Education for Tomorrow 120

EDUCATION for TOMORROW FOR THE DEFENCE OF STATE EDUCATION

Remembering the children of Burston whose solidarity action galvanised the entire trade union movement a century ago. Anne M May, Violet Potter’s niece, recounts some family history Teacher union success story in Finland Education and the E U’s free market ideology Continuing attack on teacher union activists __ Bolivarian Venezuela: review of pamphlet on workers’ rights and new labour laws Standing up for education International news

AUTUMN 2014

ISSUE120 1

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Editorial Board Anne Brown, Martin Brown, Tony Farsky, Gawain Little, Diane Randall, Hank Roberts, Simon Watson, EDUCATION for TOMORROW is produced by people involved with education of like mind most of the time and certainly on all vital matters of education and politics.

It does not claim to represent the views of any one political party of the working class. Nonetheless its aim is at all times to speak in the interests of all working people.

Fully involved in the struggle for peace and socialism it aims to publicise workers’ achievements and to counter misinformation about past and existing struggles to build socialism.

It is to promote the aims of the organised labour movement in Britain; with common schooling for ALL our children (i.e. a good local state school for every child - truly comprehensive and democratically accountable) together with everything necessary to make this possible, in terms of provision of buildings and equipment, and staff properly trained and properly paid. We therefore support the campaign for one union for all education workers as a step towards achieving this goal.

Our columns are open to all who share these aims - even though they may at times disagree with particular articles and want to say so, and why!

Posted individual copies cost £2

Contents Editorial - 3 Standing up for education - 4 Finnish teacher union success - 6 Remembering Burston children - 8 NUT officer under attack -10

ISSN 2066-9145

Education and the EU -11

Website: www.educationfortomorrow.org.uk

Anti academies news -13

Published and printed by the EDUCATION for TOMORROW Collective

Review of IER pamphlet -14

Cover photo:Roll of honour board for the striking school children of Burston, unveiled in 1917.

International news - 15

2

Good riddance He’s gone and good riddance. Teachers in England celebrated the removal of Michael Gove as Education Secretary and began the summer holidays with lighter hearts. National Union of Teachers General Secretary Christine Blower quite rightly told members ‘Your hard work in putting pressure on the government and engaging with parents has clearly had an impact’.

The scale of damage Gove has inflicted on state education is reflected in some of the media comments about his achievements: ‘England is the only country apart from Bangladesh where people with no qualifications can teach in state schools’, said one commentator. ‘The only comparable contemporary example of western school reform carried out with such speed and structural overhaul is in New Orleans – after hurricane Katrina’, said another.

Undermining teachers’ pay and conditions, local authorities’ ability to plan and provide locally accountable education services, universities’ responsibility for teacher training and ignoring the evidence about what improves pupil performance for the vast majority, are other achievements that immediately spring to mind. Yet these are all the policies of the neoliberal, free-market Global Education Reform Movement (GERM). The new Education Secretary Nicky Morgan has made it clear that there will be no changes to Tory education policy, vowing to keep alive the legacy of ‘one of the great reforming secretaries of state for education’.

Shadow Education Secretary Tristram Hunt gave Mr Gove credit as ‘a man full of ideas . . . they just happened to be the wrong ones and that’s why he had to go’. The reality is, as Gove was always quick to point out, most of the Tory policies were initiated by the last Labour Government, committed as they were themselves to GERM. Gove had to go because with a general election looming he was seen as an embarrassing liability, not for the policies he pursued, but for his abrasive manner that offended not only teachers, parents and all others who care about education, (the Blob) but also his own colleagues. Like his cabinet colleagues, he was in a hurry to bring about neoliberal change before his opponents could mobilise for a coherent counter-attack, but he isolated himself and united his opponents..

He may have also lacked attention to detail.

Mary Bousted General Secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers writes: ‘Gove’s frenetic pace of change is now beginning to unravel. He was interested in ideas, not their implementation, and did not work hard enough at creating the structures to support his vision of a highly autonomous school system. The Education Funding Agency is unfit for purpose, unable to detect fraud and inappropriate use of public money in free schools and academies.

The National College for Teaching and Leadership is, ironically, lacking competent leadership – a shell of its former self and rudderless. The School Direct system of school based teacher training is highly variable in quality and is one factor which is leading to a growing crisis in teacher recruitment, which, happening concurrently with exponentially rising pupil numbers, is a toxic legacy for Gove’s successor, Nicky Morgan.’

As Chris Keates, National Association of Schoolmasters/Union of Women Teachers General Secretary, commented: ‘Whilst some may celebrate the departure of Michael Gove from the office of Secretary of State, the issue for the education service, for teachers, pupils and the general public is not a change of Secretary of State, but a change of policy.’

Tory plans for new anti-union laws The Conservative Party have now firmed-up their proposals for a further attack on the organised working class if re-elected. They will propose that at least half of eligible union members must vote in order that a strike is lawful.

There would be a three-month time limit after the ballot, for the action to take place, and further curbs on picketing. Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude has proposed that unions will be required to set out on the ballot paper the exact form of action they are proposing, with a vote on each aspect of the dispute.

Unions would also be required to give employers 14 days notice before taking industrial action rather than the current seven days. As TUC General Secretary Frances O’Grady said: ‘These proposals are designed to make legal strikes close to impossible.

3

Standing up for education On 10th July 2014, when NUT members across England and Wales took action alongside over a million other public sector workers, Michael Gove is reported as saying,’This is a strike which will achieve nothing and benefit no-one.’ Five days later, he was removed as Education Secretary.

The news was greeted with mixed reactions by some. Whilst Gove’s departure was welcomed, the record of his successor gave pause for thought.

Nicky Morgan, also given the equalities brief, voted against equal marriage, declaring in her local paper that “marriage, to me, is between a man and a woman”. More broadly, the changes outside of education represented a real shift to the right with several socially ‘liberal’ Tories replaced with representatives of the radical Right.

However, the response in staffrooms was unanimous.

Twitter was full of pictures of champagne bottles and staffroom noticeboards were covered in celebratory messages. In many schools (including my own) teachers and parents quite literally jumped for joy on being told the news.

Of course, we must exercise some caution.

In the last issue of Education for Tomorrow David Alton presciently argued that, ‘Gove could be dismissed yet it would make no real difference.

Gove’s party might be voted from office, yet the neo-liberal pursuit of supposedly free market policies would be sustained.’

There is an important point here, namely that it is the policies embodied in the neoliberal GERM project which matter, not the personalities.

Indeed, Michael Gove’s removal has not changed a single policy. The deregulation of pay, pensions and teaching is still in place and Nicky Morgan has already been clear that the break-up of the state education system through the ‘free’ school and academy programme will continue.

However, it would be a mistake to suggest that nothing has changed, and even more of a mistake to believe that voting the Tories from office in 2015 would make no difference. It all depends on the context within which these changes take place.

It is common knowledge that Michael Gove was moved out of education because, in spite of his education reforms being central to the neoliberal projects, he had become an electoral liability for the

Conservative Party. In a poll published just after his demotion, his popularity had dropped to a new low, with 54 per cent of voters actively disliking him, compared to 22 per cent who supported him, making him the least popular senior Tory in the country.

This is not just about personalities. Indeed, unlike many left-of-centre (or even soft-right) politicians who have been demonised by the media, Gove has enjoyed pretty much solid support from the right-wing press throughout his career. Rather, Gove’s unpopularity related directly to the unpopularity of the government’s education policies, in spite of the concerted effort to sell them through the mass media.

A YouGov poll immediately after the reshuffle showed that 40 per cent of the public believe the academies programme should be cancelled, compared to 32 per cent who believe it should be continued. The split on ‘free’ schools was even more stark with 51 per cent to 25 per cent in favour of cancellation.

This is a real victory for the education unions which have worked consistently to build opposition to the dismantling of state education. In particular, the NUT’s Stand Up for Education campaign has already engaged tens of thousands of parents in campaigning against the policies of this government and lobbied over 150 MPs to show the strength of feeling amongst teachers, parents and others.

In the immediate future, this has curtailed the current government’s room for manoeuvre.

Nicky Morgan’s brief is likely to be: no new policy initiatives, talk nicely to teachers and, maybe, even offer a few small concessions in the run up to 2015.

The aim will be to get teachers and parents back on side (or at least shift the percentages) without doing anything to affect the key neoliberal policies implemented so far. At a push, there may even be some movement on qualified teacher status, as long as there is still a loop-hole for future deregulation and profit-making.

Clearly, this is not an end to the neoliberal restructuring of education. However, neither is it where the supporters of this project want to be.

There is a wide recognition that Gove went too far in alienating teachers and parents and that some kind of reconciliation (however cosmetic) is 4

necessary.

In order to capitalise on this, we need to go on the offensive but within the context of recognising that Gove’s departure is a step forward.

We must press the new Education Secretary on the key policies that led to Gove’s departure. By removing Gove, the Tories have promised the British public a change of direction (even if they were unwilling to say so). We must demand that there is a change of direction and be clear about the key issues at stake. Only by exposing this failure to shift on any of the fundamentals will we retain the initiative.

This means stepping up our public campaigning and seeking to dominate the education narrative. It also means putting forward an alternative vision of education which unites opponents of the current neoliberal project.

This brings us to the wider impact of Gove’s departure. It acts as a marker in the process of building a genuine movement of opposition to the neoliberal vision of education. Gove’s removal both shows that we have begun the wider project of building opposition to the policies that have dominated education for the past 30 years or more, and shows the efficacy of our action. The clear lesson must be that our action, both the strike action but also the ambitious campaign of parental engagement and pressuring politicians, has had a real impact.

By building a genuinely broad movement around a united education union, we can take this further. The first steps are already there and we must build on these by engaging a wider section of the population whilst developing an alternative vision of education.

This broader movement must also have an electoral expression. Not because we believe that a Labour victory (or indeed the sudden election of any number of ‘left’ alternatives) would immediately solve our problems for us, but because voting out the Tories on the basis of mass opposition to neoliberal education policies would, in a similar way to the removal of Michael Gove, circumscribe a future government’s room for manoeuvre and change the ground on which the battle is to be fought.

A number of key policies, based on the growing Stand Up for Education campaign, must be drawn together into a manifesto for 2015. These policies must be chosen on the basis that they can gather wide popular support but conflict directly with the neoliberal agenda for education. This document could then be used in the run up to the

General Election to put further pressure on prospective candidates of all political parties but, most importantly, to win further support for an alternative vision amongst the wider public.

Ultimately, the 2015 General Election will simply be another marker along the way, like the removal of Michael Gove, but it is a significant one.

A manifesto such as this, combined with stepping up the campaign to engage parents and pressure politicians, and further strike action when it becomes clear that there will be no change of direction from the Tories, can bring us closer to changing the educational landscape and undoing 30 years of neoliberal restructuring.

Gawain Little

(Oxfordshire secretary of the NUT and National Executive member)

For over 50 years FORUM: for promoting 3-19 comprehensive education has been the pre-eminent focal point for topical and informed analysis - very often highly forthright and critical - of all aspects of United Kingdom government policy as it influences the education of children from primary through to higher education. FORUM vigorously campaigns for the universal provision of state-provided education, and seeks to identify and expose all attempts to overturn the gains of the past years. Every teacher, headteacher, administrator, parent, or governor should read this exciting publication.It can be obtained by contacting info@symposium-books.co.uk The current issue has an article on ‘Standing Up for Education’ by Kevin Courtney and Gawain Little.

5

Unity of teacher organisations has been a success story for teachers and education in Finland A speech to the Professional Unity Conference in London, March 2014 During the last few years Finland has been in the spotlight of education. There have been thousands of education tourists, visitors and education experts who have come to study how the country with 5.5 million inhabitants, up in the north, can get such good results in OECD`s Pisa assessments.

There were people, mostly Finns, who thought that there must have been mistakes in those tests. There were people, mainly in ‘neighbouring‘ countries, who tried to point out that Finnish schools are too coherent and rigorous, there are no students from multicultural backgrounds. There were also headlines in some foreign newspapers which painted a picture of Finland as such a boring country that children have no other alternative than to spend time reading books and doing schools works.

But what is the lesson that can be learnt from the Finnish success? Well, we in Finland are absolutely sure that nations cannot copy the education system from any other country.

Education systems are always part of a nation´s history, part of society and culture. But, you can always benchmark something, learn something and pick up the best ideas and incorporate them into your own culture. In a nutshell the Finnish lesson is co-operation – working together to confront all challenges.

hardly find a person who will admit that this school reform, made in the 1970´s, was a wrong move.

However, today we know that this reform was worth it because during the few last years we have enjoyed the fruits of our success. In the 1970s Finland established a 9-year long comprehensive school system for all children. This was a big step from a parallel education system to a school for all children. In the parallel school system children or their families had to decide their children´s school career after the first four school years. At that age children were divided into those who went on to costly secondary school and those who stayed in elementary school.

At the same time great decisions regarding teacher education were made. All teachers in comprehensive school should have a master’s degree. This decision was great but it took a long time to implement because, of course, the teachers who had the old teacher education kept their qualifications. In this year, 2014, the very last teachers with the old teacher education start their retirement. This is an example of the fact that in education you have to make long term decisions; there is no possibility for instant success.

School reform started teacher unity An the beginning of the 1970s there were several teachers unions in Finland. All different teacher groups had their own union. Unions were created to represent specific education levels like early childhood, primary, secondary, vocational etc.

Before the great education reform elementary school teachers and secondary teachers were rather far from each other. Education and status separated them. In the old education system

There are no rapid advances in education Forty years ago Finland introduced far-reaching education reform. The reform was not politically easy. The Minister of Education from the 1970s recalled that his face was on the front page of a Finnish conservative magazine and a red cross was drawn across his face. This was a message that he was spoiling Finnish education. Today you can 6

elementary teachers were trained in the teacher colleges and secondary teachers at university.

However, at the same time as the great school reform, these two teacher unions understood that if they wanted to be strong in the new education system they had to unite. In 1973 they took this huge step, deciding together, as a one union to start the strong safeguarding of the interest of teachers. There was a lot of fear, there were a lot of reservations but these two teacher groups decided to focus on the essential – to defend teachers and education.

At the end of the 1980s vocational education teachers affiliated with OAJ and at the beginning of the 1990s early childhood education teachers and university lectures joined as well.

Finland underwent an awful financial crisis in the early 1990s. There were school closures, education budget cuts, teacher layoffs. Today we can say that we would never have survived if the unions had been in competition with each other.

During these very difficult times it was a victory for teachers and education when there was only one united OAJ against an employer at national level and at local level.

Today, in the year 2014, we are dealing with the EU crisis. In Finland we are happy to say that it is good for negotiations with the ministry of education, employers, politicians and co-operation partners that teachers are united.

Today the OAJ is a totally independent, strong, non-political union. It is the voice of 122,000 teachers, 96 per cent of all teachers in Finland. OAJ membership is, of course, voluntary but the high membership rate also reflects the success of the OAJ. It is the voice of teachers from early childhood education to university level. And the voice is strong.

start everything with a clean slate. At the time it was not possible. Unity was the most important target and so we had to be ready to make compromises. All teacher groups wanted to ensure that their voice was heard strongly in the OAJ council, OAJ board, preparation committees etc, at national level and at local level.

It also has taken time for different teacher groups to learn to listen to each other and understand different kinds of problems. However, there is still a mathematical formula that we use to elect different decision making bodies.

For example in the OAJ council, which is the highest decision making body, there are 150 members from which 92 come from comprehensive schools, 33 the vocational sector, 22 from the early childhood sector and three from universities.

During these OAJ years the teacher union has become stronger and stronger. Since 1984 there has not been any need to strike; all problems have been solved by negotiations. The strike has been imminent several times. But finally compromise and satisfactory results have been found.

Today OAJ has a place in every working group where education is discussed in ministry of education or in the national board of education.

Education Committee in parliament wants to hear our opinion when education laws are prepared.

OAJ is almost daily in the media.

The dialogue inside the OAJ is sometimes strong when different teacher groups are discussing. But when we leave headquarters, there is only one OAJ voice.

In the OAJ we keep the main focus on safeguarding the interest of teachers. There is a need to fight for better salaries for teachers and more resources for education.

One grand old female union leader used to say: ‘Unanimity in big issues, freedom in small issues’. This is still good advice when different teacher groups are in the same union.

‘Finland underwent an awful financial crisis . . . we would never have survived if the unions had been in competition with each other’

All teachers groups are important, all voices have to be heard When the OAJ was established, the organization structure became quite complicated and there were many levels. The OAJ organization became more complicated when new teacher groups joined. It would have been much wiser and less costly to

Ritva Semi Special Advisor OAJ - Finland 3.4. 2014

7

The Burston school strike centenary While the history of the struggles of Tom and Annie Higdon has been oft repeated, the children’s role in initiating the rebellion has received less attention. In this, the centenary year of the Burston School Strike, we pay tribute to the children who initiated the solidarity action in support of their teachers. Their initiative galvanised their parents, the wider community and the British trade union movement into supporting their demand for justice for their teachers.

one wet morning to dry some of our clothes without asking the Parson. So the head ones said that our Governess and Master had better be got rid of. They had their pay sent and two days’ notice to leave the school. Governess did not know we were going on strike. She bought us all some Easter eggs and oranges the last day we were at the council School.

‘Violet Potter brought a paper to school with all our names on it, and all who were going on strike had to put a cross against their name. Out of seventy-two children sixty-six came out on strike.

How the strike started ‘The first morning our mothers ‘The scholars had apparently sent the infants because they organised this business thought they did not matter, but themselves – all ‘unbeknown’ to in the afternoon they too Mr and Mrs H. One of the firststopped away and only six class girls, named Violet Potter, answered the bell. it appears, on the last day in ‘The next morning the sixty-six school had clandestinely taken children lined up on the down the names of the scholars Crossways. We all had cards who would like to go on strike, round our necks and paper and she was now there at the Violet Potter, strike leader, aged 13 trimmings. We marched past the crossing yonder, marshalling them Council school and round the together. Violet is, therefore, “Candlestick”. When we got to the foster-mother’s referred to by the children as their Strike Leader – house she came out with a dustpan and brush to which, indeed she is. The sanction of their parents, “tin” us, but when she saw our mothers she ran in. however, was publicly vouchsafed at a meeting on She put a card in her window with “Victory” on it, the green overnight . . . Mr and Mrs H. knew but she has not got it yet. Some of our parents gave nothing of the children’s initiative in this matter of us cake and drink and many other things. When the origin of the strike – though one little boy we got to the Crown Common we had a rest. Mrs nearly gave the show away by writing in his Boulton, the lady at the Post Office, gave us some exercise book,”We are all going on strike lemonade and sweets and nuts. She also gave us a tomorrow” . . .’ large banner and several flags. At twelve o’clock Tom Higdon, The Burston Rebellion, we went home for dinner. At one we marched p51 again. When we got up to one of the fostermother’s friends (who is a foster-mother too) she Our school strike jumped up from behind a hedge and began to “tin” ‘We came on strike on April 1st,1914. We came on us. When we hooted her she said she would strike because our Governess and Master were summons us, but it has not happened yet.’ dismissed from the school unjustly. The Parson got Emily Wilby 1915, reproduced in the two Barnardo children to say that our Governess Burston School Strike, Oxford had caned them and slapped their faces, but we all Playscripts, p78 know that she did not. Then our Governess lit a fire

8

In other words there was a move to demand better pay and more respect for the workers. However, in It would be difficult to write about my aunt, Burston Violet had learned that she must accept the Violet, without mentioning the Burston School status quo – i.e.

Strike, for it was she, who, as a 13 year old ‘The rich man in his castle, schoolgirl, led the children out on what was to be a The poor man at his gate, twenty-five year strike.

God made them high or lowly Violet was born in the quiet village of And ordered their estate.’

Burston, just a couple of miles from the small (Mrs. Alexander) market town of Diss on the Norfolk – Suffolk But then into Burston and into Violet’s life border. Her father, Ezra John, (known as ‘Fetchum’) came Tom and Annie Higdon. Tom Higdon, who worked on the land, as did his father before him. was teacher, Primitive Methodist preacher and Her mother, Mary Ann, (Polly) had been born in Socialist and his wife, the headmistress, a kind, Yorkshire where, for a brief period, her father had gentle woman whose teaching methods were far gone to find work as an under keeper on the estate ahead of her time, and who received glowing of Kiplin Hall near Northallerton. reports from school inspectors. Her teaching Violet was small. Children of farm workers enthused her pupils because she not only taught were not usually well nourished and therefore did the basic ‘3Rs’ and Bible study, with emphasis on not grow to a robust stature Christ’s teaching, but she taught because wages were low and some simple French, typing, families were often large. She had needlework, Esperanto and dark hair and dark brown eyes, (a photography. She supplied the family trait) and, like her siblings, equipment and the boys had their had slightly swarthy skin. There own dark room. There was music is a story that the family is and poetry too. All this in a descended from Romany gypsies, village school in the early but we have been unable to verify twentieth century! Lessons had this. become inspiring and all were Violet and the Higdons, 1936 At the beginning of the eager to learn. Violet was one of twentieth century, especially in those who avidly partook of all the more remote villages, Victorian attitudes still they could teach her, and blossomed from a quiet held sway, although with the development of the girl into the young leader of the strike. They were railways and other improved means of being shown that there was a wider world and communication, leading to easier movement of opportunities they could aspire to. The Higdons people and ideas, these attitudes were becoming were loved and admired, and, when they were outmoded and open to question. Nevertheless, for unjustly sacked on trumped up charges, the furious the country child, unless they could call on wealth villagers supported the children in their strike. Of and influence to back them, it was improbable that course education did not suffer, for the Higdons they would be able to better their situation after continued to teach all but a small number of village leaving school, particularly since they would have children. Over time children came from further ahad only the most basic education. It was expected field to Burston to experience the Higdon’s that boys would work on the land or in some job teaching viz. two Russian boys, a French girl, related to agriculture. Girls might become a dairy children from London and sons of striking maid or go into service. A few would have found Nottinghamshire miners. work in town, and in Burston there was the corn Violet made the most of her education and, mill and the railway. on leaving school, went to London to take up Adhering to these Victorian values meant secretarial work. She returned to Burston when she that the poor must ‘know their place’ and not have married and had a family. For a while they moved the temerity to aspire to something more. However elsewhere in Norfolk, but as a widow Violet news travels, and the 1912 strike of female textile eventually retired to Burston once more, remaining workers in Lawrence, Massachusetts, became mentally active and involved in village events to known in this country. People here were also the end of her life. beginning to sing the words of a song inspired by the demands on their banner for ‘Bread and Roses’.

Violet Potter 1901 – 1979

Anne M. May (Nee Potter)

9

'Worse than Goering': school governor's extraordinary attack on NUT officer We’ve all done it. Late on a Friday, a shade overrefreshed, we’ve hit a sudden moment of clarity. We, and we alone, are the voice of reason in a crazy world. It’s time we let everyone know it — and what’s more, we’ve just thought of a hilarious one-liner. In the days before Twitter, we could usually rely on unconsciousness taking over before we’d managed to find the phone and drunk-dial our ex, etc. How Gerard Kelly must wish he lived in those times still.

Kelly is a journalist, former editor of the TES, and chairman of governors at Woodside High School in Wood Green, north London. I am not remotely suggesting that he was tired and emotional when he took to Twitter on Friday night.

But his astonishing attack on suspended Haringey National Union of Teachers secretary Julie Davies and, indirectly, on the NUT, is going to take some explaining.

Davies was suspended in early July for ‘gross misconduct.’ Her union branch has threatened to strike over the suspension. In a letter to members, NUT regional officer Darren O’Grady said Davies was being victimised by the school’s management, in part for writing a letter of support to a colleague facing compulsory redundancy.

O’Grady also challenged employer allegations about her use of Twitter. The fact that social media use formed part of the charges against her makes Kelly’s behaviour all the more ironic.

In a tweet about Davies which was directed to NUT members and supporters of Davies, Kelly said: ‘…Julie Davies has probably been the biggest impediment to ed. [sic] in Haringey since Herman Goering.’ Davies is of Jewish descent.

As people expressed outrage at his remark, Kelly helpfully explained that Goering — a WWI fighter pilot before he became a senior nazi — had ‘bombed quite a few of the schs [schools], tho arguably did less damage than Julie.’ He also applauded the local authority for taking on ‘the union bullies.’

It’s not the first time Davies has been attacked by the right in ways that reveal both ignorance of, and massive hypocrisy over, trade unions. Pieces had mysteriously found their way into the London Evening Standard well in advance of the suspension, lamenting the amount of ‘taxpayers’ money’ spent on Davies. Why? Because she’s a full-time, elected union officer on 100 per cent release from work, so still draws her teachers’ salary.

‘Facility time’ has been going for decades, with the agreement of employers. It’s a method by which members can elect a workplace representative who has done the job and knows the territory, but can devote her or himself to union work for a percentage, sometimes all, of the working week. The release from work lasts only as long as they are elected. Should they fail to be, they go back to their original post. Yet the right-wing press suddenly seized on this completely legitimate practice as if they’d cleverly uncovered a financial scandal.

The Standard also noted Davies’s opposition to late education secretary Michael Gove — pauses, re-reads last five words, smiles quietly to self — and his plans to force academy status on local schools. Kelly is — by total coincidence — a huge Goveite.

As the Haringey Independent newspaper noted in 2012: ‘A commission into the future of Haringey’s education, set up by the council, will include a vocal critic of the borough’s schools …

Gerard Kelly … has labelled the borough’s education record “abysmal” and backed education secretary Michael Gove’s move to forcibly convert four (local primary schools) into academies.’

On Davies’s suspension, tiresome right-wing blogger Guido Fawkes also got in on the act, gloating over her situation and exclaiming over her king’s ransom of a £35k salary. Fawkes is the pseudonym of Paul Staines, a former financial trader who began his politician-baiting blog anonymously. He was a member of dubious, now 10

defunct pressure group Committee for a Free Britain, funded by the Unholy Trinity of billionaire tycoon James Goldsmith, Rupert Murdoch and, adviser to Thatcher, David Hart.

Despite Staines’s bravura claims since, about his love of confronting enemies — ‘You fuck with me and I’ll fuck with you’ — he initially preferred to do so from the shadows. Literally. Not only was the Guido Fawkes blog anonymous, Staines’s website was registered in a Caribbean tax haven under a false name and address.

Staines refused to give interviews for years.

When he finally appeared on Newsnight in 2007, he did so only on the proviso that he appeared in shadow and under his pseudonym — until fellow guest Michael White of the Guardian rather blew the mystique by referring to him by name.

Staines earned $1.4 million in commissions between 1997 and 2001 working for Mondial Global Investors, a Bahamas-based hedge fund — making his hand-wringing horror at Davies’s salary even more surprising. Perhaps he assumed the £35k was per day.

In other noble rhetoric, Staines has called Harriet Harman a ‘throwback to the unwashed “ladies” of Greenham Common’ and opined that killing communists is a jolly good thing.

He has advised Boris Johnson on using social media, though he feels BJ is not right-wing enough.

I could go on, but still my favourite thing about him is that he occasionally sports a pointy goatee and cavalier-type moustache — you know, just like Guy Fawkes. Kelly must be delighted with his new political friends.

Teachers on Twitter have contacted both the school at which Kelly is chief governor, and the TES, to ask for comments on his outburst. I for one will be watching Twitter with bated breath. The elitist clout of men like Kelly and Staines who, from the safety of their keyboards, howl for the blood of one worker is notable. Davies should consider it a mark of honour that, with all the highly suspect power their boys’ clubs wield, women like her can still annoy the hell out of them.

Gove has gone, free market EU ideology hasn’t Teachers and parents everywhere may welcome the news that Michael Gove has been sacked as education secretary. But while education professionals and local government figures of every party and members of the Commons education select committee may celebrate at this news, the free market ideology Gove loved to dole out certainly has not.

Why? Because it is enshrined in European Union dogma called, grandly, the Bologna Process which commits member states to ‘harmonising the architecture of the European Higher Education system’.

Now I’m not an academic and I’m not a teacher. But I have studied European Union (EU) policy over decades in a number of areas and industries and there is one common theme – economics, or more accurately, neo-liberal economics.

For instance EU transport ‘liberalisation’ rules force member states to

Louise Raw, Morning Star, 22/7/14 Louise Raw is the author of Striking A Light: The Bryant & May Matchwomen And Their Place In History (Bloomsbury).

Messages of support for Julie Davies can be sent via deputy secretary of the NUT Niall O’Connor at: nialloconnor@haringeynut.org.uk

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introduce ‘market competition’ to outsource and privatise transport networks across ferry, bus and rail networks, attacking the fundamental concept of 'socialised' public transport.

The privatisation of transport infrastructure and services with other key national assets is a core demand of the International Monetary Fund/EU/ European Central Bank troika now imposing austerity and mass privatisation on Greece and Portugal. EU Commissioners plan to create a ‘single European transport network’ dominated by private sector monopoly interests that will lead to job cuts, low pay, more expensive services for passengers and maximum profits for big business.

You can apply this rather dogmatic approach to any industry. This is because the European Roundtable of Industrialists (ERT), a grouping of Europe’s largest transnational corporations, largely writes the treaties and directives that govern EU policy. Don’t believe me? Go to ERT’s website, it’s easy to find and boasts about how much influence it has over EU policy which, of course thanks to the Lisbon Treaty, overrides national policies.

Having understood this, it may not surprise you that the basic idea behind the so-called Bologna Process, first promoted back in 1999, is economic. This planned enlargement of scale of the European systems of higher education is based on the concept of enhancing 'competitiveness' by cutting down costs.

They are remarkably similar to World Trade Organisation and GATS proposals that would effectively erode all effective forms of democratic political control over higher education. Remember here that these organisations overlooked ‘structural adjustment’ programmes in Africa back in the 1970s. If you want to see what the results of socalled ‘structural adjustment’ look like, look at Africa today.

One educational expert, Chris Lorenz of Free University Amsterdam, openly says that the Bologna Process ‘represents an extension on a European scale of the neo-liberal policies that have been “implemented” from the 1980’s onwards.

These policies can be summarised under the labels of commodification of knowledge, the marketisation of higher education, the enlargement of scale as the primary policy to cut down costs, and – last but no least - the “managerial colonisation” of higher education and the simultaneous de-professionalisation of the faculty,’ he says.

So what do many academics have to say about this process? Well, not a lot really. It is the

environment they work inand, rather like the frog in slowly boiling water, they get on with it and who can blame them? Moreover, the Bologna Process constitutes an intergovernmental agreement and does not have the status of EU legislation.

It is not a treaty or convention and there are no legal obligations for the signatory states, so participation and cooperation is completely voluntary. However the unelected European Commission plays an increasingly important role in the implementation of this Orwellian ‘Process’.

Today the ‘Process’ is now moving away from a strict convergence in terms of time spent on qualifications, towards a competency-based system. The system will have an undergraduate and postgraduate division, with a bachelor's degree in the former and a master's and doctorate in the latter. In Europe five-year plus first degrees are common. This leads to many not completing their studies and many of these countries are now introducing bachelor-level qualifications. This situation is changing rapidly as the Bologna Process is implemented.

The Bologna Process is not a conspiracy theory. It is a way of removing democraticallyelected governments from the educational process just as surely as EU rail directives remove them from the running of national transport networks.

While it may amuse Europhiles to dismiss such rhetoric, the reality is that the market is seeking to take over educational services and the EU is the conduit for making it happen through very co-operative neo-liberal governments in the member states.

Politicians of all parties used to scoff at the RMT rail union’s exposures of how EU directives were destroying democratically-run, nationalised railways in favour of an extremely dangerous private model based on the development of huge Europe-wide private monopolies. Today politicians of all hues, including UKIP, by the way, support EU directives that hand rail to the private sector as they claim there is no alternative. Do you really want education to be treated in the same shoddy and underhanded way?

Brian Denny No2EU convenor www.no2eu.com

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Anti-Academies Alliance news Nicky Morgan, the new Education Secretary has been described by some as a ‘clean skin’ after the disaster of Gove at Education. Her right wing reputation will not reassure many however, dubbed the ‘minister for straight women’ she is on record as voting against gay marriage and to restrict the right to abortion. Educated at a private school she is a member of the Conservative Christian Fellowship and is an Oxford graduate.

sponsors REAch2 have moved into Dorothy Barley Juniors where the community fought a united campaign against forced academisation. Now we hear that all of the teaching staff at the school will have left by September. Local teachers say ‘this is a terrible consequence for the children and parents at the school who rejected the forced academy. We are absolutely outraged at the devastating and harmful effect that academisation has had on our community. We remain determined to improve the education, health and wellbeing of the children in Barking and Dagenham. And it is our belief that a locally elected and accountable authority is the best way to achieve these aims.’

The DfE PR machine went into overdrive when Harris Primary Academy, Philip Lane (formerly Downhills school) got its ‘good’ Ofsted grading, but they’ve been awfully quiet about nearby Trinity Academy - another of the four forced academies in the borough of Haringey - judged to be ‘requiring improvement’.

Meanwhile ‘school’ seems to have become a dirty word at Harris Philip Lane, where children are invited to attend after-academy clubs and at Cavell in Norwich, re-branded as an academy earlier this month, children sit down to academy dinners!

Parents at Manningham’s Springwood School vowed to fight forced academisation of their primary, saying the school is already on the road to improvement. Ofsted inspectors visiting in April said: "The [new] headteacher has made a very prompt start on addressing the school’s key priorities. She is tackling weaknesses robustly.” But the DfE has it lined up for the Dixons Academy trust founded by Tory donor Lord Kalms.

Campaigners at a successful secondary school in East Sussex have been struggling for months to have their democratic voices heard. When the headteacher and governing body at Hove Park School proposed academy conversion there were three vacancies for parent governors. Campaigners insisted on elections and now all three places have gone to antiacademy candidates. That election result came on the same day the NUT took strike action as part of their opposition to the proposed conversion. The school had not been planning to ballot parents so Brighton & Hove Council stepped up. Results showed 70 per cent clearly against conversion. Parents and teachers are even more determined to make governors listen to their democratic voice.

Free Schools Gove may be gone but his flagship free schools will continue to cause headaches at the DfE. This week Hackney University Technical College announced it was to close less than two years after it opened. It failed to attract enough 14-18 students to make it viable so parents and students are left without places and taxpayers are left picking up the bill.

Academies Parents in Berwick, Northumberland were concerned about the seemingly high number of teacher resignations this term and they set up a facebook page. Rather than engaging with them the Headteacher has warned parents that online postings are potentially open to legal action.

Parents in South London are being asked not to speculate or talk to the press about the theft of £2m from the Haberdashers’ Aske’s academy trust http:// www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-28267071 .

Apparently the fraud began in 2011 when Liz Sidwell was headteacher. What has she been doing since then? Well she’s just stepped down as Schools Commissioner – tasked by the DfE with increasing the number of academies. When public money intended for their children’s education is stolen from under the noses of academy directors, why should parents stay silent?

More forced academies?

Warren School in Barking and Dagenham will be forced to become an academy despite opposition from the majority of parents and the local authority. The high court ruled that it was lawful to force academisation even though the DfE was unable to contest the fact that academies do no better than community schools once equivalents are stripped out. Warren is already in a successful partnership – described positively in the most recent HMI report with a nearby secondary school, but the DfE insists that it must now be sponsored by expanding chain, Loxford Academy Trust.

Also in Barking & Dagenham, academy

www.antiacademies.org.uk

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Review Bolivarian Venezuela: sustained progress for workers’ rights

by Francisco Dominguez and Sian Errington. Published by IER, 4th Floor, Jack Jones House, Liverpool L3 8EG. With the forces of counter-revolution apparently rampant in Caracas (although importantly not supported in barrios) and drooled over by the western press led by neoliberal free-sheet (who would pay for it?) City AM, the Institute of Employment Rights has recently published the 10th booklet in its series of Comparative Notes, examining the system of labour and employment rights in countries around the world, this time in Bolivarian Venezuela.

Reading the booklet simultaneously with Victor Figueroa Clark’s biography of Salvador Allende, I was struck by the similarities between the Popular Unity era in Chile of the early 1970s and today’s Venezuela.

With regard to the right-wing gangs now on the streets in Caracas, Clark notes that ‘Castro privately encouraged the Popular Unity to take steps to prepare for the violence that the reactionary elite and its allies in the United States were clearly preparing.’

In the comparative context, Clark describes the industrial relations philosophy of Popular Unity.

‘Participation was to be demanded at every level.

Workers were to participate in management of enterprises, and trade unions and other social organisations were to be incorporated into administering enterprises, and in the planning process.’

Similarly, in this booklet on Venezuela, the authors make the point. ‘Running through the [new labour] law, as in much of Venezuelan political life, is the nurturing of a participative democracy… ordinary people are not expected to be passive but politically active and the engine of transformation in the country.’

The passing into law of the new labour code in Venezuela was one of the last acts of late President Hugo Chávez. But this was no top-down drafting – the labour code process was a ‘product of more than 19,000 proposals resulting from over 1,800 popular

assemblies of working people held around the country in liaison with trade unions.’

The LOTT, as it’s known by its Spanish acronym, deals with most aspects of working life and more, including contracts of employment, wages, collective bargaining and the right to strike, working conditions (including dignified employment and health and safety), outsourcing, privatisation and bogus self-employment, trade union rights, equalities and life outside work, lifelong learning and enforcement.

That such an all-embracing statute could be passed into law with the support of the unions is all the more remarkable given the unions have been in a state of flux since the advent of Chávismo. The old unions, organised in the Confederacion de Trabajadores (CTV) confederation, supported the coup against Chávez in 2002.

The CTV has now shrunk to a rump although union density has grown under Chávez, not least because more and more workers have been brought in from the informal labour market.

As they enter the formal sector workers now join the new unions organised in the new Bolivarian CBST confederation. It was CBST general secretary Carlos Lopez who participated in the special commission convened to synthesise the workers’ proposals into the new legislation.

It remains a shame that the CTV is still able to claim some official recognition within the international labour movement.

This booklet is extremely timely. Given the western press’ support for the counterrevolutionary elements, it’s refreshing to be able to read about just one aspect of the positive advances of working people in the Chávez era. Don’t just read it yourself, buy it and pass it on.

Adrian Weir (Courtesy, Morning Star) 14

International news ‘Their central responsibilities,’ stated Fernández, ‘are today in the classroom itself, and in the opportunity to pursue university studies.’

CUBA More than 7,000 new teachers graduate More than 4,400 students have graduated from pedagogical high schools – for the first time since their reopening in 2009 - specializing in Primary, Pre-school and Special education, while another 3,000 graduated from pedagogical universities, equally committed to their discipline.

The 20 most successful graduates from pedagogical schools throughout the country, and the most outstanding directors during the academic year 2013-2014 were honored in a ceremony held at the José Martí Memorial.

The key speech at the event was made by Miguel Díaz Canel Bermúdez, first vice president of the Councils of State and Ministers, who emphasized the importance of reopening the pedagogical high schools, stating that they are ‘a necessary step in professional training, which has shown that – at the secondary and primary level all the motivations, all the aspirations and sentiments exist, drawing an important group of students toward teaching and toward professional university studies.’

Canel Bermúdez called upon the young teachers to approach their work with the preparation and the commitment which is expected of them.

‘We ask you in a moment such as this to be passionate about your profession, to thoroughly prepare, lead by example and leave an indelible mark on the spirit of your students.

"Teach with commitment, and through lessons, in their classrooms, contribute to educating the new generations of Cubans, who the homeland and Revolution need for the development of a prosperous and sustainable socialism’.

One of the students, Beatriz Cabrera Álvarez, spoke on behalf of all the new graduates, commenting that beginning in September, she will have but one objective – ‘to carry out the educational work which, in our country, has achieved gratifying results, and today positions it as one of countries with the greatest successes in this respect.’

Immediately after the ceremony students and directors met with José Ramón Fernández Álvarez, advisor to President Raul Castro who recognized in the figure of the teacher the "principal element of any educational system."

Yenia Silva Correa, Granma

USA Thousands of children on ‘death train’ to US A growing human catastrophe is developing on the borders of the United States, as thousands of unaccompanied children attempt to get into the country to escape impoverished and often terrifying conditions in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador in Central America.

The children often come in to the country on the roof of 'the Beast', a train owned by a South Kansas railway company on a railway built to facilitate the NAFTA agreement – a free trade agreement which has increased mass poverty in central America: while capital and goods can flow freely, people can not. According to newspaper reports, 'For hundreds of miles (children) ride on the roofs of the train cars trying to avoid fatal falls, hot days, frigid nights, and low-clearance tunnels.'

Children make this terrifying journey because of the appalling conditions in countries like Guatemala and Honduras which are governed

by US supported dictatorships. In Guatemala for example trade unionists are routinely terrorised and murdered – a situation which has persisted for decades and has been supported by the US government who, like 40th president Ronald Reagan consistently advised Guatemala to 'eliminate all sources of resistance.' In the case of Honduras a US recognised coup has left the country in chaos, with the highest murder rate in the world.

Now unaccompanied children are turning up on the US's southern border in droves. While some rightwingers demand that they be sent right back, others who recognise the horror which is unfolding in their midst, are doing their best to welcome the youngsters.

Incredibly, far from making arrangements to protect the children, the Obama government says that the vast majority will be sent right back to their countries of origin and therefore into harm's way – the President is even planning to speed up the

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process.

This pain suffered by children is something that must concern teachers both in the US and in Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras where teachers have been in the forefront of the struggle against dictatorship.

1948, displaced from their own towns and villages. It is enclosed on all sides with access to and from the coast controlled by Israel, and the border with Egypt effectively closed.

Israel has actively maintained this siege for many years and has resisted all efforts to ease access, resulting in dire results for the Gazan economy and infrastructure, and the lives of the Palestinians who live there.

At the time of writing, Israel has bombarded Palestine with over 2500 missiles, killing at least 168 people and injuring 1140, 80 per cent of whom are women, children and the elderly and who have nowhere else to go. 17,000 Gazans have been displaced and have sought refuge in United Nations buildings.

Mosques, schools, hospitals, water plants and private houses have been targeted, damaged and destroyed.

There can be no justification for this.

We therefore utterly condemn the actions of the Israeli forces and call on Israel to immediately halt its bombardment of Gaza and to enter into negotiations in good faith with the Palestinians in order to establish a just peace. We call for an end to the siege of Gaza and the illegal occupation of the West Bank.

We further condemn the inaction of our own government and the international community which has allowed Israel to act, with impunity, in breach of international law for decades.

If Israel does not abide by international law, we call on the UK and the international community to: • Start proceedings against Israel for breaches of international law • Cease any arms trade with Israel • Revoke any trade agreements which make us complicit in its illegal activities Beth Davies (Delegation Leader, Ex-President, NUT),Philipa Harvey (Senior Vice-President, NUT), Dave Harvey (Chair, NUT International Committee),Roger King (Vice-Chair, NUT International Committee), Marilyn Bater (National Executive, Outer London),Caroline Ezzat, Bodrul Amin, Seema McArdle, Kiri Tunks, Bernard Regan

The ‘death train’

www.teachersolidarity.com

NUT Delegation Statement on Gaza & Palestine Last November, we visited the West Bank of Palestine as part of an official National Union of Teachers’ delegation. We saw at first hand how the Israeli occupation oppresses the Palestinian people through its control of Palestinian areas. Of particular concern to us as teachers was the impact the occupation has on young people, in particular: • The presence of over 500,000 illegal settlers living in illegal settlements which control 42 per cent of Palestinian land • The routine harassment by illegal settlers and soldiers which has resulted in more than 1400 children killed since 2000 (1 every 3 days) • The repeated brutal detention & abusive treatment of thousands of children within a military court system which is traumatising and criminalising a generation • The obstacles to movement through the use of permits, road closures, checkpoints and the Wall preventing the free movement of Palestinians to schools and universities, health provision, work, family and their land • The lack of funding for Palestinian schools which results in a shortage of classrooms, teachers and resources •The imposition of a curriculum which denies Palestinian history and culture for Palestinians in East Jerusalem and in Israel We were unable to visit Gaza as it is besieged

by Israel in what David Cameron has called a ‘prison camp’. 1.7 million people live in Gaza with under-18s making up more than 50 per cent of the population.

Most of the population are refugees from the Nakba in

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