Last year I began by saying that I had enjoyed my year as President and only wish that I could say the same this year. However, I believe I would be economical with the truth if I were to start of by saying that this has been a pleasant year. Of course I have enjoyed working with my colleagues on the National Executive and I certainly take this opportunity of thanking them, most sincerely, on your behalf, for the support they have given the Association over the last very difficult year. They did so willingly despite the incredible difficulty each of them faced finding time from their increasingly busy professional lives. We have certainly found this year that it has been even more difficult for some committee members to attend meetings and that has of course put much more pressure on those who were able to attend regularly. Over the past year we were often faced with very difficult decisions in our attempts to achieve a fair and just settlement to our salaries fiasco. Despite some deep-rooted differences of opinion we never allowed it to damage in any way the very close working relationship we have as a National Executive. Reflecting on the past year that is one thing in particular I am personally very grateful for.

I also thank the Executive for all they did to organise another AGM and Conference and, again, particular thanks has to go to Tommy Doherty our Conference Secretary for the invaluable work he has done yet again. As always, all members of the Planning Group are truly indebted to him.

Those of you who were present last year will remember that we agreed to create the role of Honorary President and I am very happy to welcome to our AGM this year the first ever AEAS Honorary President, Mr Willis Pickard. I also welcome to our AGM today Howell John from NAIEAC who is going to address us later.

After last year's conference and in the light of our salaries situation we organised a very successful day seminar in Fife. 56% of Local Authorities were represented with 89 members in attendance. One of the commitments we made then was to seek to increase the membership of the Association and I am happy to announce today that we have been successful in increasing the membership from 95 in June 2001 to 172 in March 2002. Needless to say it is imperative that we keep these numbers.

We have continued to have close talks with our colleagues in NAIEAC and were pleased to welcome to one of our Executive meetings Simon Paten the current president of NAIEAC and John Chowcat their General Secretary. A major step forward in our relationship with NAIEAC is that we have formalised our relationship by agreeing to an Association Agreement between our two associations. Later on, as an AGM we are to discuss further the links we may make with NAIEAC.

Most of the past year has been taken up with the question of our salaries negotiations and we met with COSLA, HAS and the EIS. As president, I replaced Hugh Roche, a former president, on the Council of SCRE and I also serve on their Management Board. The major part of work to date in that area has been the negotiations on the merger of SCRE with the University of Glasgow and their moving from Moray House Campus of the University of Edinburgh to their new but temporary premises in Dublin Street, Edinburgh. I have represented the AEAS at the NAIEAC conference last September and at Learning and Teaching Scotland's annual planning consultation forum.

It would be impossible for me not to refer to the salaries situation despite the fact that Tommy Doherty is going to lead a discussion on this later. I am therefore hopeful that you will indulge me whilst I take time to give my own reflections on this dispute. I must state here, that we owe an incredible debt of gratitude to Tommy for all he has done this past year to ensure your interests were kept to the forefront. I only wish I had had even half of the tenacity and courage which he so evidently demonstrated and exercised on your behalf.

As you know I corresponded with Jack McConnell when he was Minister of Education on several occasions and had assurances from him that he wished a settlement to our claim to be made as speedily as possible. Little did we know then that a year would pass without a fair and just settlement being agreed. You know that over 40 years ago Dr Martin Luther King stated that justice delayed is justice denied. How frighteningly accurate that statement resonates with our own experience.

Early on it became very obvious to us, as an Association, that the body we were going to have most resistance from in terms of inclusion in the negotiations were the one body we would have expected the most support from - the EIS. Comments from their officials about small organisations (such as ourselves and the Headteachers Association of Scotland reported in the press) and their irrelevance to the negotiating process made it quite clear that we could not expect to get a very fair hearing from them. We found them to be arrogant and their General Secretary did not even acknowledge the letter I sent him in July 2001 offering to work closely with the EIS and to share with them any information we might have which would be of use to them. However, to be fair, later in the year they did agree to meet with our Salaries Sub Group and we had one meeting. They blocked the opportunity for even one member of our National Executive to represent the Association at the SNCT subgroup despite the fact that Jack McConnell did not seem to have a problem with this. Their official indicated that Jack McConnell had made a mistake in suggesting we could have representation on the sub group. At a meeting Tommy and I had with Dan Brown of COSLA he also indicated that he had no problem with us being on the SNCT subgroup but pointed out that it was up to the EIS to say who the union or association members of the group should be. Now, legally, we are of course not a trade union so we do not have negotiating powers but I fail to be convinced that our presence would have been detrimental to the negotiations. In fact, I remain absolutely convinced that the opposite would have been the case. We would have been a very influential presence not only supporting our members but also supporting our trade union colleagues in seeking a fair and just settlement. I was told that because John Muir, the EIS advisers' network representative was also a member of the AEAS that we were being represented. Now, I acknowledge unequivocally the incredible amount of work John did and he always ensured that we, as an Association, were kept up-to-date with all that was transpiring. But with all due respect he was not representing the AEAS he was representing adviser members of the EIS and we have to remember that the AEAS represents advisers who are not members of the EIS.

Interestingly enough, we got more moral support from our sister English Association NAIEAC. On February 6 this year their General Secretary John Chowcat wrote to Donald Gorrie MSP stating their support for our cause. The following is the text of his message to Donald Gorrie:

Educational Advisers, employed by the local authorities in Scotland, have been covered by the teacher's pay settlements for many years, but have been told they are not to receive the salary increases connected with McCrone- Their morale has been severely shaken by this development, and their own pay relationship to the teachers and headteachers of the schools they advise is now further threatened, even though they play a major role in the important field of school improvement and raising attainment levels of school pupils. This union, affiliated to the British TUC and recognised for educational advisers in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, is supporting our colleagues in the Association of Education Advisers in Scotland in seeking to highlight this problem and promote a satisfactory outcome to their pay situation. I hope you can assist by referring to the advisers in your statement to the parliament

In the same month the General Secretary of the EIS commenting on the fact that no offer had been secured for advisers after 11 months said:

What an amazing statement to come from the leader of a union which supposedly represents 4-500 advisers. This figure is based on what our salaries sub-group was told by an EIS official when I specifically asked how many Advisers were members of the EIS. However, at Tuesday's meeting of the EIS adviser's network we were informed that the membership number for balloting purposes is around 170. It is hard to have confidence in an Organisation that seems to be confused on even such a basic piece of information. I personally hate being so negative about a union I have been a member of since 1974 but their conduct since December 2000 has left me feeling betrayed and disillusioned and isolated. I also know that I am not alone in feeling this sense of betrayal.

I have it on good authority that a local secretary of that same union admitted to Adviser members at a fairly recent meeting with them that advisers, psychologists and music instructors were sacrificed for the greater good - ie the McCrone settlement negotiations in December 2000 would have collapsed had the unions pushed for the inclusion of the above 3 groups in the settlement. The same official stated that the EIS would not take any action on behalf of these groups if it in any way affected the full implementation of the McCrone agreement. That last statement is in direct 'conflict to what we were told last Tuesday when the salaries negotiator at least implied that the deal was reached due to pressure from the union on threatening progress on the Ml implication of McCrone for teachers.

What an extraordinary world we have entered when trade unions are sacrificing the interests of smaller and more vulnerable groups of their members for the interests of the larger group.

The Trade Union movement developed to protect the interests and to improve the pay and working conditions of all its members. In his book, Voters, Parties and Leaders, J Blondel points out that interest groups or associations differ from political parties in their aims, which is not to take power but only to exert pressure. He emphasises that interest groups are the only means of pressure which wage and salary earners possess. More people join protective groups than political parties or promotional associations and they do so because they expect that they can draw more immediate benefits from the membership of a protective Organisation than they can from that of a political party. I am sure, my colleagues, that that is why many of you are members of one of Scotland's teaching unions. Therefore, we are left asking what on earth pressure did our Unions exert on the employers in December 2000 and for the next 14 months? Their public statements in the press or indeed lack of them certainly did not instil in my mind a sense of pressure being exercised by them. I must, however, acknowledge here that there have been local union secretaries who have done a great deal to support our cause and that was certainly the case in Scottish Borders where Jock Houston our local EIS Secretary met with us and represented our views to Moray Place.

Martin Luther King when writing about the role of trade unions in the history of African Americans made some very interesting statements about the role of unionism. He stated that trade unions can play a tremendous role in making economic justice a reality for their members because they are engaged in the struggle to advance the economic welfare of their members whose wages and salaries are their livelihood. The past year has certainly seemed to us a year where we have been the minority, pilloried from so many sides with questions as to our identity, our role and our relevance. King, back in the 1960's was telling African Americans how unions were not functioning to their full potential but he believed they would begin to do so.

He stated that:

the trade union movement in the last two decades, despite its potential strength, has been an inarticulate giant with an unsteady gait and confused in its responses.

Well, well, well - forty years on I cannot but feel that King could be describing our experience over the past year.

I know that many of my adviser colleagues throughout the country are feeling betrayed. We know that we live in a society where we all find it difficult to admit that we have erred. We can see it from the very highest levels of national government. However, I only wish that the teacher associations could publicly admit that they did sacrifice our interests and that of the psychologists and musical instructors to ensure that the vast number of teachers received what was a fair and just settlement. If they could I believe that it would go a long way to heal the hurt which I and I know many of you here today and colleagues not here today feel. I do realise, of course, that it is most unlikely that we will ever get such an apology. Instead we are being told that the offer which has now been made though not perfect is the very best we can expect. It has been such a long struggle and we do not know what the outcome of the ballot will be.

Nevertheless, the reality is that it is not a fair or a just settlement. We have been denied minimally 8% which we believe we are entitled to. For many of us it means that by April 2003 we will reach the giddy heights of £39,000. NAIEAC secured in 2001 £41,703 for a general adviser. It is most unlikely that this settlement, if agreed, will do much to address the problem of recruitment to posts such as ours.

What of the future? As an association we will have to think hard about our existence in the light of the change from advisers to Quality Improvement Officers. As QIOs will we be able to join ADES? Would we want to join ADES? (Again, as far as I know not a trade union) Do we get into much more serious and in depth discussion with NAIEAC (a union which represents the very group of people we belong to or will become and which currently has over 3000 members) re having a Scottish branch? One thing I am certain of is that the last year's experience has proved to me that we require to have some group who will take us seriously and fight for our interests. Being a very small, vulnerable group in a very large Organisation with different interests to ours is a weak model of representation. The way ahead is most uncertain and the answer in the end will have to come from you all.

In conclusion. Many of you will know that my colleagues and I in the Borders have been embroiled in the quagmire of redundancies due to budgetary problems. Many colleagues have been working tirelessly to fight for our jobs. Our roles and identities have been questioned. My administrative colleague informed me that her neighbour's reaction on hearing that 50% of Adviser jobs had to go was: they could not have been very good anyway with the way they advised the council.

When addressing a public meeting on our role my colleague, Niki Toneri used an interesting gardening analogy which I believe spells out as clearly as possible what our role is: Let's say children are the plants and flowers, teachers and schools are the soil and advisers are the fertilizer. A good adviser is an organic fertilizer, with no strange additional chemicals and no side effects, invisible except in the exceptional health and hardiness of the majority of plants and flowers that grow in the soil. Surely that will continue to be the case whether we are Advisers or Quality Improvement Officers.

Colleagues thank you for bearing with me. I will continue to speak out for the Association as best I can and to represent your interests as best I can, given the restrictions on us as a small association.

However, you all have a responsibility to do as much as you can to support the Association in the year ahead as we seek the best for you. Hopefully it will be a good positive experience but above all else we must never again let the situation arise where we allow