socialistteachers

Teacher unions unite against OFSTED chicanery

2012-01-17T08:18:00.001Z

Ofsted wants to toughen the language of inspections in England -
changing the "satisfactory" rating to "requires improvement". Ofsted
are notorious for their violence towards the English language and
towards education in general.

By sleight of hand they change "satisfactory" to "unsatisfactory".
They label schools as "failing" in order to create a self-fulfilling
prophecy. Who would want to send their children to a "failing" school?
Or teach at one?

And the not-so-hidden agenda? Christine Blower, NUT General Secretary,
bluntly pointed out "The government's real agenda behind this change
is of course inventing yet another category of schools that it will
then seek to force into academy status."

In a welcome move another teacher union the NASUWT echoed the NUT's
concern: "The seemingly tough talk we have heard from the government
today, may have popular appeal but the reality is that it has nothing
to do with raising standards,"

"Instead, it is about ratcheting up pressure on schools, without
providing the support and resources they need to assist them in
securing further improvements.

"This announcement will encourage a culture of vicious management
practices within schools which will have a profoundly negative effect
on the workforce and children and young people alike."

Nothing illustrates Gove's hypocrisy more clearly than his dodgy "Free
School" project. For all his blather about raising standards, Free
Schools like the proposed one in Southwater, Horsham, are not required
to have qualified teachers.

So any Tom Dick or Harriet off the street can come and teach our
children on the cheap. The private
schools the millionaires in the government send their children are
staffed by professionals. If Gove gets his way they will be the only
schools that are!

Gove to reform ICT teaching?

2012-01-11T16:24:00.001Z

Like a stroppy teenager, Mikey Gove put his feet up on the desk and
declared "Ere this is soooo boring!" as his considered opinion on the
teaching of ICT in all schools in England and Wales.

"Technology in schools will no longer be micro-managed by Whitehall.
By withdrawing the Programme of Study, we're giving teachers freedom
over what and how to teach, revolutionising ICT as we know it. "

Quite right. It won't be micro-managed. It will be Micro-soft. Gove is
proposing that schools should use teaching materials which promote
Microsoft and Google.

It is usually the case that when government ministers threaten to
"reform" something, they are going to reform it the same way the
iceberg "reformed" the Titanic. In this case the DFE mean they won't
run ICT on behalf of the corporations, they will let the corporations
like Microsoft and Google run ICT directly. For Microsoft education is
a chance to make a fast buck. For Google, everything is a chance to
acquire information on consumers so they can target advertising at
them.

Microsoft Office is available at a special educational price of £99.99
per unit with additional costs for upgrades. Open source alternatives
like Open Office are available free.. The upgrades are free too.

And if Gove seriously wanted pupils to be involved in developing
software he would be promoting open source software where the code is
publicly available. This is far more educational than Microsoft which
protects its code as a "business secret".

Derek McMillan

Brighton Unison LG Pensions Statement. NO SURRENDER

2012-01-01T16:23:00.000Z

Below is a open communication from Brighton Local Government Unison to
regional and national officers.

I am asked by the vast majority of our Branch Committee, activists,
and by several hundred members, on-line(a massive response, since
Friday last), to express our deep concern at the latest developments
in the Pensions Dispute.

Four years ago we were told of a "once in a lifetime" deal on
Pensions. It is our collective view, and we believe this represents
all of the 95 percent of UNISON members that were out on strike on
November 30th (the remainder were mostly exempt staff), that ANY
climb-down from a united Trade Union position will be seen as a
weakness by this Government, with severe consequences for the future,
not just in terms of pensions.

Our negotiating position should only change when the Government makes
it clear they have moved - the communication below, is quite clear
that any move is dependent on Eric Pickles agreeing to such. And
exactly what is he being asked to agree on? What are the consequences
for the negotiations?

To myself, but more importantly to our members, basic negotiating
positions should not alter from our side, unless, and until, the
employers put a definite proposal on the table. They haven't so far,
throughout 12 months or more, unless one counts ultimatums as a
position, so why are we shifting ours?

This is utterly unacceptable to this Branch. We did not come out on
the 30th, to go "up the hill", and be left at the top.

Very simply, members will be asking, are asking, why the hell did I
take part in the most successful strike for many years, to see my
Union apparently, give away that "high ground" and appear to give in
to a "bully". The one thing we have learnt with bullies, is not to
give in - it makes them worse!

I do not fear that my Branch will lose members through this; we are
too strong, successful, and confident in Brighton and Hove for such a
luxury. Elsewhere, and I say this with some knowledge and experience,
may well be different.

The 4,300 members of UNISON in Brighton and Hove urge our national
leadership to argue for a continuing united front with our sister
Unions, and, even if that is not possible, to be prepared to stick to
the defined position of 30th November 2011 - that is, we have our
current pension arrangements and they need to stay as they are now.

Do not give in!

Yours Sincerely,

Alex Knutsen

Branch Secretary

2011-11-23T07:56:00.001Z

Our newsletter for N30 - read all about it!

Articles include
If the Con-Dems won’t retreat - NAME THE
DATES FOR ACTION NEXT TERM
Capitalism in crisis: Defending
education across the planet

Workload, Observations, Capability:
United action to stop the bullies

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Pensions robbery - Francis Maude Guilty! ....Labour Peer Lord Hutton Guilty!

2011-11-17T19:58:00.000Z

WSTA is holding a protest in Horsham. Hilariously, the Labour Party
has tried to hijack it. We have suggested they hand over Lord Hutton
alive! Of course we welcome individual Labour supporters coming along
to support us.

They want workers to support Labour. They would be better occupied
getting the Labour Party to support the working class.

Our action is portrayed by the millionaire government and the gutter
press as teachers looking after "gold plated" pensions. That is a pack
of lies. The protest in Francis Maude's constituency is against a cut
to all pensions.

The government intends to cut *all* pensions by reneging on a promise
to link pensions to average earnings or the rise in the cost of
living. Prices will go up and the current plan is that pensioners will
receive nothing - zero - to cope with it.

The West Sussex Teachers' Association (NUT) invites pensioners and
anyone concerned about the savage cuts to pensions to support a rally
in Horsham

Assemble at 10am at the Bandstand in Horsham Park and go to the
bandstand in the Carfax via Madeira Avenue where Tory Party HQ is.

Our blog wsta1.org.uk will have information about this.

Horsham MP Francis Maude needs to answer some questions. The WSTA want
to know:

1) Can you explain what has happened to the cast iron guarantee that
"We will restore the earnings link for the basic state pension from
April 2011, with a *triple guarantee* that pensions are raised by the
higher of earnings, prices or 2.5%."

2) What does the government plan to do to pensions in 2012?
Will the link to increases in the cost of living even exist or will
pensioners be made to pay for the bankers' crisis?

3) Is it likely that the current policy towards teachers' pensions
will lead to a problem of recruitment in state schools?

4) How will it impact the public schools to which government ministers
send their children?

The West Sussex Teachers' Association (NUT) is not affiliated to any
political party and we would be asking the same questions whichever
party was in power.

Our gold-plated pensions

2011-10-29T00:08:00.000Z

>> Gold-Plated Pensions indeed.
>>
>> Public sector pensions are gold-plated. You have only to read the
>> Daily Mail or the Express to know that. A pity this image won't be
>> appearing in your bank account any time soon. The average teacher
>> pension is 10000.
>>
>> However, there are exceptions to the rule of public sector pensions.
>> Margaret Thatcher has received £535,000 for ex-PM duties from a little
>> fund - well obviously a rather large fund - called the public duties
>> cost allowance. Major and Blair have also had very nice golden
>> handshakes (Major 490K and Blair 169K) from this fund.
>>
>> Remember that when some government minister tells you the nation
>> cannot afford your pension.
>>
>> Derek
>>

We're worth it!

2011-10-28T09:28:00.001Z

The government is not at all sure it can afford the scheduled CPI-based increases to pensions - about five percent. However you can rest assured we are 'all in it together' ... except the bosses of major corporations who have received ten times that increase in remuneration. Apparently this is quite fair because they decide their own remuneration and they think they are worth an average of 2.7 million per annum.

The leadership of Unite has correctly branded this as "obscene" but Len McLusky's solution is to give greater power to shareholders to curb directors' pay. One can't help wondering why a trade union leader isn't saying "what about the workers?" The workers in these corporations could give you a very accurate picture of how much use these directors are and whether they should be given house-room let alone a salary.

It does however suggest a very simple solution to the pension crisis. Let pensioners award themselves a 50 percent increase - because we're worth it!

Socialism 2011

2011-10-11T11:54:00.000Z

Fwd: Maude the Pension Pilferer

2011-09-29T19:07:00.000Z

Maggie Thatcher was Maggie the Milk Snatcher - a byword for Tory
penny-pinching cruelty. Francis Maude will go down in history as Maude
the Pension Pilferer. If we let him get away with it.

The government has already reneged on a solemn and binding undertaking
(and such things are two a penny with politicians) to link pensions to
increases in the cost of living. By sleight of hand they have invented
a brand new measure of the cost of living and !surprise! it comes up
with a lower figure than the retail price index. Far from sympathising
with the pensioners the privileged and pampered politicians are
pinching their pennies.

The government has refused to negotiate in good faith with the public
sector unions. They behave as though attacking the unions were more
important than making a grown-up decision over public sector pensions.

All of the teacher unions are acting together to lobby parliament on
26th October. This is where Maude's union bashing has got him. Firstly
the ATL, most inoffensive and moderate of unions, has taken strike
action for the first time. Now the Secondary Head's union ACSL is on
the march. And if the Tory Party cannot depend on the ACSL they cannot
depend on anybody.

Maude should stop pretending to be a reincarnation of the blessed
Margaret and remember her ignominious defeat over the Poll Tax. It is
a pity the Labour leaders are so weak and willing because the Con
Dem's wouldn't last five minutes against a half-decent opposition.
Instead we have Ed the strike-breaker and a load of Balls about
supporting cuts from the shadowy Chancellor.

Trade Unions deserve better representation than Labour can provide -
we need a new workers' party.

--
http://www.derekmcmillan.com

Strike Against Cuts

2011-09-23T11:07:00.001Z

Unity in action

2011-06-30T19:09:00.001Z

Pictures from the West Sussex rally

March for the alternative - then fight for it!

2011-03-22T14:31:00.002Z

The TUC demonstration on 26 March looks like it will be massive. Coaches and trains are coming from far and wide. Plans are being made to have more than one assembly point to cope with the hundreds of thousands expected in London.

A massive demonstration will have a tremendous effect on boosting the confidence of trade union members to fight. Millions more will be looking at the TV and news coverage. The message should be clear - you don’t have to sit alone and accept these cuts, together we can fight back!

Unfortunately, that might not be the message from some of the platform speakers who may hope to just send marchers away with a call to ‘Vote Labour’ to defeat the Con-Dems in the May elections. But, with Labour Councils also passing on Government cuts, that’s not good enough. So let’s make sure that everyone gets the message that the march has to be a step to mass action - led by public sector unions taking co-ordinated national strike action to defend jobs & pensions.

CALL JOINT STRIKE ACTION !

Warden Park teachers overwhelmingly reject academy

2011-03-22T14:27:00.000Z

Staff at Warden Park have shown in two ballots that they are overwhelmingly against the proposal to make the school an academy.
Their reasons include:
* The school has been very successful with the support of West Sussex and see no reason to change a winning formula.
* There is no evidence that academies raise standards. In some cases the opposite has been the case.
* Heyworth staff and parents have little to gain and much to lose from a ‘take-over’ by a secondary school on the other side of the town.
* Parents will have much less say in how their children are educated if the two schools combine under one headteacher and one governing body.

Malcolm Peppiatt, President of West Sussex Teachers’ Association said that ‘It is not surprising that all the main professional associations are opposed to schools becoming academies. This particular proposal involves taking a huge risk with the future of a very successful school. It is understandable that the staff of the school are so opposed to it.”

A public meeting to discuss these proposals will be held at on Tuesday 5th April at Clair Hall Perrymount Rd Haywards Heath, West Sussex RH16 3DN (5.30pm). We hope you will come to express your views. West Sussex Teachers’ Association

Should the Executive call a national ballot?

2010-06-17T12:24:00.000Z

Activities in schools, Associations and nationally can all play a role in the campaign to defeat the Academies Bill - but I believe that the National Executive must look at calling national action in particular at our meeting next week.

A lot of good work is going on trying to persuade individual schools not to take up Gove's invitation - with some successes as have been reported. However, as we have found in previous anti-Academy campaigns, we know that some governors will vote to proceed in any case. Similarly, some school groups will be ready to take action, others may not be. This strategy is therefore important, but can't be the only way forward.

Across Associations, we also have to involve members whose school is not immediately faced with becoming an Academy but who will face the consequences on their admissions/future of the Local Authority/pay and conditions. Local meetings and protests will be important but is an action route also possible? For example, could we make clear that, in the event of a school taking up Gove's offer, we would ballot members across the Local Authority ?

Last , but not least, we need national action to raise the sights of everyone and to send a clear signal to the Government. As I have said, I would support a call for a national ballot coming from the June Executive. Presuming we can avoid any legal barriers, there have been concerns raised about the timing for action this term - which would be tight - and about whether we can get the message out in that timescale quickly enough to win the ballot. However, if we do not start with some action at the end of term, then wouldn't this mean delaying any national ballot until mid-September once teachers have got back into the swing of things again? Any national action would not take place therefore until October. How many schools will have 'opted-out' by then - and will the Bill be well into law? Do people judge that this is quickly enough? If not, then we have to go for an early ballot and go all out to win it.

National/regional protests and demonstrations could be called as a build-up to a ballot - or to coincide with any day of action. I understand that there have been discussions about a possible TUC-called demonstration in September which could be linked to both cuts and privatisation - this can't be a determining factor for our timescale, however.

I'd be interested in other opinions before the Executive meets on Thursday.

Changes to blogs

2010-02-11T18:06:00.000Z

All blogs with addresses like socialistteachers.com/weblog have to be transferred back to blogspot as ftp (file transfer protocol) will no longer be supported. A link to this effect will be put into socialistteachers.com/weblog.

The disadvantage is that some schools block all blogspot sites indiscriminately.

A voice for those who don't want cuts, privatisation and war.

2010-01-21T20:08:00.003Z

Teachers will get it in the neck whichever canaille wins the election. The politicians are too busy sanitising their expenses to care about us.

There is no party of the left in this election. The coalition of trade unionists and socialists could be the first serious challenge to the hegemony of corrupt capitalist politicians.

Read all about it

Unity against Academy at Weston Favell School

2009-11-30T16:17:00.000Z

Members at Weston Favell School in Northants are striking against the proposed academy. In this NASUWT and NUT are working together.
Messages of support would be very welcome.

The NUT rep is Paul Cutts
pcutts@weston.rmplc.co.uk

You can also copy to the NAS rep, Amanda Brett
abrett@weston.rmplc.co.uk

If you want to support them there is a model letter:

I am writing in regard to the teacher’s strike at Weston Favell School. As a parent/member of staff/local resident/member of the public/local councillor I feel that the school is a brilliant and improving asset to young people in the local area.
I disagree with plans for Northamptonshire County Council to allow United Learning Trust to take over the school, and as a result take the funding, curriculum and working conditions into their control. Those changes lead to high staff turnover at the Academies.
I am proud that we have a community school here which focuses on the needs of all its students. Academies are at best an unproven system, which have not yielded the high results that have been suggested.
Indeed ULT has recently been told it can not open any more Academies anywhere else because its standards are not high enough. However it appears the Government thinks they are still good enough for Weston Favell.

I am concerned that Academies are not holistic or cooperative, and that they attempt to ‘cherry-pick’ students and leave disadvantaged children behind – despite selective entry being against the rules. I wholeheartedly support the strike of the NUT and NASUWT unions, and am pleased that UNISON has instructed its members not to cover the work of striking workers. While Roger Webb, the chair of governors, is correct that a strike is disruptive to the students, I believe that it is Northamptonshire County Council who is responsible for the much greater disruption in stretching this consultation and uncertainty over a year. The changes any transfer would bring would also disrupt our children’s education.
The teachers unions have made it clear that if these part-privatisation plans are withdrawn they will not strike. The teachers, after all, are striking to save fully accountable local education provision, and they should be supported by all in the community.

Yours Sincerely/Faithfully

University of California Students and Staff Prepare for System-Wide Strike to Protest Cuts

2009-11-17T18:15:00.001Z

According to Democracy Now!

The governing body of the University of California system, the Board of Regents, is preparing to vote on a major tuition increase for both undergraduate and graduate students. Undergraduate tuition would rise an average 32 percent, while some graduate schools would begin charging thousands of dollars for programs that are currently tuition-free. The Regents are meeting Thursday at UCLA, where students from across the state are converging for what organizers have dubbed a “Crisis Fest,” including mass protests, civil disobedience and teach-ins.

Martin4VP video on YouTube

2009-09-10T09:34:00.000Z

NEW EU HEALTH DIRECTIVE WILL PAVE THE WAY FOR PRIVATISATION OF NHS

2009-05-20T14:02:00.001Z

NEW EU HEALTH DIRECTIVE WILL PAVE THE WAY FOR PRIVATISATION OF NHS

Britain’s newest political grouping, No2EU-Yes to Democracy, warned today that Britain is sleepwalking into the wholesale privatisation of the NHS after the European Parliament approved the extension of EU “internal market” rules to cover healthcare services, paving the way for private companies to take over the UK’s national health service.

No2EU is warning that this EU diktat is the biggest single threat to the founding principles of the NHS as a service “free at the point of need regardless of the ability to pay” since it was set up by Aneurin Bevan and the post-war Labour Government in 1948.

The approval of the Commission’s Health Services Directive has been bulldozed through despite assurances from the Party of the European Socialists, which includes the British Labour Party, that they would “defend public services”. Come the crunch they abstained on the vote, without any explanation, allowing it to be bundled through.

Labour MP Gisella Stuart has been quoted this week as saying, “I bet you my wages that in 10-15 years, if this Directive goes through, we cannot have a generally tax-funded NHS system".

No2EU is calling on everyone who supports the principle of a public National Health Service to turn out and vote for them on June 4th. No2EU is running a slate of candidates in every region of the UK, with the exception of Northern Ireland, on a platform of opposition to the Lisbon Treaty and the EU gravy train and in defence of public services and workers rights.

Bob Crow, No2EU convenor and RMT general secretary, said today: “Anyone who believes in the principles of the NHS and public services should be voting No2EU on June 4th. We are fighting to stop the break up of the National Health Service which is being driven by the EU and their backers from the banks and big business. The political elite in the UK are conspiring with this destruction of our public services and we have to mobilise over the next three weeks to stop them.”

Further information:
Geoff Martin 07818 513 435
Brian Denny 07903 376 303

Gaza End the US-backed slaughter

2009-01-13T16:34:00.000Z

End the US-backed slaughter in Gaza 1

2009-01-13T16:33:00.001Z

Classroom Teacher 7 out now

2008-09-15T23:01:00.000Z

Classroom Teacher 7 can be downloaded here

Free, publicly run, good quality education, available to all at any age.

2008-06-19T21:52:00.000Z

“We claim now material necessities to lift us above worrying for food and shelter…. but we claim more – we yearn for culture, we demand opportunities for physical and mental development, and we openly and fearlessly declare war against all that tends to keep us riveted to earth”.
Martin Powell-Davies
This speech by the trade union pioneer, Tom Mann, sums up the demands that have been fought for from the very beginnings of the labour movement - and that socialists are still fighting for today.
Socialism, removing the barriers that production for private profit places on society, will not only offer a decent standard of living to all but allow every individual to freely develop their personality, talents and interests. Access to free, high quality education would be a right for all, whether as children, youth, or adults of any age.
Unlike 1891, when Mann was speaking, at least compulsory primary and secondary schooling are now seen as a right. However, as with all our public services, cuts and privatisation threaten to undermine the gains that have been made.
Starting with the Tories, and accelerating under New Labour, government attacks on comprehensive education are reopening debates first waged a century ago. Then, a determined campaign to secure secondary education for all was fought against an establishment determination, satirised by the NUT, to “Give working-class people just enough education to make them know their stations in life, but reserve all higher training for the children of the ‘better classes’”.
It was only in the 1960s, as genuinely ‘comprehensive’ schooling developed, that the idea that secondary students of all backgrounds should be taught in the same school became accepted. But how far forward have educational opportunities for working-class pupils really progressed?
Research into exam results confirms that the major factor influencing a school’s position in the league tables remains the social class of its pupil intake. Without a major injection of funding, above all to reduce class sizes to a maximum of twenty, there is no chance that schools can overcome factors such as poor housing, diet and unsocial working hours which inevitably discriminate against children from working-class communities.
Before being abolished under the 1945 Labour government, secondary schools had been allowed to charge fees. This financial hurdle was deliberately intended to restrict educational opportunities to all bar the few working-class students lucky enough to win scholarship places.
Today, the financial hurdles may be subtler but remain (certainly for university education – see ‘box’). Expecting money for books, school trips and expensive uniforms are all ways that some schools discourage working-class families to apply.
Of course, the fee-paying independent ‘public schools’ have never been touched. Indeed, when class sizes between private and state schools are compared, Britain’s educational divide is greater than any other developed country in the world. The resources of fee-paying schools should be placed under public control to be used for the benefit of all, not the privileged few.
If students from any background are to genuinely have equality of opportunity, then, as the Labour Party demanded back in 1917, education must be free – both at school age and at university.
Of course, this was a Labour Party born out of trade union struggle, turning its back on the Liberal establishment. It is no coincidence that today, when workers are having to fight against the New Labour establishment to build a new workers’ party, trade unionists are having to fight the same battles to win decent education for all.
Then, as now, many workers sought to develop their learning later in life and evening schools mushroomed at the same time as workers developed their trade unions, particularly as they won reductions in working hours. Today, adult and community education classes have been particularly hard-hit by council cutbacks making a mockery of New Labour’s claims to stand for ‘lifelong learning’. A socialist policy would allow for education and training at any age, including paid time-off from work.
No to Academies!
Some of the first successes for independent labour and socialist candidates in the 1880s came in the elections to School Boards that, before they were abolished, democratically controlled the new elementary schools. One of their central demands was that public control was extended to all schools – including those run by churches and private trusts. This demand is acquiring new significance today as New Labour’s drive to expand Academies and trust schools threatens to remove even the limited democratic control of schools through elected Local Authorities.
The policy is based on an ideology that sees free-market competition as the key to improving public services. As John Hutton, now Secretary of State for Business & Enterprise, announced in a speech to the neo-liberal Brookings Institute in Washington, “We needed to drive greater challenge into the system … opening up these monolithic structures from across the private, voluntary and social enterprise sector”.
Whether it’s transport or health, housing or education, we know what such a deregulated market means in reality. Privatisation will lead to even greater polarisation between the most popular schools and those caught at the bottom of the league tables. Working-class families will be the main losers.
Labour’s 2006 Education Act was based on the idea that Local Authorities should turn “from provider to commissioner”. In other words, rather than being elected to take responsibility for local schools, councillors should now simply oversee their transfer to privately-sponsored Academies or “Trust” schools backed by charitable foundations. They want democratically accountable comprehensive education to become a thing of the past, to be discarded along with all the other ‘outdated’ ideas that Labour’s socialist pioneers once stood for.
These independent schools depend on public funds but are not accountable to local voters. Instead, whether it be universities or banks, evangelical church groups or individual businessmen, the control of schools, including staffing and admissions, is being given over to private sponsors and trust appointees.
But, instead of planning for the interests of the community as a whole, individual sponsors will put their own interests first, at the expense of other local schools. Academies will seek to select pupils whose needs can be met most easily and who are most likely to boost their status and position in school league tables. Figures already show that Academies tend to exclude significantly higher numbers of pupils than neighbouring community schools.
Academy sponsors see the commercial advantages in getting control of brand new buildings, thanks to millions of pounds of preferential Government investment. Some have used Academies to further their business interests awarding payroll and management contracts to linked companies. For others, including the many religious organisations sponsoring Academies, the opportunity to imprint their ideas and ethos on youth may be their chief incentive. Some, like Manchester Airport, make clear that their main purpose will be to train employees for their specific needs.
Yet, despite all the advantages offered to them, there is no evidence that Academies offer pupils a better education than community schools. Dogged research by Roger Titcombe, a retired Headteacher in Barrow where anti-Academy candidates recently won seats on the local council, reveals that many Academies have skewed their curriculum, restricting access to subjects such as science and foreign languages. Perhaps most damning of all, Titcombe met significant difficulties in obtaining the information at all. Unacountable academies want to keep their secrets hidden from public scrutiny.
The fragmentation of education into the control of many different employers is also an obvious threat to collective trade union organisation. The strike action taken by NUT members in Bolton to oppose their possible removal from council employment is an important step in trade unionists opposing the Academy programme.
Individual sponsors have no right to control the education of our children. Academies and foundation schools should be brought under local democratic control. All schools should be accountable to democratic local education committees, including elected parent, staff and school student representatives.
Abolish university tuition feees now and introduce a living grant
The latest figures showing that drop-out rates from Universities are as high as ever, with 22 per cent of full-time students no longer studying two years into their courses, confirms how financial pressures are impacting on students.
Tuition fees introduced under New Labour have already reached £3,000 a year with threats that they will go even higher. Fees and particularly the lack of a living grant mean that many students are forced to take on part-time work, inevitably affecting their studies.
The massive resources that governments draw on to write-off the debts of the banks should be used to write off stident debt and fund a living grant that could make higher education freely available to those who want it.

A missed opportunity

2008-05-24T06:17:00.000Z

Linda Taaffe writes in classroom teacher Linda was on the National Executive for years but the tired old left thought she was a bit too outspoken. See if you can spot why!

In Central Hall Westminster at the April 24th strike rally in front of two thousand teachers, with many more thousands locked outside, wild cheering and applause greeted any platform speaker even hinting at further joint action.

It seemed that the NUT was on a roll. After years of trying, the Left on the NUT National Executive apparently had won a small majority in the elections. Also by a quirk of fate a left general secretary took the helm, joining an already established left treasurer. We then got the news that UNISON were going to ballot, and others were lining up to join those that had already shown willing.

At the same time discontent is being fuelled by more rising prices. Our case is strengthened daily. And to cap it all the government has come under real pressure. With the massacre in the local elections, now Nantwich & Crewe, and Gordon Brown's poll ratings at absolute rock bottom what a chance to extract another u-turn on public sector pay to add to the 10p tax fiasco.

Trade unions rarely get a favourable combination of circumstances to pursue a strike. It is never the right moment. But given some other situations this was a golden opportunity. Incredibly some, or rather quite a few, including those calling themselves Left, have voted against calling action now. They have let teachers down. They have let the government off the hook. They have quite possibly caused a negative impact on the rank and file of other unions.

We recognise that there might be complicating factors, but the overriding factor here was a chance for the coordinated action that the whole of the trade union movement has been campaigning on for such a long time. Shame on those who have shown such a lack of judgment that they voted against a strike in July.

Leadership is all about judgment. Of course we all want the same thing in the end, but timing is everything in politics. Now it seems we have a situation where some 'on the left' have joined with others on the right with similar 'honestly held views' to effectively kick our pay battle into the long grass for now.

Experience in the Left Caucus on the National Executive has shown me that there are some whose views are barely 'Left' at all. There are others on the Left like myself, Martin Powell Davies and others especially in the Socialist Party, who faced a somewhat different, quite unsympathetic reaction to our 'honestly held views'. Martin stood for General Secretary because we reckoned that the views of the candidate backed by others on the Left would fall short. Were we right? As an Executive member I spoke out against some of the methods of many in the Left Caucus who believed that those in the then majority of the Executive really wanted the same thing as us and would see the error of their lackadaisical ways and be won over by our more energetic campaigning.

Unfortunately, the result of this vote could demobilise teachers. It certainly gives the government time to re-group. It may well be that the relentless pressure of events can bring action to the fore again. I certainly hope so. The Div. Secs on June 17th might have much to say. Hopefully Divisonal Secretaries who wanted to see united action in July will not go shy in taking up the arguments of those on the left as well as those on the right.

Hunger Strike by Belfast airport workers

2008-05-20T16:49:00.000Z

Hunger Strike by Belfast airport workers is the direct responsibility of Tony Woodley, the Unite joint general secretary.

Support from Ricky Tomlinson and Jimmy McGovern

For the last five days, T&G shop steward and ex-airport worker Gordon McNeill has been on a hunger and liquid strike on the roof of the T&G headquarters in Belfast. Gordon’s condition is now critical and he will die unless the T&G leadership acts now to stop this tragedy.

Background

The protest is a result of the union’s past collaboration with the ICTS management at Belfast airport, which resulted in four shop stewards and 20 other workers being unfairly dismissed.

Last September, a Belfast employment tribunal ruled that these workers were unfairly sacked and blamed both the management and the local T&G official for bringing this about. The huge legal costs amounting to over £200,000 have been loaded on the shoulders of the four shop stewards whilst the union refused any responsibility. The tribunal ordered ICTS to pay damages, also over £200,000, but this sum has been frozen pending an appeal to the High Court by ICTS.

Because of these legal obstacles, the shop stewards are facing eviction from their homes and hugely indebted. The solicitors who acted for the workers have said they cannot act any further without these costs being met. A number of issues are involved but as a sign of good intent, the shop stewards have said that if the union pays off the outstanding legal fees, they will call off the protest.

Unfortunately, the shop stewards feel that they cannot trust the union without this concrete gesture. On four separate occasions, the union promised to settle but all of these promises have been reneged upon.

This is an extremely serious situation. Gordon has left instructions that if he is taken to hospital, he will refuse treatment as his human right. That would end in his death.

Ricky Tomlinson has said: “I have been on hunger strike myself and can fully sympathise with these workers.”

Playwright, Jimmy McGovern sent this message earlier:

“Remember the way the TGWU betrayed Liverpool's dockers? I bet you thought no union could ever sink so low again. I did too. We were wrong. The way in which Unite has treated the Belfast Airport workers is a disgrace. Unite's leaders should hang their heads in shame."

Prepare for an all-public sector strike

2008-04-25T20:42:00.002Z

TEACHERS ACROSS England and Wales are out on the streets on 24 April, many on strike for the first time in their lives.
Linda Taaffe, Waltham Forest NUT

We joined mass demonstrations, being held in all major cities, in the first national NUT strike for two decades.

Thousands of schools were shut. It is a day for teachers to make their voices heard and to teach the government a lesson - that they can't keep teachers' pay down to a miserly 2.45%.

If the three-year settlement is allowed to go through unchanged it will mean that by 2011 teachers will have suffered almost six years of below-inflation pay increases. Some on the very top of the pay scale could effectively lose up to £8,000 over that period.

With the terrible long hours teachers have to put in just to keep up with the demands of the job, no wonder 50% of new young teachers look at their pay slip, work out that they are being asked to work for something like £10 an hour, can't pay their rent, are still paying off student debt, now can't get a mortgage, don't even have time for a life outside school, and decide to jack it all in after only three years.

What a waste of talent, not to mention the cost of training! What a loss to our children!

After so long without any national strike action, and against a seemingly intransigent government, many teachers will be wondering, will they listen to us? We say Yes - but only IF the strike is the start and not the end of the matter.

Government ministers will be hoping to sit out this successful teachers' strike on 24 April. They will hope that, having let off some steam, we will settle back to 'normality'. We can't let that happen. We have to step up the action.

That means threatening to make the action bigger. On 24 April we are joined by 30,000 UCU college lecturers and 100,000 PCS civil servants in DWP, Land Registry, coastguards and others. But the pay restraint applies also to teacher assistants and support staff. It applies to hospital workers, firefighters, the police and also local government workers.

We need all the unions of these workers to threaten a massive public-sector strike. This could push the other teaching unions, namely the NASUWT and ATL, who so far have kept their distance, to come on board.

It needs to happen soon. It could happen in June when the TUC has called a lobby of parliament. If the union leaders called a strike so that thousands could go on a national demonstration and lobby in London, this would put the government under massive pressure.
Name the day

Unfortunately the TUC leaders want a low-key affair with a few representatives from each area. We need to agitate for the TUC to make 9 June a major event, and demand that the leaders of the 24 April action name the day for the next day of joint strike action and invite all other public-sector workers to join in.

However, achieving coordinated action across the public sector is notoriously difficult, due to both the time-scales of different pay rounds and the iniquitous anti-trade union laws. The National Union of Teachers might have to plough ahead, while other unions try to coordinate their action with us.

And it would be entirely possible for the NUT to do this, especially if the next national teachers' ballot for action is not just about pay, but also about the biggest issue of all - workload, including demands to reduce class sizes and increase non-contact time, as a step towards a 35-hour week.

This would inspire even wider layers of teachers into active campaigning. The NUT has a quarter of a million members. There is a school in every community. Teachers have enormous potential power. We need the courage to use it.

With the credit crunch heralding a period of serious economic instability we must fight NOW for a 10% pay increase, 20% non-contact time and class sizes of 20.

In 2002 the NUT called two strike days for an increased London Allowance and achieved some real gains. If you do nothing you are guaranteed to get nothing. If you fight, you get something.

After the strike, things can't be the same in schools. Teachers can't settle back to 'normality' and let the government get away with it. They should get actively involved, keep informed and start preparing now for the next teachers' strike, while campaigning for joint action across the whole public sector.

NUT strike 24 April

2008-04-09T19:54:00.001Z

No more pay cuts!

National Union of Teachers (NUT) members across England and Wales will be joining the first national teachers' strike for twenty years on 24 April. This will be an important date for many public-sector workers, with some sections of civil service union PCS members likely to be on strike on that day, as well as further education lecturers.
Martin Powell-Davies, convenor Socialist Party Teachers

Following a national ballot showing a 3:1 majority, action was unanimously agreed to by the NUT national executive. The strike, to oppose the government's attempts to hold down teachers' pay below inflation for year after year, has been threatened for months. With New Labour refusing to shift, and pressure building from below, all sides of the national leadership recognised that it had to go ahead.

In an unexpected turn of events, just days after announcing the strike, news came of the sudden death of the NUT's general secretary, Steve Sinnott.

Socialist Party Teachers may have often had our differences with Steve, but, to his credit, he will now be remembered as a general secretary that called a national strike. The immediate reaction across the union has been to make sure that we mark his passing by ensuring that the action on 24 April is as solid as possible.

News of the strike had already been enthusiastically greeted by local NUT officers and school reps that have been long campaigning to persuade colleagues to vote for action. Many headteachers have informed parents that their school will be closing on the day.

Whether it's paying for a tank of petrol, the weekly shopping or the mortgage, teachers know, like everyone else, that Gordon Brown's claims that inflation is running at 2% are simply dishonest. For new teachers being asked to pay back their student loans at an inflation-linked rate of 4.8%, the double-dealing is obvious!

Even the Financial Times has conceded that the idea that public-sector wage rises cause inflation is ridiculous. Showing a greater understanding of the anger building below, the FT is warning Brown that his "collision course" with the unions could prove damaging for the government.

Teachers' increasing financial pressures have certainly helped harden the mood for action. But they also mean that some NUT members will inevitably question whether they can afford to lose a day's pay. Local Associations and schools should collect towards hardship funds to make sure colleagues can be supported.

At the same time, we have to make clear that this is a serious fight that we intend to win, not just a one-off protest. The policy agreed at the Easter NUT conference, for a further ballot for discontinuous action, linking our grievances over both pay and workload, needs to be publicised too.

With most teachers having no experience of strike action, there are inevitably some doubts to be answered, particularly about how parents may react to the strike. Of course the strike will disrupt many families' childcare arrangements for the day - but that's why teachers' action can have such a big impact!

We have to leaflet parents to explain that this strike is about defending education as well as teachers' pay. Official figures show that 50% of new teachers have left within the first three years of teaching. Letters to schools from local parents and trade unionists can be a real help in boosting confidence to join the action.

A minority of bullying managers are trying to find ways to undermine the strike. Members of other school unions must make absolutely clear that they will not take on any work that would usually be carried out by NUT staff. They must also demand of their leaders that, next time, we are all taking united action against the pay freeze together!

Managers and ministers should not fool themselves that the 32% turnout in a postal ballot means that most NUT members will come into work. A similar turnout for city-wide strike ballot in 2002 over London Allowances saw most of the capital's schools closed and thousands of young teachers on the march.

24 April will see this repeated on a national scale. Rallies and demonstrations are being planned in many towns and cities. From this experience, a new generation of teachers will recognise that by taking action together, we can start to stand up for ourselves at last.

* UCU members in further education in colleges are balloting for action on pay. The ballot closes on 14 April and any strike is likely to take place on 24 April.
* PCS members in the Department for Work and Pensions, the Department of Transport, the Maritime and Coastguard Agency and possibly other departments are also considering striking on that day.
* It is also possible that Birmingham City council workers will be on strike on 24 April, in a dispute over the implementation of the single status agreement.

TES survey

2008-04-04T20:51:00.001Z

The TES online survey shows massive support from non NUT teachers for strike action. Their union leaders should wake up and pay attention!

Source: TES online survey of 7,336 teachers, of whom 3,521
were NUT members

Is the one-day strike on April 24 a good idea?

All teachers Yes 62% No 38%
Non-NUT members Yes 52% No 48%
NUT members Yes 73% No 27%
(The same proportion of NUT members said they intended to
walk out on April 24)

Will it cause your school to close?

All teachers Yes 47% No 53%
Non-NUT members Yes 39% No 61%
NUT members Yes 55% No 45%

BUILD UNITED NATIONAL ACTION ON PAY AND WORKLOAD

2008-03-17T21:00:00.000Z

BUILD UNITED NATIONAL ACTION ON PAY AND WORKLOAD
BUILD UNITED NATIONAL ACTION ON PAY AND WORKLOAD
Martin Powell-Davies (Lewisham NUT)
ALONGSIDE PAY, WORKLOAD REMAINS the key grievance for most classroom teachers.
As this year’s Conference motion states, the promised ‘work/life balance’ is just a distant ‘dream’, while for too many colleagues their daily burden is a stressful nightmare.
Delegates will be united in agreeing that the “Workload Agreement” signed by the ATL and NASUWT ‘social partner’ unions has failed to produce any significant reduction in working time. The Government’s own statistics agree.
But delegates have to draw the appropriate conclusion – as we have done over salaries. Talks with a Government that offers only empty promises will get us nowhere – unless negotiations are backed up by action.
The existing action strategy – encouraging individual school groups to apply for action – has had limited success. It requires a lot of determination from a school NUT group to take isolated action alone. The experience of national pay action may start to raise the confidence of members to call for ballots, but the desire for united action will remain.
The Union has to encourage as many school groups as possible to take co-ordinated action and make clear that it is prepared to ballot members in schools right across a Division.
Such action can help to limit some of the worst management excesses, for example in limiting staff meetings, excessive planning requirements and lesson observations.
But a real solution to workload lies in challenging the Government’s target-driven education policy and in exposing the need to employ more qualified teachers so that the workload burden can be genuinely reduced.
The target-driven culture that lies behind so much of our workload needs to be challenged. Scrapping league tables, SATs, performance pay and its associated bullying observations would not only reduce pressure on staff – it would free education from the testing regime.
Without the funds to bring in qualified supply staff, the DCSF advice that teachers should ‘rarely cover’ for absences can only be met by implementing their ‘remodelling’ agenda: to use unqualified staff on the cheap.
More teachers are also needed to help reduce class sizes and provide the additional non-contact time that would at last mean that staff could genuinely go home with an empty bag rather than another load of planning and assessment. This could also turn the empty promise of undefined ‘Management’ Time into guaranteed time to carry out responsibilities.
But national policy and national funding for additional teaching staff depends on national
Government. In short, we’ll only really tackle teachers’ workload burden by declaring - and winning - a national trade dispute.
Socialist Party Teachers’ proposal that the NUT pursues just such a national ballot over workload was only defeated last year after the ‘big guns’ of the Executive eventually managed to persuade delegates to pull back.
Unfortunately, even some on the ‘Left’ said we needed a ‘reality check’ for putting forward such a policy. But teachers know too well what their intolerable reality is like. Many Local NUT Officers also recognise that it’s not good enough for the National Union to expect Local Associations to take on the responsibility of organising school-by-school workload action. That’s why we are pleased that the proposal to prepare for national action on workload has gathered support over the year.
Some delegates - like last year - may argue that conducting a workload ballot will distract from action on pay. On the contrary, it will strengthen the response from NUT members.
The Union doesn’t have to hold a fruitless debate about what the top priority is for NUT members – pay or workload. Instead, the anger over both issues can be used to mobilise teachers to build solid national action. It is an approach that has been successfully used by Mark Serwotka and the PCS National Executive – surely it is one that the NUT Executive should embrace too!

BUILD UNITED NATIONAL ACTION ON PAY AND WORKLOAD

2008-03-17T20:52:00.001Z

BUILD UNITED NATIONAL ACTION ON PAY AND WORKLOAD
Martin Powell-Davies (Lewisham NUT)
ALONGSIDE PAY, WORKLOAD REMAINS the key grievance for most classroom teachers.
As this year’s Conference motion states, the promised ‘work/life balance’ is just a distant ‘dream’, while for too many colleagues their daily burden is a stressful nightmare.
Delegates will be united in agreeing that the “Workload Agreement” signed by the ATL and NASUWT ‘social partner’ unions has failed to produce any significant reduction in working time. The Government’s own statistics agree.
But delegates have to draw the appropriate conclusion – as we have done over salaries. Talks with a Government that offers only empty promises will get us nowhere – unless negotiations are backed up by action.
The existing action strategy – encouraging individual school groups to apply for action – has had limited success. It requires a lot of determination from a school NUT group to take isolated action alone. The experience of national pay action may start to raise the confidence of members to call for ballots, but the desire for united action will remain.
The Union has to encourage as many school groups as possible to take co-ordinated action and make clear that it is prepared to ballot members in schools right across a Division.
Such action can help to limit some of the worst management excesses, for example in limiting staff meetings, excessive planning requirements and lesson observations.
But a real solution to workload lies in challenging the Government’s target-driven education policy and in exposing the need to employ more qualified teachers so that the workload burden can be genuinely reduced.
The target-driven culture that lies behind so much of our workload needs to be challenged. Scrapping league tables, SATs, performance pay and its associated bullying observations would not only reduce pressure on staff – it would free education from the testing regime.
Without the funds to bring in qualified supply staff, the DCSF advice that teachers should ‘rarely cover’ for absences can only be met by implementing their ‘remodelling’ agenda: to use unqualified staff on the cheap.
More teachers are also needed to help reduce class sizes and provide the additional non-contact time that would at last mean that staff could genuinely go home with an empty bag rather than another load of planning and assessment. This could also turn the empty promise of undefined ‘Management’ Time into guaranteed time to carry out responsibilities.
But national policy and national funding for additional teaching staff depends on national
Government. In short, we’ll only really tackle teachers’ workload burden by declaring - and winning - a national trade dispute.
Socialist Party Teachers’ proposal that the NUT pursues just such a national ballot over workload was only defeated last year after the ‘big guns’ of the Executive eventually managed to persuade delegates to pull back.
Unfortunately, even some on the ‘Left’ said we needed a ‘reality check’ for putting forward such a policy. But teachers know too well what their intolerable reality is like. Many Local NUT Officers also recognise that it’s not good enough for the National Union to expect Local Associations to take on the responsibility of organising school-by-school workload action. That’s why we are pleased that the proposal to prepare for national action on workload has gathered support over the year.
Some delegates - like last year - may argue that conducting a workload ballot will distract from action on pay. On the contrary, it will strengthen the response from NUT members.
The Union doesn’t have to hold a fruitless debate about what the top priority is for NUT members – pay or workload. Instead, the anger over both issues can be used to mobilise teachers to build solid national action. It is an approach that has been successfully used by Mark Serwotka and the PCS National Executive – surely it is one that the NUT Executive should embrace too!

The 35 hour week in Scotland

2008-03-17T20:51:00.001Z

The 35 hour week in Scotland
A real work-life balance can never exist while teachers’ open-ended contracts mean that we are required to continue to work way beyond our ‘directed time’ of 1265 hours. The call for an overall 35-hour working week is therefore gathering support.
Many teachers look enviously to Scotland, where the 35-hour week has been included in teachers’ contracts since 2001. But research carried out for the Scottish Negotiating Committee for Teachers shows that the reality has proved very different. Just as in England and Wales, contractual promises to reduce workload mean little if they aren’t backed up by the funds to employ additional teachers.
Before we all rush north of the border, the following quotes may sound all too familiar:
“ The time-use diary indicated that teachers overall are actually working 45 hours per week on average, increasing further with increasing status.”
“ Teachers’ expectations were raised by the Agreement that their overall workloads would at least reduce … However, most teachers sampled in this study are reporting an increased workload since 2001”.
“ For many teachers, a key element in this expression of non-sustainability and overwork was the experience of what some called ‘initiative overload’ ”.
“ There was consensus that the 35 hour working week is not being met in reality, but also there is acceptance that the job may take more hours to fulfil to a professional standard”.
“Many teachers said that everything they do is essential; very few could identify anything they would willingly ‘give up’.”
The last two comments – even if written in the words of a university researcher – point to one of the difficulties in a workload campaign.
Inevitably, there will be some teachers who believe that their ‘professional responsibility’ is to get the job done – however long it takes. Of course, we have to explain that just burning yourself out does no favours to either teachers or pupils in the long-run. Stressed teachers do not make good teachers.
But the major difficulty is that teaching isn’t a job where there is an easy hiding-place. If you haven’t prepared the lesson, photocopied the materials, marked the books in time, then getting through the lesson can be tough. So many teachers end up struggling on at the weekends to prepare what they - and their management - think they need to have ready.
That’s why a demand for a 35-hour week can’t be separated from the need for more non-contact time to get the work done within that working week.

FIGHTING SCHOOL CLOSURES IN WALES

2008-03-17T20:47:00.002Z

FIGHTING SCHOOL CLOSURES IN WALES
CHALLENGE WALES’ CUTS POLITICIANS IN ELECTIONS
Iain Dalton & Ross Saunders (Socialist Party Wales)
Aschool closure is coming to every area of Wales. From Carmarthen to Cardiff, Powys to Gwynedd, the threats of cuts, closures and teacher redundancies are growing.
The root of the problem lies with the Welsh Assembly funding formula which funds each council according to the number of students going to each school, rather than their needs.
Now that student numbers are falling, a new formula is needed to allow smaller class sizes. We say abolish the formula not the schools! But parents, school students, teachers, school workers and local communities are uniting to oppose the threatened cutbacks.
All the parties, Liberal, Labour, Plaid and Tory, accept the argument that schools should close because student numbers have fallen. They claim money is being "wasted on empty places". But falling student numbers are a great opportunity to improve education without spending extra money, through reduced pupil/teacher ratios.
On 13th December, over 600 parents, children and other protesters marched through Caernarfon to protest against the closure of 29 schools and the federalising (one school over several sites) of many others. The march saw banners from many different schools and placards condemning the Plaid Cymru led Gwynedd Council proposing these cuts.
In Cardiff, the Liberal Council's attempt to close 22 schools was defeated last year by a barrage of meetings and demos. But now they have returned with a new closures plan.
School students would be expected to travel across Cardiff, increasing congestion, pollution and carbon emissions, to bigger schools with bigger classes. A united campaign, similar to the one which defeated these plans in 2006, is starting to develop. It could, if focussed on exerting maximum pressure on councillors, repeat the victory of two years ago. If local councillors only oppose closures in their own wards while backing all the others, then all the closures will go ahead. A joined-up Save Our Schools Campaign pledging to fight all attacks on Cardiff schools could extend pressure to all 72 councillors.
What use is the One Wales coalition between Labour and Plaid? Any hope that Plaid entering the government would move things substantially to the left is being snuffed out by these closures. And so much for the Liberal campaign promise in the Assembly election for smaller class sizes!
If councillors refuse to act to save schools, then parents and campaigners are preparing to stand against them in the May elections.

MONEY FOR EDUCATION, NOT WAR !

2008-03-17T20:46:00.002Z

MONEY FOR EDUCATION, NOT WAR !
Articles edited from ‘The Socialist’
Five long years of bloody war and occupation have left Iraq as a dangerous, violent and divided society. The latest statistics suggest:
Around 700,000 Iraqis have died violently or in connection with the conflict;
Almost one in two households in Baghdad have lost a family member;
Over 170 British troops and nearly 4,000 US troops have been killed so far. A further 58,000 US troops are injured or seriously ill;
Perhaps 100,000 US troops returned home with serious mental health disorders (the occupying powers do not even bother collating such statistics for the Iraqi people);
Baghdad has only eight hours of electricity supply a day and only one-third of the city is connected to the water mains. The health service, once one of the best in the Middle East, lies in ruins, as do the country’s roads, schools, homes and sewage system;
One in four Iraqis are jobless. No wonder that two million people fled the killing fields of Iraq for Syria and Jordan and elsewhere;
The estimated total budgetary and economic cost to the US: “will turn out to be around $3 trillion, with the cost to the rest of the world perhaps doubling that number again” (The Three Trillion Dollar War, Stiglitz and Bilmes, 2008).
The Iraqi people, particularly the oppressed Shias and Kurds, suffered terribly for decades under the brutal Saddam regime. But the task of overthrowing the dictatorship was for the Iraqi masses to carry out, not the cynical US
Students and teachers protest against US military recruiters
On November 16th, thousands of high school students in Minneapolis, Seattle, and other U.S. cities walked out of classes to demand an end to the war in Iraq, to protest the presence of military recruiters in schools, and call for money for education, not war.
Protesting against military recruitment was a major focus of the walkout. In Seattle, activists won an important victory last summer when the school board restricted recruiters’ access to schools following an ongoing campaign and a walkout of 800 students in April. In Minneapolis/St. Paul there is an ongoing campaign to force the school board to pass similar restrictions.
In Seattle, approximately 600 students from over 30 high schools and several universities and colleges walked out of classes at noon …
imperialist powers, which for years backed the vicious Saddam regime.
Bush wanted to secure oil for the big corporations and to vastly enhance US imperialism’s geo-strategic position, both in the region and internationally. Rather than bringing ‘stability’, the US occupation has deepened religious and national divisions, triggering a sectarian bloodbath that resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths.
The situation in Iraq remains highly unstable and fragile. In the absence of a powerful class force uniting all Iraqis, including non-sectarian, democratically-run defence committees, the Iraq state could eventually break up along national and sectarian lines, pulling neighbouring states into the vortex.
The Iraqi working class must return to its rich class struggle traditions; creating a powerful socialist party to unite all religious and national groups and to overthrow the rule of sectarian warlords and big business.
This is a huge task facing the Iraqi working class but the alternative is a continuation of imperialist rule, and deepening sectarian divisions. As recent waves of strikes in Egypt and Iran show, class struggle can unite workers across all ethnic, religious and national lines in the Middle East.
Western imperialism is also facing growing disaster in Afghanistan. The huge PR stunt surrounding Prince Harry’s ‘tour’ of duty in Afghanistan cannot hide the truth that the majority of Afghans regard Western troops as an oppressive occupation and that most of Afghanistan is out of the control of the puppet Karzai government. It says a lot about life for Afghans under Western powers that the reactionary Taliban should make a comeback.
Full support should be given to attempts by democratic, non-sectarian, working-class organisations in Iraq and Afghanistan to resist imperialism, to fight for democratic rights and to struggle to overthrow the ruling gangsters.
Working people and youth, everywhere, need political parties that represent their anti-war, anti-capitalist sentiments – new mass workers’ parties, with bold socialist policies.
… and converged for a spirited rally and march. After the rally, demonstrators marched to a military recruiting station chanting, "Hey recruiters, we're no fools! Get your lies out of our schools!" and "Stop, stop, stop recruiting the poor! Fight the rich, not their wars!"
This was a successful step toward turning the overwhelming public sentiment against the war into a more active, visible opposition.
Unfortunately, some students faced threats of discipline and suspension from school. In Tukwila, Washington, where 200 students walked out, the School District threatened students with suspension, but their main targets were teachers, some of whom had encouraged students to take part.
Disciplinary investigations threatened the firing of six teachers, and the administration placed one of the six, Brett Rogers, on leave.
A solidarity appeal was sent out across email lists worldwide, resulting in over 1,000 protest emails and phone calls flooding the school administration demanding they reinstate Brett Rogers and respect the democratic rights of both teachers and students.
The school authorities faced relentless pressure on all fronts. The Seattle teachers’ union and the L.A. teachers’ union (the second largest teachers’ union in the country) both passed resolutions in support of the teachers and the students. The campaign received significant local media coverage.
Following the school board meeting where students gave impassioned speeches, ongoing pressure by community members, anti-war groups, and concerned individuals worldwide, and the threat of further organizing by students, the school board finally capitulated.
Brett Rogers was reinstated for the fall semester, all investigations against the remaining teachers were dropped with twominor letters of reprimand, and the principal of Foster High School, disgraced and under pressure, was forced to resign!
Students have learned a powerful lesson in organizing. Teachers have been emboldened that they can stand up to the pro-war activities of their school authorities.

For the immediate withdrawal of troops from Iraq and Afghanistan.
End the siege of Gaza.
For the right of the Iraqi and Afghan people to determine their own future.
For student and teacher campaigns to keep military recruiters out of schools.
For a new mass workers’ party to represent the anti-war majority.
For workers’ unity and for

WHY I JOINED SOCIALIST PARTY TEACHERS

2008-03-17T20:45:00.001Z

WHY I JOINED SOCIALIST PARTY TEACHERS
Faith McGrath (Lewisham NUT)
WE CAN ALL RATTLE OFF the major fights we have as teachers: pay, workload and a host of centrally imposed government directives such as Performance Management.
Many of us are aware that the current political climate is dominated by the three mainstream political parties who, like the three sisters of the mythological Gorgons, share a single eye to stare coldly upon us, the workforce, with equal contempt and menace. Consequently, we have little recourse against this monster, except to look to our Union leaders to take a strong lead in this fight.
We look to the NUT leaders to meet the onslaught of these political monsters with a decisive and effective offensive. We look to the NUT leaders to make clear, unequivocal demands, and when governments do not meet these demands, to organise and implement serious and sustained strike action until we are satisfied with the outcome.
So what do you do when the awful realisation dawns on you that you cannot rely on the NUT leaders to fight their members’ battles?
You look to pressure groups active within the NUT such as the CDFU and STA, to name but two, who lean on the NUT leadership to fulfil the needs of its members.
It took attendance at only one NUT Annual Conference last year for me to realise that not all pressure groups exert the pressure that you might expect them to. I realised that it was only Socialist Party Teachers’ members that were showing the sheer single-minded determination to go all out uncompromisingly to get the job done and to defeat the onslaughts we face.
Nearly a year down the line, we at last have a hard won ballot for a one-day national strike. I can say that, without doubt, I made the right choice. Socialist Party Teachers’ members have pressed the NUT leadership unequivocally for strike action on pay, questioned the leadership when it dragged its feet, pressed them to be more specific about timescales and dates.
I know that, if, as we hope, the ballot is successful, Socialist Party Teachers will continue to apply serious pressure for this action to become more than a one-day stunt.
We will also continue to press, with genuine conviction, for firm action on all the other issues affecting teachers.
FIND OUT MORE:
For all the latest reports and analysis from around the globe from the Committee for A Workers’ International:
www.socialistworld.net
Visit the Socialist Party’s own website:
www.socialistparty.org.uk
For news, reports and resources, visit the website for Socialist Party Teachers, on:
www.socialistteachers.org.uk

SALARIES

2008-03-17T20:44:00.000Z

ALL OUT ON APRIL 24th – THEN ESCALATE NATIONAL ACTION!
Linda Taaffe (Waltham Forest NUT)
Thousands of teachers across England and Wales will be excited that the NUT is at last balloting to take national action.
As teachers experience a relentless drive towards ‘more work for less pay’, many on the Left, including the Socialist Party, have been campaigning for the Union to adopt a national collective approach, rather than an isolated school-by-school approach, to stop detrimental changes to pay and conditions.
With an absolutely insulting below-inflation pay settlement in prospect for three long years - probably with real inflation zooming upwards due to the developing crisis of the bosses globalised system - there really was little choice. The Brown government had set its face squarely against our 10% claim, as well as that of others right across the public sector like nurses, prison officers and now even coastguards. It was really time for the National Executive to put-up or shut-up!
But having launched a national ballot, will teachers respond sufficiently to turn this ballot into the first national strike for over twenty years? And, crucially, has the union got a strategy to win?
On the first issue, who knows for sure? Some areas have reported a mixed response but other reports have been extremely positive. With no national action for over two decades, this scenario is not unexpected. But it would have been quite wrong to hold back and base ourselves on the least active areas. Instead, we now have the chance to turn the tide.
Many activists report a hardening of the mood. As well as feeling the pinch of rising prices, particularly housing and fuel costs, many teachers feel outraged that they are being treated so unjustly. They feel they do everything that is asked of them by this government and headteachers, and they work such long hours on a regular basis that their pay can amount to as little as £10 an hour. Many teachers will vote YES simply to give vent to their frustration.
Many teachers also instinctively know that if the government gets away with holding down salaries for another three years, they can get away with more, even to cut wages, like in local government, where the notorious ‘Single Status’ policy is being used not just to keep down pay but to slash some workers’ pay-packets by thousands of pounds.
Also waiting in the wings are others in education, like academy owners, who view even government-set salaries as an imposition. Recently one ULT board member said that he believed teachers should be paid as if they were “in business” with bonuses linked to academic improvement, and national pay and conditions scrapped. He identified the unions as a block to this. Too right!
However, strike action is not within the lifetime experience of many younger teachers and will not necessarily come naturally. Many overworked teachers don’t find time to think, question and discuss about wider industrial and political issues. The experience of a day’s strike will be a vital part of their education!
The lack of experience means some basic concerns need to be addressed – like reassuring staff that they are protected by the ballot from bullying Headteachers demanding that they turn up to work instead of striking.
We can take confidence from 2002, when some 40,000 teachers in the London and Fringe area did get involved in the London Allowance campaign and took part in two days of strike action. The turnout in the first ballot was only around 30%, yet on the day, schools in London were overwhelmingly closed and the demonstration was full of young teachers. April 24th can be the same.
In the end we did win a significant increase. Teachers on the top of the pay scale in Inner London won an effective Allowance of £6000. Other grades got varying increases. And the STRB has had to pay special attention to the London teachers ever since, even giving them a slightly higher increase in the award proposed currently – but still not enough!
This action showed several things. Firstly, that once a battle starts, more teachers than those who voted in the ballot will get involved. Secondly, that if you fight, you get something. If you don’t fight you are guaranteed nothing. This must be our rallying cry.
The prospects for success will obviously be a factor for teachers to take into account when considering how to vote. Will it be worth losing a day’s pay - and is it possible to make this government change its mind? After all, Blair and Brown never budged over the war when two million took to the streets. Given this background teachers need to be sure that their leaders are not half-hearted. Is a one-day protest strike really a strategy to win?
We say a solid one-day strike could have an effect IF the strike is solid and IF the NUT leadership make it clear that one day is the start and not the end of a campaign of action. In recent times some other unions certainly have made the employers think again. The prison officers in POA did it spectacularly last year when they walked out unexpectedly for 24hours. After 12 hours the employers were calling them back to the negotiating table; so too, the railway workers of Metronet. They planned three days of action, but again were called after one day. The civil servants also had fixed action for the end of January this year as part of ongoing action. Again they were called to the negotiating table with promises of concessions before the strike. All these actions were part of a militant stance adopted generally by PCS and RMT and POA, and the government were not willing to face them down directly. The lesson here is that if you look like you mean business the employers have to respond.
So, is the NUT threat of the same order? It is now a year since NUT Conference made the unanimous decision in the full glare of the media to reject any notion of 2% and go for action. The Executive then failed to go for any immediate action, voted not to take the chance to ballot alongside UNISON in November, and went on to delay the action until after the STRB had reported, despite everyone knowing very well in advance that the pay offer would be around 2%.
Even after the publication of the STRB Report in January, the Union was not ready to spring into action as it should have been. Some Executive Members came to the conclusion that teachers were not ready for action. They cited lack of attendance at general meetings and a general lack of pressure from teachers themselves. So, based on this pessimistic view they were only prepared to sanction a one-day protest strike.
A ballot for discontinuous action would have given the leadership greater flexibility, especially to pursue further action and joint action with other trade unions. This was the tactic successfully threatened – without having to be carried out - in the pensions campaign.
If we are to continue our campaign beyond April, as we must, another national ballot must be taken. We must argue in the Conference debates to instruct the National Executive to ensure that any further ballot is for discontinuous action, and that follow-up action has to be a step up – not a step down like lobbying MPs, or other such low-key activity.
Traditionally other workers, like miners, were seen as being in the forefront of struggle, setting the tone for other trade unionists. However in today’s changing world, where industry is fast disappearing, education is a key plank of government policy. There is so much media attention on all aspects of schools. Teachers do hold a lot of power.
In practical terms parents often use schools as a national childminding service. Shut the schools and thousands of parents will not be able to go to their jobs. There could be a ripple effect. Nor should we be afraid of what parents will say – many will also be struggling with their bills and be pleased to see someone ‘having a go’ at last! The prospect of schools closed all over the country would firmly hit the headlines and put pressure on New Labour to pay up for teachers.
The money is there. It was there for Northern Rock, it is there for weapons of war. The rich get away with evading tax worth millions. The government should penalise the super-rich tax dodgers not hardworking public servants like teachers.
And don’t let’s forget that, so far, Brown has not really been tested. The stronger the threat, the more pressure that can be piled on Ed Balls and Gordon Brown, the more likely they will want to find a way of defusing the situation.
First we need as big a YES vote as we can in the ballot. Then, we must call the strike. The faint-hearts on the Executive who want to base our outlook on the least organised areas must not be allowed to hold us back. We can be confident of a good response on the day, with schools closed nationwide on April 24th.
We must go on to threaten further strikes, at the same time as we agitate for a massive joint public sector strike against the pay restraint threatened across the public sector.
UNITE TO MELT THE PAY FREEZE
Teachers are just one of the groups of trade unionists threatened with a pay freeze – and just one of those taking action to fight back:
LECTURERS – OUT ON 24 APRIL ?
Lecturers in FE Colleges in England are being balloted by the UCU from March 14th to April 14th. They hope to co-ordinate strike action by coming out alongside the NUT on April 24th.
PRISON OFFICERS
85% of POA members in England and Wales have voted to reject the 2008 pay offer of 2.2%. They are still in dispute over last year's pay, so there could be further confrontations with the government in the near future.
CIVIL SERVICE
Different sections of civil servants, under the firm leadership of the left-led PCS, in which Socialist Party members play a leading role, have already taken strike action this year.
Staff in the DWP (Department for Work and Pensions) went on strike for two days on 6-7 December against the imposed three-year pay offer, which even means a 0% pay 'increase' for this year! PCS then called further strike days on 17 and 18 March.
As well as pay, PCS have also included demands on a number of non-pay issues to widen the dispute into areas that are of vital concern to members. These include a demand for a no compulsory redundancy agreement, no automatic warnings for sickness absence, and rights to work flexibly. This is a tactic that the NUT also needs to follow, linking up concerns over pay with others like workload into one national dispute.
PUBLIC SECTOR ACTION ACROSS EUROPE

Germany
Berlin has seen many more cyclists on its streets than usual as bus and tube workers have taken all-out strike action for higher wages. At the same time, there has been a series of mass warning strikes in the public sector, with workers demanding a wage increase of €200 as a minimum or 8 per cent.
Hundreds of thousands of public sector workers have taken action in three waves of warning strikes in recent weeks; in hospitals, local councils, airports, childcare facilities, public transport and other parts of the public sector. The train drivers’ union, GDL, showed the way by securing an 11% pay rise from the Deutsche Bahn (DB) rail operator.
France
Sarkozy’s policy is to smash all the social gains from the past - social security, free public services, pensions, labour laws, working hours - with the aim of protecting the biggest French multinationals. And this while he gives himself a 170% pay rise and spends his holidays with the richest bosses.
In October and November 2007, a wave of strikes developed against the government’s attacks on pensions and universities. At its peak this strike gathered more workers than in the last generalised strike of 1995, which precipitated the fall of the right wing Juppé government. On October 18th there were 73.5% rail workers on strike, compared to 67% at the peak of the strike in 1995. The potential for extension was shown on the November 20th day of action when 700,000 public sector workers demonstrated all over the country.
Portugal
Major strikes and mass protests are taking place in Portugal against the anti-worker polices of the Partido Socialista government of Jose Socrates. Big cuts have taken place in public spending, pensions have come under attack and a huge assault made on public sector workers’ pay, conditions and jobs.
On 8 March, 100,000 teachers held perhaps their biggest ever demonstration. About 2/3 of teachers in the whole country were on the march. This involved all the teachers’ unions and was probably the biggest protest by these workers since the Revolution of 1974/75. A general strike is not ruled out.
Greece
On 13 February, workers, pensioners and youth from all over Greece came out for the second time in less than two months in a general strike to defend their pension rights. At least 2 million workers went on strike, on 13 February, and over 50,000 marched in Athens despite freezing cold. A new general strike is expected to be called in the next few weeks. Greek workers and youth will respond massively once again.

Martin4Vp on youtube

2007-10-03T21:40:00.001Z

West Sussex nominate Martin and Hank

2007-09-29T12:27:00.000Z

West Sussex Teachers Association have nominated Martin and Hank as vice presidents. The WSTA is fairly evenly divided on the pay campaign but members saw it as a debate on when rather than whether to take action. Martin and indeed Hank were seen as people who would fight their corner.

The vote was unanimous and a number of supply teachers who don't generally attend meetings were there. They wanted action over the appalling treatment of supply teachers and are becoming increasingly involved in the union as a result.

Striking a chord in Liverpool

2007-09-29T12:26:00.001Z

One of the liveliest hustings meetings held so far took place in the Liner Hotel in Liverpool on Wednesday September 26th. Members of the Liverpool and Wirral NUT Associations met to listen to speeches, and ask questions, from the three candidates that had agreed to attend - Martin Powell-Davies, Roger King and Hank Roberts.

The tone of the debate was friendly but clearly brought out the different approaches between the candidates. Martin and Roger explained how a majority of the present NUT National Executive could not be relied on to vote for the action needed to defend teachers and education.

Martin’s call for the Union to enact the national ballot on pay alongside UNISON for joint action this November struck a chord. An emergency motion supporting this approach, moved by National Executive member Julie Lyon-Taylor, was later passed by the meeting. Both Julie and Robin Pye, St. Helen’s NUT Secretary, were also nominated for next year’s new elections for the NUT National Executive.

Unfortunately, there were not enough Wirral members attending to make any formal decisions, but the Liverpool Association voted overwhelmingly to nominate Martin Powell-Davies and Roger King. Martin thanked those attending for their support and urged them to take news from the meeting back to their schools and to urge colleagues to vote for change in the NUT when the election starts at the end of October.

Elsewhere, Martin was also nominated by the West Cheshire NUT Association.

Academies – exam shortcuts damage education

2007-09-24T19:49:00.001Z

Academies – exam shortcuts damage education

May teachers already know that there is a big difference between the spin in favour of Academies and educational reality. But some new facts revealed at the Anti-Academies Alliance Steering Committee meeting in London on Saturday appalled a secondary science teacher like myself.

Roger Titcombe, a retired Headteacher who has been doggedly researching the actual exam performance of Academies, revealed graphs showing how many supposedly “successful” schools were simply playing the system to boost their 5 A*-C pass rate.

The news that many schools have used GNVQs to boost their league table scores will be of little surprise but Roger’s revelation that science education was particularly vulnerable in these supposedly “most improved” schools may be news to many of us. His figures suggested that, while concentrating on the English and Maths needed for the new exam statistics, science was being pushed aside in some schools. Results in one Academy showed a third of the pupils that has been entered for double award science doing so badly that their results were ungraded and none at all obtaining an A*-C grade.

There was a good turnout to the Steering Committee. We exchanged reports from campaigns across the country. Romayne Phoenix, a Green Party councillor, and I attended from Defend Education In Lewisham. Plans were made for further campaigning, including co-ordinated days of action to highlight how Academies are undermining comprehensive education.

Martin Powell-Davies

IPSWICH: Martin & Roger supported over Gill & Hank

2007-09-23T19:12:00.001Z

IPSWICH: Martin & Roger supported over Gill & Hank

Ipswich Association nominated Martin Powell-Davies for the Vice President position at our General Meeting on Thursday 20th September.

Hank Roberts was put forward at first. His role in the Wembley anti-Academy occupation was acknowledged, but so was his unreliable voting record on the National Executive. After discussion, his nomination was withdrawn. There were also doubts about nominating a headteacher, Gill Goodswen, as President.

Everyone at the meeting agreed that Martin's visit to the Association a few years ago had left a good impression and those who had been to conferences knew well exactly what Martin stood for ! We concluded by agreeing to nominate Martin and Roger King.

The meeting also passed a motion calling for an immediate ballot on pay and united action with other public sector trade unions.

Roger Mackay, Ipswich NUT

Brown and Thatcher

2007-09-16T12:07:00.000Z

Wiki

2007-08-31T17:32:00.002Z

Wiki is a term which comes from the Hawiian term "wiki wiki" which means fast. There is a wiki for education which you can accesshere

It has information about Socialist Party Teachers

Education - not safe in Brown's hands

2007-08-26T18:53:00.000Z

MANY UNIVERSITIES are in financial crisis, student debt has risen to over £3 billion and there is massive pressure on students and their families. It is clear education is not safe in New Labour's hands!

Matt Dobson, Socialist Students National Organiser

Gordon Brown, the new prime minister, has assumed office intent on driving full steam ahead with the privatisation agenda of the Blair government. This has already brought about a situation whereby 1% of the population own nearly a quarter of all marketable assets.

However Brown has made a number of small concessions to act as a fig-leaf for his pro-big business stance. He has responded to the anger felt by students with a new funding package of £400m that will be introduced from September 2008. There will be an increase in the number of students who can receive grants while they are studying. Graduates will be eligible for a "repayment holiday" of up to five years when paying back their loans.

These small improvements will help some students. It's not an accident that Brown's fig-leaves have been allocated to those who have fought and campaigned. He claims to be listening and to be changing but most students will not be fooled or satisfied by Brown's proposals. We want more!

Brown has brought the boss of Tesco into his new National Council for Education Excellence showing his real intentions for education. He aims to strengthen the links between education and business, ie offer big business further opportunities to profit out of public services.

Brown is expected to announce the lifting of the cap on top-up fees which means universities may charge up to £10,000 a year! The slight increase in the grants is almost insignificant in the face of this attack. Brown also has plans to sell off the student loan company to private investors who could hike up the interest rates on loans getting students into even bigger debts.

The extra funding is not going to solve the perilous position of struggling universities. Just days after the extra funding was announced a list of 100 universities facing financial crisis was released under the freedom of information act. The list predominantly included ex-polytechnics that are in this position because of the years of major underfunding by Tory and New Labour governments.

Having been told for years that there is no extra money for education, students will be surprised to hear that this £400m was previously unallocated.

£400m is a small part of what is needed to properly fund education but it does beg the question of what other money there is "unallocated" that could be used for public services like education or health. More to the point there are £billions being misallocated on a regular basis as money continues to be poured into war and nuclear weapons projects such as Trident.

The future for higher education under Brown is one where elite universities charge the highest fees and cater for the richest in society and the rest get underfunded universities and struggle with financial insecurity, debt and stress despite these concessions. That future will mean many thousands are denied their right to a decent education. That is not a future we can accept.

Socialist Students demands and fights for a fully publicly funded and owned education system. We call for all student debt to be immediately cancelled. We fight for the scrapping of all university fees and that all students receive a living grant.

Brown's proposals show that the government has money for services when they think it will boost their position in the polls. This shows more money can be found to properly fund higher education if political pressure is applied. But New Labour, like all the capitalist parties, would rather attack public services and protect the interests of big business than help ordinary students.

A mass movement based on mass action involving workers and students linking up with other struggles to defend public services could force Brown to scrap fees and fund higher education. The Campaign to Defeat Fees will go on the offensive in the autumn term organising protests and building the campaign starting at the freshers' fairs.

If you want to begin building Socialist Students and the Campaign to Defeat Fees in your university or college, book a stall at your freshers' fair now and contact Socialist Students at socialiststudents@hotmail.com or 020 8558 7947 for more info.

Alan Hardman cartoons

2007-08-18T07:16:00.001Z

Campaign for a New Workers' Party

2007-08-18T04:34:00.000Z

Defending "outdated" comprehensive education in 'New Labour' Lewisham

2007-07-13T21:31:00.001Z

Lewisham voters may have hoped that they were electing their Council to run local schools and services. But it seems that Lewisham's "New Labour" councillors think their job is to give schools away to private bidders instead!

A long-running parental campaign finally convinced Lewisham Council that a new secondary school was needed to provide additional places in the north of the borough. But there was never any suggestion that the ‘New School’ would be anything but a Local Authority run community school. But of course the Education Act now means that Council is being told to hold a ‘competition’ to see who should run it. If the New School is given away to become a Trust, Academy or Foundation School, then employment of staff, ownership of the site and admissions arrangements will no longer be in the hands of the elected Council. But instead of fighting this threat, Lewisham's Mayor, Sir Steve Bullock, is accepting it.

The New School would become the fifth secondary school in Lewisham not to participate in the borough’s ‘area-banding’ system. Instead of a planned comprehensive system, admissions will start to splinter into the kind of “free-for-all” that already blights education in some other boroughs. The gap between the ‘best’ schools and the rest will widen further. But that means many families and children will lose out. It could also result in the scandalous situation in Lewisham that over £10 million will have to be found from Council resources to help fund the new school. But the school won’t be owned by Lewisham! How can the Mayor explain that to council tax payers?

I was granted five minutes to speak to the July 11th Mayor and Cabinet on behalf of the joint teacher unions. But Cllr.Massey, responsible for schools, responded by saying that I was defending an "outdated" idea from 40 years ago. What would previous generations of Labour campaigners for comprehensive education have said to that ? Instead of persuading Gordon Brown to change Government policy, Cllr.Massey wants to "celebrate it" !

But, unlike Lewisham, some Councils have at least shown the political will to fight to hold on to their schools. The London Borough of Haringey decided to put in its own ‘bid’ to run its new school as a community school. It successfully beat off other bidders, including Lewisham-based Academy sponsor Haberdashers’ Aske’s, so it can now run the school as a Local Authority comprehensive school.

Clad in bright yellow ‘Defend Education in Lewisham’ campaign t-shirts, parents and staff lobbied last night's meeting. We believe the Mayor should be fighting the whole damaging ‘competition’ legislation. But, if the Labour Council won’t challenge its own Government’s policies, we at least expect them to try and follow Haringey’s lead. Regrettably, the Mayor rejected that approach on July 11th. There will be a further debate at the Council meeting on July 18th where sympathetic socialist councillors are again proposing the Council seeks approval to submit its own bid.

If the Council isn’t prepared to defend Lewisham’s schools, then the Defend Education Campaign is !

Martin Powell-Davies

ACTION IN JANUARY? – A DANGEROUS DELAY

2007-07-10T20:20:00.001Z

ACTION IN JANUARY? – A DANGEROUS DELAY

Our Union correctly challenged Alan Johnson to
“honour” the commitment to review our 2006 and 2007
pay awards if inflation went over the 3.25% “trigger”.
He refused and then made clear we could expect 2% up
until 2011 to boot ! The Government had called the
NUT’s bluff and waited to see how we responded.
The Union promised a “robust response” but June’s NUT
Executive put off a decision on a national ballot
timetable until July. But now we have been told what
the General Secretary is proposing that timetable
should be - to wait until JANUARY 2008 before we take
action !
This delay will only confirm fears that the Union is
failing to grasp the nettle and call the national
action agreed unanimously back at the Easter
Conference. The supposed ‘unity’ at the June Executive
to commit to a ballot for action “in the Autumn Term”
can now be seen as a way to gloss over two very
different approaches to action.
Steve Sinnott’s proposal is to delay a ballot until
December, after the Review Body reports in early
November, and hope to then get the NASUWT aboard for
joint action in the New Year. But that delay risks
losing the momentum that is building up, frustrating
members who are ready to support action now and, most
of all, prevents us from linking up with unions that
are really serious about taking national action in the
Autumn like the PCS. Why wait for the Review Body to
confirm 2% or thereabouts?
The right approach, as I have been arguing for in my
campaign, is to hold a ballot in September, before the
Review Body reports. This is the only way to protest
against the failure to honour the “trigger” and to
apply real pressure to the Review Body to meet our
demands for a 10% pay rise and for the end of
performance pay.
An early ballot would also help us coordinate action
with other public sector unions and apply the same
kind of pressure that persuaded the Government to
retreat over pensions. It would also be the best way
of pushing the NASUWT into action. A united public
sector strike would be a huge confidence boost for
trade unionists and a blow to Gordon Brown’s prestige.
Of course, that could be the very reason why some
union leaders are holding back.
Unfortunately, some people have accused me of
exaggerating differences over the pay ballot timetable
simply for ‘electioneering’ purposes. But the
differences are very real - and too important for the
future of teachers’ salaries to simply wish away. As I
have said before on this blog, nothing would have
pleased me more than to be proved wrong and for the
Union to agree on an early ballot after all.
Unfortunately, members’ fears that the Union is
“dithering” will only be strengthened if the July 18th
Executive meeting votes to delay action until the New
Year.
A delayed ballot will be a setback. NUT Divisions will
have to find ways to maintain the campaign throughout
the Autumn Term such as organising joint rallies with
other public sector unions. A national demonstration
against the pay freeze, as the PCS are proposing to
the TUC in September, would help sustain the momentum.
But when Linda Taaffe suggested this at the June NUT
Executive she could hardly find any other support!
One thing is clear – that this Union needs a fighting
leadership. That’s why I am challenging to be
Vice-President. I hope my campaign can encourage
classroom teachers, reps and local officers to get
organised to build a Union locally and nationally that
is ready and willing to stand up firmly for teachers
and education.

Martin Powell-Davies

Lewisham nomination

2007-06-19T14:23:00.000Z

Lewisham NUT has overwhelmingly voted to nominate Martin Powell-Davies for Vice President. They also nominated Roger King for the other VP position.

To support the campaign contact:

Martin Powell-Davies for VP • 32 Tannsfeld Road • Sydenham • LONDON SE26 5DF

Phone: 020 8659 8478 • Mobile: 07946 445488 • E-Mail: martinpd_uk(at)yahoo.co.uk substituting the @ sign for the (at)

There is a website and a blog

Defending Postal Services

2007-06-19T14:22:00.000Z

The Communications Workers' Union have asked us to circulate a leaflet about the postal dispute in view of the media misinformation on this subject.

It is here

No to these divisive schools

2007-05-26T10:41:00.000Z

No to these divisive schools

ANYBODY WHO thought that Gordon Brown would halt the government's relentless drive to create 400 divisive Academy schools, over 200 of them by 2010, will be sorely disappointed. He has made it clear that he fully supports the programme, and is even trying to convince his mates to become sponsors!

Jane Nellist, Coventry NUT, personal capacity

With the news that David Cameron wants the Tories to abandon their support for grammar schools and put their full support behind the academies programme, the campaign against academies must be stepped up.

47 academies have now been set up with another 90 already confirmed. For £2 million, which does not have to be paid up front (the Tories actually want to end this sponsorship money in their plans), private sponsors can get complete control of a school. This allows sponsors to set pay and conditions for staff, influence the curriculum and ethos of a school, as well as to control admissions.

Costs for the building of academies are escalating, with some costing over £40 million. On top of this, nearly £50 million has been spent on private consultants and project managers - enough money to build two new schools.

But at least we're getting innovation! The most expensive academy school so far (costing £46.4 million), the Thomas Deacon Academy in Peterborough, will not have a playground. The new CEO/Principal, Alan McMurdo, a Falklands veteran who had his first experience of teaching on HMS Battleaxe, says that he wants to run his school like a business and will treat pupils as employees!

Lunch will be incorporated into the third lesson of the day, when students will be escorted to the refectory and given 30 minutes to eat before returning directly to the classroom. What an inhumane way to treat children!

Local councils have been blackmailed by the government into agreeing to academies by the withholding of huge sums of money to rebuild secondary schools. Even where the 'Building Schools for the Future' scheme has been agreed the government continues to put pressure on councils to achieve a greater diversity of schools - in other words more academies and more Trust schools.

But one item of good news, and a setback for academies, was the result of the first ever 'competition' for a new school in Haringey, where a local authority-backed school beat off a proposed trust school, as well as two academies.

In the ten years that Labour has been in power, they have gone further with privatising our schools and education service than even Margaret Thatcher dared to do. Lord Adonis, the government minister responsible for overseeing the development of academies, may still lose his job under Gordon Brown but his brainchild, based on the Tories' City Technology Colleges, looks set to persist.

In June, MPs are to hold a Committee of Enquiry to investigate the impact of academies and trust schools. All anti-academy and anti-trust campaign groups should send delegates or written evidence to this enquiry - see www.antiacademies.org.uk for more details.

One thing is clear, where parents, teachers and communities join together in a determined campaign against the setting up of an academy, success can be realised.

School campaigners shake Wokingham

2007-05-26T10:40:00.001Z

School campaigners shake Wokingham

THE FIGHTBACK against cuts and privatisation is gathering pace in Berkshire. On 3 May an Independent (Save Ryeish Green School) candidate - Andrew Grimes - polled an excellent vote of 706 in a local seat in Wokingham borough, in the middle of which is a secondary school which the council is trying to close.

Sara Gillman, Wokingham

This candidate, while not winning outright, gave a scare to the Tory candidate (who received 1,009 votes). He also sent a clear message to the council that the Parents' Action Group, supported by Socialist Party members, has much of the community on its side in wishing the school to stay open. We had several meetings to discuss tactics and leafleted to counter negative publicity about the school.

This brilliant result won by a completely new contender was in spite of propaganda pumped out by Wokingham council that the school is not worth keeping open, and that children who currently attend there can go to schools an hour's journey away. This clearly shows that ordinary people will not be bullied into accepting worse educational conditions for their children.

The council became more paranoid a couple of days before polling saying posters outside the school saying "Save Ryeish Green school" had to be taken down as there was a polling station there, although these were clearly not 'party political'.

In the same week another protest, by a primary school down the road, was televised. They have been campaigning for ten years for the council to provide a crossing on a very busy main road.

Of course the school was told a protest would make little difference but the council are fast finding out that a placid non-active approach to the safety and well-being of our children will not be tolerated.

The protests, lobbies and campaigns will continue unabated with the support of Socialist Party members in the community until a satisfactory conclusion can be found with our children's services given proper resources.

SCHOOL MEALS - VICTORY!

2007-05-26T10:33:00.000Z

Press release from a Waltham Forest campaign against cuts to school meals.

After three short weeks of campaigning that seriously rattled councillors, the Leader Clyde Loakes yesterday offered to extend the school meals subsidy at least until 2009. In our books that is an unequivocal victory.

And what a marvellous campaign! In a few short weeks thousands of leaflets distributed around schools alerted everyone to the danger of losing a properly funded school meals service. The local press helped to arouse indignation from all quarters - and not only parents! London Radio carried it and the national press and TV started investigating. Then Jamie Oliver pledged to get involved.

But the pots and pans demo was the icing on the cake. Around 250 dinner ladies, teachers, parents, children and supporters gathered in the town square armed with pans, tin lids and wooden spoons, rattles and whistles, determined to make as much noise as possible. We marched along Hoe Street all chanting. "If you want to keep school dinners - bang a pan". A young education worker with an Asian drum joined in. Passers-by and shopkeepers took leaflets and cheered us on.

At the town hall everyone was in no mood for compromise. From his office Loakes said he would meet with a delegation of only three! For several tense minutes there was a real stand-off. Eventually, accompanied by deputy leader Keith Rayner he came out onto the steps. A truly Big Conversation took place. With demands and questions from a sceptical but elated crowd, he promised

> A continuation of the subsidy until 2009

> To bring the 10 schools, already opted out, back into the fold

> A strong steer to schools to remain part of Waltham Forest Catering

There was a further demand to run all private catering companies out of the borough! This he baulked at (naturally,privatisation is part of Labour policy).

But we are not standing down the campaign. We intend to monitor the situation closely. We need to hold all Cllr Loakes' promises to account. Union members in each school need to be vigilant and report any developments through the campaign network. Fundamentally our success has been due to two things - the determination of the unions involved UNISON and NUT, who represent thousands of workers in the borough, and the marvellous response from parents and the general public. If we have helped councillors change their minds once through serious campaigning - we can do it again. Come and help us.

Hands Off School Meals 7pm Tuesday 5th June Town Hall, Forest Road, E17 All Welcome

If you DO nothing you get nothing. If you FIGHT TOGETHER, you get something.

400 march in Lewisham to defend education

2007-05-24T21:42:00.001Z

Tonight's march exceeded expectations with perhaps 400 parents, staff and students marching to the Town Hall in Catford to oppose cuts in special school provision, academies and selection.

Thanks for the messages of support that were sent

Martin

400 march in Lewisham to defend education

2007-05-24T21:42:00.000Z

Tonight's march exceeded expectations with perhaps 400 parents, staff and students marching to the Town Hall in Catford to oppose cuts in special school provision, academies and selection.

Thanks for the messages of support that were sent

Martin

Discussion on Martin for VP

2007-05-19T16:21:00.000Z

There is already a discussion on Martin's nomination on teacher discussion boards

http://www.infet.co.uk/forums/viewtopic.php?p=89668#89668

Just copy and paste the above into Explorer or Firefox.

and the Times Ed website, where the initial tone is generally supportive:

click here

It was also posted to the education forum:

click here

Campaign for a New Workers' Party

2007-05-17T20:48:00.000Z

The conference was opened by CNWP Chair Dave Nellist, who pointed out that it was apposite to be meeting in the same week that Tony Blair announced his departure from power. But when Blair leaves office on 27 June, “unfortunately he won’t be taking the entire cabinet with him”.
The world is a less safe place as a result of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and in Britain, young people now face massive debts consisting of loans and payments equivalent to “three mortgages”: the first for a house, the second for rising pension contributions and the third for university fees. However, house prices are so high now, that workers such as fire-fighters, teachers and health workers are unable to afford a house at all in many parts of the country.
Voters in elections are not faced with “three competing parties” because “the Tories, New Labour and the Liberal Democrats agree on all the essential issues – at least between elections.” The CNWP needs to build further on the 2,500 signatories it has so far, by sinking deep roots in local communities and trade unions to help create the conditions as soon as possible for the existence of a new party.
Chris Baugh, Assistant general secretary of the civil service trade union PCS addressed the conference in a personal capacity and expressed his support for the CNWP. He condemned Gordon Brown’s “arbitrary and swingeing” 100,000 job cuts plan in the civil service and said such cuts will inevitably damage vital services. He also condemned Brown as the chief architect of the NHS funding crisis, the huge privatisation programme being forced on 20,000 workers in the Ministry of Defence, and the vicious spending limits across the public sector. “PCS members will take some convincing that there is any material difference between Blair and Brown” he concluded. He reminded the conference that three million public sector workers had threatened strike action in the run-up to the last general election over the government’s plan to increase the pension age, and that this forced a significant government climb down. More recently, on May Day this month, successful PCS strike action shocked the government and was a warning of further action if cuts continue.
Due to unforeseen family commitments the actor and Shrewsbury Two campaigner Ricky Tomlinson was unable to attend the conference, but just 48 hours before hand recorded a video address. In his ‘virtual’ appearance, Ricky outlined the campaign still running over the jailing of 24 construction workers for picketing in 1972. He went on to he express his anger at the way New Labour has made things “worse and worse” for workers in Britain. He went on to say: “I don’t think there will be a difference between Blair and Brown because they’ve worked so closely together.. New Labour doesn’t represent working class people.. I call on workers to unite to form a left wing socialist party to represent the working class. There’s no shortcuts, no easy fix.” He closed his comments by stating: “New Labour, my arse!” This video will be posted on the CNWP website within the next two days.
Charter debate
The first conference debate was on the CNWP’s charter. In proposing an updated charter, CNWP assistant secretary and Socialist Party (SP) member, Hannah Sell, explained that its wording needed to cover the period up until the next conference, so it deliberately concentrated on the most enduring issues and government attacks.
Hannah argued that it is preferable to keep a clause stating the need for socialism in the charter. But she argued against resolutions being put to the conference by Workers’ Power (WP) and the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) wanting clauses for the ‘revolutionary overthrow’ of capitalism and how it could be achieved, because: “It is not our job to sound as left and radical as possible. We need a programme that is readily taken up by workers.., one that they can identify with. Most of these workers have not yet drawn conclusions on how socialism will be achieved”.
In the debate that followed, four organisations– the Socialist Alliance (SA), WP, the Campaign for a Marxist Party and the CPGB moved four resolutions and amendments. The debate also included contributions from conference delegates, including from Onay Kasab of Greenwich Unison, who spoke on the battle against pay cuts by employees of Greenwich council and from Alec Thraves, a Socialist Party candidate in the Wales Assembly election, who concluded: “In Wales many people voted for the party most likely to defeat New Labour because there is no mass workers’ party. They need a voice”.
In the voting at the end of the debate, the CNWP officers’ proposed updated charter was overwhelmingly carried, along with the amendment from the SA. The three other amendments and resolutions were defeated.
Debating the way forward
The second conference debate was on the way forward for the CNWP. Secretary of the CNWP and Unison NEC member, Roger Bannister, moved a resolution from the CNWP officers, which called for the CNWP to “vigorously campaign to popularise the idea of a new mass workers’ party over the coming year” and outlined a number of steps towards doing this. The debate that followed was opened by the moving of three resolutions, from Berkshire CNWP (subsequently carried), the SA (defeated) and Workers’ Power (defeated).
In moving the Berkshire resolution, Terry Pearce reported on a “spirited” campaign in his area to defend council housing, and called for a regular CNWP newsletter to be produced that can report on all campaigns around the country.
Vanessa from the health service campaign PUSH spoke in this session on the need to build for a protest against NHS cuts and privatisation in Parliament Square on 5 July. She expressed her frustration with the union leaders’ delay of a national demonstration to save the NHS – now called for 13 October – by asking “will October ever come?”
Burslem postal worker, Jane, explained why she and other local postal workers had been forced to take nine days of strike action. During the second strike, 400 managers had been drafted in to do the work of 100 workers! Darfur refugee Sadiq Abakar, made a moving appeal for help with his campaign for asylum, and that of other Darfur refugees whose lives are in danger.
Pete McClaren, a member of the SA, said to the conference that his press releases went out without any unwelcome political edits by other CNWP officers, in this way making it clear that he was happy with the working relationship that exists within the campaign. There was however a difference at the conference between the SP and SA on the present structure of the CNWP, with the SA calling for individual membership to be introduced now and there to be a right of representation on the steering committee regardless of the size of affiliated organisations. These issues should be discussed further in the coming period to attempt to reach agreement.
Following commissions and the election of a new steering committee, the conference was closed with an inspiring speech by Tony Mulhearn, who was president of the Liverpool District Labour Party (DLP) during the 1980s battles of Liverpool council against the then Tory government. In summing up what he described as “a great conference”, he said that the politics of the mainstream parties today is to “make promises, get elected and then to break promises”, but that in Liverpool in the 1980s the Marxist and other leaders of the DLP carried out their promises. By building a firm basis in local communities, we can again “be absolutely positive that we can build a mass movement”.
Pete Smith - Democratic Labour Party councillor
The second conference session was addressed by newly elected Democratic Labour Party (DLP) councillor Pete Smith from Walsall. He explained that since he and others in the DLP had been “kicked out of the Labour Party” they had refused to be silent. He said that during the election campaign he had been “so busy in the cul de sacs and streets of Walsall that I have not had time to work out if I am a revisionist, a radical or a revolutionary” and that in the DLP they “work with local people, starting at the level they’re at – otherwise we’d be nothing but a talking shop. We have gained increasing respect in our communities. Since leaving the Labour Party, we have remained clear to our consciences; no pillow is more comfortable than a clear conscience. We need a nationwide party to oppose New Labour. A large tapestry to link in the views of working class people in our towns. I hope this conference takes us closer to a new party, a truly democratic party, in the interests of workers and their families”.

NOMINATE MARTIN POWELL-DAVIES FOR NUT VICE-PRESIDENT

2007-05-16T21:43:00.000Z

16 May, 2007

Dear Colleague:

The pressures facing teachers have never been greater. The demands on schools to ‘raise standards’ have created intolerable workload for staff and a joyless curriculum for our students. The divisions between schools are widening as this Government seeks to make comprehensive schooling run by a democratic Local Authority a thing of the past. Unless defeated, the twin attacks of an imposed pay freeze and new performance management regulations will further strengthen the grip of divisive ‘payment by results’ on education.

The National Union of Teachers has to show its members that we can turn the tide. With determined effort, school reps and local officers have won important victories through individual casework and local disputes. But the pressures only grow greater. The continuing stress of working in our underfunded and divided schools is taking its toll on teachers and on Local Association officers struggling to do the best they can to defend NUT members.

The 2007 National Officer Elections are an opportunity to strengthen our leadership. Local Associations need the support of a President who understands the pressures facing classroom teachers, can express their discontent, and help offer a strategy to take us forward.

We urge your Association to give one of your two nominations for Vice-President to Martin Powell-Davies. Martin will already be well known to many as Lewisham NUT’s Secretary since 1992. He has regularly been a pivotal contributor to Annual Conference debate and an articulate campaigner for teachers’ interests in school and public meetings, inside the Union and to the media. By electing him as Vice-President, NUT members can ensure that his skills and determination can also be used to strengthen the National Union.

Martin argued forcefully at Annual Conference 2007 that a strategy of defending members through individual school disputes alone is totally inadequate. As National Officer, he will campaign for the Union to lead from the front and build support for the national action that is required if we are to seriously tackle the national attacks we face.

The unanimous vote to prepare for national strike action to protect our pay was an important step forward. Martin will be campaigning within the Union to make sure that this policy is put firmly into practice, answering those who will try to find reasons not to stand firm, while forging links with other public sector unions to build strong united action.

Please do put Martin’s name forward at your Association meeting and/or in any ballot held for nominations by the closing date of September 30^th 2007. If you would like to add your personal support alongside ours, invite a speaker to your Association, order copies of Martin’s campaign materials, or to donate to the campaign, please contact the address below.

Yours,

Alison Long, Assistant Secretary, & Gabby Mullins, President, Lewisham NUT

Tim Woodcock, Divisional Secretary, & Joanne Sanderson, Membership Secretary, Greenwich NUT

Robin Pye, Secretary, St. Helens NUT Jane Nellist, Joint Secretary, Coventry NUT

Linda Taaffe and Julie Lyon-Taylor, members of the NUT National Executive

Phil Clarke, NUT Young Teachers Advisory Committee

Union leaders out of touch with teachers' discontent

2007-04-13T18:44:00.000Z

Union leaders out of touch with teachers' discontent

The conference demonstrated just how many different attacks teachers and education face under New Labour. Workload, teacher stress, the public-sector pay freeze, performance-related pay, management monitoring of staff, academies and privatisation were some of the issues under discussion.

Martin Powell-Davies

The key debates centred on the need for the union to take national strike action. An emergency motion from the union's executive, calling for a ballot for a national one-day strike against Gordon Brown's 2% pay target for teachers was unanimously agreed. Conference also agreed to encourage members to support the civil service union, PCS strike action on 1 May.

However, it was proposals from Socialist Party teachers that the NUT also pursue the PCS' strategy of taking national action over a range of different issues that sparked the fiercest discussion.

Delegates applauded speeches from Robin Pye and Martin Powell-Davies pointing out the limits of only taking school-based action against workload and performance pay. Despite the lack of support from the main left groupings within the union, delegates responded by defeating an executive amendment deleting their call for national strike action to defeat new government performance-management regulations.

It was only when a succession of leading executive speakers were brought to the rostrum that the main motion was also defeated on a card vote. Ian Murch called on delegates to take a "reality check", warning that the NUT hadn't taken national action for over 20 years.

These debates exposed the union leadership's pessimism and how out of touch they are with the discontent within staffrooms. NUT members now have the opportunity to build united national strike action against the pay freeze, but the need for the NUT to have the same fighting leadership as a union like the PCS has never been clearer.

Socialist Party teachers showed that they will be playing a key role in making that change.

Crazy about work

2007-04-12T21:28:00.000Z

A copy of John Illingworth's survey about mental health problems "Crazy about Work" can be downloaded from the WSTA website

here

Slavery - the truth

2007-04-04T10:18:00.000Z

200 YEARS ON – HOW WAS THE SLAVE TRADE REALLY ABOLISHED?

Two hundred years ago, Britain’s parliament voted to end the brutal slave trade. That was after its empire had been built on the bones of millions of Africans torn from their homes.

NUT Conference will rightly take note of this anniversary in its debates on racism. But teacher trade unionists have to make sure that the real history of the abolition is told.

William Wilberforce, figurehead of the British abolition movement, is portrayed as the liberator of the slaves. But, in this edited article from “The Socialist”, HUGO PIERRE, explains that other mighty forces, especially slave uprisings, were behind the 1807 act.

The slave trade between the west coast of Africa and the Americas over a period of 300 to 400 years was probably one of the most barbaric periods of exploitation in history. The capture and sale of Africans made the traders and their sponsors wealthy; the buyers used the labour of their slaves to make themselves rich.

The accumulation of this wealth played a major part in the development of capitalism in Europe. But the suffering inflicted on the slaves was immense and the legacy of this trade is still with us today.

The plantation owners developed a system of violence to suppress the spirits of their already disorientated and easily identifiable captives and an ideology, racism, to confer on themselves superiority and justification for their actions. It is estimated that the British slave merchants made £12 million in profits (the equivalent of £900 million today)

This human trade was not universally supported in Britain even in the 18th century, but the wealth created powerful advocates for its continuation.

The trade was not without perils for those who took part in it. The captives themselves did not take enslavement lightly. There were many reports of ships being sacked by slaves, in one case capturing a whole ship and throwing the crew overboard.

The slave system practised on the plantations required the formation of local militia to keep it in check and often the use of the Navy to stop serious disturbances. One of the earliest slave revolts in Barbados in 1683 included a written appeal in English for other slaves to unite in rebellion.

In Jamaica hardly a decade went by without a rebellion that often threatened the entire plantation system. On occasions, peace had to be made with the rebels by allowing them to run their own communities. But for the successful overthrow of slavery, the fight-back of the slaves had to be reinforced by other class forces back in the imperial centre.

The mood of the early working class and poor was for radical change. Among them were approximately 10,000 blacks - ex-slaves, servants and runaways. Within a year the launching of a petition coupled with mass meetings in towns and cities to hear the first-hand experience of ex-slaves such as Olaudah Equiano articulated the general concerns of the working masses and poor.

In Manchester 10,000 men (women were not encouraged to sign the petition although they often sought to) signed - over half the adult male population. Despite this, Wilberforce's first motion to parliament was defeated in the commons in 1789. But greater events would intervene. In France underlying tensions between the wealth of this new class of merchants and the monarchy was exploded by the masses with the storming of the Bastille and the beginning of the French Revolution.

In the colonies, the revolution broke the whites into different camps. The French colony of Saint-Domingue (now Haiti) had become the most prosperous of the Caribbean islands. It produced more sugar, coffee and tobacco than any other not just in terms of quantity but also quality.

The free and sometimes wealthy Saint-Dominguans of mixed race (known at the time as mulattoes) took sides and pressed for their rights. The whites unleashed terror and violence against them and the majority population of blacks. But the white splits gave all others the opportunity to grab the banner of liberty.

The 'mulattoes' in particular appealed to the Constituent Assembly in France to be treated as equals with whites at the end of 1789. They still wanted labour on the island and therefore did not call for rights for the blacks. The Assembly was dominated at that time by the right-wing of the revolution, who wanted to gain rights for the new wealthy capitalists but were terrified of the potential of the masses who had stormed the Bastille. After much procrastination only a tiny minority of those of mixed race were granted rights.

But the splits between the ruling classes - royalty and the aristocracy against the new emergent capitalists - as in all revolutions would give confidence to the masses. This was true both for the workers and peasants of France and the blacks in Saint-Domingue, who had the self-belief to press for their demands, but this time to the very end.

By 1791 Saint-Domingue exploded and a class war, which also separated whites, blacks and those of mixed race, began. Very quickly Toussaint L'Ouverture emerged as the leader of the slaves. His army took many different routes and sides to fight for their emancipation.

But revolutionary France was also under attack internationally. In particular British imperialism, which vied for supremacy in the Caribbean with the French, launched war for the colonial possessions of France and in particular Saint-Domingue. Pitt, Britain's Prime Minister, had second thoughts about abolishing the slave trade when he could see the potential for a captured British Saint-Domingue.

With Saint-Domingue effectively split under the control of three forces and facing capture by the British the new governor faced no option but to declare the total abolition of slavery in 1793 and bring Toussaint L'Ouverture's army under his control. The masses in France too had moved to defend their interests and the Assembly in 1794, now controlled by the left-wing Jacobins, abolished slavery.

Revolutionary drama was played out in Saint-Domingue. But the effects of the French Revolution shook the entire French Caribbean: slave revolts took hold in Martinique, Guadeloupe and Tobago. The banner 'Liberty, Fraternity and Equality' inspired the slaves.

In Saint Lucia between 1795 and 1796 the slaves took over the island after expelling the British troops. When the British eventually took control again they made 'peace' by agreeing to form the slave's army into a West African regiment. The Marseillaise was still sung by youth in the villages in the 1930s and 1940s!

The war with France weakened the parliamentary support for abolition. Wilberforce backed Pitt's foreign policy against France and his home policy of repression. During this time he only went through the motions in keeping the abolition debate in parliament.

The legacy of the movement is that the masses - black and white - can struggle together for decisive change

he revolution in France had not ended its twists and turns. Ten years after it began, Napoleon Bonaparte came to power. Many of the gains for the sans-culottes were reversed, but the change from a feudal system to a capitalist one remained.

Napoleon re-established slavery, but Toussaint L'Ouverture had predicted the reaction of the slaves of San Domingue as early as 1797 in a letter to the French Directory: "Do they think that men who have been able to enjoy the blessing of liberty will calmly see it snatched away? They supported their chains only so long as they did not know any condition of life more happy than that of slavery. But today when they have left it, if they had a thousand lives they would sacrifice them all rather than be forced into slavery again."

The black masses of Saint-Domingue began an insurrection that would lead to the end of French rule and independence. The colonial jewel of France, which Britain tried to steal, would remain free from slavery.

The radical movement in Britain moved back on to the parliamentary road. By 1806 more radical MPs (although of a capitalist variety) were elected to parliament. British imperialism, without the competition of Saint-Domingue increasingly turned to making its riches in India rather than the Caribbean.

Furthermore the French navy, decimated in Saint-Domingue, no longer posed the same threat to British policy or interests. In the Caribbean, it was clear that the constant threat of revolt would be increased by the continuing import of new slaves from Africa. The Abolition of the Slave Trade Act was passed in 1807 to be implemented by 1808.

Tens of thousands of Africans continued to be captured and traded for decades more. Loopholes in the Act were found and illegal activities, smugglers, foreign fronts for British traders and a host of other devices were used to fulfil the colonists' desire for plantation labour.

But the slave trade and slavery itself was finally abolished in Britain in 1833 by the activity of the working class and the continued uprising and resistance of blacks held as captive labourers.

Today, the ruling class cannot even bear to apologise for the atrocities of slavery for the fear of being caught up in claims for reparations. Slavery's devastating legacy - racist ideology, the destruction of African civilisation and communities, the death or transportation of between 10 and 30 million people, the destruction of black family life in the colonies - has left its mark today.

However, the legacy of the abolition movement is that the masses, particularly the working class and the poor - black and white - can struggle together for decisive change.

Now only the socialist control, distribution and democratic use of the enormous wealth of the world can decisively end their exploitation and division.

Supply Teaching

2007-04-04T10:10:00.000Z

SUPPLY TEACHING – A HELLISH TASK OR A REWARDING JOB?

Sheila Caffrey (Bristol NUT)

The Labour Party proudly boast that there has been an increase of 36,000 teaching posts in England since 1997, but neglect to mention the thousands of teaching graduates every year who are unable to find jobs and who are forced to either give up their chosen career or try to navigate the increasingly tricky world of supply teaching.

Some teachers choose to leave full-time positions to take up supply work, either due to a change of circumstances in their school or to take advantage of the flexibility that supply work can give. As one of the NQTs who have been forced into supply, I fail to appreciate this flexibility.

Only 1/5 of supply teachers actually get their entitlement of PPA time

hat I face is uncertainty of hours, long holidays with no work and no pay, the struggle of dealing with inappropriate behaviour with little or no support from schools, lack of respect from all angles as I am “only supply” and a wage that does not assist me to graduate from my student overdraft.

Increasingly, schools are using agencies for their supply cover, yet these do not have to adhere to the School Teachers’ Pay and Conditions Document and can pay teachers whatever they choose. This is another avenue that the private sector is taking to attempt to invade our education system and make money from both schools and teachers. This money should be available for training and resources instead.

Supply teachers are generally recommended to be paid for a 6.5 hour day. Most supply teachers regularly work 8 hours plus, allowing for the preparation and marking of work. This work should be fully paid as well as an entitlement to at least one break in the day away from the classroom.

There is also obviously no possibility of sick pay or maternity pay, which can make supply financially a very risky business. There is an allowance for holiday pay, however for an NQT who works an average of a 4 day week throughout term time, this works out as a princely sum of about £90 a week through the holidays. Unfortunately, landlords don’t give discounts for low paid months!

Recent research conducted by the General Teaching Council for England found 52% of supply teachers do not feel that their CPD needs have been met. This is especially important for NQTs who are desperately trying to find a full-time position. It should be the responsibility of the Government and councils to provide free training to all teachers, whether supply or not, both during term time and holidays so it is possible for everyone to access it. This training should cover a wide array of subjects from behaviour management to training for changes to legislation and strategies taught in schools.

The introduction of PPA time has eased some of the burden on teachers, however this rarely applies to supply teachers. The GTC believes only 1/5 of supply teachers actually get their entitlement of PPA time, which is grossly unfair. The unpredictable nature of supply teaching means this time is needed to ensure teachers are fully prepared with work for all classes so pupils do not miss out on their education, yet at the moment the majority of supply teachers are expected to do this work unpaid.

Supply teaching can be extremely rewarding and whether a deliberate choice or whether a teacher does it due to other factors, the job should be covered by the same rights and protection that full-time permanent teachers have.

If teachers new to the profession are increasingly to be forced through an induction of supply before being able to find a permanent post, the utmost should be done to ensure they stay in the profession. Otherwise, in a few years Britain is going to face a crisis with fewer and fewer people entering the profession.

The NUT should mount a campaign to recruit more supply teachers, listening to their concerns and then working together with other teachers to put pressure on the government to ensure the retainment of new young teachers in the profession.

Workload

2007-04-04T10:09:00.001Z

WORKLOAD

THINGS WON’T GET BETTER UNTIL WE TAKE NATIONAL ACTION

Louise Cuffaro (Newham NUT)

The high prioritisation of the workload resolution (in 2006 and again in 2007) reflects the strength of ordinary teachers' feelings that the NUT must urgently and more effectively address this issue.

Excessive requirements for short-term planning, endless meetings and the like are just the tip of the iceberg as far as members in my school are concerned.

Highest on the list of hates remains SATs and all its associated initiatives.

ike many school NUT groups, we held a union meeting to discuss the Union’s new workload guidelines and how to implement them. Teachers expressed their growing concern over the numbers of initiatives that have come down to schools over the last few years, increasing our workload and levels of stress.

Highest on the list of hates remains SATs and all its associated initiatives.

There’s the grind of planning, endless revision of maths, literacy and science (largely unrelieved by educational trips, music, art, PE etc until after the actual tests). On top of this is the endless marking and levelling of every piece of maths, science and literacy. Add to this the pressure on our year 6 teachers and
relevant post holders (now with TLRs) to run breakfast, lunchtime or after school
booster classes-and the subsequent increases in planning, marking and
teaching time.

Last but not least, is the amount of time consumed, and the high levels of stress experienced by teachers dealing (often daily) with the behavioural fallout, which is the high price many of the current generation of children are suffering due to SATs.

Most members also expressed frustration at the increased stress and workload surrounding the increased use of technology. We all now have to use the
interactive whiteboards that have been installed. As with all ICT, it's great when it works and you have been fully trained, (which for many of us was inadequate as it amounted to a twilight session at inset) so that you can feel confident and competent. But it messes up your plans and your nerves
when it fails!

More recent initiatives have flowed from the much-publicised government plans to introduce the compulsory teaching of foreign language in Primary schools in the near future.

This term, in the Primary School where I teach, we were told that we need to have a "Language of the Week". Staff managed to get this changed to a Language of the Half Term! We are told the language and then we are expected to look up basic vocabulary and pronunciation on the Internet e.g. counting 1-10, yes, no, hello, goodbye, please, thank you etc. and to incorporate opportunities and activities to use the language throughout the school day and across the curriculum. As with all new initiatives there was inadequate training given (a Monday night inset) and no extra time to plan or prepare resources.

In our inner city, multicultural school we have always used opportunities to share and promote the languages that our pupils speak. This initiative however, takes away our professional judgement and skills on when, how and which languages (based on pupils' languages which may vary from class to class) to share and experience. Instead it has become another stick to beat us with, added to the long list of things management monitor in our planning and practice.

Numerous other NUT groups must have had similar meetings discussing the particular pressures facing their staff. But why haven’t many schools then requested a strike ballot?

It certainly isn’t because teachers aren’t snowed under with workload. Even the Government’s own surveys show that, despite the promises, there have been “no statistically significant changes” in teachers’ working hours.

Many delegates will already understand what’s missing from our campaign - and that’s the national strike action that is already Conference policy.

suspect that, like at my school, part of the problem is that the workload pressures often don’t translate easily into the specific headings in the Union guidelines. But the main problem is surely that the Union’s strategy places all the responsibility on individual school groups to pursue a dispute with their own Head and Governors.

Fighting in your school alone is no easy matter. Yes, where members stood firm over TLRs, some significant victories were achieved. But for every school that scored a victory, there were many others where teachers weren’t confident to go for a ballot.

Trying to use the guidelines school by school in itself engenders workload and
stress for reps and members. It may require standing up to a bullying management team. Even where the Head is more reasonable, schools are under such pressure that boosting pupil results and taking on the latest initiative will take priority over maintaining teachers’ ‘work-life balance’.

Many of the fundamental problems like class size, a shortage of administration staff to take on the ‘21 tasks’, and the absence of meaningful ‘leadership and management time’ can only be solved by securing extra funding in any case. That can’t be won just by local action.

That’s why teachers recognise that teacher workload can’t just be solved at school level – it needs a national approach as well.

Annual Conference will have little time to debate these critical issues in any detail. That’s why the main Conference motion on workload is right to call for a meeting of Divisional Secretaries to discuss how the new workload campaign is going so far.

But I think many delegates will already understand what’s missing from our campaign - and that’s the national strike action that is already Conference policy.

The Union’s “Taking the Campaign Forward” Guide for Associations and Divisions rightly reminded us all that “Conference 2006 reaffirmed the … decision of the 2005 Conference to … ballot members on the introduction of new toughened workload guidelines … and, further, to develop a campaign of nationally co-ordinated industrial action to secure the funding needed to meet our demands, including announcing plans for a national strike and putting in all the preparations necessary to win the ballot ”.

What’s changed since 2005 and 2006? Workload certainly hasn’t got better. Teachers are still being driven out by stress and ill-health. So why has the Executive only carried out half of the Union policy? – ignoring the half that puts the responsibility on the national union to give a lead!

School reps and local officers are being ground down by the pressures of trying to keep up with the individual cases created by the intolerable stress and workload teachers face. It’s time we tackled the cause, not the symptom and took the national action proposed by St.Helens & Lewisham (37.1).

National action will send a message that enough is enough and give confidence to and strength to NUT members to pursue further action in their schools as well.

Academies

2007-04-04T10:08:00.003Z

NEW LABOUR’S SCHOOLS MARKET - DESTROYING COMPREHENSIVE EDUCATION

Martin Powell-Davies (Lewisham NUT)

A DECADE ago, Tony Blair famously announced that “education, education, education” would be his top priority. What followed has been a bitter disappointment for the majority of parents, students and school staff.

New Labour has turned its back on the “comprehensive” ethos that underpinned previous post-war Labour governments’ education policy. Then, the needs of an expanding economy, combined with pressure from the trade union movement, helped open up opportunities for working-class children previously restricted to grammar school pupils. Now the ladder is being pulled up once again.

Some areas are still blighted by open selection at the age of 11. The number of pupils at grammar schools has jumped by 20% since Labour came to power. The retention of “secondary moderns” for children deemed ‘failures’ at 11 in Lincolnshire and Kent meant these two authorities had the highest numbers of schools in the “bottom 100” in the latest GCSE exam league tables.

But the growing inequalities in schooling under New Labour are generally more obscured. Rather than blatantly reintroducing the “11-plus”, they are encouraging a “free market” to take hold, where schools compete with each other for pupils and resources. Such elements of genuine comprehensive education as existed are being fragmented as schools seek a competitive advantage by becoming “specialist” schools, “trust” schools or “Academies”.

Blair and Brown’s neo-liberal advisers theorise that such competition between schools and other public services will ‘drive up standards’. But the real result of marketisation is a growing polarisation between schools at the top and bottom of the league tables and a widening class divide in education. This is evident in England but also in countries like Sweden where similar policies have been pursued.

Despite Brown’s promises, Britain has one dubious claim to being a world leader in education: An international study found that the difference in class sizes between private and state schools is bigger in the UK than in any other developed country.

Lacking real resources and caught in the spotlight of league tables, even schools that have firmly embraced the comprehensive ideal in the past are being driven to find a way to get ahead of others – or risk falling to the bottom of the pile themselves.

While this or that ‘school improvement’ technique can have some effect, there is really only one fundamental factor that determines a school’s league table position – its pupil intake. Schools ‘succeed’ if they manage to attract pupils who are most likely to succeed in the examination hall and who can be easily taught with the minimum of staffing and attention.

Schools ‘succeed’ if they manage to attract pupils who are most likely to succeed in the examination hall and who can be easily taught with the minimum of staffing and attention.

PCS opted to combine all the issues they faced into one combined ballot

he key factor remains social class. That is not in any way to accept the reactionary idea that middle-class children are inevitably ‘brighter’ than working-class youngsters. It is simply that relative affluence can offer countless advantages, such as a good diet, decent housing, access to books and the internet, time to read and play together and much more besides.

These class factors would challenge even a genuinely comprehensive system. In Blair and Brown’s capitalist Britain they are a huge barrier to genuine equality. As a 2006 analysis of nearly a million individual pupils’ results by London University academics concluded, “For schools the message is clear. Selecting children who are in high-status neighbourhoods is one of the most effective ways of retaining a high position in the league table”.

New Labour’s privately-sponsored academy schools are able to try and put this advice into practice. They are allowed to set their own admissions criteria, independent of any Local Authority arrangements.

Labour’s national Admissions Code still leaves Academies plenty of leeway to set policies that help them improve their intake at the expense of neighbouring community schools.

Figures also show that permanent exclusion rates at academies often far exceed those of neighbouring schools as the sponsors seek to unload their more challenging pupils. Similarly, the proportion of pupils with special needs has drastically fallen at academies in Walsall and Bristol.

Even so, and despite the massive investment in new infrastructure, the promised examination successes in academies have been, at best, limited. Yet Labour claim that the private sponsors’ influence will improve schools. Whether having lectures in ‘enterprise’ from a carpet millionaire or a curriculum that expounds the particular religious views of your fundamentalist sponsor helps pupils to learn is questionable!

The benefits to the sponsor are far more obvious. In return for a few per cent of the total cost, they are given an expensively rebuilt independent school and public funding to use to impose their particular beliefs on young people. In the case of Bob Edmiston, sponsor of the Grace academy in Solihull, the returns appear to be more concrete. The school has awarded £300,000 of contracts to a company run by … Mr.Edmiston!

In case anyone was under any illusions that he may have a different agenda to Blair, Gordon Brown recently publicly endorsed Labour’s plan to set up 400 academies altogether. And the expansion of “trust schools” allowed for under the latest Education Act is just as serious a threat.

Like academies, trust schools can also set their own admission policies. Both also employ their own staff, a direct threat to undermine unions by fragmenting national pay and conditions arrangements. Unlike most academies, many of the schools now contemplating becoming ‘trusts’ are already high in the league tables. Trusts will inevitably use their new status to consolidate their advantageous position at the expense of neighbouring schools.

Local democracy is also at stake. New Labour’s vision sees councils as “commissioners, not providers” of education. Instead of elected local authorities planning the admissions and funding of local community schools, New Labour’s market policies could give rise to a chaotic system of competing enterprises run by unaccountable sponsors.

There is an urgent need for trade unions and local communities to organise in defence of comprehensive education and to demand the resources that would really allow every child’s needs to be met.

Campaign groups of parents and staff have been mounting local battles across the country against school closures, cuts and academy proposals, sometimes successfully. But a national lead to seriously challenge the government and its Tory allies has been sadly missing.

The National Union of Teachers has produced some well-argued materials opposing New Labour policy but has largely restricted its campaign to parliamentary lobbying. It proved completely ineffectual in opposing the Education Act. NUT General Secretary Steve Sinnott’s misplaced illusions in Gordon Brown will also soon be shattered. The need for parents, students and staff to build their own political voice will become ever clearer.

Just as with other public services such as the NHS, local campaigns need to be brought together in a national campaign. But it is the workplace unions, particularly the NUT, that have the strength and resources to give the campaign a solid basis.

The threat to teachers’ conditions from Labour’s market policies should be reason enough for the unions to take collective industrial action. When our children’s futures are at stake, surely it’s time to act!

THE DIVIDE between schools is acute in a big city like London. With so many schools close to each other, there is growing competition to attract the ‘best’ pupils.

Where the local authority still has control over admissions, some degree of common planning is possible. My borough, Lewisham, operates an “area banding” system. Pupils are placed into five ability bands and each secondary school is then allocated 20% of its intake from each band.

The system ensures a number of genuinely comprehensive community schools still thrive in Lewisham. But it is under increasing pressure from schools that run their own admissions procedures, within and outside the borough.

Most notoriously, the privileged Haberdashers’ Aske’s Hatcham Academy has long used its independent control over admissions to attract able pupils from across Lewisham and beyond. In 2006, it admitted just 7% of its pupils from Lewisham’s lowest band. Far from being ostracised for undermining other local secondaries, Aske’s was allowed to polarise local admissions even further when it was given control of a second academy, Knight’s.

Aske’s’ empire-building hasn’t stopped there. They are bidding to run another academy in Haringey. Lewisham’s New Labour council also plans to give the Hatcham Academy control of a nearby primary to create a 3-18 school.

But for every ‘winner’ there will also be losers. Two community schools have been thrown into real difficulties. Unable to attract many children from the highest ability bands, the schools instead fill with pupils with needs that are much harder to meet. In contrast to Aske’s, one school admitted only 4% of last September’s intake from the highest band, over 40% from the lowest. Many need individual support which the schools simply aren’t resourced to provide.

NUT meetings in both schools have been held to seek to organise and defend staff worn down by the challenges of teaching in such difficult circumstances.

These problems will grow across the country unless Labour’s market policies are challenged. All schools have to be brought under democratic local control so that a commonly agreed comprehensive admissions policy can be applied right across a locality. At the same time, schools have to be funded to provide the qualified staffing and resources to meet every child’s needs.

Testing

2007-04-04T10:08:00.001Z

EXCESSIVE TESTING

’MAKING GOOD PROGRESS’ = MORE TESTS

Jane Nellist (Coventry NUT)

Every education campaigning organisation, parent group and trade union is shouting out for an end to the SATs because of their destructive nature.

Scotland never had them. Wales and Northern Ireland have ‘seen the light’ and have got rid of them. So why, when the government had the chance to show it was listening to the experts, is it now consulting and introducing a pilot scheme that will not only introduce more tests for Key Stages 2 and 3 but is also planning on paying schools extra if they reach their targets?!

What we will end up with is a trip in the Tardis to the Victorian era with payment by results not just for schools but for individual teachers as well.

his ‘extra’ “progression premium” will be worth 5% of their pupil allocation and with no new money it is likely to mean less for some and more for others. With huge concerns about the Comprehensive Spending plans to come next year, this could mean real cuts for some schools.

The tests are supposed to be aimed at measuring progress where each pupil is supposed to achieve two levels of progress within each key stage no matter where they start from. The biggest problem is that the whole system of the National Curriculum was flawed from the very start when it was introduced by the Tories.

What we will end up with is a trip in the Tardis to the Victorian era with payment by results not just for schools but for individual teachers as well. Remember, the NUT was founded on the fight against this unworkable system over 100 years ago!

It is truly unbelievable that with all the educational research that the DfES has available to them that they are even thinking about piloting this new system from September along these lines in 10 Local Authorities.

For a start off, there are no plans to scrap the end of Key Stage SATs so these new tests, which will be additional and will be held twice a year in each of the year groups in KS 2 and 3, will actually mean potentially 28 more tests in English and maths of an hour each. Children in England are already some of the most tested pupils in the world.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that teachers will have to put their pupils through the tests every time but you can imagine can’t you, especially in those schools on the borderline, there will be an encouragement by the Head to put as many pupils through the tests just in case they get it – especially if money is at stake.

Inevitably these changes will mean even more narrowing of the curriculum and more ‘teaching to the test’. Far from informing teachers about pupil’s progress to allow them to adapt teaching to meet their needs, they will be absolutely useless. It doesn’t square with other government strategies especially the ‘Excellence and Enjoyment’ document for Primary schools and the ‘Every Child Matters’ agenda. Young people will yet again be sacrificed on the government’s bonfire of targets, testing and tables.

What has been promised by the government is that all tests will be externally set and marked. All children failing to meet these targets will also be entitled to 10 hours of individual tutoring but, again, no plans for any extra funding. No-one can doubt the value of 1:1 support with a qualified teacher for those pupils who need extra support but this needs to be funded properly with a clear strategy of how this will be delivered. For example, it is not clear when this tutoring will take place, or by whom.

Professor David Hargreaves, former chief executive of the QCA summed it up by accusing ministers of a “continuing obsession with the short term”, “a desperate determination to make discredited policies work” and “wilful blindness to anything outside the Government’s own narrow preoccupations”.

If we are serious about ending this obsessive compulsive disorder of testing and league tables on the part of the government, which is damaging not enhancing education, then all the trade unions must boycott these tests and force the government to listen to reason.

Young Teachers

2007-04-04T10:06:00.000Z

YOUNG TEACHERS

HOW CAN THE UNION INVOLVE YOUNG TEACHERS ?

Phil Clarke (elected to the NUT Young Teachers Advisory Committee from the South East Region)

T he NUT Young Teachers’ Conference took place between the 2nd and 4^th March this year at Stoke Rochford Hall.

The common thread running though all the topics was a desire from young teachers for the union to spell out what it will do – what action it will take to defend their interests

umbers were slightly down this year -mainly because funding had to be obtained from the branch rather than applying directly. Nevertheless, most young teachers attending had not been involved in any union activity before, and this event was their first contact with even a local NUT association.

This fact should not be overlooked. It is vital that in many areas of the country new members are not just recruited, but channelled into active involvement in the union; a conference such as this can be a strong starting point for such participation.

The theme this year was “Classroom Climate, Global Climate” (not a weekend long discussion about the ‘upper limit on classroom temperature’ motion being proposed by my Lewes, Eastbourne and Wealden Association at Annual Conference – which I certainly hope delegates will be supporting!). Instead the theme was an extension of last year’s subject of international development, with an emphasis on environmental issues.

These are, of course, some of the most important issues facing us today and it is vital that the labour movement is at the core of the struggle to protect our planet. However, apart from the advent of workplace environmental reps, the keynote speakers’ main contributions were limited to endorsing photocopying on both sides of the paper and taking a bike to school. While no one would argue against these sensible but individualistic measures (which should be taken up by environmental reps), they are not the sort of vital campaigning points that will have overworked young teachers rushing to take a role in local associations.

Much better than the main speakers, where time for points from the floor was very limited, were the smaller sessions on specific subjects. Sessions on the union structure and the specific roles of workplace reps are very useful for those of us new to the union, but most interesting were the discussions around issues facing young teachers in the work place.

In a repeat of the discussions last year on the government white paper, it seems that the rank and file of the union are well to the left of the leadership – if not always consciously so – in their expectations that the union can be an active, fighting body.

Workload was a subject that cropped up again and again, especially from new teachers who suffer at the hands of bullying management and have no experience of saying ‘no’ to excessive demands. The workload agreement, despite laying down guidelines, is no good if it is not enforced, and in schools where the union is not strong this is too often the case. The reaction from these young teachers showed that, if the leadership put forward a fighting strategy to bring in an acceptable work-life balance, they would have without doubt been overwhelmingly supportive.

A major concern raised was that … observers can criticise a teacher for classroom techniques that a previous observation praised, while themselves providing little or no helpful feedback.

he pressures of teaching are all too obvious, with over-sized classes and targets to meet; excessive observations only add to this, with NQTs being hit harder than most. Alongside the number of observations, a major concern raised was that there seems to be no standards system or training for those observing newly qualified teachers. Observers can criticise a teacher for classroom techniques that a previous observation praised, while themselves providing little or no helpful feedback. It was keenly felt that the union should push for real limits on observations and training for those carrying them out.

Lack of affordable housing, worries about performance-related pay and the attacks on comprehensive education in general also featured heavily; but the common thread running though all the topics was a desire from young teachers for the union to spell out what it will do – what action it will take to defend their interests.

The Young Teachers’ Advisory Committee elections have just taken place with view to replacing the ad-hoc group running the conference for the last few years. We must look to the example of the civil servants union, the PCS, in particular, as to how to build a successful and expanding young workers section. This is helped by the PCS having a combative left leadership which has built the union as a whole, but has particularly inspired young members, who see it as especially standing up for them.

It is important that members of the committee help put together young sections in associations and divisions, to build up a new activist base in the unions and, at events like this conference next year, debate concrete – and if necessary, controversial – topics. These will educate young members and show them that, with their involvement, the NUT can and will take action to promote their interests - and those of the students they teach.

CLIMATE CHANGE - How “green” will our politicians go ?

NUT Conference will be debating a motion urging the Union to raise awareness of the threat of climate change. It rightly points out that “action on these issues … will require a new level of global co-operation … to overcome the anarchy of existing world trade principles” (in other words, we would argue, a socialist world). But can Blair, Brown, Cameron and the world’s other capitalist politicians offer any way forward ?

THE STERN REPORT on the devastating economic effects of global warming has highlighted the seriousness with which sections of the British ruling establishment are taking the issue of climate change. In particular, the Tory party leader David Cameron is trying to portray himself as the champion of the environmental cause with a radical sounding programme that includes the possibility of environmental taxes and more regulation.

Blair also probably realises that something needs to be done about global warming, but what has happened since he came to power shows the difficulties the Tories would be faced with. Blair claims that the UK Kyoto targets will be met, but this is very unlikely if current upward trends in greenhouse gas output continue. In fact, emission levels only fell in the early years of the Labour government because utility companies were switching to gas from coal burning, for commercial reasons largely unconnected to any government policy on global warming.

It is probable that, like Blair, the Tories would turn to nuclear power as the ‘lesser evil’ … a position, unfortunately, some on the left are now flirting with as well.

lair, of course, is under an obligation from the Kyoto treaty to cut emissions, but has been under intense pressure from big business to water down the commitments.

Ironically, it is possible that Cameron may, to a greater extent than Blair, stand up to the pressure he would come under from the capitalists, whose interests his party traditionally represents. Firstly, his credibility will be on the line in delivering on this issue and, more importantly, sections of big business, particularly those in non-carbon intensive industries, who understand that their long-term profits could be threatened by global warming, may back him.

So, assuming that he succeeds in doing this, and puts through the measures he wants; will they be effective in tackling global warming? The emphasis is on market permit trading through a development and extension of the Kyoto treaty. But the Kyoto treaty has been a disaster, and has no chance of coming near to its (very modest, cosmetic) target.

Another problem with Cameron’s proposals is that his ideas on green growth do not hold water. Citing the example of one or two firms that have made money at the same time as cutting their emissions proves absolutely nothing about the claimed rosy prospects for green growth on a market basis. If it really was more profitable for firms to switch to a sustainable basis of operation they would all have done it decades ago. Looking at the economy as a whole, using oil pumped out of the ground is by far the cheapest option available and will remain so for the foreseeable future.

Assuming that Cameron is really serious and realises that permit trading is not working, he could then turn to an approach that would have a better chance of being effective: tax rises on gas, oil and coal, and regulations to force firms to cut emissions directly. (Carbon taxes, except on luxury consumption, would be very regressive, hitting the poor hardest – something socialists oppose.)

This would be the real test of the Tories’ resolve on the issue and it is not clear that Cameron would be able to push it through. The capitalists would say: why should we take a hit on our profits unless firms in other countries follow suit, particularly since unilateral cuts in UK greenhouse gases would have a negligible effect on global warming. In these circumstances, it is probable that, like Blair, the Tories would turn to nuclear power as the ‘lesser evil’ since it does not generate greenhouse gases, a position, unfortunately, some on the left are now flirting with as well.

The need for international action cannot be avoided because global warming is what it says, global, and unilateral cuts in emissions by any one country, even the biggest culprit, the USA, would not solve the problem. Capitalism has become a world system based not only on a massive expansion in the trade of goods, but also the export of capital on a huge scale, carried out by competing multi-national corporations. Despite these manifestations of globalisation, the nation state simultaneously has grown in importance as the defender, by force if necessary, of the monopolies that lie under its jurisdiction, as competition for profit between firms based in different countries has intensified.

This is the contradiction, undiminished today, that led to the wars and horrors of the 20th century and makes the international agreement that is necessary to reverse global warming very unlikely. The 500 multi-national companies that dominate the world economy resist fiercely anything that could threaten their profits in the short term, even to a small extent, and look to their ‘home’ countries to assist them in doing this. This is particularly true of US corporations, because America accounts for 25% of all greenhouse gas output and its firms would stand to lose by far the most from any effective action to reduce global warming that ‘made the polluter pay’.

Another objection the US multinationals always raise with regard to action on global warming is the position of China. China along with all other ex-colonial and third world countries was not expected to participate in the Kyoto process in the early 1990s because their output (particularly per head) of pollutants was very small compared to the imperialist countries. Now, however, the situation has changed in China, which has the second largest environmental footprint after the USA. The USA insists that any future agreements on global warming must include China, which is emerging as a major strategic rival, whereas the Chinese regime, quite understandably, responds by pointing out that the current problem was caused almost entirely by the imperialist countries, and China should not be penalised as a result.

The opposition by the US multinationals to giving what they will characterise as a free-ride to their main emerging strategic rival will be a major obstacle to reaching any worthwhile agreement on global warming. The US bosses also realise that even if the Chinese government does sign up to an international agreement to cut greenhouse gases, its ability to make it stick is limited. The wild-west nature of the development of capitalism in China means that local bureaucrats and capitalists operate independently of the central government in many areas and ignore inconvenient laws passed in Beijing.

Like the situation Cameron or a New Labour prime minister will face here, when the heat is really on, a future US president will almost certainly opt for the ‘lesser evil’ of nuclear power as a way out of the dilemma.

If the true long-term costs of nuclear power are included, including storing ever increasing amounts of waste for tens of thousands of years, decommissioning power stations, creating a fund to deal with the effects of a Chernobyl-type disaster in the future, etc, sustainable energy sources become comparatively less expensive. However, the long-term costs of nuclear power will be effectively ignored by capitalist governments, so that the profits of the multi-national firms that really control the political agenda will be affected to the minimum extent. Only by eliminating the power of these companies can a sustainable alternative to the nightmare scenario of environmental disaster caused by a nuclear accident or global warming become a reality.

This will require the dismantling of the capitalist system on an international scale, based as it is on the relentless, short-term, destructive pursuit of profit, and its replacement by a democratically planned socialist economy. In such a society the genuine international co-operation that is necessary to tackle global warming will be possible for the first time, something that is ultimately impossible under the capitalist profit system.

This is an edited version of an article by Pete Dickenson in the January 2007 issue of ‘Socialism Today’, the monthly magazine of the Socialist Party. Pete has written a pamphlet, “Planning Green Growth”, as a socialist contribution to the debate on environmental sustainability.

For further information visit: www.socialistworld.net & www.socialismtoday.org

Performance Pay

2007-04-04T10:05:00.000Z

PERFORMANCE PAY

PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT – A NATIONAL ISSUE DEMANDS NATIONAL ACTION !

Martin Powell-Davies (Lewisham NUT)

T HE NEW REGULATIONS being introduced this year are not just “more of the same”. They are a serious escalation of a performance pay and monitoring regime which has already done so much harm in schools.

The 2007 STRB report recommended that pay progression is linked to performance management for main scale teachers too.

erformance management and the pay ‘threshold’ were always intended to be the mechanism to force performance-related pay on teachers. When they were first introduced, Socialist Party Teachers warned how they would be used to bully teachers into taking on even more work for fear of not getting a pay increase, and how bullying managers could use them to divide and demoralise staff. With others, we helped to initiate “School Teachers Opposed to Performance Pay”. While our union leaders failed to act, STOPP organised a national demo and rally in London in 2000.

Without industrial action, our campaign could not prevent performance pay being introduced. But it did help persuade New Labour to tread more carefully. To start with, nearly every teacher crossed the threshold. But, every year, the noose has been tightening. More teachers are being told their performance isn’t good enough to make the next step up the Upper Pay Scale – especially from U2 to U3.

But New Labour and their advisers think schools are still being too generous! Under their new performance management regulations, schools will be expected to set teachers more ‘challenging’ objectives and make more ‘robust’ pay decisions. OFSTED and the new School Improvement Partners will be used to make sure Heads are doing what the Government expects of them.

Line managers, rather than Heads, will be expected to do the dirty work. At the end of each performance management review meeting, they will have to say whether they think members of their team should be allowed to progress up the pay spine or not. Instead of any genuine discussion about teaching and learning, these meetings will now be dominated by pay. Teamwork and morale, so vital to a successful school, will be undermined.

It looked like these threats would only apply to Upper Pay Spine teachers at first, but the 2007 School Teachers’ Review Body report recommended that pay progression is linked to performance management for main scale teachers as well. This will apparently help “teachers to prepare for threshold assessment ” (!) and schools to “distinguish more effectively between unsatisfactory performance meriting … withholding of pay progression and serious underperformance meriting capability procedures ”.

The threat of capability procedures is not an empty one either. The RIG advice (5.38) states that “if serious weaknesses are identified … performance management should cease and the school’s capability procedure be substituted”. Heads have been specifically advised at training sessions that they should consider taking such an approach with UPS3 teachers that are no longer making the grade. This alone - along with the pressure on ‘reviewers’ to be firm with ‘reviewees’ -answers those who argue that UPS3 teachers won’t care about these changes.

There are other threats that should have been given more publicity. For example, Regulation 16 allows any reviewer with concerns to call a ‘revision meeting’ and set new targets mid-cycle. Of course, neither the law, nor the model RIG policy, set any limit on the number of targets to be set.

Even where NUT groups can secure our policy of a maximum of three objectives, the problem remains of what those objectives actually say. The NUT guidelines released last year correctly recommended that “objectives should not contain commitments to achieve certain percentages of test or examination results”. Unfortunately, the same statement appears to be missing from the latest NUT model policy for schools.

To show … that we are engaged in a serious fight, local approaches must be combined with national action.

ailure to show sufficient “pupil progress” is already the commonest cause of rejection of pay progression. In New Labour’s league-table dominated system of competing schools, this will be even more common in future. Unless we organise an urgent fightback, every teacher faces “payment by results”. Staff will end up opting to work where results are easier to get, adding to the growing polarisation between schools.

Performance management isn’t just about pay, it’s also about control. It is bound up with the incessant nit-picking observations that so demoralise and stress teachers. How can such observation be “supportive and developmental” when it’s linked to pay?

The latest blow is the revelation in the latest “NUT News” that any limit on ‘drop-in’ classroom observations has been dropped from the original draft RIG model policy. Teachers could apparently face a visit from a manager at any time – with the prospect of a ‘revision meeting’ being called if they are unhappy with what they see.

Of course the RIG unions will do nothing to advertise these dangers. The ATL’s advice to its school reps states that “local NUT representatives will not necessarily have the same information and understanding of the proposals that representatives of the social partnership will have.” We’d hope not! But has the NUT actually done enough to explain to teachers what is really at stake?

The Executive’s amendment (15.1) accepts the danger of performance pay applying even to main scale staff but reassures us with the thought that the Secretary of State didn’t make any formal change to their pay arrangements – for now ! For them, any consideration of national action is left for when “additional” measures are introduced. By then the new regulations will be in place.

Cambridgeshire’s amendment, reflecting the views of some in both the Socialist Teachers Alliance and the CDFU, calls for school and Division action to be supported where unacceptable policies are introduced or pay progression unacceptably denied. However, consideration of national action is postponed until “there is evidence of general support for such a strategy amongst members”.

But this is really an excuse for continued delay. PRP seeks to divide and isolate teachers. It is best fought by collective action. Of course, as on workload, we must encourage members to take local action. But, to show teachers, and the Government, that we are engaged in a serious fight, local approaches must be combined with national action.

The strategy of relying on individual school reps and Division officers to fight local battles alone will not succeed. As on TLRs, we may win some local victories, but many members lack the confidence to ‘go it alone’ in fighting battles that they rightly recognise are part of a national issue. But, if the Union led from the front and held a ballot for national action over performance pay and the workload driven by it, members would give support. That was certainly what the 96% YES vote in our indicative ballot of Lewisham NUT members demonstrated. That’s why we hope our amendment 15.3 will be reached, and passed, by Conference. No more excuses, give a lead, take action!

Defending Reps

2007-04-04T10:03:00.002Z

SUPPORT FOR LOCAL OFFICERS

DEFENDING REPS – COLLECTIVE ACTION TO DEFEAT MANAGEMENT BULLIES

Derek McMillan (West Sussex NUT)

Last year’S NUT COnference agreed that “bullying is best

challenged by a collective and organised response”.

The union rep at a school “somewhere in Sussex” was targeted for redundancy by the head teacher.

utting this policy into practice is going to be vital if the Union is going to succeed in building school-based action – particularly where that leaves the school NUT representative vulnerable to attacks from a bullying management.

Successful trade union organisation has always depended on, in each workplace, a courageous rep that enjoys the support of his or her colleagues and his or her union. Employers have always known that if they can break the rep, they may well have broken the union.

The traditional ways for Headteachers to bully a rep through spurious capability procedures and changes in the timetable to induce more stressful working conditions are being augmented with intensified performance management regulations which offer ever more ways to put an assertive rep in their place.

The union rep at a school “somewhere in Sussex” was targeted for redundancy by the head teacher. There were a lot of issues which had arisen at the school and the union reps of all three unions were at the centre of the demands arising from the staff involving allegations of bullying by the head. The regional office intervened and all three unions held a meeting to agree a form of words to present to the governors.

Teachers had been forbidden by the head to talk to governors. Since the NUT rep was married to a governor this didn’t make things straightforward!

There was a petition signed by all of the staff except senior management who were forbidden to sign it – but one of them did anyway.

The meeting also agreed a proposal from to hold a ballot the following week - when OFSTED would be on the premises and the eyes of the local press focussed on the school.

The head decided that discretion was the better part of valour and perhaps the financial circumstances of the school were not all that bad and, as the NUT had suggested at the outset, the reserves could take the strain.

The net result was that not only was the rep’s job saved – for which he is eternally grateful – but the head was then unable to make anybody else redundant either. The NUT remains the largest union in the school to this day.

Successful trade unions have always known that the best response to attempts to intimidate their workplace reps is collective industrial action. The St.Helens / West Sussex amendment (52.1) gives 2007 NUT Conference the chance to make sure that this approach becomes the clear policy of the Union.

Professional Unity

2007-04-04T10:03:00.001Z

WORKING WITH THE NASUWT – LESSONS FROM TLR ACTION IN ST.HELENS

Robin Pye (St.Helens NUT)

Two schools in St. Helens conducted formal strike ballots during the TLR campaign.

Throughout the strike, it was the strikers themselves, who insisted on unity in action. As the NASUWT rep at the school often remarked, “Really, we should all be in one union”.

he first school was the secondary school with the largest NUT membership in the borough. During the course of the dispute the membership became even bigger with several teachers leaving the NASUWT to join the NUT and nearly all the NQT’s joining as well. The dispute ended in victory for the union with strike action being averted at the last minute as all our demands were met.

The second school was little Holy Spirit Catholic Primary School where teachers were evenly divided between the NUT and NASUWT. Members of both unions asked their local secretaries whether they could be balloted for strike action over a proposed TLR structure which would scrap three permanent MA’s and two temporary ones and replace them with two TLR’s that anybody on the staff could apply for.

The NASUWT had maintained locally that the TLR system would mean that all subject co-ordinators would now be paid additional allowances. However, at Holy Spirit, teachers would be expected to continue to co-ordinate subjects without any additional pay. They argued that the national ‘agreement’ was not being implemented properly. So they balloted their members as the NUT balloted its members because we were being faced with a salary cut.

Teachers took a total of ten days’ joint industrial action. The fact that we were in two separate unions threw up all sorts of practical difficulties during the dispute.

The employer was clearly encouraged to think that the strike would never take off because of the confused mixed messages given out by two unions with very different national agendas.

It became very difficult to agree tactics during the dispute. The NUT sought to agree everything at a strike committee made up of all the strikers and local officers. However, NASUWT regional and national officials would routinely try and overturn decisions made by the strike committee, without any attempt to co-ordinate at a regional or national level with the NUT.

Although local officers found it easy to agree joint statements to the press and joint leaflets to be distributed to parents on the picket line, the NASUWT regional and national officials insisted on producing their own leaflets and making their own statements to the press which ignored the role of the NUT.

Throughout the strike, it was the strikers themselves, who insisted on unity in action. As the NASUWT rep at the school often remarked, “Really, we should all be in one union”.

The dispute ended with two clear victories; slimmed down job descriptions for teachers not in receipt of TLR payments and half a day non-contact time on top of PPA time for TLR postholders.

Crucially, unlike most other local primary schools, teachers at Holy Spirit not in receipt of TLRs will no longer have to co-ordinate subjects. They will not be accountable for the teaching of pupils other than their own, they will not have to monitor pupils’ work from other classes, write action plans or internal or external review documents. This victory is already being used, alongside the national workload campaign, to push for similar improvements in other primary schools in St. Helens. Unfortunately, there will still be a net reduction in the number of teachers receiving additional allowances. Whereas last year five teachers were paid MAs, under the new structure, only two will be paid TLRs.

A lack of support from the NASUWT was crucial in undermining the NUT’s ability to negotiate a better settlement in this respect. Jerry Bartlett, NASUWT Deputy General Secretary, who led the negotiations for his union, told governors that ‘NASUWT has no problem with teachers losing salary as part of the transition to the new structure’ and ‘the system of management allowances did not work’.

Taking the positives out of the strike, it is clear that neither union would have won anything for its members if they had not worked together with the other union. The insistence of members of both unions that the unions work together was absolutely correct. It is also clear that if the two unions had worked more closely together, they would have won much more for members.

Once you have two unions working closely together and achieving much more for their members, the logical and obvious question, ‘Why not become one big union?’ is bound to follow.

The present leadership of the NASUWT has no interest in professional unity. During the Holy Spirit dispute, they went to extraordinary lengths to maintain their separateness from the NUT even when their own members and the logic of the position demanded the opposite approach. The pressure for professional unity within the NASUWT will come from elsewhere, from activists and members who can see what the benefits of one union for all teachers will bring on the ground.

To undermine the policy of social partnership which provides the cover for recent attacks on teachers’ terms and conditions, we need to reach out to and encourage those elements in the NASUWT who are already deeply unhappy with the deals their leadership is negotiating on their behalf. It is these NASUWT members that need to be won over to the idea of one democratic union taking action for teachers.

That is why the NUT call for one union for all teachers will only ever be accepted if it is combined with a willingness to take action on behalf of teachers. It is when they are taking action that teachers stop regarding professional unity as a nice theoretical idea and start thinking of it as an essential prerequisite for victory in the workplace and nationally.

When the present leadership of the NASUWT defend their policy of social partnership, they have two main arguments. Firstly, they point to all the benefits of the workforce remodelling agenda they can find; PPA time, the list of 24 tasks, limits to cover etc. etc. Secondly, they imply that all the bad things; tighter performance pay regulations, teachers losing management allowances, classes being taught by non-teachers etc. are all things that would have happened anyway. Thus, so their argument goes, we should all be grateful for the NASUWT leadership for the way in which they have negotiated improvements that would never have been achieved if the NASUWT had stayed out of talks with the government, as the NUT did.

The great big ‘What if?’ question which they do not want to be asked is, ‘What would have happened if the teaching unions had stayed united in opposition to government attacks on teachers’ pay and conditions and threatened action to support an agreed national negotiation position?

Keeping teachers divided in separate unions and the policy of social partnership with all its concomitant attacks on teachers’ pay and conditions go together, well, like peas and carrots. Once you have decided that remaining a separate union and refusing to work closely with the larger union for fear of being swallowed up by them is the keystone of your policy, social partnership becomes your only option.

Similarly, the call for one union for all teachers, really only makes any sense for teachers if it is combined with a vision for how a larger union will use its strength to negotiate a better deal for teachers backed up by a stronger and more credible strike threat.

‘One union for all teachers’ suddenly makes a lot more sense when unions take collective action

ost teachers will agree that ‘one union for all teachers’ makes sense, but normally it does not make enough sense to do anything about it. If teachers regard their union essentially as an insurance company that provides support and cover if you get into difficulties as an individual, then one union for all teachers is not really that important.

In fact, it could be argued that the teacher looking for an insurance company type union may actually feel that he or she is better served by a situation where there are a number of unions competing for his or her custom allowing teachers to switch union depending on factors like, how good they think the local rep is, what special offers they have and so on.

‘One union for all teachers’ suddenly makes a lot more sense when unions take collective action, or negotiate on the basis of having a credible threat of strike action. In this situation, every division is a weakness that undermines the unions’ negotiation position.

Teachers know that action will only succeed where there is sufficient unity to support it. When our members can truly say to their colleagues in other unions, ‘Join the NUT because your membership of that other union undermines our ability to negotiate better terms and conditions in school and nationally,’ then we will start to see startling growth in our membership.

If the membership growth measured in those schools where we took action over TLRs was happening nationally, the leadership of the smaller unions would be really feeling the heat now.

So professional unity and taking action go together like peas and carrots too. However, as well as recruiting members from other unions, we need to be raising the question of professional unity in the most effective way possible.

The NASUWT leadership has had major difficulties selling the benefits of their social partnership deals to a layer of their activists who in turn reflect the disquiet from some of their members. The leadership are having to promise these activists that they can take action to ‘make sure the national agreement is implemented properly.’ It is to this layer of activists that the professional unity message has to be aimed. That message is, ‘We could achieve so much more if we join together.’ And as well as saying it, we need to demonstrate it.

Depending on the decisions made by this year’s Annual NUT Conference, there will be a range of local and national action agreed for the next year. All action should be accompanied by an appeal to members of the other unions to join us, either as a body, or as individual members of the expanding NUT. As part of our campaign, there is a real opportunity to recruit to our campaign for professional unity those NASUWT activists who are fed up with the shoddy deals made from a position of weakness by the NASUWT leadership. As they call for a change in direction for their union, we can be encouraging them to look anew at the possibilities of professional unity built on action.

SEN Provision & the impact of privatisation

2007-04-04T10:01:00.000Z

Rachael Thomas ( Bristol NUT )

Inclusion can only work in a culture of collaboration in which there is a sharing of resources and expertise. Competitive market driven policies impact on the most vulnerable children and penalise the most dedicated of teachers.

The statement above is a quote from the final paragraph of the report commissioned by the NUT on “The Costs of Inclusion” . This report by John MacBeath, and others from Cambridge University, is referred to in the Executive’s Motion 45 on SEN provision.

The paragraph goes on to say that: “The most striking aspect of this study is the goodwill of teachers who believe in inclusion and try to make it work but do not find their goodwill repaid by the level of professional support they deserve. It is time for a thorough review of policy and practice.”

These statements sum up the issues for the NUT in terms of privatisation and resourcing to meet individual, additional needs. But, as the Brent amendment (45.1) highlights, we face attacks, not only in the education sector, but also in the health service where lack of funding is denying children access to essential services such as speech and language therapy, occupational therapy and mental health services.

Wasn’t the ‘Every Child Matters’ agenda supposed to make access to these services better? As a SENCo I certainly haven’t seen any evidence of this and, like Brent, my local NHS trust has just withdrawn speech and language therapy for KS2 children.

But, while expressing support for the “NHS Together Campaign”, teachers also need to be aware of the frustration of many NHS campaigners at the sluggishness of the health union leaderships. They have so far failed to organise a national demonstration which could harness the anger of the many thousands who have marched in towns and cities across the country. Socialist Party members will be among those keeping up the pressure for such a demo to be held.

“The Costs of Inclusion” study highlights the huge pressure felt by teachers, most of whom fundamentally believe in inclusion but are not able to overcome the enormous barriers placed in the way by government policy. Teachers then become demoralised and feel guilty for not being able to support children with SEN appropriately. The current “standards” agenda where achievement has to be in the form of national curriculum levels (and will be enshrined in performance management and ultimately teachers’ pay) is difficult for individual teachers to resist.

The onslaught of teaching to targets remains and is used to justify practice that is not in any way inclusive such as streaming and imposed “focus” teaching groups that do not benefit pupils, particularly those with SEN. Neither are the resources made available to schools to really ensure that pupils’ individual needs are met.

SENCo’s need good quality support from a central team of dedicated SEN expertise

n the current climate, the strategy for developing Inclusive Schools should be based on the premise that a locality has a range of schools – mainly mainstream but with access to specialist provision as and when required. In this model, a vital role of special schools must be to provide outreach and support work to develop inclusivity in mainstream schools. Schools must carry out their responsibility to make ‘reasonable adjustments’ to include a diverse intake of pupils, as the Disability Discrimination Act mentioned in amendment 45.2 suggests.

However, as schools are encouraged to compete and operate in isolation, the concept of partnerships between schools will become less and less realistic. The privatisation agenda, where SENCo’s are to be “procurers of services”, allows no mechanism for ensuring the quality and types of services that will be available.

Perhaps missing from the executive’s motion is the issue of the demise of local authority support services which do not seem to fit in to the government’s “personalised learning” agenda. SENCo’s need good quality support from a central team of dedicated SEN expertise on which they can draw upon for advice and support. This support can often make the difference between enabling a child to be included in mainstream and needing to be referred to an appropriate specialist setting.

The other aspect of the inclusion issue which must be examined is the role of TAs and Learning Support Assistants in the inclusion of pupils with special needs. Whilst support staff play a vital role in ensuring children’s needs are met, they are often insufficiently trained. In some cases support staff find they are not guided adequately by their class teachers perhaps due to lack of time or gaps in the teachers’ own expertise.

However, it is now usual practice for the classroom to be run by a ‘team’ of a teacher and a TA. To be an effective team it is important that support staff and teachers receive training together and are provided with time, in the school day if possible, to reflect together on strategies that have worked (or not!) Such arrangements would increase the skill level of both teachers and TAs. It would also be a helpful first step in addressing concern at the number of children who, because they have special needs, have in reality less access to direct teaching from a qualified teacher than their peers. This discrimination needs to be addressed.

As a trade union this is an approach that can build genuine links and partnerships with unions representing support staff and promote collective campaigning to improve working and learning conditions for all. We should also be building on the links already forming between rank and file members of the NUT and other public sector unions to challenge the free market economy and the wholesale dismantling of our comprehensive education system along with other socially inclusive public services. We should, as motion 45 suggests, be calling for a thorough review of policy and practice and the impact of current privatisation initiatives on pupils with SEN as this type of approach, by its nature, is not inclusive either educationally or socially.

Early Years

2007-04-04T10:00:00.000Z

EARLY YEARS

TACKLING CLASS SIZES

& THE ‘EARLY YEARS PROFESSIONAL’

Linda Taaffe (Waltham Forest NUT & NUT National Executive member)

The two motions in the early years section outline some important issues that link in with all other sectors. The first is about class size. The second is about the new ‘Early Years Professional’ (EYP).

Class size in the Foundation Stage

Union policy on a Reception class size limit of 27 seems to have gone off the radar

few years ago nursery and Reception were brought together as a distinct Foundation Stage. This was a good move. It meant that very young children were not subjected to the demands of the national curriculum, and located their learning in a less prescriptive way - although it fell short of the continental model of including six year olds.

Also, in the early days of the Labour government, a limit of 30 was introduced for all reception classes. This was progress in response to problems in some areas where Reception classes were over-sized.

However, like many things brought in by New Labour, it has turned out to be a double-edged sword, due to the way schools are now funded and the pressures of the “standards” agenda. Instead of three termly points of admission most schools now adopt two or even one point. They want them in for census day to get the finances; and they want to “get them in and get them on”. So, instead of starting in small reception classes, gradually building up numbers to often 20 or 25, now many children are dropped straight in to 30 in a class. These developments have implications for both staffing and children’s education, and particularly for 4 year olds.

Many 4 year olds are now in classes of 30, where they previously might have enjoyed more generous staffing ratios in nursery or playgroup. Lesley Staggs, an early years consultant, recently spoke out over the early admission of 4 year olds into Reception classes, raising concerns about language and social development, and lack of outdoor play, which boys in particular benefit from.

The NUT has a good nursery policy aim of 20 children to one trained teacher and one trained nursery nurse. The NUT also uses the DfES limit of 26 to two adults. However, our policy on a Reception class limit of 27 seems to have gone off the radar, as other adults, both trained and untrained support staff, have been taken on in Reception classes. Teachers have been hesitant about applying the 27 limit, which was made at a time when reception was deemed as part of “Infants”. It is time to have a proper class size policy to match the conditions in the Foundation Stage.

There a huge number of different possible scenarios in the Foundation Stage, so coming up with a common class size limit will not easy, but it is certainly time for a review. The Welsh Foundation Stage pilot is posing a one to eight ratio, although the ‘one’ is not necessarily a trained teacher. Early years organisations have suggested that any class with 4 year olds in it should be staffed by a trained teacher and nursery nurse to 20 children. This should be our starting point.

The Early Years Professional

The early years is often used as a training ground for changes that will eventually feed into all other sectors. This is why all teachers should be alarmed by the ‘Early Years Professional’. This new EYP qualification will have the same status as a teacher, but not the same pay or conditions. These will not be subject to national negotiation, but a matter for each employer. How’s that for individualised pay!

The Early Years Professional is being sold as a means of increasing training in the care industry – noted for its low pay and long hours. It is being introduced firstly in Children’s Centres, but in the long run it is intended that only a person holding this EYP status will lead practice across the Foundation Stage. This quite definitely opens the door to two-tier teachers. When budgets are under pressure there are no prizes for guessing the implications for Foundation Stage classes in schools.

The attempts by government to include the private and voluntary sector in the Foundation Stage curriculum could quite easily be a prelude to the possibility of hiving off the Foundations Stage in some way, probably similar to the incorporation of sixth form colleges.

We need to ensure that all teachers are aware of the introduction of the EYP and stop the possible erosion of teachers’ jobs.

Building Schools for the Future

2007-04-04T09:59:00.001Z

It has to be said that under the Tories there was little or no investment in the infrastructure of schools. Many schools were left to cope with inadequate school buildings which had a detrimental impact on teaching.

It was a national disgrace that school buildings were left to crumble whilst public services were sold off like BT, British Gas and the water companies, with millions of pounds being made by the market. Cuts in school funding meant that schools had no spare cash to even address redecoration or simple repairs.

Labour has managed … to marketise and privatise our education at a faster rate than the Tories

n fact, the only way to get any money to build new schools was by radically reducing school places through the ‘surplus places’ regime which often meant in reality closing schools. In Coventry, we went through a number of campaigns during the 80’s and 90’s to oppose the closure of local schools. Some campaigns were successful, others were not, and we lost a number of local schools.

When Labour came to power in 1997 their mantra of ‘Education, Education, Education’ rang out across the Local Authorities up and down the country. Labour seemed to promise that money would be found to rebuild and refurbish our crumbling schools. Sure enough, billions of pounds were pledged by Gordon Brown in his budgets - often announcing the same cash more than once!

This funding should have begun to address the state of school buildings and to provide an infrastructure that would meet the challenges of delivering an education system in the 21^st century. Unfortunately, there were serious catches to this programme and things were not as simple as they should have been. The funding came in the form of PFI, the Building Schools for the Future (BSF) programme and the City Academies. What Labour has managed to do with these three strategies is to marketise and privatise our education at a faster rate than the Tories ever managed to achieve. More important though is that they have attacked the very core of our Comprehensive system of education.

Up and down the country, campaigns often led by NUT Associations have fought against PFI deals, City Academies and other attacks on our education system. Whilst there have been some successes where local parents teachers and communities have come out in force to protect their schools, we have also seen communities bought off with the promise of shiny new buildings crammed with computers and state of the art technologies. Not surprising really when you look at the decrepit school buildings that many have to contend with.

What has happened in Coventry is no different to what is happening up and down the country with local authorities being undermined and Councils - whether they be Labour, Tory or Lib Dem - caving in to the big bully pressure of the government. How many times have you heard from our locally elected representatives ‘This is the only game in town’?

When Coventry first applied for the funding to rebuild their secondary schools under BSF they were turned down because they were told that results were too good and we had too many special schools! It was clear from the offset that BSF was going to be used by government to lever local authorities into carrying out exactly what the DfES dictated - complete and utter blackmail!

The LA consulted on its special schools and came up with a plan to amalgamate some special schools to reduce the number. When they applied again they were rejected because Coventry did not have any Academies. The LA identified a school to sacrifice on the altar of Lord Adonis’ City Academies programme only to find that Bob Edmiston, a Vardy ‘clone’, had identified another school in the city as an Academy so we could potentially end up with two !

Now that Coventry has been accepted on Wave 4 of the BSF plan it has become apparent that there are even more obstacles put in the way. For a start, all of the re-builds will be through a massive PFI scheme. One of the big questions is how much will the ‘affordability gap’ be and how will this be funded. This is the difference between the budget that has been identified and the real cost of the PFI. It is estimated that this could be as much as £3 million every year for the lifetime of the PFI scheme which will be 25 years or more- that’s £75 million in total!

If we look at PFI schemes in the Health Service this can amount to huge amounts of money which has to be found and the only way of finding this money is to cut services. To our cost in Coventry, some of those cuts are impacting on schools with cuts to speech therapists, school nurses and other health practitioners who support pupils. Already, Heads are becoming extremely concerned about how their school budgets will be affected and where this money will come from.

The fact that the BSF programme is not managed by an elected accountable body but by a Local Education Partnership (LEP), where 80% of this will be made up of private companies looking to make profits out of education in our city, sets the scene for even further privatisation of services.

Schools are beginning to see that BSF will not only have financial implications but will also dictate teaching and learning. This is especially true for the delivery of the 14-19 agenda as well as further remodelling of the workforce, heavy reliance on ICT and extended hours which will all have a direct impact on the conditions of our members. ICT companies such as Microsoft must be rubbing their hands with glee.

What has become clear from Council Officers who have been in discussions with the DfES about Coventry’s bid for BSF is that they desperately want to see even more diversity amongst schools which means they want Coventry schools to take up Trust status as well.

Another factor that has become evident is the debate about how many school places these new schools should cater for. The government clearly does not want any spare capacity at all in the system so no chance of reducing class sizes. If the government was really sincere about providing a first class public education system to rival the Independent sector then this rebuilding programme should have provided an opportunity to reduce class size.

Finally, what about the type of schools that will be built. Will they meet the challenge of reducing their carbon emissions? With millions of pounds already spent on BSF schemes up and running, a report by the British Council for School Environments suggest that the criteria set for new school buildings, called the BREEAM tests, are insufficient. The report warns that new buildings could be unfit for purpose! They call on the government to look again at the criteria and make them tighter. One of their demands calls for ‘greater participation by teachers and pupils whose needs must be paramount’ !

As teachers, we demand good quality school buildings for our pupils and for ourselves but not at any cost. Certainly not at the cost of more privatisation, marketisation and increased selection. It is obscene that the government has just voted through £75 billion to replace Trident and continues to waste billions on the war in Iraq. That money should be ploughed into education and health services!

Why we need a political fund

2007-04-04T09:58:00.001Z

Jim Lowe (Devon NUT)

PUBLIC-SECTOR trade unions have been under the cosh from this New Labour government almost since the first day it took office.

It is the New Labour government’s policies that have, unfortunately, forced some despairing sections of the working class into voting for the BNP.

espite promises of more money on education, health and other public services the reality – as any public-sector worker knows – is one of increasing workload and attacks on our conditions.

On a number of occasions, public-sector unions have come together to fight against this government – most notably the success which was achieved on pensions. But, many trade union activists feel that something over and above that is needed.

In the past trade unions that were affiliated to the Labour Party tried to influence the party’s policy and programme to benefit working people – often with success.

Now, even those unions affiliated to the Labour Party find themselves blocked and ignored at every turn.

It is clear that Labour does not represent the interests of working-class people and trade unionists anymore and an extensive debate is taking place in the unions and amongst people on the Left about the need to build a political alternative to represent trade unionists and working-class people.

It is in this context that the debate at this year’s NUT conference on whether or not to have a political fund will occur.

Some members will say why bother having a political fund at all when all the establishment parties are attacking trade unionists and there does not appear to be a clearly defined alternative at present for working people to vote for.

One of the arguments put forward in favour of a political fund is that it will allow the union to campaign ‘politically’ against far-right organisations like the BNP.

This is an important argument for having a political fund as currently the NUT cannot oppose the racist BNP and speak out against them at election time. But we shouldn’t restrict our fund just to these purposes. We face other serious threats besides the BNP.

Our lack of a political fund also means that the union cannot oppose New Labour’s education ‘reforms’ (or any of the other parties who may be doing the same at local level) when it might hurt them most – at election time.

A political fund - a separate fund from general union monies that can be used to support political campaigns - doesn’t just mean providing financial support to campaigns, but gives the union greater legal rights to speak out on political issues.

The NUT could look at linking up with other public-sector unions … to support candidates standing in defence of well-funded local public services

aving a political fund will be a positive step forward because it will allow the union to more explicitly campaign on educational issues during election campaigns and be able to actively campaign against far-right parties such as the BNP and any other organisations that members see as potentially damaging to the education of children and the pay and conditions of teachers.

However, we have to be clear that campaigning against the BNP in elections does not mean we advocate supporting uncritically any of the establishment parties solely as a means of stopping the BNP being elected. It is the New Labour government’s policies that have, unfortunately, forced some despairing sections of the working class into voting for the BNP.

Advocating a vote for Labour, Tory or Liberal (or just saying vote anyone but BNP) will not convince people not to vote BNP as a protest against those policies.

What is needed is for the labour movement to put forward an alternative at elections – whether standing against the BNP or not – that convinces working people that there is an organisation standing in elections that is fighting for them and worth voting for.

However, as can be seen with the job losses and service cuts in the NHS, the fact that UNISON, the health union, continues to pour members money into New Labour coffers, using money from the political fund does not guarantee success. In fact, New Labour has consistently ignored and kicked in the teeth its affiliated unions no matter how much money they have poured into the party’s coffers.

The NUT should take steps towards establishing a political fund. And, unlike other unions with a political fund such as UNISON, having a political fund would not and could not mean the NUT supporting New Labour politically or financially – we would not be paying the same government that attacks us and pushes through damaging and divisive trust schools, academies, and performance pay.

Instead, the NUT could look at linking up with other public-sector unions that have a political fund but that are not affiliated to the Labour Party – such as PCS, RMT and FBU - to support candidates standing in defence of well-funded local public services, workers’ rights and decent pay and against privatisation, cuts and warmongering.

This would be an important step forward and would inspire many union members that at last the unions were taking the political campaign against New Labour more seriously and using a political fund to good effect.

However, beyond that, what is needed is a new political party founded by and democratically run by workers for workers and public services in Britain and internationally.

That is why Socialist Party Teachers support the Campaign for a New Workers’ Party, an initiative arising from the frustration and anger at a lack of a mass alternative to the three shades of the same policies currently on the menu.

Already over 2,500 trade unionists, community campaigners and youth have signed the declaration supporting the campaign to build such a party.

One of those signatories is Dr Jackie Grunsell, elected as a Councillor for the Save Huddersfield NHS campaign last May. Jackie, a GP, Socialist Party member, and active campaigner against hospital closures, will be speaking in Harrogate at the Socialist Party Teachers’ Fringe Meeting at Monday April 9^th, 8pm in the Grants Hotel.

Jackie’s election onto Kirklees council is a good example of how trade unions and community campaigns can use elections to challenge the policies of both the BNP and the main political parties – and win!

For once, local voters realised there was a candidate worth going out to vote for. As a result, her Crosland Moor and Netherton ward had the highest turnout in Kirklees. Dr. Jackie Grunsell’s majority of 807 was one of the highest in the country!

By standing, the Save Huddersfield NHS Campaign was able to highlight the issue of hospital cuts and closures and give local people the opportunity to elect a councillor who was prepared to stand up to the cuts policies of the establishment parties. It’s an example that campaigners against academies and school closures should also follow – as could the NUT if we had a political fund to support such candidates.

But it wasn’t just Labour, Liberals and the Tories that got hammered. The BNP’s vote was squeezed as well. This shows how the BNP can be fought – by offering voters a real electoral alternative. It’s vital that we cut across the growth of the BNP by building a new workers’ party that can offer real answers to the many disenfranchised voters that have had enough of the big business policies of the establishment parties.

Campaign for a New Workers’ Party Conference

Saturday 12 May

12 – 5 pm

(registration opens at 11 am)

University College London, Cruciform Building, Gower St, London WC1.

(nearest tubes Euston, Euston Square and Goodge St)

To register for the CNWP Conference or to find out more visit www.cnwp.org.uk

Classroom Observations

2007-04-04T09:57:00.000Z

CLASSROOM OBSERVATIONS

Nicky Downes (Coventry NUT)

Classroom observations are now one of the main areas of query raised by our Reps in Coventry.

The number of observations has increased dramatically in all schools with some teachers being observed on average twice a term. This has placed unnecessary stress on staff. All this when there is no evidence that increased classroom observations actually raise standards.

‘Drop-ins’ are clearly a dangerous loophole that gives Heads the ability … to bully individual staff.

he other main concern is about who can observe. We’ve had members been observed by two or more people on a regular basis. There have even been suggestions that they should be observed and assessed by pupils and governors.

Classroom observations can play a valuable role in the professional development of teachers if they are undertaken by peers to both share good practice and to encourage a fair appraisal of a teacher’s professional practice. However, the current draconian system of observations is used to make judgements about individual teachers that can then be used to determine their pay and progression. They are a method of policing teachers and can be used as a tool to bully and harass individuals.

The new Performance Management arrangements will further reinforce this. Strict limits on the amount of time a teacher is observed in a year is necessary in the current climate. The “three hour limit”, however, is not accompanied by a limit on the number of observations that can be carried out. As with so many new procedures it is down to individual schools how this is interpreted. This is clearly open to abuse with some teachers being observed for 6 half hour periods or more and some getting less than 3 hour long observations.

Any teacher knows how incredibly stressful an observation is. Particular when the performance in an observation can have a direct affect on pay. Observed lessons are expected to include all the current examples of the latest ‘whiz-bang’ techniques. In Primary this comes in many forms: partner talk, thinking time, WILF and TIBs. Don’t forget to add as much interactivity and ICT, including the use of cameras and lap tops, as you can cram in. You feel like you’ve run a marathon at the end, and to top it all in the assessment of the lesson there will be constant references to pace.

What is more concerning will be the way individual Heads interpret the term ‘drop in’. I recently sat down with my Head to negotiate on my schools Performance Management policy. When it came to classroom observations she said ‘now here I expect we will disagree’. Although she accepted all the points raised on the number of observations and how they should be carried out it was the ‘drop ins’ that caused the disagreement.

I did finally get some agreement on interpretation that was acceptable but ‘drop-ins’ are clearly a dangerous loophole that gives Heads the ability to use informal observations of teachers to bully individual staff. It basically negates any of the limits put on observations included in the RIG guidelines for Performance Management.

Part time teachers also need protection. In a recent survey in my LA they were the least likely group to achieve progression on the UPS. There is no caveat for them to ensure fairness and it is likely that they will be expected to undertake the same number of observations as full time teachers in a school. This is a clear example of discrimination. The hours of observation should be pro rata to the hours worked. Part time workers should be fully trained and supported to achieve deserved pay increases and not to have to work the hours of a full timer to achieve this.

What is clearly essential is that all schools adopt a fair and achievable set of protocols for lesson observations as outlined in Motion 23 and its accompanying amendments. These should be fully consulted upon by union representatives and staff.

In Coventry we have spent this year attempting to negotiate a set of protocols and good practice for classroom observations with the Local Authority. However the NAHT refusal to negotiate has completely scuppered this. It’s now going to come down to, as was the case with TLRs, each school having their own policy and procedures.

Just like TLRs, it will depend on the strength of mood and support they get in these schools to fight against examples of discrimination and unfairness. Through the union’s workload dispute, members in individual schools can be balloted against breaches of observation protocols. We will need to ensure that this happens and that strike action is supported where necessary.

We should not have been put in this position. National strike action is essential in the fight against Performance Related Pay and Workload - which these classroom observations are an integral part of. It should never have been abandoned.

Pupil Behaviour

2007-04-04T09:34:00.000Z

DEFENDING TEACHERS, MEETING STUDENTS’ NEEDS.

Robin Pye (St.Helens NUT)

Poor Pupil Behaviour is a major issue facing teachers and students in schools.

It is the most common reason given by teachers leaving the profession. It is a major focus of media attention, government initiatives and ‘public debate’. Young people also complain that they struggle to learn as effectively as they could do if lessons are routinely disrupted by other pupils.

The issue presents trade unionists with particular challenges. Clearly the Union must be at the forefront of any attempts by teachers to protect and improve their conditions of work. Inappropriate behaviour is a major source of work-related stress and a clearly documented health and safety issue. It can trigger a collective response with school groups sending reps in to see Headteachers armed with threats of ‘refusal to teach’ action or no confidence votes.

But any trade union campaign must also consider and address the various factors which contribute to the problem, such as:

Inadequate resources

Large class sizes and a lack of support for pupils with special needs is a major factor. Most pupils transferred from mainstream classes to small groups in Pupil Referral Units or similar respond by improving their behaviour enormously. Many more young people could benefit from smaller teaching groups if resources were available. A successful resolution of a ‘refusal to teach’ action threat can be the pupil concerned accesses specialist support of this kind.

When collective action results in an increase in resources provided, trade unionists can rightly see this as an achievement. But with a fixed budget, gains for some can only be made at the expense of others. Therefore, campaigns for an increase in the budgets of nurture groups, support teachers, PRUs and special schools are the only way to make sure that all our pupils can benefit from our collective response. This campaign needs to be a higher priority for the Union.

Targets, Testing and Setting

The argument that pupils feel stigmatised as failures in a system that spends so much time evaluating them is easy enough for teachers to accept. Less easy, but undoubtedly true, is the argument that teachers under pressure to meet targets, pass that pressure onto pupils who in turn pass it back to teachers in a vicious circle.

One of the affects of targets is that it encourages setting and even streaming in schools. Most secondary teachers in Britain believe that setting by ability is essential to effective teaching. At the very least they believe that mixed ability classes mean more work for the teacher. This is, of course the case in the short term. However, if teachers had more time to prepare for their lessons and smaller classes to teach, mixed ability classes would be feasible and would bring the huge advantage that no child is left in a class where it is clear to everybody that there are no realistic aspirations for the pupils in that class to succeed.

Teaching approaches

As teachers, we all know that we can teach well and we can teach badly. Experienced and well-motivated teachers will tend to teach better. These teachers experience fewer problems with poor pupil behaviour. This is a fact routinely used by Heads who seek to blame teachers for difficulties.

Teachers, not unnaturally, expect their trade union representatives to dismiss these arguments out of hand and insist that the poor pupil behaviour is more than what they should be expected to cope with. We have to accept that good teaching does help. But the Union has to put the blame on a system where teachers have little chance to support each other or spread good practice.

When a teacher does have a fellow teacher in the classroom, it is usually a stressful experience related to performance management or worse. Teachers should have time to support and learn from each other without observations being made that could lead to a teacher being criticised.

Inappropriate curriculum

Trade unionists will, inevitably, have to lead collective disputes around the behaviour of individual pupils or groups of pupils

hy should young people engage in lessons if they feel they aren’t learning anything which is relevant to their lives? The curriculum in our schools is overladen with assessment and leaves little room for teachers to relate learning to their pupils’ interests. We must continue to demand that teachers be given the freedom and time to develop more relevant schemes of work.

Coercive management of schools

Most of our schools are to a greater or lesser extent run along coercive lines with people in charge directing other people in what to do. The result is an environment where young people are told what to do, sometimes almost for the sake of it. For example, Britain is one of a very small number of European countries where school uniforms are common-place. Of course, this means enforcement of uniform regulations.

The Union should support a culture of mutual respect for one another and a respect for education. In my view, we need to raise the question of whether school uniforms and any other rules which are not directly tied into a culture of respect are necessary or even counter-productive.

Wider problems in capitalist society

Capitalism depends on a brutalisation of human beings. Its wars and famines have created conditions which have damaged generations mentally and emotionally. Capitalism seeks to belittle workers, break down any feelings of mutual support, and divides workers along ethnic lines and in any other ways it can devise. The numerous pressures that arise from poverty such as cramped housing, strained relationships and a poor diet restrict many children’s development from an early age. It is unavoidable that many will grow up alienated and ready to test the patience of even the most dedicated teacher.

Advanced capitalist societies can afford services designed to deal with the physical manifestations of these pressures. The criminal justice system, social workers and mental health services are all there to tidy up the mess. However, many of those services are facing cuts and privatisation.

Socialists have a vision of a different form of society which will unleash the talents of the working class and end alienation. In time, this will lead to a reduction in the number of alienated young people and children in our schools. However, while fighting for a better society, a trade union has to deal with the issues presented in the here and now.

A Programme for the Union

The Union must be ready with practical solutions to improve pupil behaviour, the working conditions of teachers and the learning environment for all pupils.

Trade unionists will, inevitably, have to lead collective disputes around the behaviour of individual pupils or groups of pupils. As we do this, it is vital that we also develop a programme of demands that can take the direction of the debate on poor pupil behaviour towards permanent solutions based on the kind of factors outlined above.

Salaries

2007-04-02T17:32:00.000Z

FORGE PUBLIC SECTOR UNITY & BALLOT FOR NATIONAL ACTION

Linda Taaffe (Waltham Forest NUT & NUT National Executive member)

ALL teachers across the country need at least a 10% salary increase. They will have their sights raised by a fighting decision of this Conference to join with other public sector unions in a campaign to break the Chancellor’s imposed 2% barrier.

PCS opted to combine all the issues they faced into one combined ballot

rown does not expect the unions to mount a serious challenge to this insult. Yet he boasts of the strength of the economy, and makes it easy for city financiers to rake in millions in bonuses. It is time to call his bluff and go for national pay action.

The rise in inflation already means that our latest 2.5% annual pay “increase” is actually a pay cut in real terms. But it will come as no surprise that the Review Body has failed to respond positively to the NUT’s call for them to consider an improved award. The Government believes that they can impose what they like on teacher unions without facing a serious fightback – we have to show them that they are wrong! The threat of united action on public sector pensions forced the Government to retreat – the same can be true over salaries.

We can take heart by the decision of UNISON and the other local government unions to reject their employers’ pay offer of 2%. Instead, they are making a claim for a one-year deal of 5% or £1,000 a year along with improved conditions of service. The civil service union, the PCS, have already taken national strike action on 31 January and will be taking a further day of national action on 1 May. The NUT should prepare for joint union action – with TUC backing if we can get it but without it if necessary.

The PCS’ action was not about pay alone. Like teachers, civil servants face attacks on a number of fronts including salaries, job cuts and privatisation. But, rather than try and judge which single issue was most likely to get members’ support for national action, the PCS instead opted to combine all the issues they faced into one combined ballot – and won the support of their members. The strike on 31 January closed courts, tax offices and jobcentres and even official figures show greater support for the action than their last national strike in 2004.

The NUT needs to take the same approach. This New Labour Government has broken its promises to reduce our workload. It imposes below-inflation pay awards. It also plans to hit us with new performance management regulations as well! All these areas require national strike action if we are going to mount a serious fight to defend our members and the education of our pupils.

The real issue isn’t whether we take national action on salaries or workload, performance pay or privatisation, it’s whether the Union has the confidence to call, campaign for, and win a national ballot.

We should have confidence in our members. Teachers are fed up with everything that has been thrown at them. A fighting leadership should be able to harness that anger. It’s time the Union gave a lead.

Let’s take national action on pay and on all the other issues facing teachers. Let’s forge public sector unity and seek to organise united action with colleagues facing exactly the same kind of attacks.

LONDON ALLOWANCES £7,000 INNER AND OUTER!

The Union also needs to resist any pressure to go down the road of regional pay. The government has shown itself ready to try this on recently by attempting regional pay banding in part of the civil service. Teachers are divided enough through the privatisation of academies, the hiving off of Sixth Form Colleges, numerous cash recruitment and retention incentives, and soon new PRP regulations and trust schools. New Labour’s commitment to individualise learning could be a prelude to individualised teachers’ pay!

However, an element of London pay is a long established and a recognised factor covering public and private sector workers. So, as long as London pay exists, London teachers need as fair and as equitable a system of London pay as possible. This is not the case now. In fact it is a mess.

After the last campaign in London in 2002 the government used the opportunity to change the London Allowance into three separate pay scales – a step along the road to regional pay. They are increasingly a cause for much discontent because of the differentials between teachers at all levels, and all locations. For teachers in Inner London the “notional London Allowance equivalent” can vary between £4000 at the bottom and £6,500 at the top. In Inner London the threshold increase is worth £4000, while in Outer London the same “jump” is worth only £2000. Of the 20 London boroughs, which are known as Outer London, 6 are paid on the Inner pay scale and 14 on the Outer pay scale.

We need to go back to one national pay scale plus a fixed lump sum London Allowance that would be the same for every teacher, at whatever stage of their career they are at, and wherever they teach in London; hence, the demand for £7000 for both Inner and Outer London which covers the whole metropolitan area; and £2000 for the Fringe, who are very hard done by at the moment.

Teachers in various parts of the country may complain that house prices in their areas are just as high; or that there are just as many EAL students or behaviour problems. However, what rate of extra pay a London teacher gets has nothing to do with any of these factors. For Inner London teachers it’s about the ‘threshold’. For those paid on the Outer London scale, it’s purely about geography! Being paid on the Outer London pay scale is decided by such an arbitrary factor as simply having a mile or two of border with the shire counties.

Critics describe “cliffs” at the edges of the Fringe as a potential problem, and give that as a reason for not fighting for a big Fringe allowance. Yet there are canyons of nearly £4000 between some neighbouring Outer London boroughs! There is no justification for differential pay scales of such magnitude within the London metropolitan area.

The Union should be instructed by the delegates at this Conference to launch a national campaign on pay, and to include in our submission to the STRB for the next pay round for 2008 a demand for the SAME SUM of £7,000 for both Inner and Outer London. (For comparison, the police have a metropolitan London Allowance of around £6333.)

Such a decision will help our pay campaign in London and raise the tempo for a fight nationally. There is already the beginning of a campaign in Waltham Forest, where recently a packed special meeting held on London pay unanimously supported the demand of £7,000 for all metropolitan teachers. Those present wanted the Conference to support our demand, and having discussed all the injustice and unfairness of the current system, could not see how anyone could possibly vote against it! We have set up a “£7000 Committee” to progress the campaign to reach all our members in anticipation of a positive Conference decision. Don’t let them down!

A national pay campaign would be enormously strengthened by the added twist of London teachers on the move again.

Socialist Party Teachers NUT Conference Fringe Meeting

2007-03-25T21:45:00.000Z

Socialist Party Teachers NUT Conference Fringe Meeting

Grants Hotel, Swan Road, Harrogate, Monday April 9^th, 8 pm

Speaker: Councillor Jackie Grunsell

TAKE NATIONAL ACTION TO DEFEND EDUCATION

2007-03-25T21:43:00.000Z

WORKLOAD * STRESS * PERFORMANCE PAY

TAKE NATIONAL ACTION TO DEFEND EDUCATION

Martin Powell-Davies, Lewisham NUT

Teachers are being ground down by the pressures of intolerable workload, underfunding and performance pay. Academies and Trusts are designed to further undermine collective opposition to their divisive policies.

Our stressful lives are bad for our health, our families and the children we teach too. Too many teachers are already voting with their feet. Some resign, some are driven out by ill-health or bullying managers.

Local NUT Associations are struggling valiantly to defend members through individual casework and local disputes. But the strategy of relying on school reps and officers to fight local battles alone will not succeed. At best, as when striking against TLR pay cuts, we may win some local victories, but as a long-term strategy it leaves the NUT playing King Canute trying to stem the New Labour tide.

Unless the Union acts, the attacks will continue on pay, conditions and comprehensive education. But, if the NUT led from the front and campaigned to win a ballot for national strike action, members would respond. A successful one-day strike would give an outlet for teachers’ many grievances and raise the sights of members who aren’t yet confident to take action in their school alone.

It’s not that the Union is short of issues to galvanise the membership around. By the Government’s own admission, teachers are still working 50 hours a week and more. Pay rises are being pegged beneath the rate of inflation. The Education Act is fragmenting comprehensive state education.

A demand to withdraw the new performance management regulations could prove the clearest focus for action. They threaten to add a cruel twist to the existing performance pay regime. Schools will be expected to carry out more nit-picking observations and set teachers more ‘challenging’ objectives. More staff will be demoralised and denied their pay rise; more will accept unreasonable workload so as to keep in line for salary progression.

But the Union doesn’t have to choose one priority for national action above all others. The civil service union, the PCS, with Socialist Party members playing an important role in its leadership, have recently successfully won a ballot and called national strike action. They linked different threats to jobs, pay and conditions into one national action. The NUT can do the same.

We must have confidence in our members. Teachers are fed up with everything that has been thrown at them by this Government. A fighting leadership should be able to harness that anger. It’s time the Union gave a lead. NUT Conference delegates have a responsibility to make sure it does.

Socialist Party Teachers NUT Conference Fringe Meeting

Grants Hotel, Swan Road, Harrogate, Monday April 9^th, 8 pm

Speaker: Councillor Jackie Grunsell

Campaign for a New Workers’ Party Conference

2007-03-18T20:37:00.000Z

*Campaign for a New Workers’ Party Conference
*Saturday 12 May 12 – 5 pm (registration opens at 11 am)
University College London,
Cruciform Building,
Gower St,
London WC1
(nearest tubes Euston, Euston Square and Goodge St)

"New Labour, my arse!"

Ricky Tomlinson addressed the meeting of about 250 in Liverpool on 12 Feb . Older readers will remember the Shrewsbury Two, imprisoned for trade union organisation. Ricky was one of them.

“Tony Blair has disembowelled the Labour Party. It’s not New Labour, it’s the New Phoney Labour Party and a growing number of people are fed up with it. We’ve now got to stop the rot.”

The current choice, he says, between New Labour, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats, represents no choice at all.

“There are loads of groups that have set up in opposition but we’ve got to bring all the different socialist parties together to form one powerful new party that can win elections.

“There’s got to be one unified, left wing party that has the interests of the working class at heart.

“Why am I doing this? Sometimes you have to put yourself up as an Aunt Sally. I’ve been at the bottom of the ladder. I’ve had my house repossessed. I’ve been blacklisted. I’ve been unemployed.

“But I have got lucky – I got a wonderful job, earned good money and travelled to places all over the world that I never thought I’d see. I know what is the best out of those two and I want other people to have as many opportunities in life as possible.”

Shop Stewards network

2007-03-18T15:45:00.000Z

A flyer for the shop stewards network is available here

The founding conference is at
South Camden Community School
Charrington Street
London

7th July
11 am to 5 pm

G8 - Trade Unionists oppose neo-liberalism

2007-03-07T15:15:00.000Z

Trade unionists against neo liberalism! No to a global race to the bottom!

Stop the G8 summit - Trade unions onto the global stage!

We are trade unionists from many different parts of Germany and we are part of the protest movement against the G8 summit 2007 in Heiligendamm. These annual summits are a symbol for global neo liberal domination like no other international institution. The G8 summits serve the purpose of global coordination and the division of power between the major global powers. This way, they are stabilising the global neo liberal economic order with worsening effects for the majority of the population. An elitist minority accumulates the wealth produced by millions of people.

We support the protest against imperialist power strategies, wars, environmental destruction and the threat of global warming. In contrast to its promises, global capitalism propels humanity into a crisis of existence. Without an answer to the looming climate catastrophe, there can be no solution.

The globalisation of capital and labour markets has put workers into global competition with each other. Workers, industries and workplaces of individual countries are being played out against each other without any scruples in a ruthless competition about jobs, labour conditions, wages and human dignity. As trade unionists we therefore demand the following:

 Essential labour norms are a human right and have to be enforced as minimal standards. Among those are the right to form trade unions, the right to collective bargaining, the abolishment of child and forced labour and a general ban of discrimination at work. Breaches of these rules have to be made public and punished severely.

 Maximum working hours: Redistribution of labour is the most important tool to cut unemployment figures of 200 million and 1.4 billion working poor globally. The development of productive forces has to be used for the progress of society, together with a cut in working hours: The 30 hour week is the aim, there has to be a global maximum 40 hour working week.

 The minimum wage is already a reality in a few countries, albeit in an insufficient form. The minimum wage has to become a worldwide minimum standard. The minimum wage should be 60% of the national average way and thus become a global reality.

 Pension systems have to be built and defended against privatisation and commercialisation. Health, education, public safety and the natural foundations of life must not become a commodity.

 Rights at work have to be regulated by law in order to guarantee a minimum level of protection for workers against arbitrary measures by the employers.

As a result of globalisation, the balance of forces between capital and labour has shifted dramatically in favour of capital. Global financial markets and multinational companies have gained a gigantic blackmail potential against nation states (erosion of taxes and environmental standards, deregulation of labour markets) and against trade unions acting within nation states.

We have to get out of this historic defensive position. We have to put pressure on capital, we have to overcome language difficulties, we have to recognise our common interest to work together across all borders on all levels of the trade union movement, as was the case with the strike demonstration against the Bolkestein doctrine and the international strikes of dockworkers and maritime workers and as will be the case in June 2007 against the G8 summit in Heiligendamm.

We know we are only at the beginning of this journey. But we also know that only by overcoming our national rivalries and by creating a trade union movement which is able to campaign globally we will be able to effectively challenge the globally active capital.

Signatories
(This is a selection, an official publication of all initial signatories will follow soon)

Detlef Baade, Betriebsrat/Schweb-Vertretung/K-Sbv, Hamburg
Hagen Battran, GEW Bezirksvorsitzender, Freiburg
Gerd Buddin, Stellvertretener Vorsitzender der Gewerkschaft ver.di, Bezirk Berlin
Patrick von Brandt, ver.di Landesbezirksjugendsekretär Niedersachsen-Bremen
Jeannine Geißler, ver.di Jugendbildungsreferentin, Hannover
Werner Dreibus, Bevollmächtigter der IG Metall, Offenbach
Roland Hamm, 1. Bevollmächtigter IG Metall Aalen
Ralf Krämer, ver.di Gewerkschaftssekretär, Berlin
Walter Mayer; IG Metall Gewerkschaftssekretär i.R., Berlin
Bernd Riexinger, ver.di Bezirksgeschäftsführer, Stuttgart
Werner Sauerborn, ver.di Gewerkschaftssekretär, Stuttgart
Heidi Scharf, 1. Bevollmächtigte IG Metall Schwäbisch-Hall
Michael Schlecht, ver.di Gewerkschaftssekretär, Berlin
Berno Schuckart, Mitarbeitervertretung, ver.di Hamburg
Sibylle Stamm, ver.di Landesvorsitzende Baden-Württemberg
Roland Tremper, ver.di Bezirksgeschäftsführer, Berlin
And many others.

Contact:

Dirk Spöri, spoeri@gmx.net, Tel.: 0160 7942195, Auwaldstr. 29, 79110 Freiburg

Werner Sauerborn, werner.sauerborn@t-online.de

Workload and performance management

2007-02-20T19:54:00.000Z

TEACHERS ARE BEING GROUND DOWN by the pressures of intolerable workload and a divisive system of performance monitoring, targets & observations.
Our stressful lives are bad for our health, our families and the children we teach too. Let’s take action together to call a halt!
MAKE THE GUIDELINES STICK IN YOUR SCHOOL
THE NUT’S NEW GUIDELINES give every school group the chance to take a stand on workload.
The updated policy covers a whole range of issues that schools can use to select their own particular priorities. Teachers need to identify what needs to be changed in their school and - if nothing is done - be ready to take strike action in their school.
Where schools pursued similar action over TLRs, teachers won significant victories in opposing cuts to their pay. Let’s see what gains can be made in reducing workload!
ORGANISE A SCHOOL MEETING
Organise a union meeting at a time when most people can attend. Ask colleagues to come ready with suggestions. Decide on some priorities that most members think something needs to be done about. Use the NUT guidelines to suggest changes that will help with your ‘work/life balance’.
NEGOTIATE WITH YOUR HEAD
Approach your Head with your priorities. See what changes can be negotiated. But don’t just take “NO” for an answer! If talks fail, get NUT members together again. Get ready for strike action - first of all with an indicative ballot - to win your demands.

MAKE YOUR DEMANDS:
* Our right to a work/life balance If a particular school procedure or policy causes unreasonable workload, insist that it is renegotiated.
* No more demands on our time If the schools introduces a new initiative, insist other work is dropped instead.
 Give us a break! Demand your legal right to a complete break at lunchtime. ASCL, the Secondary Heads union, thinks ‘half an hour would be perfectly reasonable’. Teachers don’t!
* Give us the time to do the job Timetabled PPA time for all – plus extra ‘Leadership and Management time’ for all teachers with additional duties.
* Plan for teaching, not monitoring If planning demands are unreasonable in your school, insist that policy changes.
* One staff meeting a week Our time is precious. NUT policy calls for just one 60 minute meeting on average.
* Provide admin staff for admin tasks Refuse tasks outside contractual duties.
* No more than 3 observations a year Insist on a school protocol that allows no more than three observations a year
* No more than 3 performance targets Insist on a performance management policy that meets the NUT’s guidelines.
* No class size that breaks NUT limits NUT guidelines are clear – a maximum of thirty, less for early years, mixed age etc.

BUT LET’S CALL A NATIONAL STRIKE TOO !
NUT CONFERENCE VOTED for local AND national action on workload – we need both !
Local negotiations, backed up by school-based action, can win important gains. But this isn’t a local problem, it’s a national one.
The Government promised us a decent ‘work-life balance’. Their own surveys show there have been “no statistically significant changes” in teachers’ working hours.
More staff denied a pay rise
Their new performance management regulations will make matters even worse. Schools will be expected to set teachers more ‘challenging’ objectives and make more ‘robust’ pay decisions. More staff will be demoralised and denied their pay rise; more will accept unreasonable workload so as to keep in line for salary progression.
Line managers, rather than Heads, will be expected to do the dirty work. At the end of each performance management review meeting, they will have to say whether they think members of their team should be allowed to progress up the pay spine or not. Instead of any genuine discussion about teaching and learning, these meetings will now be dominated by pay. Teamwork and morale, so vital to a successful school, will be undermined.
It looked like these threats would only apply to Upper Pay Spine teachers at first, but the 2007 School Teachers’ Review Body report recommends that pay progression is linked to performance management for main scale teachers as well. This will apparently help “teachers to prepare for threshold assessment” (!) and schools to “distinguish more effectively between unsatisfactory performance meriting … withholding of pay progression and serious underperformance meriting capability procedures”. Unless we organise an urgent fightback, this means every teacher faces “payment by results”.
For a one-day national strike
The National Union has to answer these threats with national action. A clear one-day national strike by NUT members would put teachers’ grievances firmly in the headlines and warn the Government to back down from its plans to bully and divide staff and ration pay rises through performance pay for every teacher.
National action would also raise the spirits of members who aren’t yet confident to take action on workload in their school alone. The two approaches go together.
Lobby your NUT delegates
As well as calling for a ballot on toughened workload guidelines, 2005 & 2006 NUT Conferences also instructed the NUT Executive to ballot for such a national strike. Socialist Party teachers helped win that demand – teachers should call on their local delegates to back it in 2007 too!
Unfortunately, the NUT Executive has failed to carry out this part of the policy because a majority lack the confidence that teachers would vote for national action. But if the NUT put out a call for a national strike against performance pay, and the workload and bullying that come with it, teachers would respond positively. That’s exactly what a recent indicative ballot to judge support for national action - carried out by Lewisham NUT Division - found. The Union leaders need to show some leadership!
The civil service union, the PCS, with Socialist Party members playing an important role in its leadership, have recently successfully won a ballot and called national strike action. They linked different threats to jobs, pay and conditions into one national action. The NUT can do the same.
Teachers can’t afford to hold back and let the Government pile more pressure on us. Let’s take action – both local and national – to turn back the tide!

Phillip Clarke for Young Teachers' Rep

2007-02-17T16:30:00.000Z

All NUT members under the age of 35 are entitled to vote for the representatives of young teachers.

The following is Phil Clarke's statement:

I am seeking election as a recently qualified teacher who believes that the NUT has a vital role to play in defendingyoung teachers and the future of the comprehensive education system.

The main issues I want the union to campaign on for young teachers are:

* excessive workload
* the threat of performance related pay
* housing costs (especially in the South East)

The government seems determined to further divide and privatise the education system with the use of PFI schemes, trusts and academies. In contrast, we need publicly funded and accountable schools which co-operate not compete.

I am a Socialist and an active member of a hospital anti-cuts campaign group. I believe that it is only with a willingness to campaign and fight that the NUT will be able to play its vital role in securing an education system which meets the needs of all pupils.

Campaign to Defeat Fees

2007-02-13T22:47:00.000Z

The Campaign to defeat Fees is contacting trade union branches for support and who better than the National Union of Teachers?
They can be contacted by email at socialiststudents@hotmail.com and they have a web page
www.socialiststudents.org.uk

Dear Friend,

We are writing to you to suggest that you invite a speaker from the Campaign to Defeat Fees to your trade union branch around the question of building a campaign that can force the government to scrap all university fees and fund a quality education for all.

Fees of £3,000 a year were introduced in 2006. As a result the average graduate’s debt is expected to rise to £22,000. A survey of Vice Chancellors showed that the majority now want to raise the cap on the fees to £10,000! The student experience is based on poverty and debt. Education workers are suffering from cuts, privatisation, and increased pressure. Socialist Students launched the Campaign to Defeat Fees (CDF) in November of last year to bring together everyone who stands for free education and opposes cuts, closures and privatisation. So far we have support from the NUS and a number of local student unions and hundreds of students across the country. We believe that it’s time to fight back to defend our public services.

We believe that fees could have been defeated if the NUS leadership had led a concerted mass campaign. Unfortunately that was not the case. Socialist Students welcomed the NUS demo in October where, despite the inadequate slogans and mobilising in many areas, it was clear that there’s a huge number of students who were serious about wanting to campaign on the issue and to fight against all fees – not just to maintain the status quo. So we launched the campaign and hope to work with all who oppose fees and privatisation.

We think a mass campaign can force the government to retreat – but it will need to be broader than just the students currently at university. This campaign, to be victorious, will have to learn the lessons of the French students and youth. Through their collaboration with the trade unions and working class they forced the government to retract the hated CPE law. This law would have meant that workers under-26 could be fired for no reason in the first two years of employment. We want the trade unions, with their experience and authority, involved from the start to ensure that this campaign is as strong and effective as possible.

Trade unions have always played an important role in fighting for education as a right. Enclosed is a copy of the resolution we ask trade union branches to support. Hopefully you will agree and decide to organise a meeting or debate in your union branch and to support the CDF. You can contact me at the e-mail address or phone number above to arrange a speaker from the Campaign to Defeat Fees.

Yours in solidarity,

Matt Dobson
Socialist Students national organiser

What's behind the school leaving proposals?

2007-01-20T20:55:00.000Z

What's behind the school leaving proposals?

THE GOVERNMENT is apparently preparing to raise the school leaving age from 16 to 18. Education secretary Alan Johnson and Gordon Brown are both reported to favour the move, with Johnson asking staff to prepare for change.

Ben Robinson

But is this a move to increase the education that young people receive, improve the capabilities of the population and advance society?

Or is it a desperate move to cut youth unemployment (currently 11% of 16-18 year olds), reduce benefit payments and play down the impact of statistics on GCSE pass rates (only 38% of school students leave with 5 A*-Cs, including Maths and English)?

Press reports on the plans are very vague. No ideas have been put forward as to where the extra students would go, or how much extra funding will go into building new classrooms or hiring new members of staff.

Cheap labour

The latest figures show 114,000 16-17 year olds not in work or in full time education. This is roughly an extra pupil for every nine already in education. Will schools and colleges be expected to take this without at least a corresponding increase in the money they get?

If so, this move will lead to young people being educated in crowded conditions, with overstressed staff, and will see the effects of education for the majority go down, not up.

The guardian reports "the last time a government raised the school leaving age was a costly, bumbling shambles. School buildings weren't big enough to cope, and millions went (too late) on extra bricks and mortar."

The other option being proposed for young people is to be in work, on a training scheme. Modern Apprentices, the government's current youth training scheme, sees young people used as cheap labour, earning £30-£50 a week working full time. An increase in young people on courses such as these will see more jobs being staffed using cheap labour, and being replaced when they have got a qualification.

The only people this will benefit are bosses, paying £1 or £2 an hour whilst supposedly providing 'training'. The proposed move for every 16-18 year old to be in education or on-the-job training will turn hundreds of thousands of young people into cheap labour to undercut wages and do things on the cheap.

Clearly this is just another step in Blair and Brown's agenda for education; turning it into a factory belt to create workers for big business, allowing them to make millions in the process. When the White Paper comes out in spring, it should meet ferocious opposition from the unions and from young people.

Academies myths

2007-01-20T20:50:00.000Z

Academies myths

THE FOLLOWING letter by Ian Page and Chris Flood, the two councillors on Lewisham council's Socialist Party group, was sent to the Education Guardian.

IT WAS good to see Fiona Millar's spirited debunking of some of the myths surrounding New Labour's academies programme (Don't forget about the rest of us, January 9), and the contrast with the lack of attention given to the excellent work that countless community schools do.

Here in Lewisham, the latest New Labour wheeze is to hand over a primary school to the local, selective secondary academy - which will only divide local parents and schools instead of bringing them together.

Unfortunately, Fiona's conclusion that "no one appears willing to challenge" the academies spin - 'the emperor's new clothes' as she rightly terms it - is only too true when it comes to councillors from the establishment parties.

Since last May Lewisham has been a 'hung council'. So, as Socialist Party councillors we were quietly confident when we presented a motion at the last council meeting calling for a thorough, cross-party council select committee public inquiry into the takeover plan.

After all, is there any evidence that secondary academies have had any success in primary education?

To their credit the Green group backed the Socialist Party's call. Despite much agonised hand-wringing, however, the Liberal Democrats and the Tories sided with New Labour. Is there nobody else who will point out that schools minister Andrew Adonis and his colleagues really are going around naked?