073 - Nick Smart - Breaking the Silence on Settlement Agreements in Education

Nick Smart: Silenced by Support and the Fight for Change

Welcome to Season 2 of The Pit Pony Podcast. We begin with an episode that steps beyond individual exit stories and into the heart of a growing campaign.

Our guest is Nick Smart, a primary teacher who entered the profession at 42 and is now, at 58, exiting the classroom. But Nick’s story is not just about his own departure - it’s about shining a light on the thousands of teachers who have been forced out under the guise of “support plans.”

In this powerful conversation, Nick explains why informal support plans have become a death knell for so many careers, how settlement agreements and non-disclosure clauses keep teachers silent, and why he decided to contact his MP to raise the issue nationally.

Together with Sarah Dunwood, Nick has helped produce Silenced by Support, a report containing over 100 anonymous testimonies and data from thousands of educators. It is a campaign that shows the scale of the problem and demands urgent change.

This is more than one story. It’s a call to action.

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Edited with finesse by our Podcast Super Producer, Mike Roberts of Making Digital Real

Transcript

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Hello and welcome to the Pit Pony podcast with myself Sharon Cawley and me Sarah Dunwood in which we talk to teachers from all walks of life who exited the classroom from what they thought was a job for life and thrived on the other side of teaching. Coming up in this episode people for so so many years felt completely separated completely alone in all of this. You know people would be told yeah you're struggling everybody else seems to be getting on okay and you know and of course what we haven't mentioned yet of course is NDAs all the all the people that tend to leave after getting a support plan. 

There's a couple of ways people leave lots just resign and lots leave with a settlement and those that leave with a settlement have to sign an NDA. So you know straight away all those people are separated straight away they feel like they're the only one they cannot talk about it outside of the walls of their own house. Hello and welcome to a brand new fresh episode of the Pit Pony podcast and for those of you on YouTube you will see our faces because that's what we're going to do from now on.

We've come from behind the screen so no more Sunday afternoon Sarah in our pyjamas. This is it full full hairdos happening and we're starting with a really great episode to be perfectly honest one that sits slightly outside of the norm of our Pit Ponies life after teaching exit the classroom and thrive stories because we've got a great guest with us today Nick Smart who deserves an episode in my opinion all of his own to talk about what he is doing at this moment in time to give you a framing structure where Nick's concerned. Primary school teacher now he was traditionally trained as a middle school English teacher but has always taught primary a late entrant into the profession so not your typical Pit Pony started at 42 and is currently 58 because I always like to work out how old people are when I look at them on screen don't you Sarah and I can look quite now he's 58 okay he's 58 and is currently exiting the classroom.

Full stop no more comments are going to be made about the exiting of him from the classroom. So Nick welcome and thank you. Oh yeah thanks hi Sharon hi Sarah thanks for the introduction.

There's no problem at all so Nick let's start before we go into the whole story that you're going to tell us of what you've been up to which is staggeringly impressive start by that night you messaged me you slid into my DMs on Facebook well what happened was this for me I mean I've been teaching for 16 years now and for most of that time I've been aware that there's been a big problem within the profession in that some people leave and have a leaving party and some people leave and just quietly disappear and you just never see them again and no one really contacts those people and people might be warned that it might not be professional to contact those people who've suddenly disappeared and gone quiet and you know these these people were just literally disappearing from the profession. It became clear to me that something was very wrong and yeah of course what we now know is that what's happening is people are given support plans and these support plans don't provide any support whatsoever generally they just provide pressure and extra work to do and most of these people just leave quietly so I came to contact you Sharon because what I decided to do I just got fed up with this basically and I decided to write to my MP and not just write to him but urge him to write to the Education Secretary to raise this as a serious issue. Now I've been a member of Life After Teaching for I don't know maybe four years or something I think you've been going about five years is that right so I think yeah maybe been going about a year when I joined up and I've been pretty quiet and sometimes I'd comment anonymously but I became aware that Sarah had written in the past to the Education Secretary as well so tried to get in touch with Sarah couldn't directly do so but was able to get in touch with you Sharon. 

The reason I wanted to get in touch with Sarah is because I knew that she'd written to the Education Secretary herself so I thought well I'll tell my MP Dan Aldridge is my MP I'll tell him you know what's what the past is and what's gone on and what kind of communication Bridget Phillipson has had about this in the past so I did so we got in touch and that's where the story began. Cheers Nick and you're absolutely right Sarah has been banging this drum for many many years let's just take a little step back let's take a step back and imagine we are talking to the non-teaching listener the husband or the wife of somebody who has not been in education and goes why are they kicking up a fuss about a support plan I'm an accountant I wish my boss had come in and offered me support for what I'm doing okay what do we mean by this support plan because you have come up with the most beautiful captured expression of what is happening the reason these people are ghosted out of the profession the reason they go and we've not signed their leaving card is because they've been silenced by support so let's dig into that for a moment now a support in the world of education and support plan become an expression that people have now started to dread and signals the death knell on somebody's career I'd be interested in both of your opinions on that right let's start from a basis of where people don't understand because the word support in its truest sense should be exactly that which is something's something's not right or somebody wants to develop themselves further and a variety of mechanisms are put in around them in consultation in agreement to to help that person if they're struggling or help that person to to to move on and become even better that's that's kind of the CPD framework of it then sat within the human resources employment legislation and we've talked about this Sharon on um on a on a previous podcast I think it would be ridiculous for anybody to think that in any profession there aren't going to be people who either aren't fit for the job their capability or that there aren't going to be times where somebody needs to be disciplined so there are legal routes for that there are there are accepted HR processes for that so what we're talking about is in the world of not fit to do the job capability so a good capability process which I don't know whether that's a misnomer or a paradox but a good capability process that's actually designed to support somebody properly in order to then move them to a point where they are able to do their job effectively and then move on with their career should have stages in it and one of those stages very early on is this kind of idea of informal support in that it's it might be documented but it's not part of an official capability process because once you're into an official capability process then there are two roads on that which is you you walk the line all the right support is actually put in place to allow you to be successful you come off that capability you carry on with your life or all the support is put in place you don't achieve it and at the end of it the employer has a legal right because they've followed the process to dismiss you because you are not able to do your job that's what should happen what's happened over time is that informal support in education now appears to have been turned into informal support plans and very much to my mind and by the observable evidence of what's happened in our group over the last five years those informal support plans are not being put in place a lot of the time with the genuine intent of providing meaningful support for people to help them to improve they are being used as a tool that removes psychological safety for those people because the very term informal support plan now has become synonymous with i'm in trouble here and that's not what should happen if somebody's saying to you you need so we need some support let's put something in yes i'm going to write it down but you're not in trouble i want to help that's what it should be i want to help we want to help but it appears not to be that it appears to be the precursor to or the the lever that is used to generate that visceral response in somebody where they go oh my number's up here and i either have to suck this up or i have to walk away before i get tied up in a process that is not going to help me and and in my experience and i think this is why this is the case let's look at it in real terms a school comes to you and says sharon look your results have plummeted for the last two years it is clear that your classroom management is really struggling slt you're at your door every every single lesson your classroom we've had complaints from we have got some real evidence here that says we've got got a problem and you need our support okay fair enough in my experience what happens is i'm speaking to group members who go i've just gone through a great offset my results were the best i've ever had i don't have an ounce of issue with the kids me markings up to date but i've got to agree that i need support with no evidence whatsoever that i've done out wrong out out of the blue and suddenly on your praise on your 40 on your party big birthday yeah that first edge of the blue it just comes up so often doesn't it as you just said sarah literally just it comes from nowhere and as you say sharon it kind of once you hear those that phrase informal support plan you know you're in those crosshairs and with no evidence and at that point i find that the person who's faced with that crumbles some of them do and they suddenly default into this pit of fear because they they've seen it happen it's pastor nine muller isn't it first they came for and actually at that point they don't fight necessarily give me the evidence show me this they fold because the amount of people who've been put on support park plans with no evidence whatsoever is staggering or spurious evidence because to go to your scenario let's imagine that it is you sharon your results the last two years have been they've not been great and slt are always at you you're always calling for slt uncle and you're this and you're that and you're the other somebody who is seriously reflective in leadership would before they even go and have that conversation would look at the circumstances so okay let's have a look at sharon's timetable oh she's got all and i'm going to use some phrases that that people might not like but bottom sets sharon's got loads of classes with really high needs kids in there and we've not been able to put the right ta support in sharon's kids actually when they came in in year seven had a reading age of six or seven so how on earth are they going to get those gcse results that's what a reflective leader would do that's what a supportive leader would do not looking for excuses but looking for the circumstances that sit around it to go is this a sorry for talking about you like this but is this a sharon problem oh but even more is this a circumstantial problem oh and what's more sharon lost a mum last year and sharon's marriage is broken down and a son's struggling at school now that would be really beautiful if they could start to take into consideration if my personal circumstances had shifted so you're right absolutely that's what should happen and the other thing of course is that um what sharon's children do or how well they get on in sharon's class is not entirely down to what sharon does yeah it's not we're not in a factory here you know children are not widgets so you know there's loads of things that have happened to those children you know some of them have had a struggle getting up in the morning some of them have no breakfast and then everything that happens in in their exams or in their sats if they're in primary all seems to be blamed on on the teacher and it can you know it's regarded that it's only the teacher that can possibly have any effect on that absolutely spot on and i think to the to the non-educator listener i think that discussion was perfect as a framing so okay prior to groups like life after teaching that kind of stuff was happening nobody knew because they were exited ghosted and there was no leaving card to sign correct now here's where we come to the new chapter a little bit of joined up thinking there is a facebook group where this kind of information is becoming thank god facebook put an anonymous posting feature on it because if you can post anonymously in the life after teaching facebook group this narrative is now writ large time and time again and yourself nick and sarah have been joining up dots now going oh this isn't a one-off endorse it or this doesn't just happen in liverpool this isn't just this matt's problem nick you've and sarah have been spearheading i'd like you to talk us about what you talk to us about what you've done so far to start to make the silence start to make the statement silenced by support isn't just a one school issue absolutely right yes so you're absolutely right in that people for so so many years felt completely separated completely alone in in all of this um you know people would be told yeah you're struggling everybody else seems to be getting on okay and you know and uh and of course what we haven't mentioned yet of course is ndas all the all the people that tend to leave after getting a support plan um there's a couple of ways people leave um lots just resign and lots leave with a settlement and those that leave with a settlement have to sign an nda so you know straight away all those people are separated straight away they feel like they're the only one they cannot talk about it outside of the walls of their own house so a group like life after teaching that brings all those people together and as he said allows people to talk about it anonymously makes a massive difference and in fact facebook have changed it recently so that um you can have a like an anonymous name can't it so you can even you can now begin to realise who you're talking to and get those conversations going as well so yeah but to answer your question sharon what what happened after i contacted you and sarah and i started talking was that um we got together sarah basically talked about what we could do about this um i talked to my mp dan to get him to write to project phillipson which he's now done and we started thinking about what else we could do one thing that we did was get in touch with schools week for anyone who's not an educator they're an important online education publication and um they did an investigation about it and did a report on our campaign um and what happened simultaneously with that was that i'd said to sarah you know we need to get some evidence or one of us said i'm not sure which and this was the power of the group you know 175 000 people so a message went out you know who's been affected this way and who would like to share their story and about 330 people i think it was at that point came back actually shared their story which is actually a really brave thing to do when you've been through everything that you've been through we've talked about how people crumble and i was just thinking when you were saying that sharon another reason why people crumble is because when you're a teacher often it's really an integral part of your identity and you're probably absolutely exhausted by running around just trying to do everything you possibly can you can never get everything done when you're a teacher so you're already exhausted um you know you get this plan sort of dumped on you from nowhere you can't see how you can do any better because you're already you know at your wits end um and that that's kind of why people crumble um just to interject sorry nick i've got another theory about that i think one of the reasons so many people crumble is the generation who's been targeted there is an age bracket i suspect that is emerging here and our age bracket call us gen x's if you want gen x's do as they're told in the workplace gen x's are not millennials gen x's are not gem z's who go i'm out of here you're not talking to me like this i know my boundaries i know my rights we are the pit ponies who've come through the education system probably since university i know you slightly buck the trend but we have been taught and worn down over years to doff our cap to whoever is sat behind the desk that says head teacher's office we think a union is something that we only use in a point of crisis and actually our generation on the whole haven't even got a copy of their bloody contract that they signed let alone know what they're entitled to what their rights are employment law where do i even go with that we are disempowered we are by our nature deferential and do as ours and as we are told and we sit so quickly in a pool of self-inflicted shame that we've done something wrong because we are people pleasers by very definition which is why we're in the profession we are ripe for the picking when it comes to this kind of toxic controlling bullying and hopefully soon to be illegal practise within school the generation they're targeting it is like shooting fish in a barrel if you want my opinion yeah and it's like that's absolutely right about about our generation and also that's absolutely right about the culture within teachings that we think of as nice helpful people you know who sort of give of ourselves to help the next generation so we don't think of ourselves as a militant or anything like that in any way i used before i was a teacher i used to do a few things but one thing i did for 13 years was i worked in a shoe factory and you can imagine that was a heavily unionised environment and if anything like the things that happened in teaching happened in that shoe factory the shop steward would have marched into the office of the manager and said what the hell do you think you're doing to my member but our unions i don't want to be too critical here i'm very oh i will be national campaigns and i absolutely support their stances on them on palestine and pay and all those sorts of things but it's so so important that they actually focus on the individuals who are members of their union that need support okay so where we are now you contacted me to get to sarah um you then realised that you'd got a hive mind working within life after teaching you realised you'd got some support with the ear of dam and sarah two like-minded people then you started to reach out and garner stories and testimonials from people who had similar experiences to each other then schools week came into play and then you you produced the most powerful publication between the two of you that sarah is showing now silenced by support for those of you who are listening to this from audio it's it's the most powerful read and tell us a little bit about what you produced at this point so you've done schools week you've got dan aldridge you pull this together beautifully tell us what you did there uh yeah we basically um so as i was saying before our little detour um yeah sarah put out a thing to the group um saying um you know who's been affected by this we had these 300 people or so um got in touch and from there and some some people shared their story but said they didn't want it shared any further um which is just so understandable in the circumstances um but we pulled out 101 stories from that which was so powerful and what i always say to people is um you know if we send this off to someone there's um there's like a preface um a piece that um the two of you have written uh finding my tree and there's an introduction so i always say to people read all of those those three sort of um introductory passages and then there's no way people are going to even though it's not you know very wordy no one's going to sit down and read the whole thing but if they just pick out three at random just flick through at random and pick out come to teacher number 51 here and just read the pull quote at the bottom and do that three times you've got a picture of what's going on so if i look at number 51 here it says female teachers particularly those approaching or over 50 called into question with performance management or appraisal and then focused um then forced out under threat or capability capability procedures that's what happened to me flick through another one randomly number 36 i was gonna say i'll give you number 90 go on i battled hard to try to meet the new targets but each time new issues were blindsiding me and that goes about into that support plan doesn't it yeah all my observations and appraisals yeah i mean people can write in and pick a number 67 all my observations and appraisals for my original subject were outstanding until november when slt started to find faults with things that were judged outstanding only a month before perfect sarah can we have at least 26 please let's see what number 26 yields well this is like bingo there with caller the response was that my time management is obviously an issue quote you need to be on the support plan okay so we have a really powerful piece of literature to read that that at that point you have something concrete where's that gone has that stayed sat on your desk nick sarah what's happened to that publication it's a website has it been sent anywhere what have we done with it it took us quite a while to get them printed so first of all what we did was the schools week piece came out that was coming out on the monday and on the friday or saturday i thought all these people are going to be looking at schools we can seeing this and they're going to be thinking that happened to me what are those people going to do they need somewhere to go they need something to to pull them all together so i thought i better put together a website really quickly well luckily i um in my spare time when i was a teacher um i i run a magazine because someone's got to run a magazine about david bowie and it falls it falls to me someone's got to do it um so i know i knew how to set up a website i knew how to design a report like the one we've just done so it almost feels like all those things i've done in my life up to now i've just been there to give me the skills to be able to do the things we need to do for this campaign so anyway so i set up the website and i thought well when people get there they're going to need something to do you know they're going to need some way to sort of pull them together or share their stories so i just went on to google forms and came up with a bunch of questions so that people could share their stories about things that happened to them and i think it's fair to say sarah isn't it that we were quite overwhelmed and swamped by the by the responses what was the response sarah what happened so so in the end i think just just to just to clarify because because it's been a bit of a it's been a messy timeline it's happened very quickly you'll have to bring me back to this point sharon but i want to go back to last september october because last september october a journalist from sky got in touch with us and and there was some work done over the period of about five six weeks wasn't there where she spoke to about 250 people from our group directly gathered some of these stories but it was more focused on it was more wide-ranging it was about toxic bullying and the use of ndas and i think we were quite hopeful at that point that something would would come of that and to be fair they did push it hard on the cycle for that 24 hours and there was a podcast in it and there was this that and the other and also at that point in time i was still waiting for a response from bridget phillips and i'd kind of hoped that it would it would tie in with that but ultimately it didn't it came a little bit later so we'd had a bit of media engagement and then and then it kind of is the phrase it was a damp squib it kind of and then nothing um and and then i had this horrible period of time where we'd received a response from dfe i'd received a response from dfe to what was a really robust nothing to do with my ego here but a really robust well articulated summary of the collective concerns of a lot of people who'd contributed from the group and trying to distil all of that down was very difficult it started out at about 50 pages it ended up at 10 it was it was a bit of a struggle but we got there i got a response and it wasn't from bridget phillipson it was from somebody in the communications office of dfe and i i think i've said this on a previous podcast the the second paragraph of it was nothing short of mansplaining to me the importance of teaching as a profession well really mike's gonna have to bleep this but no s*** sherlock so and then it went on it was a very standard political response we're doing this here's a link to this and and to be fair some of it was very relevant there's been changes to the appraisal and capability procedures it's actually tied down a bit more now but i don't think some senior leaders have read it but it was such a disappointing response because it was a non-response it didn't acknowledge the reality of what was written in that letter that i couldn't bring myself to go back to the group and go i've had a response and here it is because i think it would have caused utter outrage and i couldn't deal with that at the time so i felt ashamed that i'd not had the right response from the people who should have responded to that in the right way and in all honesty that was then parallel to the experiences of what a lot of people who've gone through support plans and the exits and settlement agreements that's the feeling i've not been listened to they're not taking it seriously they do so anyway so nothing had happened i'd kind of put it to one side for a bit when nick came to me and and that initial go out to the group was a call for testimony and and that initial as nick said we probably got about mid 300s responses to that and it was harrowing reading was really harrowing reading nick and i were in touch we were we were going through and and almost cleansing it to make sure that there was absolutely nothing identifiable and then it nick correct me if i'm wrong it wasn't difficult to go we'll pick 101 random because there was no there was no testimony that wasn't powerful if that makes sense so and i have to say nick nick has done the legwork on this nick is nick is the person who sat in the background and has gone through those testimony that the the book is beautiful the website is beautiful nick just goes off and does it because i'm a scattered squirrel on speed at some at times i i can't focus so nick's done this but what then happened with nick's absolutely right we knew then we knew the school's week article was coming out and there was this kind of blind panic about oh my god it now's the time to capture this and we haven't got anywhere to follow on to so nick did did the did the website did the questionnaire and where nick started this was with the benefit of hindsight we could have structured the questionnaire slightly differently because we've had a monumental response to that which when we've gleaned the data again has probably left us with about three and a half thousand really robust responses but then we've had to really dig into the data rather than being able to directly pull out some of the deeper trends we've been able to pull out some obvious ones to do with age to do with gender but but we could have framed the questions slightly differently if i may i don't think what went out to gather that information was anything other than a temperature test are we on the right minds here is there a yet on the people who so let's just park that for a minute in irrespective what questions were asked what quality of data because that data's data we're talking about people here let me just ask you this the data is solid and robust so we could have we could have made it easier for ourselves by asking questions differently let me just go back again 3 000 what people 3 300 yeah 3 300 people right who have responded to something that went out through a facebook group that not everybody is a member of but not everybody has social media that not everybody is prepared so if you've had 3 000 people do it already i'm no mathematician but i'm already multiplying stuff out about the scale of what we're talking about here so yeah you're absolutely right and it and it is a temperature test and and i think where i come from with this is is it was a temperature test for multiple reasons a we wanted to build on on what we had in terms of that that testimony and what our gut was telling us about what we were seeing in the group but also we knew that actually like it or not when you go to somebody and say there's a problem there is a systemic issue there is this they don't want the soft data they don't want the anecdote they don't want people's experience they want numbers so and i said this to a couple of people in the group because a couple of people did kind of were quite critical about it um which i took very personally but hey ho but fundamentally it was for that it was to be able to go to somebody and go three and a half thousand people have responded to this of that three and a half thousand people this many were put on support plans this many ultimately ended up going through capability this many ended up leaving their jobs leaving the profession so when you statistically amplify that to the equivalent of the profession and everybody that's come out what we have seen is the tiniest tip of the iceberg the tiniest tip of the iceberg and that volume of responses and the quality of the data that is in those responses is enough for it to be statistically significant and that is important when we are going and having conversations with other people so i think that's where i was going with that so that is so powerful because you have had conversations then subsequently with other people so who else have you spoken to i mean what we keep saying on the group we've got irons in the fire there's it's a really exciting time you don't have to name names but what i want to get out on this podcast is this you don't have to drop who you've spoken to talk about this exciting time talk about these irons in the fire this is not going away is it no it isn't and there's media interest let's put it like that there's media interest there have been multiple meetings with one particular media outlet who are very clear that there is a story they're very clear that there is a public interest story what and that's the data isn't it sarah go along to them say like three thousand people through the group through through the survey have said this and out of those three thousand people two thousand have directly had a support and maybe a thousand to see that somebody else you know and we because we've crunched the data we can demonstrate now that there's a problem and so we're being taken seriously but it but i think what's what's been beautiful about these conversations has that it has been that the the person here is here is one particular person who's talking to us is so utterly determined as a non-specialist non-education background has really dug into it has really dug in to understand the experience to to understand they they to so even go back to the start of this podcast the reality of of there needs to be hr processes we've had those conversations so it's very clear that we're not coming as representatives of a profession who basically don't want to be scrutinised we've been very clear in terms of avoiding bias and that sort of stuff but the joy for me in the sadness of the whole thing is that somebody who sits outside of education is really listening the unknown at this point is what that's going to resort in and how that might play out because we don't know at this point where there's a whole mechanism in media and in journalism that is not quite as straightforward as somebody going this is a great story i want to run with it it's not the movies it's not a man with a hat with press in it and and it's not that so we're we're sat in a space at the moment where nick and i feel feel very hopeful that there are people sat outside of our world who are seeing this that that it's potentially i'll say a me too scenario there is a damn going to break at some point and i think as well people sat outside of education in the media but also we've now got some very significant voices in terms of mps dan eldridge has been amazing i know that nick will talk about that dan eldridge has been amazing i know there's another group member who has been given access to their mps parliamentary aid who has structured the question to be posed to yeah and there's there's a whole flipping process with that so i know there are people listening and we're now trying to be just two steps ahead all of the time anticipating what questions they're going to come back with what might they want what what do we need to be able to present to them almost on a on the turn of a sixpence to to to kind of respond and not let the momentum go as it's starting to build and i can think of no two better people to do that in terms of the way in which i've seen you operate together as as a unit and we've talked about that one media outlet but simultaneously nick i know that you have had a list of people that you have sent copies of silenced by support to do a bit of name dropping who've you gone out to and why yeah well this has gone out to lots of um outlets so it's gone out to the guardian the bbc um obviously their education um correspondence private eye some smaller sort of media outlets as well channel four you know because you want to get with you know we're talking to people that do things like final four and dispatches and all those sort of investigatory sort of things we don't know which ones of these will come out but it's a numbers game you know the more you send out the more you get i've also sent it to people who are like academics there's um ucl do quite a lot of work on teacher retention and so they're interested in this sort of thing as well and of course i've sent out to the unions as well and um so those went out i'm going to say a week ago maybe just over a week so um so yeah we're just sort of starting to get some responses from that as well so with with the uh the media outlet that we've been talking to that sarah was talking about plus all these other things going on as well um you know if um if 20 percent of the people that get the report think gosh there's something here we've got 35 reports you know we'll have quite a lot going on and you know alongside that we can now follow up because since we've got the report we've now got the data from the survey as well so now we can follow up with these people and say look you've had the anecdotes you've had you've had this sort of human side of it you can see how it's affecting people now with the data you can see how many people is affecting you can see the scale of it and this just showed that this really is the tip of the iceberg but still it's thousands of people so we keep talking about really compelling tip of the iceberg and and sarah said the dam's about to burst thousands of people and and one of the things that i want to move us on to there because what you what you've outlined there the pair of you is a campaign and i think that's what's really important to harness at this point what we are talking about now and what is making this podcast different is it isn't anecdotal about what's happened to such and such a body we are talking now about a campaign and in my experience of life after teaching people will bubble over sporadically but frequently panorama need to know about this we should be writing to our mp we need a petition we need to just give it but you know what teachers it's happening and like any good union and any good campaign it is only as good as the member and the body that gets behind what's happening you've had outlined for you a campaign well sarah and i think i think that's fairly critical actually because when we initially put the the second questionnaire out the the questionnaire that was really data based initially the response rate to that was so disappointing it was unbelievable and and i react and respond to things in a in a i take everything personally it's just who i am it's just who i am so when you have had five years almost of people going this is a scandal it's like the post office scandal let's get panorama involved let's write to our mps let's do this let's do this let's do this and then when you do this and the engagement on it was was i don't want to use the word appalling but it was disappointingly low in a group of 175 000 i think in the first week we only had about 150 people respond to it which i thought was appalling but then some group members started becoming very vocal about that about the campaign and they started posting about it they they started tagging people and part of it's to do with facebook facebook doesn't show everything to everybody even if they're in a group blah blah blah but when some group members really got behind it and kind of articulated that oh come on people you've been asking for this for ages now's the time that's when we that's when we saw we saw that spike but i think it's symptomatic of a number of things yes there there is a campaign campaigns are only as good as the people that are behind it not in front of it it's behind it that's important it's the people who are prepared to speak up and push with those people at the front nick and i fundamentally are not important in terms of yes we are we're doing bits on it we're doing we're legwork monkeys that's what we are but we need we need people behind it because ultimately at a really simple level there's safety in numbers um and i think that's part of the fear factor people don't want to speak up because they don't want to be isolated and all the rest of it so there is safety in numbers but but with any campaign there is always a tipping point there's a point where the critical mass of people becomes so much that they have to be heard and this has always been my little pushback within the group there's no point in coordinating a campaign of writing a standardised letter to all of the MPs because all that results in is a standardised response coming back there is no point doing a questionnaire uh not a questionnaire a petition because then they don't achieve anything they're wasted energy this is not wasted energy because it's people's real lived experience and you are absolutely right with what you said Sharon let's take it away from numbers and take it back to people people are being damaged they are being broken they are being pushed to the point of wanting to find the mechanism that hurts them significantly enough that they can legitimately have time off work it is making people suicidal people have taken their own lives that is the stark reality of it so this now is about people it's about the story and just off on a tangent although it is not like the post office scandal with one central problematic thing like a like a software system the post office scandal came to light because people were relentless in talking about it Private Eye in particular Private Eye really picked up on this and when it came to it hundreds of people came together in Fenny Compton and people had that realisation of oh it's not just me can I just take that it's not just me and I think that's where this works really nicely into where I'd like to lead you both which is a huge part of the silenced by support which is the settlement agreements that sit at the back of this which is what we are campaigning to bring to light but in and of themselves are part of the problem of asking for support for the campaign because these people have been frightened to death by things that they've signed at the lowest point in their life so if you can imagine we're asking for people to get behind us to come from out of the shadows when they're frightened to death because of what they've had to sign to exit so if we could at this point because it's going to I think bring us nicely into the next couple of things I want to lead into number one let's talk around what is the worst case scenario at the end of this support plan which is the exit and the settlement agreement what does that look like the next thing I'd like to then take us into is and what's the union's role within the exits of the support plans please and then finally to bring it to a conclusion what do you want to happen so if you could just hold those in your heads and I will be keeping you in a very narrow lane smart and downward so these tangents are not meandering off let's start I don't know which one of you wants to pick up this ball I'm about to bat over the net Mr Smart talk me through this very emotive term NDA gagging order settlement agreement let's start again for our non-educational listeners what do we mean by NDA's settlement agreements and exit so it's clear that there's like a very clear and well-worn path now that if you get a support plan you know you're on a path basically you are you're literally on a path to leave your job our data shows from those 3 300 responses we've got that 70 of people who are given a support plan leave their job it's actually probably a bit more than that because there are also another 6% who are still going through the process and there's another 2% who've had to take a demotion as a result okay so there's 22% that retained their position so if you get a support plan 75% of the time you lose your job so that's how much of a supportive procedure it is so there's a well-worn path as I said and what happens is you get given a support plan you think oh it's okay it's time for a beep again oh my numbers up this is it you know and you know people are expecting it sometimes because they get to a certain age they get expensive and maybe they do get a bit slower and set in their ways and stuff because we do as we get older and the system doesn't allow for that in any way you get a support plan and basically if you're wise you bail get out as soon as you got a support plan because if you don't you'll almost certainly fail your support plan and when you say you'll fail your informal support plan they'll have all sorts of stupid targets on it that you'd know way that they can be measured and they can just say oh no we don't think you've done this in our opinion then you get a formal support plan then you fail that then you get capability well once you've got capability on your record schools have to disclose that for the next two years so you're not getting another job because that will be disclosed and you won't get a job offer and this is why people get out as soon as they have a support plan they just know the writing's on the wall then what happens is the union steps in they negotiate an exit plan for you which is normally a very small amount of money probably equal to the amount of money that you would have got if you just worked out you notice and an agreed reference probably quite a meagre one that just says has facts rather than probably the reference you deserve and you get out and you get to you know if you're not too broken go and get another job in teaching somewhere else or do something else entirely with your life and you know these things just can come completely out of the blue and they're just like okay this is the end of my career so this is this happened at last but I think I think what's critical with the settlement agreements and and it is part of my nature in terms of wanting the precision with the language we use the term NDA a lot and actually when people exit they don't exit with a non-disclosure agreement they exit with a settlement agreement that will have something called a non-disparagement clause within it now the non-disparagement clause does work both ways and I am aware of very specific circumstances where actually a teacher who has exited has then subsequently found out that within the school environment they've exited from some really quite unprofessional and inaccurate things have been said and they've been able to leverage that non-disparagement clause to go after the school after the fact so it does work both ways in that regard but fundamentally what it stops you from doing is talking about it settlement agreements for non-disparagement clauses are the fight club of the education system you you don't talk about settlement agreements you you aren't even allowed and and this is the the great frustrating you alluded to this Sharon people are quite often at such a low point mentally and physically at the point where a settlement agreement is put in front of them regardless we'll come on to unions in a minute regardless of how good the union support has or hasn't been regardless of how well it's been explained or not at the point where you are signing it I cannot believe that people should be allowed to sign a legally binding contract that binds them forever it's not it's not time sensitive it's not for the next five years or the next 10 years it is forever it how on earth can you sign something like that when you are not mentally well when you are not physically well and how can you sign it here's the interesting one and we will come on to unions in a minute in the same process as a head teacher who's trained in mental health who understands the significance of anxiety work-related stress a union official a union rep they are broken they are sobbing they are on antidepressants they are under the doctor because I'd be interested to know what percentage have gone off with work-related stress as a result of it and are working out their exit whilst off and I am using air quotes sick so they're not even medically signed on at work to sign this agreement okay and interestingly my understanding is part of that agreement will state as a result of you signing this you now give up your right to go for constructive dismissal in the future once you get your act back together and you realise you've been shafted royally by not only your school a weak and ineffective union rep who should have said I'm gone a minute that this this person's not fit to do it oh and by the time you come out the other side you gagged you're bound you're isolated and you can do bugger all about it because you've signed something when you have been so unwell and that my friends is the bloody scandal there's there's you you sign away all of your rights don't you the only thing that you don't sign away your right to is if they've messed up your pension as a result of their actions you've got legal recourse outside of the settlement agreement for that but fundamentally you relinquish all of your employment rights that you would have had and this this is the way up that people have sorry Nick to cut across you because and this will lead into the unions people will say well get legal advice go and why don't you go to a tribunal well aside from the fact that the tribunal process is lengthy you can be talking 18 months two years three years costly as well it's extremely costly it's extremely costly not only financially but in terms of that whole thing is with you the whole time so the emotional and the mental cost is huge and fundamentally the success rate statistics to do with employment tribunals are appallingly low in favour of employees bringing a claim to a tribunal it's something like less than 10 percent of not just in teaching but employment tribunals generally i might be misquoting staff but it's very low in terms of the success rate of an employee winning at a tribunal against an employer the odds are categorically stacked against the employee in most cases so when faced with all of that even when you are in the depths of a severe mental health crisis there is enough rationality to go well i'm i'm really bad right now do i want to be really bad for the next three years while this is playing out and then come out at the other side having achieved nothing i might as well just wipe my hands of it and walk away and live with the injustice for the rest of my career do you know what the sentence is i just wanted it to stop that's it nick we talked very passionately then about that that point of signing stripped of your rights what are your thoughts on on that because you you've immersed yourself in the stories and the testimonials i'm immersing myself in the um the stories and testimonial i mean in my uh in my little office upstairs i've got my my desk my wife's desk is behind me and then sometimes i'm just coming across a testimonial and read it to her and we're just so angry and literally just hurt on the behalf of the person that's writing the stuff and you're thinking how long ago did this happen i hope this person's okay now one or two cases i had to get back onto sarah and say i don't think this person has written this testimony is okay have you got details you can get in touch with that person to make sure that they will be all right so it's it's been a very emotional thing you know it's going through with this i can imagine a positive part of it is that what's going on now is as you were saying everyone's been separated in the past by these non-disparagement clauses everyone's been afraid to talk about it the whole massive thing has been just a whole bunch of individuals all thinking they're the only one and this is our moment this is what's happening now people are coming together and realising through the group through the campaign that it's happened to thousands and thousands of us and as we get together now this is where the where the power is we've got the data we've got the testimonials we can we can convince people that something is really going on because we've got that combo of heartbreaking stories and the huge numbers and now we're all where this where this takes us now is what burst open the hollywood me too the minute you are not frightened that they're going to sue you or come after you or take your home because there's so many they can't possibly do that to you and the minute they suddenly go hang on a minute these guys were acting illegally so do you know what your gagging order counts for nothing and i've said this to sarah on many occasions when we have sat in the twilight hours on our 25th hour of the day on the phone i have got a vision of hundreds and thousands of teachers ripping up their settlement agreements and going come on bring it on let's see what you've got because you've not got me on my own anymore because there's 25 000 stood with me go on take me to court i dare you and that's the point i want us to to get to because when we come on to what do we want to happen with this campaign where do we want this to go well i'm going to start by throwing my hat in the ring that those pieces of paper stand for bloody bugger all go on take me that's the first thing i would like to come out not for the going forward not for the changes that this will bring but to get justice for those poor people who've gone through it so that's my first what would i like to happen sarah what would you like i i think fundamentally that's that that's it for me is i go back to where i started there is employment legislation for a reason because you cannot believe in it and the entire population that everybody's perfect all of the time it's there for a reason and there are going to be cases where where that person is not right for that role or they have done something wrong and so capability or dis or disciplinary is completely appropriate but the point being there are processes in law in law and what is happening here a lot of the time with what we're reading is unlawful behaviour it's not illegal it's unlawful and what i want is two things number one i want anybody who's been subjected to one of these things exactly like to be able to in reality or digitally shred it and say screw you guys it it means nothing come at me go on but more than anything and this is really personal for me i know people in my life who are entering the profession are early years early career teachers at this point and i do not want a situation where somewhere down the line somebody close to me that that that i love the bones of who love their job then suddenly finds themselves in this position later on because people are still behaving unlawfully part of this is to do with the absolute absence of skill set by senior leaders senior leaders do not understand the legislation that sits around the processes that they implement in schools not all schools have got hr departments not all hr departments are effective and let's make no bones about it a hr department is there for the employer it's not there for the employees no matter how you dress it up so i want and it's kind of happened but not in relation to this specific thing there has recently been a proposed change i don't think it's quite gone through into law yet to do with the the misuse of non-disclosure elements in relation to cases of sexual harassment and harassment in the workplace so that's either progressing through parliament or it's all it's all but there but that's not a general because a lot of people in the group went yay ndas have gone no they haven't it's in very specific instances and it's almost to stop the the thing that was happening in the church in the 70s and 80s of moving a priest on when there was something about it that that's how they were being used i want a change in legislation i want that i want external scrutiny i want a situation that if somebody is deemed to need to be having that support that at that point it is not the school that does it that it's a an independent third party who is able to scrutinise what the school have already done to support that person to scrutinise the school's processes to make sure that the school have followed not only policy but legislation because there are far too many school leaders in this country who believe not everybody but there are far too many in my experience that believe policy trumps law so that's what i want thank you sarah nick yeah i mean first of all endorse all of that um in terms of the campaign i think um some of the next steps will be um really exciting as well as how out of the 3300 people who answered the survey about 2000 gave us their email address and say they want to keep in touch it's going to be a bit of a massive job to put all those into the right database to be able to send out emails to them but um you know i've got the time so um once that's done pretty soon we'll email out to everyone that's got in touch and ask them what they want to happen next i've got some thoughts about that i wonder if we might have um online meetings of people i wonder if we might have regional face-to-face meetings with people i just think that would be really powerful because i really you know i've said it a couple of times but we've been separated for a long time so bringing people together feels like it's really really important and sharon if people come along to those meetings online or um face-to-face and bring along their um their their agreements and their settlement agreements and tear them all up i think that'll be absolutely brilliantly powerful and so i think that's going to go with the campaign perfect and you know what we keep talking about this data set here's a message for you you shouldn't be collecting that data the bloody unions should be collecting that data because i'll tell you for nothing they're the ones who are putting the pens in the hands of the people who are signing it so they know they know how many of their members have signed ndas they know settlement agreements so so let's just rip a bit of a sticking plaster off that one for a minute because the information is out there it's just not been collected because every single person i've ever dealt with who's been sobbing to me on the phone at 10 o'clock at night who are signing the settlement agreement have had a union rep so one of my asks is let's see you figures unions because you know what's happening yeah and i i really want to separate something out here because i've alluded to it previously i want to separate separate out the decision making processes that the case workers might make with an individual person in terms of it going to settlement agreement because actually that is the only realistic option because tribunal it is not going to go there it is a whole thing to do with with legal cases that an insurance underwriter or a lawyer will will often not take on a case unless there's a really secure chance of it being a win in their favour so i and i do understand to a point why quite often settlement agreement is the option that is is presented as the most favourable of all of the options that are presented that's one issue but the you are where i completely am in alignment with you is there has been what's the word i'm looking for there's culpability from the unions because you are absolutely right this is not a new problem our data tells us that this started escalating in 2014 make of that what you will michael gove well it was 2010-2014 but fundamentally the unions even if they don't have a complete picture have a picture they have a picture and this is not being spoken about but it is being spoken about to us we were approached last year by two or three regional union people who are saying we are talking about this at regional level it's a disgrace we want to talk about it but it's not being talked about up here the union should be publishing figures annually the union should be publishing figures annually and then going to dfe and going is this okay this okay with you that this is you know what this should be you know what they should be going to dfa with dfe with do you know how much this has cost you do you know how much it has cost this profession to get that teacher who's been off on work-related stress because of this covered by supply to have the time for the senior management team off timetable dealing with it do you know how much this has cost your budget and then the settlement agreement in the pay that we've had to do as a lump sum tax-free whichever way you want to look and we talk about how much this is costing and then tell me we've not got adequate sem provision and i'll give you this one and this is my last one all right the one thing they weaponise more than anything in my opinion is a reference okay that's the one thing that the teacher panics about more than anything so here's the thing if i want to look at somebody's online dbs they give me a password potentially and i can go on and i can check it that's what a reference should be it should not be written by a head teacher it should be an ongoing document that is added to every year that is a standard template for every single teacher ta and anybody working within a school dates job description that's it and yes safeguarding concerns 100 but it is a standardised reference that's accessible by any employer simply with a one-off password because it's on a portal we're in 2025 for christ's sake me and the connexus team could have that up and running within 10 days thank you very kindly all right so in all fairness take the power of the reference away from the school unions let's see the colour of the money in the figures that you've got and campaign wise let's get behind nick and behind sarah and what they are doing it has been the first of i suspect many podcasts with you nick many because i am going to hold this space to promote and publicise the meetups the networking meetings to publicise and promote the stuff you are doing fair of you the support that you're getting and on behalf of every single member of life after teaching and on behalf of the people who have gone through this and their families i want to thank you both for what you are doing of your free time and your own expense i hasten to add because i think without people like you this would go on for a lot lot longer than it's going to so thank you both and thank you both for your time today thank you both yeah it's an exciting time i you know i can't stress it enough we're coming together now um people are not separated anymore we're all getting together and um just really watch this space and yeah we'll be emailing out to people and get in touch with people in other ways and it's uh it's getting to that point where it's rolling and you won't be able to stop it rolling you know it's just reaching critical mass perfect cheers nick thanks enough's enough now we're on it thanks for staying with us during another great episode of the pit pony podcast and on behalf of myself sarah dunwood mike roberts at making digital real we wish you all the very best and we'll see you soon if you wish to contact me directly for a support session or a clarity call for your next steps please find my link in the comments below see you soon