Roy Leach (NUT Executive, personal capacity) LABOUR'S education initiatives have been favourably & uncritically received by the 'education establishment' and media alike. Initiatives such as the 'Literacy Summer Schools' have been hailed a success and extended before any evaluation of their real effectiveness has been carried out.
Even the teacher trade unions have been generally positive in their reactions to the almost daily outpourings of ministerial statements. Certainly the abolition of the totally discredited nursery vouchers is welcome, as is the continued commitment to phase out (as opposed to the much more desirable scrapping outright) the assisted places scheme to free-up resources for reducing infant class sizes.
The promise of an extra flbn on top of the Tories spending target tor next financial year and £1.2bn extra capital expenditure (over the next five years) will also help.
Yet the reality for teachers in the classroom (and, of course their students) is that things haven't got better - and in many case continue to get much worse.
The decision to impose the Tories' spending cap upon Oxfordshire & Somerset will result in yet more devastating cuts in education. Labour's much trumpeted 'crusade' to raise standards looks an increasingly hollow promise, particularly in these LEAs, where yet larger classes and fewer resources are the inevitable consequence of sticking to the Tories spending limits for another year.
Likewise the euphoria in the staffrooms on May 2nd which greeted Labour's landslide victory is rapidly evaporating. Blunkett's promise to listen to teachers and give them a fairer deal (no favours mind you) has given way to a renewed bout of even more vitriolic 'naming & shaming'.
Pilloried
Individual schools - deemed by Blunkett & co. to be failing - have been pilloried and exposed to the full onslaught of trial (and summary conviction) by the media. For the teachers in those schools there is precious little evidence of their views being taken into account: no fair consideration of why their underfunded schools, often surrounded by predatory selective Grant Maintained or Grammar schools, should be failing to deliver the necessary numbers of A-C grades.
The White Paper - 'Excellence in Schools' - rounds on those who might not share in the enthusiasm for its prescriptions. In Blunkett's own forward he calls for "set[ting] aside the doubts of the cynics and...the perpetual sceptics".
Once again teachers are identified as the problem with their "culture of complacency" and the solution is to speed up dismissal snailes classie MTS. How long before protestors wise up and attack failing ministers? procedures and "strengthening the management role of headteachers... so that appropriate action can be taken."
The White Paper also, under the disingenuous chapter "Modernising the comprehensive principle", seeks to impose setting by ability upon schools since Labour is not prepared to "defend the failings [sic] of across-the-board mixed ability teaching" and "unless a school can demonstrate that it is getting better than expected results...make[s] the presumption that setting should be the norm in secondary schools.. [and is]... worth considering in primary schools."
Fast-tracking - where pupils are taught out of their age range - and "accelerated learning' (for the privileged few) are also to be encouraged.
The White Paper is also at pains to point out that Labour's "priority is standards, not structures" but proposes to leave in place the privileged status of 'opted out' (Grant Maintained) schools by allowing their governors to choose 'Foundation' rather than 'Community' status in Labour's proposed tripartite system (the third type being 'Aided' church schools).
Although all schools within an LEA will be funded according to the same formula (bringing to an end the preferential funding GM schools enjoyed under the Tories) the existence of different statuses STOP NO Editio ROUND ANCIES will still allow 'Foundation' schools to promote the idea that they are somehow different and hence better than mere 'Community' schools.
Furthermore, only teachers in 'Community' schools will be employees of the LEA - all others will be employed by their school's governing body. With the Tories' anti-union laws still in place the existence of a plethora of individual small employers will continue to undermine the ability of teacher unions to defend their members.
Blair & Blunkett continue to maintain that education is their number one priority but their failure to challenge Tory spending limits and actually invest the necessary fbillions in education means that their promises are just so much empty rhetoric.
The tone of the White Paper makes it quite clear, however, that any failure to achieve its demanding targets will be the fault not of a Government unwilling to break from the austerity logic of the Maastricht Treaty and monetary controls but of "failing teachers" and "failing schools".
Instead of falling over backwards to find something positive in each and every Government statement the unions - and the NUT in particular - should be shouting loud and clear that none of it will work without extra cash! IT IS THIRTY years since the passing of the 1967 Abortion Act - the biggest step forward for women's abortion rights this country has ever seen.
It is certainly the case that the Act itself Is far from perfect - but what went before was far worse with countless women dying of septicemia as a result of back street abortions.
Ask any nurse who worked on gynaecological wards before 1967 - ask any women who was forced through lack of choice down this Ilfe threatening path and they will have no end of horror stories to tell.
While the 1967 Act does not guarantee a woman's right to choose much of pro-choice campaigners energy has been devoted in the intervening years to defeating reactionary legislation that would further undermine what rights we have won.
It Is a positive step that the MUS Women's campaign have called a demonstration to mark the passage of the Act - this deserves as wide support as possible from individuals and groups.
Let's make it clear to Tony Blair that the hard won labour movement support for a Woman's Right to Choose is just as strong as ever. That is the best basis to prepare the ground for an offensive for strengthening our rights both In law and in practice.