Lewisham council: Labour defeated over schools and pool...

LEWISHAM SOCIALIST Party councillors Ian Page and Chris Flood are leading the way in two long-running campaigns; the fight for a new school in the north of the borough and the battle to save Ladywell swimming pool.

Under the last Labour administration, Labour mayor, Steve Bullock, rejected parents' demands to build a much-needed school in the north of Lewisham. Instead, they decided to demolish the recently refurbished swimming pool and build a school on that site!

The Socialist Party opposed this from the start and all opposition parties followed this line in the May elections.

Lewisham is now a hung council, so straight after the election Ian Page, the Socialist Party group leader on the council, immediately called on the other opposition parties - LibDems, Greens and Tories - to live up to their commitment and fight for the school and pool.

On 12 June, Ian and Chris successfully moved the report criticising the mayor's decision and calling for the site of the school to be reviewed. At the full council meeting two days later, the Socialist Party jointly moved a motion formally calling on the mayor to look for a new site for the school and to keep Ladywell Pool open.

All opposition parties voted for this, so Labour were defeated in full council for the first time in years to the delight of the packed public gallery of pool and school campaigners. However, Labour claim that the final decision rests with the Mayor, so the Socialist Party will keep fighting alongside campaigners to try and ensure the council's decision is implemented.

Ian Page commented: "I'm pleased we pressured the other political groups to support this campaign. We told them this must be a priority, we weren't going to let them put it on the back burner once they were safely elected into the Town Hall. Now we'll build the campaign outside the council chamber to make sure we win!"

Chris Flood added: "The Labour group have continuously tried to use legal and procedural tactics to stop us changing their policies since they lost their majority. But I have challenged the Head of Law on this and the Socialist Party will continue to fight their undemocratic procedures".
... but campaigning continues

LEWISHAM'S LABOUR Group, backed up by the council's Tory chair, tried to rule the motion 'unlawful' as it included the sentence "the council agrees to appoint independent advisers to investigate more appropriate sites for a new school".

This power, the council's legal officer argued, could only be exercised by the mayor, not councillors. To get the motion debated, an amendment had to be moved replacing "agrees" with "calls upon the mayor" to appoint advisers.

Yet in June 2005 a motion (also moved by Ian Page) had been debated - and defeated - with the sentence "the council therefore agrees to appoint independent advisers to investigate potential sites for a new school".

The difference? New Labour lost its majority on the council! Unfortunately for them, Socialist Party councillors aren't intimidated by their 'legal' bullying tactics.

(from The Socialist)

New RIG Proposals

Model motion for schools/union branch meetings


New RIG Proposals*


“This meeting rejects the latest proposals on Performance Management from the government via its Rewards and Incentive Group (RIG) of social partners. We particularly regret that leaders of TUC-affiliated teacher unions (NASUWT and ATL) have met with government to agree these proposals whilst knowingly excluding the biggest classroom and head teachers’ unions.



We particularly reject:

The new mandatory three hours per year of teacher observations, on top of OFSTED or Local Authority surveillance.
The new requirement for middle-managers to determine the pay level and incremental progression of their colleagues.
The DfES’ rushed deadline for consultation of 12 July


We call on the NUT to:

a. immediately conduct a full-membership action ballot to implement NUT policy on performance management

b. seek support from the headteachers’ union, the NAHT, to implement such action if these changes are introduced in a revised School Teachers Pay and Conditions Document by September.

c. To produce press and campaign materials highlighting the detrimental effect on workload and industrial relations these proposals will bring.”



Send To:



NUT General Secretary

Hamilton House

Mabledon Place

LONDON

WciH 9BD



E-mail: s.sinnott@nut.org.uk



* Full documentation of proposals and deadlines are at:

dfes website

Louisiana - privatisation with a vengeance

Immediately after Hurricane Katrina hit, the Louisiana state legislature voted to take over most of New Orleans' public schools and effectively fire the 7,500 teachers and employees who work in them. The city schools are now part of the state-run recovery school district and control of many of schools is being given to private charter organizations. The US TV program Democracy Now! spoke with a member of the United Teachers of New Orleans.

Click here

The Socialist Party is not responsible for the content of external links but this is of interest to teachers in the UK.

Massacre of Teachers in Mexico

The 70,000 schoolteachers in Oaxaca have been on strike since May 22nd, demanding a pay raise, differential pay for teachers working in high-cost regions, resources for school infrastructure, free school breakfasts, school supplies, and scholarships for students. For much of this time thousands have been camped in the centre of the city to press their demands.

Thursday morning, state police attacked the encampments with riot police and helicopters. They also raided the union headquarters, a hotel that houses teachers and the Union’s radio station. Despite the force used against them, teachers were able to regain control of the main plaza and the blocks around it.

With all the chaos, the reports we have received of casualties are not firm and are sometimes conflicting, but it appears that at least 5 people, including one teacher's child, have been killed, dozens wounded and dozens more detained. There is fear that there will be more violence as police backed by federal reinforcements attempt to take the plaza again.

If further violence is to be prevented, the Oaxacan teachers will need the support of the international community to pressure Mexican authorities to rein in their security forces and return to the bargaining table.

If you are a member of a teacher trade union you could get your executive member to take an interest in this.

Contact information below:
Lic. Vicente Fox Quesada
Presidente Constitucional de México
Fax 55 5277 2376,
vicente.fox.quesada@presidencia.gob.mx.

There is also a report in Indymedia
http://nyc.indymedia.org/en/2006/06/71509.html

Labour and Tories unite to let the free market loose on schools

New Workers’ Party needed to defend comprehensive education and public services

The spectacle of New Labour and Conservative MPs walking through the parliamentary lobbies together to ensure the successful passage of the Education and Inspections Bill exposes the real crisis in political representation for trade unionists today.

Martin Powell-Davies, Teachers’ representative on the CNWP national steering committee said:
“Today’s vote shows that the Government are determined to privatise and fragment education. It is part and parcel of their big business ideology which considers that the future of public services has to be market competition. But the Education Bill will leave our school system even more divided. Working-class families will be the losers.”

“Teacher unions and education campaigners have won all the arguments but most MPs simply didn’t want to listen. More and more teachers are recognising that these big business politicians will only take notice if they face a real challenge – from industrial action by trade unions and from a political challenge from a new workers’ party”

Dave Nellist, Chair of the Campaign for a New Workers’ Party said: “This shabby coalition reveals all too clearly how New Labour has embraced old Tory policies. Both parties are united in trying to dismantle comprehensive education and all of the other public services that trade unionists have fought for over decades. The Conservatives have always stood for privatisation and privilege. Now New Labour is no different”.

“The main parties are operating their own big business agenda. A new trade-union backed party is needed to give teachers and parents a real voice. The best thing that the Labour rebels can do if they really want to defend education is to join our Campaign for a New Workers’ Party”.

NOTES
The Campaign for a New Workers’ Party (CNWP) was launched in London at a Conference attended by 450 socialists and trade unionists on March 19. Nearly 2,000 supporters have already signed the founding declaration, and a number of left groups have affiliated. Officers and a Steering Committee have been elected.

For further information contact:
Pete McLaren on 07881 520626 or Dave Nellist on 07970 294237

Muslim Schools

OF COURSE, when we are putting forward our views on faith schools, socialists and trade unionists have to be extremely careful not to be seen to be part and parcel of a racist society that denies rights to one minority while allowing the established faith groups to maintain their privileges.
Such discrimination is particularly sharply felt within some Muslim communities, with their anger fuelled by the Iraq war, poverty and growing Islamophobia since 9/11. In areas of London, for example, Christian Church schools faith requirements operate at the expense of Muslim children’s access to local schools.
At this stage, most Muslims in Britain support multiracial, multifaith schools, understanding that further separatism would only lead to increased discrimination against the Muslim community. But some calls have been made for the setting-up of more state funded Islamic faith schools. However, socialists have to explain that this would be a retrograde step, both for workers as a whole and the Muslim community in particular.
Increasing the numbers of faith schools would only increase segregation and division in working-class communities. In contrast, multi-faith, comprehensive education, while insufficient on its own to overcome all the problems of society as a whole, enables youth to accept and recognise differences of faith and race, fostering a unity that can be built on in the wider community beyond the school gates.
This is particularly important at a time when, in the absence of a clear socialist alternative, poverty, wars and oppression have created the conditions for the growth of more fundamentalist interpretations of Christianity, Islam and other faiths. Unchallenged, these ideas could contribute to increasing religious and ethnic tensions that can dangerously divide workers and youth.
Rather than increase the numbers of faith schools, we stand for separate schools of any faith to become reintegrated as non-selective local community schools.

Faith Schools

MANY PARENTS and many teachers are worried at the growing influence of religious views on both education and politics. When a Prime Minister, happy to let God judge his support for war in Iraq, is also happy to let fundamentalist car dealers like Sir Peter Vardy run his Academies according to “Biblical teaching”, there is plenty to be worried about.
Martin Powell-Davies (secretary, Lewisham National Union of Teachers)

If you are a parent in Middlesbrough and your local school is a Vardy Academy you already have little choice but to see your child suffer religious indoctrination. But Blair’s Education Bill will give even greater opportunities to business and religious sponsors to instil their ideas on young people.
The Bill will encourage foundation schools and trusts to set separate admission criteria which allow selection, perhaps overtly on the grounds of faith or “aptitude” but also, even if covertly, on academic and social grounds as well. As socialists, we say all schools should belong to a democratically-elected local authority, operating the same comprehensive admissions arrangements.
In campaigning against the Education Bill, the question of the separate admissions arrangements that already operate in existing faith schools is inevitably being raised by parents. A recent survey of Church primary schools in England confirmed that they were less likely to accept children from low-income families than council-run schools.
In some rural areas and small towns, Church schools are already the only option. Falling rolls are adding to the problem with existing community schools being bullied into merging with church schools – but under voluntary-aided status.
In areas like Kent, where the 11-plus continues, the situation is even worse. Schools are polarised between the selective grammar schools, the “comprehensive” faith schools that may require appropriate proof of attendance at Church for children to be admitted, and the remaining “sink schools”.
So, in opposing privatisation and selection, teachers and trade unionists also have to tackle the broader question of whether faith schools should have any place in our school system at all.
A hundred years ago, the demand for secular education was strongly held in the growing trade union movement. There was deep resentment at the 1902 Education Act which legislated for “voluntary” schools to be left in the control of the Church but paid for by the public purse.
As the Labour Clarion of the time complained, “it is preposterous that ratepayers should be compelled to pay an unwilling toll for the promulgation of a theology which they deny”.
A century on, socialists would still call it preposterous! However, after so many years during which government-funded voluntary-aided schools have become a firmly established fact, a blunt call to end state funding for faith schools today could provoke a fierce reaction. It could easily be misunderstood as a more general attack on the provision of schools.
Socialists and activists in the teachers’ unions aim to win the argument in local communities, including faith communities, against Church schools having a separate status to community schools. Our policy should be to encourage all faith schools to become fully integrated in the state sector.
That doesn’t mean that socialists and trade unionists shouldn’t carefully explain why they support secular education, while also defending the right of every individual to practise their religion. This should include supporting the granting of special leave for religious festivals, not just Christian ones. It also means defending the right of Muslim girls to choose – or to choose not – to wear the hijab.
However, we must oppose religious views being used as an excuse to prevent young people from gaining access to a thorough health and sex education or to allow discriminatory, homophobic or scientifically false ideas such as “intelligent design” to find their way into the curriculum.
We argue for policies that should apply universally – for inclusive, well-resourced, non-discriminatory, genuinely comprehensive schools teaching a range of religious and non-religious views as part of a wider humanities curriculum that encourages solidarity across the globe.
Socialists stress the need to campaign against the imposition of business and religious sponsors and help encourage existing faith schools to become fully integrated within local authorities as community schools.
We need to avoid our views on faith schools creating an unnecessary barrier to building united opposition to new government attacks. But we must argue against the existing divisions that have been created by faith schools as well.

Letter to Steve Sinnott

Steve Sinnott, NUT General Secretary.
cc Kevin Courtney, Alex Kenny, NUT Executive members for Inner London.
Monday, 15 May 2006
Dear Steve
DECISIONS OF NUT ANNUAL CONFERENCE
I am writing following the General Meeting of Lewisham NUT, held last week to discuss and report back from the Annual Conference in Torquay.
Members felt that the publicity from Conference had been very positive, particularly around our opposition to the Education and Inspections Bill.
However, members were concerned to know what progress was now being made to implement the policies agreed and, in particular, the following urgent matters:
1) Ballot on workload guidelines:
Conference instructs the Executive to proceed with a national ballot of members, by the end of September 2006 at the latest, to seek their support for the introduction of these new action guidelines.
2) Action to oppose the Education Bill, in particular:
 campaign for the broadest possible support for amendments to the Bill, which both remove the threat to and strengthen support for, comprehensive education and organise a mass lobby of Parliament around the third reading of the Bill.
 explore the circumstances under which national industrial action, up to and including national strike action, could be taken to highlight the strength of opposition to the Education and Inspections Bill, and campaigning actively for support for such action among members;
I would be grateful if you could inform the Association as to when plans for the workload ballot, and lobby and consideration of strike action on the Bill are going to be made. As this will undoubtedly be a matter of interest to all Divisions, I would also like to suggest that these matters could be included on the agenda for the Briefing to be held at Hamilton House on May 19th.
Yours sincerely,


Martin Powell-Davies, Secretary, Lewisham NUT.