Are the teachers who turn up for the annual funfest that is the Easter conference season mad?
As hundreds delegates gather in Gateshead (ATL), Birmingham (NASUWT) and at the end of the week Torquay (NUT), the majority of their colleagues are at home enjoying a break at the end of the long winter term.
Teacher-friends of mine react with amazement, quickly followed by disbelief, when I tell them that hundreds of their colleagues willingly give up their Easter hols to hang out with other teachers talking about, of all things, schools.
"Haven't they got a life? I don't know anyone who would even consider it and personally I could not think of anything worse," one primary school teacher and mother of three from West Yorkshire told me recently.
The conferences undoubtedly play an important role in forming policy and allow activists to exchange ideas (and sometimes phone numbers). But do they really reflect the concerns of the rank and file teacher?
Many of the debates seem to come round year after year and all too often it is the same people taking to the platform saying by and large the same thing.
So how can the Easter conferences be revitalised?
Firstly, as proposed by NUT boss Steve Sinnott in the Guardian earlier this week, the various unions must merge so that their voice can not be ignored by those in positions of power.
Secondly the single union needs to reach out to the majority of members who are not activists and don't want to forego their precious Easter break.
One answer maybe to embrace technology. Debates could be disseminated into homes around the country and the voting could be done online, giving hundreds of thousands teachers the chance to have their say without losing their holiday, hopefully creating a much more meaningful debate and making whatever was decided almost impossible for ministers ignore.
But this must be just the start. Teaching unions need to think long and hard about how to ensure their Easter gatherings don't become little more than an annual irrelevance for the majority of the profession.
