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NUT strike 24 April

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.

Fight against School Closures

EDUCATION IS under attack. 30,000 children could lose their rural schools in the first stage of the government's new closure plans. Campaigners are worried that more than a thousand small schools in England and Wales could in the longer term be threatened with closing.
This is one of the ruinous effects of the 'market' on education. In cities and towns as well as villages, every time a school's number of pupils goes below a certain level, many local councils talk of closure. Whatever happened to Labour's supposed commitment to smaller class sizes? Why not use the opportunity of declining school rolls to bring down the size of classes?
Socialist Party members Jim Reekie and Jake Moore report on the angry response in Shropshire to these threats.
ON 23 January, Shropshire's local authority announced plans to close 22 rural primary schools with another 16 earmarked for merger. Many individual school campaigns are already underway against these attacks.

They will demonstrate together outside the council's offices before the councillors' cabinet meeting.

The county council claims that all those schools in Shropshire with 92 pupils or more would be deemed 'viable'.

Local Tory councillor Ann Hartley claimed that other schools would close, based upon falling pupil numbers and that this was the "only option".

But these are village schools that have been there for years, serve the local community and many are in fact over-subscribed.

These plans will further undermine communities, some of which have already lost local post offices and hospitals.

Days after the county council's decision, Shropshire Socialist Party was out campaigning and petitioning against these planned attacks. Our petition against this market-style madness struck a chord with Saturday shoppers.

The mood was one of outrage that schools would be closing because of a lack of funding. One worried parent summed it up appropriately: "The three main parties are now all the same. They're all happy to spend billions on wars, then there's no money for our services such as education and hospitals."

A united campaign must now be built across the 22 affected schools and beyond. With the correct strategy in opposition there is potential to take on the government's local and national plans to cut education further.

We also argued the need for a new workers' party that would stand for public services and against cuts, closures and privatisation.

These school campaigns, alongside those against cuts and privatisation in other public services, can help play a role in forging a new mass worker's party in the future.

Defend the NHS demo

Campaign for a New Workers' Party

Defending "outdated" comprehensive education in 'New Labour' Lewisham

Lewisham voters may have hoped that they were electing their Council to run local schools and services. But it seems that Lewisham's "New Labour" councillors think their job is to give schools away to private bidders instead!

A long-running parental campaign finally convinced Lewisham Council that a new secondary school was needed to provide additional places in the north of the borough. But there was never any suggestion that the ‘New School’ would be anything but a Local Authority run community school. But of course the Education Act now means that Council is being told to hold a ‘competition’ to see who should run it. If the New School is given away to become a Trust, Academy or Foundation School, then employment of staff, ownership of the site and admissions arrangements will no longer be in the hands of the elected Council. But instead of fighting this threat, Lewisham's Mayor, Sir Steve Bullock, is accepting it.

The New School would become the fifth secondary school in Lewisham not to participate in the borough’s ‘area-banding’ system. Instead of a planned comprehensive system, admissions will start to splinter into the kind of “free-for-all” that already blights education in some other boroughs. The gap between the ‘best’ schools and the rest will widen further. But that means many families and children will lose out. It could also result in the scandalous situation in Lewisham that over £10 million will have to be found from Council resources to help fund the new school. But the school won’t be owned by Lewisham! How can the Mayor explain that to council tax payers?

I was granted five minutes to speak to the July 11th Mayor and Cabinet on behalf of the joint teacher unions. But Cllr.Massey, responsible for schools, responded by saying that I was defending an "outdated" idea from 40 years ago. What would previous generations of Labour campaigners for comprehensive education have said to that ? Instead of persuading Gordon Brown to change Government policy, Cllr.Massey wants to "celebrate it" !

But, unlike Lewisham, some Councils have at least shown the political will to fight to hold on to their schools. The London Borough of Haringey decided to put in its own ‘bid’ to run its new school as a community school. It successfully beat off other bidders, including Lewisham-based Academy sponsor Haberdashers’ Aske’s, so it can now run the school as a Local Authority comprehensive school.

Clad in bright yellow ‘Defend Education in Lewisham’ campaign t-shirts, parents and staff lobbied last night's meeting. We believe the Mayor should be fighting the whole damaging ‘competition’ legislation. But, if the Labour Council won’t challenge its own Government’s policies, we at least expect them to try and follow Haringey’s lead. Regrettably, the Mayor rejected that approach on July 11th. There will be a further debate at the Council meeting on July 18th where sympathetic socialist councillors are again proposing the Council seeks approval to submit its own bid.

If the Council isn’t prepared to defend Lewisham’s schools, then the Defend Education Campaign is !

Martin Powell-Davies

Defending Postal Services

The Communications Workers' Union have asked us to circulate a leaflet about the postal dispute in view of the media misinformation on this subject.

It is here

No to these divisive schools

ANYBODY WHO thought that Gordon Brown would halt the government's relentless drive to create 400 divisive Academy schools, over 200 of them by 2010, will be sorely disappointed. He has made it clear that he fully supports the programme, and is even trying to convince his mates to become sponsors!

Jane Nellist, Coventry NUT, personal capacity

With the news that David Cameron wants the Tories to abandon their support for grammar schools and put their full support behind the academies programme, the campaign against academies must be stepped up.

47 academies have now been set up with another 90 already confirmed. For £2 million, which does not have to be paid up front (the Tories actually want to end this sponsorship money in their plans), private sponsors can get complete control of a school. This allows sponsors to set pay and conditions for staff, influence the curriculum and ethos of a school, as well as to control admissions.

Costs for the building of academies are escalating, with some costing over £40 million. On top of this, nearly £50 million has been spent on private consultants and project managers - enough money to build two new schools.

But at least we're getting innovation! The most expensive academy school so far (costing £46.4 million), the Thomas Deacon Academy in Peterborough, will not have a playground. The new CEO/Principal, Alan McMurdo, a Falklands veteran who had his first experience of teaching on HMS Battleaxe, says that he wants to run his school like a business and will treat pupils as employees!

Lunch will be incorporated into the third lesson of the day, when students will be escorted to the refectory and given 30 minutes to eat before returning directly to the classroom. What an inhumane way to treat children!

Local councils have been blackmailed by the government into agreeing to academies by the withholding of huge sums of money to rebuild secondary schools. Even where the 'Building Schools for the Future' scheme has been agreed the government continues to put pressure on councils to achieve a greater diversity of schools - in other words more academies and more Trust schools.

But one item of good news, and a setback for academies, was the result of the first ever 'competition' for a new school in Haringey, where a local authority-backed school beat off a proposed trust school, as well as two academies.

In the ten years that Labour has been in power, they have gone further with privatising our schools and education service than even Margaret Thatcher dared to do. Lord Adonis, the government minister responsible for overseeing the development of academies, may still lose his job under Gordon Brown but his brainchild, based on the Tories' City Technology Colleges, looks set to persist.

In June, MPs are to hold a Committee of Enquiry to investigate the impact of academies and trust schools. All anti-academy and anti-trust campaign groups should send delegates or written evidence to this enquiry - see www.antiacademies.org.uk for more details.

One thing is clear, where parents, teachers and communities join together in a determined campaign against the setting up of an academy, success can be realised.

School campaigners shake Wokingham

THE FIGHTBACK against cuts and privatisation is gathering pace in Berkshire. On 3 May an Independent (Save Ryeish Green School) candidate - Andrew Grimes - polled an excellent vote of 706 in a local seat in Wokingham borough, in the middle of which is a secondary school which the council is trying to close.

Sara Gillman, Wokingham

This candidate, while not winning outright, gave a scare to the Tory candidate (who received 1,009 votes). He also sent a clear message to the council that the Parents' Action Group, supported by Socialist Party members, has much of the community on its side in wishing the school to stay open. We had several meetings to discuss tactics and leafleted to counter negative publicity about the school.

This brilliant result won by a completely new contender was in spite of propaganda pumped out by Wokingham council that the school is not worth keeping open, and that children who currently attend there can go to schools an hour's journey away. This clearly shows that ordinary people will not be bullied into accepting worse educational conditions for their children.

The council became more paranoid a couple of days before polling saying posters outside the school saying "Save Ryeish Green school" had to be taken down as there was a polling station there, although these were clearly not 'party political'.

In the same week another protest, by a primary school down the road, was televised. They have been campaigning for ten years for the council to provide a crossing on a very busy main road.

Of course the school was told a protest would make little difference but the council are fast finding out that a placid non-active approach to the safety and well-being of our children will not be tolerated.

The protests, lobbies and campaigns will continue unabated with the support of Socialist Party members in the community until a satisfactory conclusion can be found with our children's services given proper resources.

SCHOOL MEALS - VICTORY!

Press release from a Waltham Forest campaign against cuts to school meals.

After three short weeks of campaigning that seriously rattled councillors, the Leader Clyde Loakes yesterday offered to extend the school meals subsidy at least until 2009. In our books that is an unequivocal victory.

And what a marvellous campaign! In a few short weeks thousands of leaflets distributed around schools alerted everyone to the danger of losing a properly funded school meals service. The local press helped to arouse indignation from all quarters - and not only parents! London Radio carried it and the national press and TV started investigating. Then Jamie Oliver pledged to get involved.

But the pots and pans demo was the icing on the cake. Around 250 dinner ladies, teachers, parents, children and supporters gathered in the town square armed with pans, tin lids and wooden spoons, rattles and whistles, determined to make as much noise as possible. We marched along Hoe Street all chanting. "If you want to keep school dinners - bang a pan". A young education worker with an Asian drum joined in. Passers-by and shopkeepers took leaflets and cheered us on.

At the town hall everyone was in no mood for compromise. From his office Loakes said he would meet with a delegation of only three! For several tense minutes there was a real stand-off. Eventually, accompanied by deputy leader Keith Rayner he came out onto the steps. A truly Big Conversation took place. With demands and questions from a sceptical but elated crowd, he promised

> A continuation of the subsidy until 2009

> To bring the 10 schools, already opted out, back into the fold

> A strong steer to schools to remain part of Waltham Forest Catering

There was a further demand to run all private catering companies out of the borough! This he baulked at (naturally,privatisation is part of Labour policy).

But we are not standing down the campaign. We intend to monitor the situation closely. We need to hold all Cllr Loakes' promises to account. Union members in each school need to be vigilant and report any developments through the campaign network. Fundamentally our success has been due to two things - the determination of the unions involved UNISON and NUT, who represent thousands of workers in the borough, and the marvellous response from parents and the general public. If we have helped councillors change their minds once through serious campaigning - we can do it again. Come and help us.

Hands Off School Meals 7pm Tuesday 5th June Town Hall, Forest Road, E17 All Welcome

If you DO nothing you get nothing. If you FIGHT TOGETHER, you get something.