Holy Family Catholic School, Keighley - Union visit
The physical and social education teacher at
Holy Family contacted me with regards to a visit at the school. I
was contacted by the school as I was a former student and also have
a daughter who is in full time education there. The school was also
aware of my trade union involvement and thought that this would be
a great and ideal opportunity for Unite to be involved in their
studies.
I had a pre-meeting with the school to clarify
what they would like and also what I deemed essential for the
students to know. I was to spend the day with the year 9 students
(13years), which consisted of 160 pupils. This would be split into
4 sessions of 40 pupils at a time. Also present on that day would
be West Yorkshire Police, Project 6- drugs and Alcohol abuse and
Enterprise. They too would be giving talks on their own specialised
subjects.
The sessions on that day would be broke down
into sections-
- Unite the Union- Who we are, what we do, who we represent and
the values and benefits of a Trade Union. In this section there was
a briefing from myself with question and answers from the pupils. I
also had the students involved in an interactive game based around
what they knew about the Trade Union.
- The second session was based around the Trade Union and
Equality issues which fitted in quite well with the school and the
policies they were trying to achieve. This was followed by an
equality and diversity quiz. A copy of this was requested by the
school to be used in other student lessons.
- The third session was based on an activity the school wished to
use. Case studies of a company who may need to cut wages or make
people redundant. I briefed the pupils on the situation and
provided them with handouts to aid their study. These consisted of
T.U.P.E, Industrial Action (right to strike) and Redundancy. This
exercise was to be completed in another lesson at a later date. I
have requested a portfolio of work produced by randomly picked
students for our records, when they have completed their
studies.
As the sessions began I passed around
information sheets to be filled in for Equality and Diversity
recording. The school were happy for the students to complete this.
The National Education Department, through much persuasion provided
me with freebies for the students, just to embed the name of Unite
on the minds of all who were potential/possible members.
The added value to Unite from this session was
an invite back to the school in the New Year to do a session with
the school leavers. Membership forms were requested from staff, who
were not members of a trade union and also members from other
unions who were considering changing to unite. The feedback on this
was that they were disheartened with the service they were given
and have seen the benefits and support, that unite can provide.
Machaela Hutchinson
Unite Regional Learning
Organiser
