Easter will see hundreds of delegates from Britain's larrest teaching union, the NUT, meeting in the face of a massive Tory offensive against state education.
The comprehensive system is at a crossroads, with cuts threatening thousands of teaching jobs, an effective pay cut for reachers, and a massive political and ideological offensive culminating in the National Curriculum tests (SATS).
The Education Bill currently working its way through parestablishes a framework for a two-tier selective educational system.
With funding following pupils, and government plans to maintained unis, thorint Increase the number of of school funding to pertormance in national league tables of test results (SATS and GCSEs), will create an educational "market.
Competition between schools for limited resources Socialist Campaign Group Supporters Network and the future of socialism Organising the left in the Labour Party Saturday April 17th Sheffield Hallam University, Pond St 11:5pm For further details contact:
byn, Red Rose Club, 129a Seven Sisters Road, London N7 Page 14 April, 1993 mance related pay. will set school against school and teacher against teacher, resulting in the undermining of collective resistance to the tory educational agenda.
SATS represent a concerted ideological attack aimed at reversing the gains of comprehensive education. They are a culmination of moves through the National Curriculum to end upil-centred learning, critical hinking and anti-sexist and anti-racist education.
In their place the Tories want a return to rote learning and the idea of a fixed and homogene ous national culture which presses the values of Major's "classless society.
The branding of children as failures at the ages of 7, 11, 14 and 16 will provide a justification for underfunded 'sink' schools to receive them in the educational market place.
Opposition to SATS and the pressure for a boycott is also a product of increasing anger amongst teachers and a willingness to fight. Recent years have seen a massive increase in teachers' workload and a steady erosion of pay.
Changes brought about by the imposition of the National Curriculum have increased administration, record keepin while cuts and and meetings, redundancies have seen class sizes soar and non-contact time plummet.
compulsory redundances amongst teachers have been limited. in part, by a scramble for early retirement.
As monev for this runs out and alternative jobs dry up in the recession, sackings are now the only option for the Tories, and for Labour councils unwilling to confront the government. redundancy The NUT needs to break out of the straight-jacket of isolated No. 40 Although local strikes have had some impact in preventing redundancies, the scale of the problem is now exposing the imitations of this policy. Conference must commit the union to a national strategy for the defence of state education.
The initiatives taken around SATS have shown the way forward, linking parents' concerns about education, with teachers' anger at weir own worsens conditions and the negative impact of Tory reforms on their pupils.
While Conference must comNAS/WT, to a boycott of all NUT, like the SATS, it must launch national action on class size, and against redundancies, and the performance related pay needed by the Tories to underpin the educational 'market.
It must also determine to work with parents and pupils to formulate an alternative agenda for caucatone Mat Official Dispute holiday entitlement hit colleges in Wolverhampton, Dudley, Walsall and Birmingham itself.