Question: What are the primary goals of the Professional Association of Teachers?

Philip Parkin: To serve the needs and the interests of our members.  Members join for their own reasons, but clearly many do so for the insurance element of employment protection – that there’s somebody there to help them out should they get themselves into difficulties in the workplace – and that’s the major focus of our work.

Question: How do you think you differ from other teaching trade unions?

Philip Parkin: I think we serve a diverse group of professionals who share specific values, which they recognise in PAT. 

It may well be that members who choose to join us do so because of our cardinal rule: that we don’t believe in industrial action – that we believe in the power of argument, rather than the power of force. 

Admittedly, things are different to how they used to be, particularly as there hasn’t been industrial action in schools for some 15 years, but there does appear to be a growing militancy and some teachers are coming across to us because they thought they’d joined unions that were non-militant, and are discovering that that is not the case.

I think people also come to us because of our independence. We are not a TUC union and people seem to value independence for its own sake – the fact that we’re not a part of a large conglomerate or large organisation that’s trying to drive our thinking.

Size I think is quite important.  The fact that we’re a smaller organisation of 34,000 members again seems to attract people to us, they like the combination of being slightly smaller but able to give a personal service and perhaps knowing our members individually, more intimately, than in a larger organisation. I think they feel they get a personal service from us.

Question: How is the new website an improvement on the old one?

Philip Parkin: I do hope it is an improvement on the old one! I think it has a contemporary and clean look to it; also we’ll now be able to engage with our members’ opinions directly, with online polls and surveys to find out what our members are thinking in a fairly direct and quick method, so that’s something we’re look forward to. 

I hope it’s going to be more user-friendly, given the considerable improvement in the navigational and search facilities, and it will certainly be personalised for our members when they log in.

It will enable us to serve our members better in terms of renewing their membership, changing their details, and new members will be able to join online. We’ll see how it all works out!

Question: How can the new website be of use to non-members?

Philip Parkin: I hope it’s going to tell people about what we do in a more direct and interesting way.

I think it’ll make it easier to anyone interested in finding out what PAT’s thinking really is on a variety of issues, rather than having to ring to ask us. 

Clearly as a trade union we’re also in the business of attracting new members; I hope when people are considering which union to join, the website will give a clear picture of the sort of organisation that PAT is, and what we want to achieve.

Question: What is the most pressing issue for your members?

Philip Parkin: I think we have a number of issues arising all the time and obviously some of the issues are ones that are driven by the government’s agenda.

It’s of great concern to us and our membership that headship of schools no longer appears to be an attractive option for many teachers, causing an actual dearth of candidates.

We are concerned with leadership as an issue for the educational world as a whole and we’ll be making our views known on the way forward on school leadership to the DfES in appropriate consultations and work parties. 

Come 2009 there will be a large number of head teachers retiring with perhaps not enough people to fill those posts; so we’ll be wanting to explore with the government why headship is so unattractive, what is not encouraging people to take up the reigns of headship as they used to in the past, and how we can address this concern. Clearly there are issues surrounding workload and about the spread and growth of responsibilities for the head teacher.

We have opposed the current testing regime for a long time and that continues to be a source of concern to us, as I know it does to other unions. Testing appears to be driving education: it seems that the priority is for children to be taught how to pass tests rather than actually receive a rounded education.

We’ve long campaigned for the registration of nannies (who are part of our membership) given that there are around 100,000 working individually with children and families in this country.

We have no understanding at all why nannies continue to be excluded from the new arrangement for vetting and barring, when other categories of childcare such as childminders will be required to be registered. 

At the same time there appears to be far more registers being created. There is a danger of bureaucracy causing more confusion, rather than making it easier and simpler to ensure that the people working with children are the right people. So that is something we will want to explore with ministers over the next few months.

Question: What challenges would you like the new occupant in Number 10 to address?

Philip Parkin: On the assumption that the new prime minister will be Gordon Brown, we don’t have a clear picture of what his thinking is on education as of yet.

It seems perverse to say it, but in a way, I think the one thing we don’t want is yet another change of direction because schools have to cope with so many government-introduced initiatives. I compiled a list recently which indicated there are something like 50 initiatives at the moment focused on secondary schools and 45 on primary schools: an enormous workload for those working in schools.

Also, every time there is a new secretary of state there is a new change in focus. I did a calculation last year that of the 33 years that I was a teacher there was something like 18 secretaries of state for education - that’s an average of less than two years in the job.

Alan Johnson is a candidate for deputy prime minister, which might mean yet another change in the DfES; so, to some extent, we would like some stability rather than change.

Question: Are there any initiatives you would like the government to consider?

Philip Parkin: What schools are telling us is that they don’t have time to bed in new initiatives that are there already. So, rather than saying "PAT wants this, this and this", let’s take time to consider the issues that are there on the table.

To some extent, we’re saying to the government: just slow down a bit, and let’s prioritise things. 

Question: Do you have any final messages for ePolitix.com's readers?

Philip Parkin: We’d be very pleased if ePolitix.com readers let us know what they think of the new site and I hope they’ll get a lot of usage out of it.

I look forward to hearing from readers of their views and opinions on both education and childcare issues, and the things that PAT are saying about them.