GFTU BGCM Minutes 2017

affect the educational, psychological and social wellbeing of many of our

children and young people.

Lastly, I did not realise we were looking for Shakespearian quotes, but as we

have been sitting there I have thought of one, but my quote can only be aspirational for the morning of 8 th June and it is: “Now is the winter of our

discontent Made glorious summer” by this fairer, more ethical and aspirational

Labour Government. (Cheering and Laughter )

The motion was formally seconded

THE PRESIDENT: Does anybody want to speak against it? (No response) Does

anybody else want to speak for it?

SIS LYNNE MACKEY (Association of Educational Psychologists): I have never

spoken at conference before and I am so, so nervous, so please-- (Applause)

I am not going to go on about the evidence base. I can alert you to a policy

that is written by the Education Policy Initiative last September in 2016 really

challenging the idea of social mobility, but what I am really interested in more,

and I do not have a quote from Shakespeare, but I do have quotes from my

dad and my brothers and my son’s grandma as well, of a social reformer called

Michael Young, saying it is amazing that the battery of certificates and degrees

that the education system has at its disposal has put its seal of approval on the

minority and its seal of disapproval on the many who fail to shine from the time

they are regulated to the bottom streams from the age of seven before, I would

say far, far before the age of seven. I would argue that rather than trying to

better the player, what we should be doing is disrupt and challenge the game of

meritocracy itself that accentuates existing structural inequalities. All of our

children have merit. Children with profound and multiple learning difficulties

have merit. Traumatised unaccompanied asylum seeker children have merit.

Emotionally vulnerable in some aspects children in care, but also incredibly

resilient children have their merit and that enormously creative year 5 child that

I am working with who insistently frustrates the children because she refused to

comply to put her creations into paragraphs certainly has merit and my dad

used to say to me, “You don’t need a university degree to work that one out”

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