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No2EU rally - genesis of a new workers' party?

2009-06-03T22:18:00.001Z

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.

STOP THE TESTING TREADMILL

2008-03-17T20:40:00.003Z

Sheila Caffrey (Bristol NUT)
SATS. The dreaded word that makes children and teachers alike shudder with horror. But it makes MPs and the media smile with joy as it gives them yet another stick to beat struggling schools with!
A needless stick, most of Britain would argue, with England being the only country to have school performance tables for 11, 14 and 16 year olds and National Curriculum tests which are imposed on all children.
In Scotland, school performance tables similar to those in England have never been published and there are no tests similar to those in England. Wales got rid of school league tables and the national tests, and instead uses teacher assessments: a much truer reflection of a child’s level that can actually then influence future teaching.
But “league tables give parents choice”, we hear the government chime, and whilst of course some can choose where to send their children to school, most parents have to send their children to their local school.
No doubt it will be a school where the whole staff are working at least 50 hour weeks to try and ensure the children benefit as much as possible, but it doesn’t detract from the fact the school may be under-resourced or in a ‘deprived’ area.
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".
And of course this is true. Whilst as teachers we feel the pressure endlessly weighing us down, you cannot escape the fact that a child’s 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 are advantages that most working-class children will never access, at home or in school.
Whilst learning through play is being introduced at the lower end of primary schools and a creative curriculum is being grasped by many, these things are meant to be dropped in Year 2 and 6, as children are to just focus on Literacy and Maths, ignoring any of the other subjects that will actually teach our children to be active rounded-out citizens in society.
As well-known children's author, Philip Pullman, commented: the government's National Literacy Strategy document has "71 different verbs under the heading of 'reading' ... reinforce, predict, check, discuss.... The word enjoy didn't appear once".
UNICEFs findings that British children are some of the unhappiest in the world does not come as a great surprise, when a child’s education appears to be a race, always pushing to the next exam. This has an extremely negative impact on a child’s academic life as well as social and emotional well-being. Not exactly the model that ‘Every Child Matters’ suggests!
The NUT should again step up their campaign against SATs and league tables, supporting both teachers and children to get the most out of education.
It would have an immediate direct affect on stress and workload, two of the main reasons so many teachers leave teaching. It would also improve children’s lives and help guarantee they receive the true benefit a decent education system can provide.

LGBT TEACHERS

2008-03-17T20:38:00.001Z

LGBT TEACHERS
FIGHT BACK AGAINST INTERNATIONAL HOMOPHOBIA & TRANSPHOBIA
Sheila Caffrey (Bristol NUT)
The debate at NUT CONFERENCE on international homophobia and transphobia is an important opportunity to highlight the growing repression against LGBT people in a number of countries. It is also vital that the trade union movement – especially teachers - opposes these attacks.
Some, including LGBT people themselves, may feel that recent legislative reforms have brought equality here in Britain. But legal freedoms do not abolish prejudice – especially at a time when recession is starting to grip.
The hangover from years of government-sanctioned homophobia is still felt by many young people, especially in the form of homophobic bullying in education.
The main parties have all made comments against homophobic bullying but hot air from them won't solve anything. In fact their educational policies are likely to make it worse. Privatising schools into Academies lets unaccountable sponsors take control. If the sponsor has anti-LGBT views, as may well be the case with some church and business backers, then students can wave goodbye to any decent education on LGBT issues, policies to deal with homophobic bullying or sex and relationship education in general.
Even in community schools, there may be few resources to help equip teachers and staff on how to deal with homophobic bullying or provide education on relationship issues.
Prejudice and violence is still a very real issue in the UK, but in some countries LGBT people are facing government repression and attacks by right-wing and fundamentalist forces.
Members of the CWI, the Committee for a Workers’ International, the international body to which the Socialist Party are affiliated, have been to the fore in opposing repression and calling for LGBT activists to link their struggle to a wider movement of oppressed peoples facing economic and social discrimination.
Once again, the 2007 Pride march in Moscow was broken up. This was another in a long line of brutal repressions of opposition activities that are a hallmark of Putin's regime. Members of 'Socialist Resistance', (CWI in Russia), were arrested alongside Russian and international protestors.
The Pride demo in Jerusalem has faced vicious threats and homophobic propaganda by reactionary Jewish and Arab organisations. Maavak Sotzialisti (CWI in Israel) campaigned for proper stewarding to protect the event and produced leaflets outlining the reactionary role of the homophobic campaign against the demonstration being used to divide workers, Jewish and Arab, alike.
In Poland, the mayor of Warsaw has banned a Pride parade and encouraged neo-fascists to attack gays. CWI members in Poland are active alongside August 80, a leftward-moving trade union with its main base amongst miners. It has initiated a new left-wing anti-capitalist party, formed a committee to defend victimised workers, but has also championed gay rights and abortion rights. STOP THE TESTING TREADMILL

GENDER EQUALITY

2008-03-17T20:36:00.001Z

GENDER EQUALITY
Fight for a woman's right to choose
Sarah Sachs-Eldridge (Socialist Party)
Hypocrisy is not the word for it! The Guardian reported that Tory leader David Cameron pledged to give a third of jobs in his first government to women in order to ensure that they are not mere 'window dressing' but can influence decisions affecting women's lives.
But earlier in the week he said he would support calls for a reduction in the abortion time limit. Those who seek late abortions are among the most vulnerable and any reduction in the time limit would put their mental or physical well-being at risk. But we shouldn't be surprised.
Fundamentally many Tories and church leaders, and the anti-abortion groups such as SPUC (Society for the Protection of Unborn Children) would like to see the right to legal abortions removed. Last October an NOP poll showed that a majority of people in Britain (83%) support a woman's right to choose to have an abortion. Most anti-abortion groups do not, therefore, feel confident to publicly call for the abolition of all abortion rights at this stage.
Instead attacks are made on the time limit and on abortions in the case of foetal abnormality, for which there is no time limit, in an attempt to erode rights and to build up a stigma about terminations.
Prior to the 1967 Act abortions had to be paid for at private clinics. This meant that thousands of mainly working-class women, who could not afford to pay, were condemned to dangerous back-street terminations.
A doctor working in Lewisham in 1956 described what this meant: “every night three or four women would be admitted with botched abortions. They would be haemorrhaging, suffering from immense loss of blood; if they left it too long they could have become infected or gone septic and sometimes there was kidney failure”.
Millions of women around the world have no access to legal free and safe abortion. This does not mean that terminations do not take place. Every year 19 million women risk their health and lives to undergo unsafe abortions.
According to the International Planned Parenthood Federation, complications from unsafe abortions are responsible for 70,000 deaths each year and studies show that up to 80% of women who have unsafe abortions suffer illness, injury or disability as a result.
The 1967 Act was an enormous improvement on the previous situation in Britain but is certainly not enough. Contrary to the way it is portrayed, the 1967 Abortion Act did not legalise abortion on demand. The Act does not apply to Northern Ireland, where women have to travel to Britain.
While it is estimated that one in five British doctors does not believe abortion should be legal, a woman must get two doctors' signatures and then begin negotiating the cut and privatised NHS. 27% of Primary Care Trusts delay women longer than 21 days. The government's own Science and Technology committee recommends that the requirement for two doctors' signatures be removed.
Crucially the 1967 Act introduced access to abortion on grounds other than serious risk to the mother's health or life. The choice about when and whether to have children does not come down to the question of abortion rights or services.
For many women the choice is influenced by their financial and housing situation, access to childcare, questions of domestic violence, mental and physical health and other personal issues. Women should not be forced to go through nine months of pregnancy and a lifetime of motherhood. Many of those who seek abortions will have or have had children but this must be a choice.
Earlier this year Baroness Masham of Ilton tabled an amendment attacking abortion on grounds of foetal abnormality. The law currently allows for late abortion (after 24 weeks) if tests suggest that the baby will be seriously disabled. The results of many of these tests, such as amniocentesis, are not available until 18-20 weeks.
The motion fell but if passed into law, this amendment would have had a devastating impact for the small proportion of women who need to use this clause.
During the debate, Baroness Masham said: "I can think of no greater affront to equal opportunities for those who are disabled than the denial of the right to life itself." But this amendment would in no way advance the rights of disabled people. Every woman should have the right to decide whether to continue with her pregnancy including being able to rely on adequate public services and support.
The Socialist Party campaigns for the right to a minimum income for carers and disabled people that reflects the real cost of living and for accessible public transport and properly funded social services.
Ann Widdecombe, a prominent Tory anti-abortion campaigner, is known to oppose financial help from the state for older carers who have passed retirement age. Their hypocrisy knows no bounds! Socialist Party members stood side by side with workers with disabilities fighting against closure of the Remploy factories.
The 1967 Act set a time limit of 28 weeks. This was reduced to 24 weeks in 1990 and Cameron and Co now seek to reduce it further. In practice it already means 22 weeks as doctors often allow a two-week margin of error. Emotive propaganda in the form of 4D imaging has been used by anti-abortion campaigners. They cite new developments in medicine that increase the viability of foetuses at 24 weeks.
Unfortunately this has been shown to be on very shaky ground scientifically. In fact the Science and Technology Committee said of those working in perinatal care that "in general, [they] do not believe that survival for babies born below 24 weeks of gestation has improved to such an extent that they would see any value in redefining the lower limit of viability".
In fact 99% of abortions take place before 20 weeks. No woman wishes to have a late abortion. There are greater health risks associated with late abortions. Women who present late for abortion are generally in the most difficult circumstances. In many cases they are the most vulnerable; those with mental health problems or learning disabilities and victims of incest or domestic violence.
Some women present late because they did not know they were pregnant. They may be menopausal, having irregular periods anyway or regular 'bleeds' with no obvious signs of pregnancy. They may have a contraceptive device fitted or be on the contraceptive pill, but as Guardian columnist Polly Toynbee says: "The pill is only 99% effective and since 3.5 million women take it, at least 35,000 efficient pill-users will get pregnant accidentally every year."
The portrayal of women in the media contributes to an environment in which young women feel increasingly under pressure to be sexual at an ever younger age without the necessary support and advice. Teenagers are among those who seek late abortions who can be too scared to speak to anyone or do not realise they are pregnant.
The Netherlands has the world's lowest abortion rate. The author and Guardian columnist George Monbiot recently cited a Unicef report which noted that a sharp reduction in unwanted teenage pregnancies was caused by "the combination of a relatively inclusive society with more open attitudes towards sex and sex education, including contraception".
If David Cameron was actually concerned about women's health and well-being and serious about wanting to reduce the numbers of late abortions he should campaign for improving sex education for all young people and for a more open attitude to sex. Chance would be a fine thing.
For the Tories, like the other parties of big business, there cannot be little enough money spent on public services. They blame individuals for being 'irresponsible'. The real irresponsibility lies with the politicians and the fat cats whose interests they protect.
Nearly a third of the UK's largest businesses paid no corporation tax in the year 2005-6 according to a Guardian report, estimating that Tesco, for example, paid a tax rate of just over 20%, 10% below the grossly inadequate UK corporate tax rate. Better access to free contraception, investment in family planning facilities, research into improved contraceptives and information campaigns are needed.
Legal rights alone are insufficient. Gordon Brown has said that he will be guided by science and sees no case for reducing the time limit. However New Labour's policies of NHS privatisation will clearly make it more difficult for women to access abortion services.
The 1967 Act made no provision for increased NHS funding and women face the problem of whether their health authority will fund an abortion. NHS statistics show that only 86% of abortions are funded by the NHS in Wales and that 26% of women in England have to pay privately for their abortion.
St John's and St Elizabeth's Hospital in North London gives a glimpse of the effect privatised health care will have on women's needs. George Monbiot points out that although it is partly funded by the NHS, this is "a Catholic hospital, which forbids doctors from prescribing contraceptives or referring women for abortions". New Labour, with privately run, unaccountable PFI and private health schemes, is no friend to women.
A woman's right to choose when and whether to have children is a class issue. Prior to the 1967 Act the rich could afford to pay for abortions. In countries like southern Ireland, where abortion is not legal, rich women can pay to travel. Whether or not to continue with a pregnancy should be a personal choice made by women.
But a genuine choice is only possible where abortion is free, on demand and safe and the resources and support are available to bring up a child. At present these aspects of a woman's right to choose are not readily available to all women.
Every year about a thousand women in the UK take legal action claiming they were sacked because they became pregnant. Last year there were 200,000 more children living in poverty in the UK than the year before. The government was meant to be halving child poverty by 2010.
A Unicef report put British children at the bottom of a league table for child well-being across 21 industrialised countries. These are issues for the working class and unions to take up and fight on.
We cannot wait for any of the politicians from the main pro-business parties to defend our rights, let alone to fight for more. Some so-called pro-choice MPs and peers have said that stirring the abortion debate could open a Pandora's box and risk erosion of existing rights.
If these MPs cared more about women's lives and health than about retaining their seat and all the perks of the job, they would be tabling amendments on ending the two-signature law, on pumping money into all aspects of the health service - abortion services, fertility treatment, maternity and midwifery services and making sure that all of it is free and publicly run. They would campaign, as the Socialist Party does, for childcare to be available to all, for equal pay for women and a living minimum wage, not one that condemns millions of women to poverty.
The pro-business, anti-working class policies of all three main political parties make life much harder for women and impact enormously on the choices available to them. The Socialist Party campaigns for a new mass workers' party. Such a party could really challenge the so-called 'pro-lifers'. SPUC and the other anti-abortion groups have pots of cash to fund their campaigns. MPs with small majorities feel vulnerable to anti-abortion lobbies, especially among Catholic voters.
In the absence of a mass workers' party at this stage it is crucial that the trade unions oppose any attacks on abortion rights and build for a national demonstration to demand improvements for women.
The Abortion Act was introduced as one of many reforms gained in the post-war years of economic boom. Women made up more and more of the workforce and, with improvements to their living standards, they became more confident to struggle.
They were not only successful in the struggle for abortion rights, but also for equal pay and sex discrimination legalisation. But there is still a battle to be fought. 31 years after the Equal Pay Act women in full-time work earn 17% less than men, rising to 36% for part-time workers.
Politicians often seek to distract us, using emotive campaigns on so-called 'moral issues' in the hope of whipping up a right-wing backlash. This is currently the case in Spain, where the housing market bubble has burst and the politicians attempt to distract attention by attacking abortion rights.
To distract workers from uniting to fight back, the capitalist parties also scapegoat certain sections of society. Recently much of this has been aimed at women and families, such as Blair blaming gun and knife crime on black mothers. But the struggles starting to take place over the single-status agreement in local government show how 'divide and rule' tactics can be overcome.
In Greenwich, where mainly male manual workers were told they must accept a pay cut to fund equal pay for mainly low-paid women workers, the Unison branch, whose branch secretary is a Socialist Party member, has conducted a marvellous battle and forced the council to guarantee no wage reductions.
The Socialist Party has a long history of fighting for women's rights. We have campaigned against sexist advertising as well as against sexism on many university campuses. We have a proud record of campaigning against domestic violence and challenging low pay and cuts and privatisation of public services.
You can't fully control what you don't own. Socialism is about public ownership of the top companies and about planning production to meet need rather than profit. It is about ordinary women and men democratically making and controlling the decisions which affect our lives on a day-to-day basis.
Based on co-operation and equality, socialism would lay the basis for an end to poverty and all forms of discrimination and oppression. Only on that basis will women genuinely have the right to choose when and whether to have children.

Free abortion on request.
Access to free, safe contraception including emergency contraception; a reversal of the cuts in family planning services and a massive investment into sympathetic youth advisory centres.
Improved sex education in schools.
Access to free fertility treatment on the NHS for all those who need it.
Maternity and child benefit to reflect the real cost of pregnancy, childbirth and bringing up a child.

THE COSTS OF ‘INCLUSION’

2008-03-17T20:32:00.000Z

THE COSTS OF ‘INCLUSION’
Louise Cuffaro (Newham NUT)
I am a primary class teacher working in Manor Park, Newham. Newham is a fully inclusive borough and has had no special schools for many years.
All the teachers in my school fully support the principle of Inclusion. However, we are increasingly concerned that the real needs of pupils with special needs are not being met due to: class size; lack of ongoing training for LSAs and class teachers; lack of timetabled time for teachers and LSAs to plan and prepare for Special Needs pupils; a lack of trained specialist teachers in the many different areas such as Autism, Downs Syndrome, ADHD etc. to support and work with class teachers and Special Needs pupils.
Class Size
This year I have an autistic pupil and a pupil with severe learning difficulties and epilepsy in a Year 3 class of 29 children. (This is not unusual in our, and many other, Newham classes.) They both have fulltime LSA support.
Our class size limit is 30 and there is no reduction to account for the extra workload entailed in planning and teaching a class that includes Special Needs pupils with very high levels of needs. Besides children with levels of Special Needs that mean they have fulltime LSA support, we all have children with special needs who are on school action plan but have little (½ a day per week) or no LSA support.
Class teachers in Yrs 2 and 6 also have the extra pressure and workload of preparing their pupils for SATs while still trying to provide an appropriate curriculum and experience for their Special Needs children.
At the same time, we also have a high turnover of pupils and about 97% of all our pupils have English as a Second Language.
We all feel strongly that overall class size should be reduced to 24 and reduced further for each pupil with high level Special Needs.
Training
My autistic pupil came to our school able to communicate using the Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS) at level 5 but unfortunately only 2 out of 4 LSAs, timetabled to be with him, and myself have had ½ a day’s PECS training and only to level 3! This is frustrating for the pupil and for all of us who want to communicate with him to the fullest extent possible.
Planning and Preparation
Many children with Special Needs present challenging behaviour that disrupts class lessons and routines but there is no timetabled discussion and planning time given to class teachers and LSAs. We need time to review and discuss day to day activities and develop strategies for behaviour management in the interests of both the Special Needs child and the rest of the class, not to mention the frazzled nerves of the adults involved.
Also there is no time to set up and make the many resources necessary to provide all the appropriate and fulfilling curriculum and life skills activities that our children with Special Needs need. Both teachers and LSAs do a lot of extra work at home or in their inadequate breaks (15 minutes morning break, but often not at the same time, and LSAs get only 30minutes lunch break). While teachers and LSAs do their best, management tends to exploit our goodwill and ignores the fact that all our efforts cannot compensate for the fact that our Special Needs children have no soft play area, no sensory area, no mentoring area and no space to practice life skills comfortably and with dignity outside of their classroom.
Specialist Teachers
At present we only see a Support Teacher about once a term when they visit to observe a Special Needs child and grab a quick chat with the class teacher.
We feel strongly that specialist teachers should be based on site in a special unit attached to every mainstream school so that Special Needs children can have access to soft play areas, sensory areas and some one to one teaching as well as being in a mainstream classroom.

FAITH SCHOOLS

2008-03-17T20:31:00.002Z

FAITH SCHOOLS
ALLOW A REAL DEBATE ON THE FUTURE OF FAITH SCHOOLS
Martin Powell-Davies (Lewisham NUT)
The City of Leicester motion on faith schools allows NUT Conference to return to the debate begun two years ago in Torquay.
Given the range of views, and the understandable concern of teachers and communities of various faiths that their beliefs might be under attack, it is right that the Union considers its policy carefully. However, those fears cannot be used as an excuse to prevent real debate about the way forward.
Unfortunately, when I attended the Union’s Consultative Conference on Faith Schools in November, I was one of a number of delegates to be surprised that the Union’s Interim Position paper argued that “there was a strong case for new [faith] schools to be established”. This was a position that had been defeated at the 2006 Conference.
While trade unionists must fully defend the right of every individual to practise their religion, it is a false logic to equate this with supporting the setting-up of separate schools, for example for the Muslim community. As one of the later platform speakers pointed out, such a step actually risks allowing the often unrepresentative and reactionary religious leadership of minority communities to control young people’s education. It is the same kind of danger that arises from allowing fundamentalist Christians to sponsor Academies and peddle ‘intelligent design’.
The trade union movement has to strongly warn against the dangers of faith schools segregating and dividing working-class communities. In contrast, multi-faith, comprehensive education, while insufficient on its own to overcome all the problems of society as a whole, does enable youth to accept and recognise differences of faith and race, fostering a unity that will be built on in the wider community beyond the school gate.
But what about existing faith schools? Given the history of education in Britain, where Government-funded voluntary-aided schools have become a firmly established fact, any suggestion that the Union might support a “secular” education system as a “long term aim”, as the City of Leicester motion suggests, is bound to be controversial. However, it is one that historically the trade union movement have rightly supported.
We must fiercely defend the right to religious freedom, without in any way trying to belittle people of faith as some ‘secularists’ can do. However, we must equally oppose any attempt to impose a particular religious outlook on children. That’s why we should indeed argue for a secular education system.
This is an argument that would need to be won in local communities, including faith communities, convincing parents of the benefits of a secular comprehensive system, teaching a range of religious and non-religious views within the curriculum.
The debate will undoubtedly continue. But to let it happen, Socialist Party Teachers will be supporting the City of Leicester’s call to widen the remit of the NUT Working Party to include proposals for the integration of faith schools into a secular education system.

No to Academies. No to Selection.
All pupils to study a curriculum that includes a range of religious and non-religious views as part of a wider humanities curriculum that encourages solidarity across the globe.

Full freedom to practise religion but not to impose any particular religious outlook on young people in school.

Encourage all faith schools to be part of a secular comprehensive system.

42 IN A CLASS - PERSONALISE THAT, GORDON!

2008-03-17T19:06:00.000Z

42 IN A CLASS - PERSONALISE THAT, GORDON!
Robin Pye (St.Helens NUT)
In my last year at primary school, I was taught in a class of 42. Our teacher, Mr. Crossman, kept telling us how terrible it was that we were in such a large class. I grew up thinking that classes of 42 children, along with outside toilets, would soon be a thing of the past.
Four years ago, I was at a meeting of primary teachers in a school not too dissimilar from the one I remembered from my childhood. One of the staff then told the meeting she had 42 pupils in her class and wanted to know if that was allowed. I couldn’t believe it.
Unfortunately, of course, the law allows it. Even more unfortunately, I could not find anybody who was prepared to do anything about it. The school did not have the funds to split the group. The Council did not have the power to instruct the school to do so, nor did they have the inclination to increase the school’s funding for fear that it would encourage ‘irresponsible’ attitudes to budget setting across all the schools in St. Helens.
Two years ago, I was in another primary school to be told that NUT members were teaching merged classes numbering between 52 and 55 pupils every afternoon. The Head confirmed to me that if she would de-merge the classes – but only when she had funds to employ a part-time teacher (see box).
Pupil numbers always fluctuate for all sorts of demographic reasons. The fact that schools get delegated budgets based on pupil numbers means they are ill equipped to respond to these fluctuations. In St. Helens we have schools that seem to have a policy of having class sizes in the mid 30’s so they can remain in robust financial health. We also have schools with falling rolls that then have to make large classes, usually in Key Stage 2, to compensate financially for a shortage of pupils elsewhere in the school. This can lead schools to make teachers redundant while their colleagues are left behind to teach large classes. These schools are then treated as if they are guilty of financial mismanagement.
Some of the cracks are being papered over using the worst aspects of the ‘remodelling’ agenda. Schools who cannot afford teachers make do with teaching assistants to cover more and more of the timetable.
The impact on children is quite clear. Larger classes make it harder for the individual needs of pupils to be met. Teachers inevitably focus on those pupils whose performance will make most impact on the dreaded league tables. Where year groups are merged to make large classes this problem is made even worse.
The impact on teachers is also clear. The larger the class, the more marking and preparation needs to be done. There are more classroom management issues and our members can too easily go under.
We have a colleague in St. Helens who has been placed on capability procedures despite having a track record of being an excellent teacher. He teaches a class of 35 Year 3 and Year 4 pupils in a school which has previously been ‘financially mismanaged’. He has three pupils with special needs none of whom get any additional support. He is not responsible for the financial mismanagement – nor are his pupils - but they are all paying the price now.
Of course, not all schools are struggling in this way. Independent primary schools never have such large classes. Class sizes in the upper teens are more typical in this sector so the pupils in those schools can get a lot more of a teacher’s time. The teachers spend less time marking and can spend more time planning lessons. Often, they are relatively free of pressure to meet SATs related targets. Why can’t all children access a primary education like that?
Gordon Brown gave a pledge in 2006 that spending per pupil in state schools will be increased to match the per pupil funding in private schools. But who can believe him? The limited funding announcements in this year’s Budget are just crumbs off the table compared to the billions that have been thrown at banks to stave off financial crisis.
Additional resources to employ more teachers are vital, but on their own will not be enough.
The system of delegated budgets and per pupil funding demanded by the ‘market forces’ approach to education also needs to be replaced by a system that funds schools according to need, including guaranteed funding to enforce maximum class size limits.
The NUT’s current workload campaign does, of course, give members the right to request a ballot if they are asked to teach more than 30 pupils. However, it is clear that members are reluctant to take this issue up on a school by school basis. This is because they feel isolated. They are not convinced that there is widespread support for a ceiling of 30 pupils. Some of our members have been teaching in schools where classes in the mid to upper 30’s have been the norm for years.
The Union cannot throw the responsibility for this vital issue onto the courage of individual school groups. It needs to lead a national campaign aimed, above all, at building parental support for our objectives. In the context of a national campaign with the threat of national action, more school groups will be prepared to take up the issue of class size.