Local Officers
This page provides information on training courses for Local Officers
Organising in the Local Association
This course is essential for all members active within their Local Association. The course is particularly effective where existing local secretaries, assistant secretaries and other members of the Local Association team attend the same course together.
The course considers the servicing and organising models of trade unionism, highlighting the differences in approach and examining how we use the organising model within the NASUWT.
Using the active learning approach, course participants examine how to: develop their local association; build a strong and active union in the workplace; recruit new members and activists; organise in teams; tackle the barriers to trade union organisation and how to organise and campaign around workplace issues.
Organising In The Local Association Courses
Treasurers
Taking over the duties of Treasurer of a Local Association or Federation can sound daunting. This course will teach you how to keep accounts, how to use the NASUWT Imprest system and how to prepare activity-based budgets. Treasurers can play an important part in the effective planning and functioning of Local Associations and Federations. This course shows you how.
The course is offered on a residential basis at Hillscourt Education Centre only. Local Association Treasurers or those ‘shadowing’ the role are eligible and should apply for places.
Equality Officers
The Equality Officer is an important position within the branch structure of the NASUWT. The person occupying this position is an essential part of the local organising team and helps bring an overview of equality issues central to the NASUWT’s bargaining agenda.
This course will equip Equality Officers with the skills to identify the range of problems that members of underrepresented groups face. The course will highlight the legislative background to equality issues whilst also having a focus on organising in workplaces around equality issues
Equality Officers Briefings
These briefings are single day events focusing on issues of particular concern to Equality Officers, highlighting recent legislative changes and issues identified by local activists. The briefings aim to inform the work of the Equality Officer and are essential events for all Equality Officers to attend. The events at Hillscourt Education Centre often include external speakers, experts on issues within the field of equalities.
Benevolence Casework: For Benevolence Visitors
The course is designed to equip members handling benevolence casework for the first time or who are very new to the job with the relevant knowledge and skills. Local Association members handling benevolence casework and Benevolence Federation workers are eligible to apply.
Redundancy
This course for Local Association caseworkers provides an update on the law relating to redundancy and enables the spreading of good casework practice. Other issues covered during the day are redundancy avoidance, redundancy procedures and redundancy hearings. This is a good opportunity for those handling redundancy situations to share experiences.
Local Association Officers and caseworkers are eligible to apply.
Casework Briefing
These seminars consider issues of interest to caseworkers and Local Secretaries. Briefings focus on issues such as current developments in employment law and on other relevant issues as identified by local representatives.
Accredited Casework Representatives need to attend these events on a regular basis in order to keep their skills, knowledge and accreditation up to date.
ICT Courses for Local Association Officers
All of these courses are held on a residential basis at Hillscourt Education Centre.
Attendance at the courses is restricted to those holding elected positions at Local Association, Federation or national level.
There is no course fee and travelling expenses are paid. Please note that special conditions are attached to some courses.
Access (Stage 1)
Access is the Microsoft Office database application. This is a two-day residential introductory course covering basic design of tables, queries, forms and reports. There will be an introduction to linking tables leading to the design of a relational database. It is recommended that applicants attend the Excel Stage 1 course before attending this course.
Access (Stage 2)
This is a two-day residential course for those wanting to learn the more advanced features of Access. Covering the concepts of database design, importing and exporting data, particularly between Access and Excel, different types of queries, including update queries and delete queries. Macros and menu building will also be covered. Applicants must have attended the Access Stage 1 course.
Excel (Stage 1)
Excel is the spreadsheet application within Microsoft Office. The course covers spreadsheet design, formatting, basic formulae and functions, printing, graphs, data sorting and absolute addressing. Spreadsheets are a useful tool for Local Association Treasurers but their usefulness extends far beyond simple book-keeping.
Excel (Stage 2)
Excel (Stage 2) builds on what has been learnt in the Stage 1 course, moving onto the more advanced features. It covers the use of functions, particularly the ‘if’ function, conditional formatting, named ranges, vertical lookup tables and spreadsheet design techniques. The database facility within Excel is covered in detail including pivot tables. Applicants must have attended the Excel Stage 1 course.
Powerpoint (Stage 1)
PowerPoint is a presentation application. It covers outline view, slide view, slide sorter view, notes view and slide show. It also covers masters, designs and animation effects. Once you have learned to use PowerPoint you will be able to put together full-colour animated electronic presentations, use pictures to enhance your displays or prepare professional quality OHP slides.
Word (Stage 1)
Knowledge of how to use Word, the word processing application within the Microsoft Office suite, is essential for all NASUWT Local Association Officers. The course covers character and paragraph formatting including indents, spacing, bullets and numbering. Page layout, headers and footers and the production of a newsletter are also covered.
Word (Stage 2)
This is a new intermediate two-day residential course, which builds on the skills acquired at Stage 1. It covers tables (for the development of worksheets and forms), AutoText, section breaks, headers and footers, tab leaders, multilevel numbering, templates and mail merge. A section of this course will be devoted to file maintenance, covering the creation of folders, moving files from one folder to another, moving files onto a floppy disk and the use of zip drives. Applicants will normally be expected to have attended the Word Stage 1 course.
