Why teachers have had enough

The two main teachers’ unions, representing about 500,000 teachers, today begin a series of rolling strikes culminating in an all-out national strike for one day before the end of the year. They have simply had enough and it’s easy to see why.

Nowhere is the lack of democracy that is a feature of our age more apparent than in education. Education secretary Michael Gove has shut his ears to the education experts, the teachers themselves, their unions and most parents too. 

In line with what is happening in most other workplaces, Gove wants every teacher to take on more duties, work longer for less pay and agree to lower pensions. And he plans to dismantle the national pay bargaining system which is a direct attack on the unions.

Head teachers will get more power (and money) while the teachers themselves, at the sharp end, get pay cuts. They are expected to toe the government line, swallow their principles, and carry on teaching in a set-up that they most of them think should serve all children better.

And they are not consulted or listened to. Such is the arrogance of this Tory Party. They know best.

The Labour Party’s answer? Shadow minister Stephen Twigg’s speech at the recent party conference was almost pure waffle. There was nothing on the pay and conditions of teachers, nothing on performance-related pay, so impractical and unpopular with teachers.

And, of course, there was no commitment to return the new academies and free schools to local authority control — which would restore some fairness to the system. No surprise there as New Labour introduced academies in the first place. On the role of teachers to help work out Labour policy on education, there was not a word.

“Our vision of one nation is one of high aspirations for all,” said Twigg. “The Tories will tell us that we shouldn’t aim high for all. That’s what makes them conservative. Out for the privileged few. Wrong choices, wrong priorities. But as the progressives of British politics, we reject their defeatism. One nation is about high aspiration. On childcare. On the forgotten 50%. On higher education. Opening up power wealth and opportunity....”

Blah, blah, blah.  

Labour would make a few tweaks to the education system here and there, and some small policy changes such as wrap-around-care of pupils from 8.00am to 6.00pm, but would not challenge the Tory grand plan.

Gove’s ambition is the fragmentation of state education into competing schools, some with fancy new names and extra money, and some destined to become “sink schools”. Some would be able to select their intake of new pupils, others would end up with the so-called problem children, mostly the poor, and those on free school meals.

A few would have to teach to the narrow and prescriptive national curriculum, while the new academies and free schools, like the public schools, can ignore it.

The idea of having a co-operative family of schools in a region or of providing a good community school in each catchment area, is simply not on the agenda of the three main parties. It is the “global race”, the necessity of keeping UK PLC competitive and more profitable than the next country, that drives everything, including education policy.

Private schools are the model the Tories are heading towards. They, together with high-achieving state schools, can select the future entrepreneurs and scientists that the capitalist economy needs. The rest can join the race to the bottom.

There are other models of education, of course, that can be developed through practice and discussion. In a different world, they would set out to develop the talents and aspirations of all children, not for capitalism or the nation but for themselves and humanity as a whole.  

Peter Arkell

Form alliance to defeat government

Today’s strike by teachers, college lecturers and civil servants is an important challenge to the low pay and privatisation agenda that this government is inflicting on workers in the public services. It is the first national strike by teachers in the National Union of Teachers (NUT) for 21 years. For many lecturers in the University and College Union (UCU) and for civil servants in the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS) it is the first time that they too have taken industrial action.

While the leaders of the unions will tend to see the strike as a protest and a chance to let off steam, for the 400,000 workers involved, it is a long-overdue opportunity to express their anger at the way they have been treated over a number of years, culminating this year with another below-inflation pay award. And beyond the pay issue, today’s strikers are all enmeshed in “an orgy of privatisation” plans, as Mark Serwotka, the leader of the PCS, has described it.

New Labour’s ringing slogan of 1997,” Education, Education, Education” turned out in practice to be the opposite of what most voters thought it meant. The Tory Education Reform Act of 1988, with the introduction of the prescriptive National Curriculum, the management of schools by themselves, the setting up of new types of school, such as the City Technology colleges, the ending of local control over these new schools and the polytechnics and FE colleges, and a regime of testing youngsters every other year, was left entirely in place by new Labour in 1997. The much-hated schools inspector Chris Woodhead, continued to oversee and terrorise schools up and down the country.

New Labour then built on this framework, encouraging competition between different schools and colleges and inviting the private sector to bid for control of so-called “failing schools” and even failing authorities (such as Islington). It created “academies” and school trusts outside the control of the local authority (but under the control of a local business, or a church or even an “intelligent design” outfit). The government outsourced school meals and school supplies and got private firms to build (and own) new schools and colleges through PFI deals. Many schools themselves are increasingly run along the lines of a business enterprise with the head teacher as the CEO.

This was called “modernisation” and was falsely touted as a means to increase parental choice. Apart from opening the door wide for businesses to cash in, it led to confusion and dismay amongst teachers, who now had to teach children to pass tests, the results of which became the all-important measure for attracting new parents.

Centralised, top-down management of education in the state sector, in schools and colleges, has largely cut across the old ideals of a learning environment, which was to encourage a genuine spirit of enquiry and discovery in youngsters. Class sizes have risen while wealth and job inequalities have manifested themselves in the form of disruptive behaviour. No wonder three out of four NUT members voted to support strike action,

The truth is that New Labour (and the Tories for that matter), dancing to the tune of the World Trade Organisation, will continue to pursue policies for the privatisation of all the public services, including the NHS and the civil service. That is the dynamic of the new market state, towards a world where eventually transnational corporations will provide everything for everyone from birth to death (in two or three distinct levels, of course, according to wealth and class).

With New Labour in a weakened and confused state in the midst of a growing global economic crisis, now is the time to force the issue, to build an alliance of all public sector unions teachers, parents and other supporters to defend services and to defeat this government of corporate globalisation and privatisation. Such an alliance can only strengthen the movement if and when it comes to confronting Cameron’s Tories. The reported meeting of the NUT and the PCS to plan for further action after today is an important first step.

Peter Arkell