Defending Education:
learning the lessons
Bill's article in The
Morning Star, TUC week 2009
“Protect and improve our public services - no
cuts. End corporate profiteering in health,
education, social and other public services. Stop the EU privatisation
Directives.”
The People’s Charter
Schools and colleges are about
to experience a sustained period of fierce budget cuts and staff redundancies.
That’s the situation as we hear the “good news” that the economic crisis is
officially over – as the FTSE 100 index reaches the 5000 mark.
Of course this is genuinely
“good news” for the fatcats and the
“something-for-nothing” big investors – but not quite so good for teachers,
lecturers and the young people we teach. For the “recovery”, we are told is
dependent on public spending being “squeezed” from 1.1% to 0.7%. And this, we are
told by New Labour, by the Tories and by every self appointed pundit and
apologist for capitalism, means us making a few sacrifices – in terms of jobs,
pay, pensions, resources and much more. And if we fail to conform to this
regime, we will only have ourselves to blame if things get worse…
Just how long will we
tolerate this Alice-in-wonderland interpretation of the world, where working
people are held responsible for the crisis generated by those who have got very
rich and powerful by exploiting them in the first place? Where public services,
so essential to the ordinary people who can’t buy into the privileged areas of
private education and health etc, are cut in order that the bankers and
speculators can return to “business as usual”? Where children in State schools will
have to share books and equipment in oversized classes and inadequate
buildings, often taught by unqualified staff, while those who brought the world
into crisis remain free to buy their children the small classes and “old school
tie” privileges of private education?
On top of the cuts of
course, the Government ploughs ahead towards privatisation of education…
through the discredited Academies and Trusts programme which takes schools out
of the control of publicly accountable local authorities and puts them in the
hands of “private sponsors” – which include, amongst others, second hand car
salesmen, sausage and pie manufacturers, religious institutions, carpet
warehouse magnates, mobile phone dealers – and yes, you might have guessed it –
an outfit called “ARK”, which run by a collection of Hedge Fund management companies! Just because
such people and their business interests are responsible for world wide
economic chaos is clearly no reason that they shouldn’t run our education
system!
As more and more local
campaigns against this process of privatisation have been successful, the
Government has changed its ground. Now the “privateers” don’t even have to put
up the £2million previously required, the Government seeks to “pretty up” the
privatisation by encouraging more universities and colleges to become
“sponsors”…but the “direction of travel”, the dismantlement of state education
and its privatisation remains very much in place.
And there is money to be
made already… just last week the Times Education Supplement reported, “The management of a special school for boys
with behavioural problems (The
The TES in the same issue
(4.9.09) also reports “Edison, an
American education firm, took over the management of
I bet they do! There’s no
shortage of public money when it’s destined to fill the trouser pockets of the
privately rich…
The private sector, the
competitive dog-eat-dog world of profit is unstable and unaccountable and
periodically goes through period of crisis and collapse. Recent experience
bears this out. Supposing there had been a Woolworth’s Academy, or an MFI
academy, or a
Yet the neoliberal agenda of
New Labour – predicted by some to have been “killed off” by the financial
crisis and economic recession – carries on regardless, with the Tories always
willing to go one step further.
It is not that the lessons
have not been learned, it is that they have been deliberately ignored - ignored
in favour of another more powerful one – that only parties that promote the
profit driven interests of big business and finance capital are seen as “fit
for office” by ‘opinion forming’ media moguls and those individuals and
organisations who are most politically powerful.
It is now quite clear that
if the Labour Party is to have a chance of winning the coming General Election
it will need to seize the lifeline thrown by the People’s Charter and similar
proposals for a Manifesto based on the real needs of working people, and turn
its back on the neoliberal policies that have so damaged the lives and
interests of those people. The opportunity is there – let’s hope they take it…
though it appears unlikely to say the least.
Meanwhile almost 4 million children
continue to live in poverty in
Public service cuts and
particularly education cuts will worsen their position – underlining and
worsening social disadvantage. At the same time “Academised”
schools’ track records show that children from the toughest backgrounds are not
welcome, as they are simply just not good prospects for exam results, and the
Academy’s position in the school “league tables”.
So, teachers have a
professional as well as a Trade Union and political responsibility to fight the
cuts, and to fight privatisation – but not only that. We have to develop a new
vision for education, to replace the “tick box”, tests and league table dominated, competitive, marketised service that has been
forced on us.
That’s why the NUT is
proposing the development of an Education Charter - and is seeking to join with other unions in
the education sector, with parents’ organisations, school governors, local
communities and all education campaigners to initiate a wide debate about the
key features of an education service and curriculum to meet the needs of
working people.
Such an Education Charter will
not just be a policy document, but an organising and campaigning tool, taking us off the defensive
and putting teachers and schools at the heart of their communities in the wider
struggle for what the People’s Charter for Change calls “a fairer Britain” – a
struggle that can’t and won’t wait any longer.
Bill Greenshields
Ex-President, National