Labour's misplaced priorities
(MORNING STAR
Monday 08 September 2008)
TUC congress
2008: BILL GREENSHIELDS
LAST Sunday
saw the Burston Strike School Rally, commemorating
the long struggle, starting in 1914, of two teachers and their local community
for proper education for working-class children.
The
teachers, Tom and Kitty Higdon, were committed trade unionists and socialists
and insisted that children should not be simply conditioned to "know their
place" but properly educated in a sound and warm school building.
This was
enough to outrage the local "establishment" and Tom and Kitty were
sacked - whereupon the children went on strike and followed them to a new
"strike school," financed by donations, which flourished until the Higdons' death in 1939.
How far have
we moved on from those days?
Their fight
is one of many that have characterised the history of education - a history of
struggle.
Struggle for
the rights of all children and, particularly, working-class children from the
most deprived backgrounds, both urban and rural.
Struggle for
the proper provision of public services for the well being of individuals and
the whole community.
Struggle for
the extension of democratic rights for working people.
Now, we are
living through pivotal times and, though of course circumstances have changed,
the essential nature of the struggle remains the same.
Decades of
research show that there is a direct and clear correlation between the economic
background of the child, the educational opportunities that they can access and
their attainments.
Recently,
the work of Leon Feinstein of London University shows how, in 2008, it is
possible to correlate the social class of a child with their development score
at age 22 months to accurately predict educational qualifications at the age of
26 years.
The government
recognises the link between class and education. The Department for Education
and Skills, in publishing the five-year strategy in 2004, wrote: "We also
fail our most disadvantaged children and young people ... Internationally, our
rate of child poverty is still high ... The links between poor health,
disadvantage and low education outcomes are stark."
So, we have
to ask, if the links are stark, why is your absolute priority not the
elimination of poverty?
In fact, as the
recent Rowntree report shows, the situation has worsened, with 200,000 more
children living in poverty over the last two years, a total of over three
million, or one in four children.
The sad fact
is that governments, both Tory and new Labour, while recognising the
correlation between class disadvantage, poverty and educational
underachievement, have turned the matter on its head and have sought to blame
the education system, teachers and other public-sector workers for continuing
inequalities and for the lack of "social mobility" and social
cohesion.
Recently,
Education Secretary Ed Balls wrote in a Guardian article: "A culture of
excusing poor-performing pupils on the basis of deprivation will let another
generation fail."
We could put
it another way: "A culture of excusing poor-performing governments on the
basis of blaming teachers will let another generation of politicians get away
with it."
The
government, far from tackling poverty, is obsessed with the privatisation
agenda. Thus, their academies programme and their determination to impose a
"flexible school workforce" and to attack national pay and conditions
- both preconditions of a successful privatisation exercise.
Why are they
so unwilling to tackle the real causes of educational underachievement and so
determined to undermine teachers and break up state education in the name of
"diversity and choice?"
The
unpalatable and politically unpopular fact, in my view, is that social class
advantage and disadvantage and the growing wealth and poverty gap, far from
being aberrations in our free market, dog-eat-dog, private not public society,
are national and international economic imperatives that the government feels
unable or unwilling to challenge.
And those
with the most wealth and power demand new avenues for investment and profit -
the education system being a prime target.
All our
battles on pay and working conditions are fought within this context. If it is
money that makes the world go round, it is inequality in wealth and power that
keeps it turning the way that we are encouraged to think of as normal.
We teachers
need to be part of a wider movement that rejects the fundamental systemic
inequalities of society, rejects the social mechanisms that sustain inequality
and works strategically against them.
Fighting for
proper pay and conditions for school staff and for a good local state school
for every child and community, we reflect the values of the people of
Bill
Greenshields is president of the National