Oxfordshire NUT Secretary (personal capacity) A GROWING willingness to fight has developed among icachers since the general election.
Demoralisation has been replaced with a militancy that can take on both the Tories and the new realist union leaders. Decisions of the NUT Easter conference opened the way to industrial action, and victories in the courts mean that boycott. ing tests for 14-year olds is now a virtual certainty.
Leaders of the National Union of Teachers (NUT) came to the union's Easter conference committed to ballot for a boycott Standard Assessment Tests of English classes. A NASUWT (another teaching union) boycott, and calls from science, maths, technology and primary teachers placed them under pressure to go further.
Threalened with a major defeat as conference opened, the Executive proposed extending the ballot to a total boycott of National Curriculum testing. To avoid accusations of polítical action. the result will be nounced after the local govemment election.
A boycott by the NUT. NASUWT and the ATL (a nonTUC union) will stop a central part of the Tories education reforms, dealing a blow to streaming and the reintroduction of selective admission to certain schools. Teachers and their unbons must now reopen debate about the Curriculum's content and confront the growing radical right influence in education.
The size of defeat the teachers can inflict on the government is shown in the new proposal to make illegal boycotting tests or parts of the National Curriculum. The expensive failures of the Tory's Wandsworth stoopes in the courts reinforces their desperaThe conference also decided to ballot over a boycott of appraisal. The Executive motion Birmingham New Street ASLEF and RMT pickets encounter little resistance in Birmingham condemning the pay freeze and Performance Related Pay (PRP) put off action till next year.
Socialist Outlook supporter Roy Leach seconded a narrowly defeated amendment calling for a national one-day public soctor strike. An amendment calling for a total boycott was passed destite a viton alica trom the Executive, who ended up opposing their own pay policy! The amended motion calling for total boycott was finally carried. Already NUT manches committed to the boycott are build. ing for a 'yes' vote.
The left also succeeded in broadening the Union's aims and objectives to allow branches to express collective education, allowing campaigns TRADE UNION NEWS like Fight the Alton Bill. The Executive was heavily defeated over their use of disciplinary proccoreto vicarise ica-wing Treasurer lan Murch.
The Tories are defensive over education. Teachers have to defend conference decisions against the NUT leadership and koep the Tories on the run.