Guide to Oldham MATs

NEU Oldham District have shared the NEU LGBT+ Inclusion Charter and the NEU Anti-Racism Toolkit with the Local Authority and all Oldham MATs, and they have all accepted them in principle.

The LA and Oldham MATs bar one have also accepted the Oldham Schools Workload Charter, most of them outright but a few have incorporated it into their wellbeing charters or policies. 

Starting in the new academic year we will also be negotiating the new NEU Disabilities Toolkit with the LA and MATs. 

As well as recruiting more school reps our focus this past year and into next year has been on creating clusters of reps, initially of schools within MATs which form natural clusters, and establishing lead reps of those clusters, and establishing school-based JCNC meetings. It is more complicated now because some of the Oldham MATs are branching out into neighbouring districts so we have to involve those districts with their district secretaries (including the other unions besides the NEU) where a number of the schools do not even have reps in the first place. We have been working on the New Bridge Trust, with some success, but more is needed. We have a natural lead rep at the Oak Trust, James, and two excellent reps at the Pinnacle Trust who would have been perfect lead reps, Philippa at the Sixth form College and Tracy Haughton at Broadfield, except unfortunately they are both finishing in August.

Our other focus has been promoting school-based JCNCs, which is set out in the TURA which all the Trusts in Oldham have signed up to. This is similar to the Trust-level JCNC meetings that I attend but focusses solely on operational issues at the school. Such meetings exist in nearly all our secondaries but have met resistance from many primary heads.