SEN CAMPAIGNERS IN LEWISHAM PROTEST

SEN CAMPAIGNERS IN LEWISHAM PROTEST

Another lively lobby of parents and staff gathered outside Lewisham Town Hall on Wednesday October 3rd to protest against the Council’s proposals for the future of special needs in the borough.

After waiting five months for the results of supposedly ‘independent’ consultation, the Mayor and Cabinet were meeting to push through plans which parents and professionals have consistently warned could damage education for all pupils.

Campaigners from Brent Knoll, Pendragon and Meadowgate special schools are angry at the plans to relocate and reconfigure their provision without any detailed plans being provided which would show that the new sites will allow for sufficient specialist provision. Parent Debbie Lester, who has been working alongside us in building the ‘Defend Education in Lewisham Campaign’, explained her fears on a phone-in on Radio Five Live the following morning.

The programme also included opinions from several protestors, including my own. I explained why mainstream teachers feared such reorganisation plans were too often a mockery of inclusion. Children ended up being placed in mainstream classes without the staffing and support to meet their needs. As the NUT’s national research on the ‘Costs of Inclusion’ points out, ‘The presence of even one child with complex needs without relevant support and resourcing could be enough to upset the balance and flow of teaching for all’.

Martin Powell-Davies

NUT EXECUTIVE DELAYS PAY BALLOT

NUT EXECUTIVE DELAYS PAY BALLOT
ANOTHER MISSED OPPORTUNITY FOR UNITED ACTION

The NUT National Executive meeting on Thursday October 4th again decided to put off the national ballot on pay that we have been waiting for. A majority voted to wait until after the Review Body has reported, rejecting a timetable for an earlier ballot that had also been suggested.

Their lack of urgency exposes a lack of belief that teachers are prepared to take action. Yet the hundreds of postings on pay listed on the National Union’s own website confirm the widespread anger against continued below-inflation increases and the difficulties colleagues already face in paying their bills. A determined leadership should certainly be able to translate this discontent into a positive ballot result.

What this delay also means is that they have thrown away the chance for NUT members to take united action on pay alongside UNISON support staff. UNISON are presently balloting for action on pay for action this November. In rejecting this golden opportunity for unity, the NUT leadership is letting down both teachers and our support staff colleagues. Instead of joint action, we face the prospect of NUT members being told to cross UNISON picket lines.

What a confidence boost it would have been to UNISON members in schools if they knew that teachers were also looking to take national action on the same day as them! There would then have been no doubt that schools would have closed across the country, making sure the pay cuts hitting all school staff were firmly in the headlines. It would have helped make sure that UNISON got a positive result in their ballot, in spite of the poor materials being circulated by the national UNISON leadership.

The Union will be preparing more materials for schools to explain our case for national action on pay. But why hasn’t more been done already? Of course, every NUT member must carry on explaining to colleagues why we can’t afford to sit back and allow five years of below-inflation pay increases to be imposed on us - and why we need to vote for national action on pay. But members will want to know when the ballot is happening!

The ballot timetable discussed at the Executive apparently proposes a ballot starting on December 10th to allow action in January 2008. I am sure I am not the only teacher that will think straight away that balloting in the crazy last weeks before Christmas might not be ideal.

Of course, we will have to make the most of what opportunity we are given by the Executive majority to take action to defend our pay. But their mistaken decisions again point out why we need a change in our national leadership. That’s why I am standing to be Vice-President in the National Officers elections.

Martin Powell-Davies

SIXTH FORM COLLEGES PAY BALLOT

SIXTH FORM COLLEGES PAY BALLOT
- REJECT THE 2.5% DEAL

National Union of Teachers posters rightly proclaimed the refusal by Government to reconsider the schoolteachers pay award of 2.5% for this September as a “matter of honour”. Fortunately, you might think, as we still have negotiating rights when it comes to the pay of teachers in sixth-form colleges, we could insist on a better deal for them?

But when the same below-inflation 2.5% award was proposed by sixth form employers for their teaching staff, the NUT’s negotiators, including Martin Reed, agreed to it!

At a time when the National Union is meant to be gearing up for national strike action to reject pay cuts, how can we agree that sixth-form college staff put up with 2.5%? Like other teachers, their debts and bills, mortgages and rents are also rising at well above 2.5% a year. So this would mean, in effect, agreeing to a pay cut. It must be rejected.

Martin4Vp on youtube