Roy Leach (NUT Executive, personal capacity THE TORIES sought (with some success) to introduce market relationships into state education.
Local management of schools (LMS) gave head teachers gave head teachers greater control over their schools' budgets (particularly in relation to the employment/dismissal of staff).
Open enrolment encouraged competition for pupils and the funding that followed them.
Opting out created a privileged tier of better funded schools, the heads and governors of which were not obliged to follow LEA procedures.
However, while consultants and others were able to take advantage of this market (competing with LEAs to provide services to school "purchasers) the core function of schools, remained firmly in the public sector and free from profiteering.
Labour, in a breathtaking extension of its capitalist-friendly policies, is now proposing to hand over to big business the running of state schools. So-called Education Action Zones, consisting of 10 to 20 schools, will be put under the control of Action Forums, at least one of the first five of which will, according to the DFEE, be led and run by a business.
As Dr James Tooley, director of the Institute of Economic Affairs (a right wing think tank), pointed out, "the government has accepted that there is no matter of principle that the government should deliver education".
EAZs will attract an additional £500,000 above schools' normal budget - £250,000 from the government and £250,000 from business; however, the latter may be paid "in kind".
The Action Forums will be empowered to tear up the existing pay and conditions of teachers.
With so much talk of increasing the working day and year for teachers (led by Labour's Margaret Hodge, chair of the Education Select Committee) it is clear that the "carrot" of extra pay will be small compensation.
Attack on contracts Once EAZs have driven a coach and horses through national pay and conditions, it won't be long before the rump LEAs follow suit, and indeed a complete rewrite of teachers' contracts cannot be ruled out.
Any doubts about this have been answered by Schools Minister Stephen Eyers who is on record as saying "I want zones to pilot new ways of thinking as far as teachers' conditions of service go... If we put extra demands on teachers to work in the evening, at the weekend..."
The government's stated aim of creating a more flexible reaching force which anyone working for a gung-ho employer in the private sector would be entirely familiar with.
New Labour has thrown down the gauntlet to the teacher unions and is clearly spoiling for a fight. As predicted in the columns of Socialist Outlook, it is only a matter of time before New Labour seeks to take on a section of organised labour in order to prove its capital friendly credentials. It looks odds-on that teacher unions are being set up to be the fall guys in this set piece.
The response of the unions has been strong on rhetoric ("NUT to fight privatisation of education"). But what is the proposed method of fighting privatisation? Local NUT branches are being urged to promote LEA bids to set up EAZs in order to forestall more draconian business run ones.
Teachers only need to look at what has happened to other local government workers who cut their own terms and conditions to keep contracts in-house and who now face being sold off at or even before TO FEES While students have fought back against fees, Labour has lined up to hit schools the end of 5-year terms. Such a response will just make taking over Action Forums easier, cheaper and more attractive for the profiteers at a later date.
EAZs pose a threat to every single teacher, whether or not they. teach in working class areas with so-called "failing schools"
The leaderships of all the teacher unions have either failed to grasp this inescapable conclusion or they lack the will to lead their memberships into the sort of industrial action campaign that is needed to defeat the proposals.
Doug McAvoy has identified the creation of business-run EAZS as the most right-wing antieducational initiative in 20 years, yet the strategy he has announced is depressingly familiar and completely inadequate, given the scale of threat they pose.
Teacher illusions in Labour have already largely disappeared. Whether or not they are prepared to stand up and fight is a question which as yet remains unanswered.