An address by the new Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, earlier this year to the National Supply Teachers Network Annual Conference.

Back on the 21st February this year, the NSTN held our 3rd annual conference. As usual, we opened with a few videos from friends of the NSTN, who wished us well for our conference. One video in particular gained a few gasps from the delegates in the room.

Andy Burnham, then metro-mayor of Greater Manchester, had recorded a short video for us which we were about to play for delegates. The NSTN has a long history with Andy Burnham. When he was last a Member of Parliament, he had been my MP here in Leigh. I had met with him to sign Early Day Motions concerning supply teachers. 

When he became the mayor of Greater Manchester, I met with him back in 2023 to ask him to set up a Greater Manchester Supply Pool. Although he was unable to work on projects for children between 4-16 years of age (this being the remit of the DfE), he did bring Rose Marley, CEO of Coops UK to the meeting. She posed the question: could this be set up as a cooperative? It was from this meeting that Proxi Education was born:

It was at the same time as setting up Proxi Education as a cooperative that members of the NSTN set up the NSTN Association as a similar cooperative.

Last August, we had another meeting with Andy and Rose Marley, to feedback the success so far of Proxi Education, to make him aware of other agency alternatives such as the Northern Ireland Substitute Teacher Register (NISTR) and to ask whether he had any new powers to create a Greater Manchester Supply Pool. Little did we know, at that point, what was to happen in the coming year.

Fast forward 12 months and Andy is now our new Prime Minister. It is amazing that we managed to get the next Prime Minister, even by video, to address our national conference. I hope you enjoy the video today as much as we enjoyed it back in February.

To watch the video, click on the link below: