Chris Keates, NASUWT - 17 June 2009
House of Commons, Children, Schools and Families Select Committee Meeting
Eighteen years on ... it’s incredulous and scandalous to realize that absolutely nothing has changed and the same cruel and heartless rules are rigorously and ruthlessly applied today ... and tomorrow ?
How many teachers have suffered during these long 18 years ? Indeed, how have they suffered ? ... health, divorce and even suicide ! Where are those statistics ?
In eighteen more years, will it still be the same ? Will the NASUWT be sitting before another Select Committee and speaking of their considerable amount of statistical data but not having done anything ? Will nothing have changed ?
The NASUWT database (ref. : APPENDIX B Page 19) only contains case references that involved the provision of a solicitor to assist teachers experiencing criminal arrest. In effect, this database might well be their accounts management system - they could query their financial accounts history to extract union expenditure relating to legal support for teacher arrests.
I would have expected the NASUWT, on such an important issue, to be able to provide substantial depth and content for all cases of false allegations including how many teachers never worked again in education, whether guilty or innocent, and indeed how many have committed suicide through the stress of their experience ?
After 18 years, the NASUWT have failed :
- To provide literature / books that might help teachers who have been falsely accused or that might educate teachers about the risk to their careers and lives.
- To provide adequate support for teachers who become subject to an allegation. In my case I was met with incompetance, complacency and an utter disregard for me as a person and my situation that destroyed my life - I was treated as a statistic, a number, from the moment of my suspension.
- To change any aspect of existing procedures to protect and support the accused teacher.
- To provide an indepth analysis of the precise scale and consequencial damage associated with false allegations.
- To do anything to have prevented or minimized the utter destructive effects and consequences.
How anyone can feel proud to be directly associated with a problem that has existed for 18 years without progress or resolution defies commonsense and is an afront to teachers and union members alike !
I wish that I could use stronger language ... it’s about time that Chris Keates got off her ... .... and actually made a stand on this issue and shoved her database containing 18 years of statistical data where it belongs !
Refer : Part Of The Union
I close this blog with an e-mail comment that I received from my arresting DC (January 2008) :
“I am sorry to hear that the whole situation has not been sorted by now (Court cases do not appear to take this long).
It is good that she has the support of you all to get through this and I cannot even think how she functions on a daily basis with the situation still not resolved.
I find it so hard to understand how in our society that Jane now has to present her own case and cross examine witnesses. That in itself appears to go back to the dark ages when victims of crime were allowed to be cross examined by offenders !”
Jane Jameson (née Watts)
