Gill Lee, Officer, Association EDUCATION Action Zones threaten to undermine teachers' national pay and conditions; introduce business involvement and the profit-motive into the running of state education; and increase social inequality in eduCanon.
On May 9 around 80 activists gathered in London to build a against the EAZs. Those present recognised that the EAZs represent a "Trojan horse' which, in the name of tackling social disadyantage, will actually enshrine inequality while introducing business interests directly into the state education system.
The Campaign is a response to the defeat on EAZS at the National Union of Teachers Conference at Easter which failed to adopt a strategy of all out opposition to the Zones. Instead the Broad Left (ie right wing) Executive's 'new realist' policy of 'constructive engagement' was adopted.
Delegates were told that Blair was too authoritative, too determined, and had too much international prestige to back down under union pressure, and that total opposition to EAZs would& leave the union marginalised.
Many of those present on May 9 mulated bids and a number of key features quickly became apparent. Many of the bids have been formulated in secret, with parents and teachers in targeted schools often unaware a bid had been drawn up.
Businesses involved in the Zones are aiming to make indirect profits by involving teachers in using educational materials they have drawn up which will promote products or particular viewpoints.
For example in Lewisham, Carlton Television will be a partner in the bid, presumably using working class pupils in the EAZ area as guinea pigs for In other areas new educational business partners programmes. aim to extract more In other areas business partners direct profits. aim to extract more direct profits. The Edison project, which runs 25 schools in the States and is negotiating with four local authorities in England - Tameside and three others which prefer not to be named, has helped the US charter schools initiative siphon off £35 million from state expenditure this year alone.
The Labour government's proposal to allow business to make profit out of education is part of their so-called 'third way' economic policy which allows the restructuring of public finance to the benefit of private companies.
It builds on the blossoming Private Finance Initiatives in education which allow the ownership and management of schools to come under the private sector.
The PFI bid for Pimlico School in Westminster is to replace the existing school and the 22 million contract is for 25 years. The winner of the bid will take over cleaning, dinner staff, IT, CDT, Art, school keeping and other jobs; everything except teaching itself.
All the existing staff will lose their jobs, and have to reapply for them. In "exchange" for the investment, between 25% and 40% of the playground will be sold off for luxury housing. In Lewisham catering firm Chartwell's is about to take over the management of school meals and will spend £4.5 million upgrading run-down school kitchens and canteens. In exchange they would like to introduce outlets for Kentucky Fried Chicken and Taco Bell in schools.
In Ealing repairs to buildings are under a PFI contract which allowsonly one firm to repair school buildings, reputedly for exorbitant fees. The battle of the Hillingdon workers with Pall Mall should tell us the conditions and pay that workers can expect once private firms are allowed to take over what have previously been publicly owned services.
While the EAZ initiative at least represents a recognition on the Government's part that social deprivation and educational achievement are linked, the Zones look for the solution in the wrong place - private industry -and through the wrong prism.
The solution offered is for working class pupils to spend more time in school (an extra 2 hours in many Bids) and less in their homes and communities, since these are seen as the barriers to achievement.
In so far as the Bids address the manure of education, they enshrine social inequality rather than challenge it. Each EAZ will contain a specialist school. Those proposed so far seek to specialise in sports or performing arts.
This narrow, stereotyped view of the talent of working class pupils is reinforced by the power of the EAZs to disapply the National Curriculum and the proposal in many Zones to substitute a narrow vocationalist curriculum of extended work experience, literacy and numeracy.
In a context in which the "exchange"
for the investment, between 25% and 40% of the school playground will be sold off for luxury housing majority of middle class pupils receive the 'gold standard' of the National Curriculum, pupils receiving a reduced curriculum will be less likely to find jobs or further educational opportunities. The danger is that in using the rhetoric of deprivation, in promising some extra money for EAZ schools (which will largely be swallowed up in extra salaries for superheads and the provision of services "in kind" by the private sector partners) and in promising a work-based curriculum to parents who fear unemployment for their kids, Labour is driving a wedge between teachers and parents. In building opposition to the EAZs teachers should be ready to engage in a debate with parents about why the current education system is failing working class pupils and why the EAZs are no solution. Activists at the May 9 Conference agreed a series of measures to draw attention to the EAZs, including local public meetings, a national demonstration and a fringe meeting at Labour Party A reconvened steering committee will be held on June 13 in Manchester Mechanics Institute at 1.30pm.