain.

We do worry that some schools will be very reluctant to take on lower ability special needs pupils.

Although selection per se isn’t in the White Paper, there is evidence that suggests it is already happening in the highest performing schools. We would be very unhappy if that continued.

The government’s rejection of the select committee’s call for benchmarks of students from different socio-economic backgrounds is not very encouraging.

We remain concerned about the powers of the proposed trusts and their backers. These groups will have their own agendas - be it political, religious or making a profit. PAT is worried that providing high quality education and care may not be their overwhelming priority.

The initial results from academies suggest that changing the legal and administrative nature of a school does not necessarily deliver better education. We believe all families should have access to good quality local education.