YouSaid · the spoken record

Mary Bousted

lines on the record: 48
first: 2023-02-03
most recent: 2023-02-03
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Well, the problem with the job at the moment is on full on and it's very difficult to get a plan for after. But what I'll tell you I won't be doing is backseat driving in the NEU. We will leave the union on the 31st of August and then the union will take its chances and chart its own course. I will not stop being interested politically. I will not stop wanting to change the world. I will not stop wanting to make the world a fairer place, and I will not stop being outraged by child poverty.”
2023-02-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Mary Bousted One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think Kevin Courtney and I myself, we're both Joint General Secretaries, and we both said we would do one term, and then we would leave because we brought the union together. I think it's been in trade union terms when you get two general secretaries, that's regarded as an outbreak of war. We've managed it, I think, really well. We get on together well. you know different strengths and we've brought those together to lead the union and lead it i think effectively it's you know we've over the last 12 days we have 50 000 new members i i am looking”
2023-02-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Mary Bousted One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My dad was always a member of the Union, always knew that his most valuable asset in the school was his teacher's, and Was a good leader. I'm very sure that my dad would have addressed poor performance very well. He school was one of the most successful in Bolton, from the poorest area, got the highest number of 11 plus passes because he refused to let the poverty of the children hold them back in their lives. But my dad was a good union member and if the teachers were on strike, he would have been on strike with them.”
2023-02-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Mary Bousted One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I hope so, I mean that would seem to be the sensible, reasonable, and rewarding thing to do. And listen, we don't go in with if we can't get what we want, we'll just flounce out. We do know how to negotiate. And it seems to me that the government has to relearn how to do that.”
2023-02-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Mary Bousted One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, we've got twenty seven days before the next regional round of industrial action. There's a day in Wales before that, but in England. And the way it will end, and we want this to happen, is for the government to sit down and start to negotiate. The government should not think that it can just run down the clock and that members will get exhausted. And if we're talking about politics, let me remind the government that we've got half a million teachers. And the majority of them are in the National Education Union. And they're very like to vote. And they're not going to vote for a government which they think disregards their views, devalues their work, and leaves them worrying about bills at the end of the month.”
2023-02-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Mary Bousted One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think that that would be very unlikely. I think that teachers work some of the longest working weeks of any profession. They take the education of their pupils incredibly seriously. They devote hours to it. They come, you know, teachers are in school at 7 o'clock in the morning. They're leaving school at 6 in the evening. They're going home to do more work. Teachers in England work longer hours outside the classroom than any other OECD country apart from Japan. So these are dedicated hardworking people. They don't want to be taking this strike action and they will not harm the exam and life chances of the pupils in their care. But I don't want the government to therefore just think that it can sit and wait this out because that would be extremely cynical.”
2023-02-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Mary Bousted One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I'm not negotiating now, but I'm saying what you asked me are there propositions, and there are indeed propositions that they can do. We don't accept that actually public sector pay drives inflation. Many economists would argue with the Secretary of State and the government on that.”
2023-02-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Mary Bousted One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it's certainly something, and we have said to Gillian Keegan, look, In Wales they're negotiating, you need to do that. There are many ways that you can do that. We need, there are two issues with teachers. The first is that their pay has declined virtually more than any other profession since 2010. And particularly that's particularly bad for experienced teachers. And that's leading to a massive recruitment of retention crisis. And it's leading to our schools just not getting the teachers they need. So we need a longer term correction in teacher pay. One of the ways you can do that, the most powerful way you can do that, and that was done, it has been done in the past by the Houghton Award and the Clegg Award is a longer term correction on teachers' pay. So you accept that, you know, you're not going to correct it in one year, but we need a long-term plan because you can't carry on paying teachers so poorly that they won't join the profession and they won't stay in it.”
2023-02-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Mary Bousted One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I'm really struck now by the, first of all, the mum's net poll last week. 62% of the parents there blame the government for the current dispute. And there's other research coming through about that. I was struck also by a conversation this morning with a journalist from a very right-wing newspaper who said, well, we're very puzzled that our readers, when we look at reader comments, they're still so supportive of teachers. So my advice would be to Gillian Keegan to stop the anti-teacher rhetoric, stop the anti-union rhetoric, and get around the table and let's negotiate seriously about this dispute. Because once you get into serious negotiations, you find ways through, which previously either hadn't thought about or you hadn't considered. We've got 28 days now before the next round of industrial action.”
2023-02-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Mary Bousted One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So can I just say that Jillian Kegan herself says I can take no credit, political credit for that it's very clear to me that the reason why we got that extra 2.3 billion was because we were preparing to start our school's cuts campaign again, which in 2017 caused the Conservative Party such damage in the election.”
2023-02-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Mary Bousted One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, and Ostead and Academies and test which narrow the curriculum and lead us to now being top of the international league table for rote learning. That's a problem. But I'm certainly not against tests altogether. I think, and I've written this, tests in the right place and do certain things really well. The problem that we have at the moment as a society is we are structuring our curriculum and our assessment system to fit into the test rather than the subject.”
2023-02-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Mary Bousted One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When I frequently give credit, and if you look at the press releases from my union, they're quite often, with lines inserted from me, which says no, that we have to give credit for that. It's not that I'm not being fair to politicians. It's that for the last 12 years we've been working under governments who actually don't accept that unions have a voice representing their membership. And remember the attitudes and the policies I put forward, they are the policies of the union. It's my job, one of my jobs to be a spokesperson for the union. And those policies, when it comes to education and the teaching of reading and standards, those policies are absolutely informed by the experience of members.”
2023-02-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Mary Bousted One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, listen, I've been really clear that standards have risen in core subjects because of the hard work of teachers. But it's also the case that we have an education system which more than virtually anywhere else in the world just provides cut-off points beyond which pupils can't progress. So a third of our pupils are factored in every year virtually to get less than a level four in English and maths, which has profound consequences for their future lives. Now that's not to say it's the same standard each year. It's done on a norm referend basis. Virtually no successful country just denies roots to young people and those are predominantly young people who are disadvantaged already.”
2023-02-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Mary Bousted One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think that's a significant statement. And I do think that's because the Labour Party has become really concerned about the effect that Offstead is having on teacher recruitment and retention, the unreliability of the inspection judgments, and the fact that this is a regulator which, frankly, its inspection judgments are much more based on the intake of the school than the quality of education provided. And I do think that research evidence behind that has been heard. Now, I do say when I started saying OFSED is not fit for purpose over 15 years ago, it was like a voice crying in the wilderness. Now there's a big massive research evidence and even conservative politicians in private will say, yeah, it's clearly a failing agency. It's clearly a problem. My problem is politically how do I deal with it?”
2023-02-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Mary Bousted One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, we want standards and we want accountability. And I've always been very clear about that. I do think that the discourse is changing. So on Sunday, Bridget Phillips said Osted needs reforming from top to bottom.”
2023-02-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Mary Bousted One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Day exhausted. And we see this flight from the profession and that's recognised internationally and other countries are doing something about it.”
2023-02-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Mary Bousted One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think it's been hard. I think in 2010 there was a strong movement internationally to look at productivity and how do we measure productivity and then how do we regulate public services to get more productivity. I go to an international conference every year which is unique in that the minister has to go with a union leader. It's an OECD Education International Conference. And it's very interesting to me how the narrative around the OECD has changed too. We went into this productivity drive and we've lost our teachers. And that's what's happened here as well. So if you subject, so teachers in England have seen the greatest work intensification of any profession since 2003. eighty five percent of them say they go home at the end of every”
2023-02-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Mary Bousted One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“School budget, secondly, I would completely from the top to the bottom reform the inspection system, Ostead. I think it's a dysfunctional regulator. It knows the price of everything and the value of nothing in education. Its inspection judgments are unreliable and usually invalid, so I'd stop them. And thirdly, I would work to get the profession able to be evolved again in decisions around curriculum and assessment so that teachers could once again exercise their professional knowledge and expertise.”
2023-02-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Mary Bousted One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, well, I mean, the agenda would last longer than a day, but what I would do, I think, first of all, is, well, I tackle three things. First of all, a funding system, which means that schools in challenging areas with deprived pupils are getting less of a real terms increase over the next few years than schools in the Leafty suburbs, because money is being directed towards them. So I would fund it.”
2023-02-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Mary Bousted One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I can't comment on that because the election for the next general secretary is an election amongst the membership. I have no voting in that. And it's quite right that I should have no voice in that.”
2023-02-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Mary Bousted One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, political parties have international positions, so do unions. I don't think that's unusual. I might not always agree with what individuals say, but the fact that union has a policy on them. I don't think that should be a matter of contention.”
2023-02-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Mary Bousted One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, we don't opine about them all the time, and most of the time it's fed to that conference, is spent on education debates. We have one motion on international affairs. And, you know, members are interested in international affairs. We have an international committee. We have strong policies on Palestine. And we have strong policies on a range of international issues. We're a big union, and I don't think that's unusual. Most big unions have international departments. Well, just to say also, they're part of the International Solidarity Movement. They have strong connections with other unions. We have strong connections with unions all over the world.”
2023-02-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Mary Bousted One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Look, people can have their political views. Those political views are not the policy of the Union. I can't speak for their independent political views. I can speak for the Union. And the National Education Union, since it's been formed, I think has been a fantastic force for good, both in education and in the trade union and in the political world.”
2023-02-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Mary Bousted One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I think that's a complete misrepresentation. You know, even when I don't agree with them, and sometimes, let's be frank, sometimes I do feel like banging my head on the desk when I'm not agreeing with some of them, even then it's absolutely clear to me that they are thinking about education, they're thinking about the profession, they're thinking about their members, and they're thinking about what's best for them, even when I don't agree with them. Really?”
2023-02-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Mary Bousted One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, they didn't advertise it. Well, it is an important question. You know, when you leave your life, this is serious, isn't there, that this is parallel universes, that when you make a big decision in your life, that you go one way, but there's another universe where you make the other decision, the sliding doors thing. But in the real world, I got the avenue. The fact is the NUT would never have done such an advert. It is inconceivable that they would have done such an advert.”
2023-02-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Mary Bousted One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The committees and the meetings and all that. I'd always been a union member, but I hadn't been an activist within the union.”
2023-02-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Mary Bousted One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“While I was a member of the NUT when I was at school, when I was working in schools, what happened about the ATL job was that in 2002 they advertised in The Guardian for a general secretary and I had then worked in universities for about 10 years, three universities, and thought, well, I know the policy environment very well. I think I've got good instincts about children and young people and about the profession. I'll just give it a go. I had no expectation really. And people say, oh, I didn't expect to when they really did. Listen, I really didn't expect to...”
2023-02-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Mary Bousted One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I was working full time. I had to work full time because my husband was working part time. And I'd done an MA in language and education and just finished that and really felt that I had a very good handle on theory and practice. I'd taught for 11 years, I had a good theory handle. So I thought, well, I'll just train teachers for a while and then I'll go back to school. Well, my daughter's very little. I'll go in to teach training, do that for four or five years and then come back into school and I'd really like to end up as a head teacher. That's what I wanted to do.”
2023-02-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Mary Bousted One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I because I was working, well, I was in London, I was married then to a musician, we were finding it very difficult. This is a story which has come around again, very difficult to pay the mortgage and pay the bills. I taught for 11 years. I was ahead of English. I had my daughter. I was working, I would say, 65 hour week. And we decided that we...”
2023-02-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Mary Bousted One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It really was, and one of the biggest differences, well, you're in London and that's a different place. I don't think London's like anywhere else. And I wasn't really ready for it. I wasn't really ready for how big it is and how anonymous you are in London. It can be a very, I think, lonely place. And I wasn't ready also for working and teaching and living in such a multicultural society. The school I taught at had 32 first languages other than English spoken. And I'd grown up in white Catholic environment. And so just the culture shock and learning to love living in such a multicultural, such an exciting environment, that took a while to get used to, but I did get used to it.”
2023-02-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Mary Bousted One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When I see the scenes they do in schools, I just have to lie on the floor because I'm laughing so much because it takes me right back to just the very particular education you receive from nuns.”
2023-02-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Mary Bousted One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, really I was just dressing up, but I was taught by nuns by the cross and passion when I went to my secondary school which was a girls convent grammar school in Bolton. When I watch dairy girls and I see Sister St. Michael, and I think that's Sister St. Michael, I see the nuns.”
2023-02-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Mary Bousted One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I dressed up as a nun. That was very good. You know, after I'd had a bath, put a towel around my head, dressed up as a nun. I was educated by nuns.”
2023-02-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Mary Bousted One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, I mean, I had various I thought I might like to be a journalist and I liked to be an actress. I was always in the school play.”
2023-02-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Mary Bousted One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, some of my family do commit mortal sins according to the culture of my family because they are conservative voters, yeah. And I still speak to them and love them very much. But that was a bit the sort of, it was the Zeitgeist in our house was that the Conservative Party was not liked. The politicians were not agreed with. And my father in particular, he was a head teacher, the headmaster of a small primary school on the biggest council estate in Brakman in Bolton. And he had to deal every day with children coming to school who clearly their lives were being blighted by poverty. And he always said that that got worse under a conservative government and it made him mad. And that anger that he had about inequality and poverty is the thing which drives me.”
2023-02-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Mary Bousted One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My younger sister got kicked out more than me because she was outrageous. I was quite a good girl, really. So very rarely, but my youngest sister, who sadly died now, she was out of the room quite a lot.”
2023-02-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Mary Bousted One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My father, all my father had to do was say both your names, your first name and your middle name, and you knew we were in trouble. That's all he had to do to stop you misbehaving.”
2023-02-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Mary Bousted One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When you weren't having a row about monopoly. Yeah, I mean, at the dinner table, one of the ways that my dad would keep order is to, he was an avid reader of The Manchester Guardian, and he would take a news item from the Manchester Guardian and we'd be expected required to give our opinions on it.”
2023-02-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Mary Bousted One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, but not sort of party political in that way. I think my dad voted liberal. I think my mum veered between liberal and Labour. But what we were brought up with was a strong Catholic tradition and Catholic social teaching is about equality. It's about recognising unions. It's about paying someone a fair day's work for a fair day's pay. It's about protection of the environment. And it's about dignity at work.”
2023-02-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Mary Bousted One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, listen, monopoly was banned in our house because it led to physical violence on my mother's ninetieth birthday my brother gave a speech and he said, well, these are the three things you learned in the Pleistow family, which is my family name. First is that a good Rowcliffe is the heir. Second is it's important to cheat at the monopoly. And third, it's a mortal sin to vote Tori. So those were the cultural lines that I was brought up with. You just told me my dad.”
2023-02-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Mary Bousted One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I've been bold in Lancashire. Growing up in Bolton. My father was headmaster of the local primary school. My mother, in between having eight children, taught. And yeah, I was the seventh of eight, got five elder brothers and an elder sister. And in that environment, a very loving environment, but you soon learn you're not the center of the universe and you soon learn that you have to be determined to get your voice heard.”
2023-02-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Mary Bousted One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I'm sure it does. I'm the seventh of eight children. So as you can imagine, it's a big Northern Catholic family, Irish Catholic family.”
2023-02-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Mary Bousted One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm simply waiting for these guys to negotiate and understand what negotiation means. And negotiation means this, that the unions get into a room with ministers who have the power to make decisions and with experts. So in this case it would be experts on teachers paying conditions. And you sit down and you start from your respective positions and you negotiate until you see if you can or you can't, sometimes you can, sometimes you can't, but you work for hours and days to try to come to a resolution to the dispute. Unfortunately, the Secretary of State for Education seems to think that calling is in for an hour and the last meeting was half an hour is negotiations. That's simply not the case.”
2023-02-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Mary Bousted One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When I get frustrated, it's that when evidence is misused, when it's misrepresented for political purposes, because ultimately my job in the end isn't political. The National Education Union isn't affiliated to any political party. My job is to work with government, whichever government, to try and do the best for education and the best for my members. And when I get frustrated, it's when I do not think that the evidence is really being looked at and the political decisions that politicians should take comes out of that.”
2023-02-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Mary Bousted One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, that's just a complete misrepresentation of what we're actually doing. I mean, I said to Gillian Keegan when she said, well, we'll pay teachers in shortage subjects more. The fact of the matter is 14 out of 17 of the secondary subjects are shortage. Governments failed to meet their targets catastrophically. I mean, English, which is, as you say, my subject. And then after I taught, I trained teachers in three universities. And English was always, of course, first to close because it had so many applicants with such high degrees. Last year the government missed its English target for teachers by forty percent.”
2023-02-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Mary Bousted One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think that's so important. And when I wrote the book, it's called Support Not Surveillance How to Solve the Teacher Retention Crisis. And I wrote it because I've done, as you say, I've done this job leading an education to education trade unions now for 20 years. And in that time, I have really worked hard to amass the evidence. I think that's so important when you are representing your members. I think it is so important to be as expert as you can about the data to underpin your argument. And obviously it's essential when I'm facing you on the today program. And as a union leader, you don't expect an easy ride. It's very important that you have the data to back up the assertions you've made. And that's something that's always been important to me.”
2023-02-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Mary Bousted One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, told him was wrong and given the evidence it was wrong three times, and I said, I don't know what to do next, so I think I'm just going to bang my head on the desk, which I ceremoniously did.”
2023-02-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Mary Bousted One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I did. I did. It was with Nick Gibb. The school's minister, who actually has been schools minister for virtually longer than anybody else. And personally, I get on with him very well. I don't agree with what he's doing to schools and what he's done. You know, he's a serious politician and he works very hard. He just comes to the wrong conclusions. But the thing about Nick is that once he's got an idea in his head, it will not be dislodged. And he said something which I had...”
2023-02-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Mary Bousted One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source