Education for Tomorrow 121

EDUCATION for TOMORROW FOR THE DEFENCE OF STATE EDUCATION

TUC Congress 2014 Anti academies fight – successes

Reviews International news – USA, Finland, West Africa

‘Britain needs more than a pay rise. It needs a government that fights for working people like the Tories fight for the rich.’

UNITE General Secretary Len McCluskey, TUC London rally, October 2014 WINTER 2014

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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 TUC 2014 - 4 Reclaiming education - 6 Anti Academies Alliance news - 7

ISSN 2066-9145

Website: www.educationfortomorrow.org.uk

Reviews - 8

Published and printed by the EDUCATION for TOMORROW Collective

Private education stranglehold - 11

Cover photo: ‘Britain needs a pay rise’ march, London, 18th October 2014

International - 14

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Agony for us, ecstasy for them All in this together? Even the Chief Economist at the Bank of England doesn’t believe it.

‘The UK economy is writhing in both agony and ecstasy with strong growth, low inflation and high employment being tempered by weak wage growth and productivity,’ he told a meeting recently: ‘This has been a jobs-rich, but pay-poor, recovery . . . there has been a mark-down in global growth, heightened geo-political and financial risks and the weak pipeline of inflationary pressures from wages internally, and commodity prices externally.’

Explaining why he would not support an interest rate rise when the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) next meets, he said: ‘the evidence suggests that the MPC, in common with every other mainstream forecaster, has been forecasting sunshine tomorrow in every year since 2008 – that is, rising real wages, productivity and real interest rates. The heat-wave has failed to materialise . . .’

This is the result of Government policies that have promoted an economic recovery based on easing taxation on big business and the richest people in society, while depressing working people’s living standards. The average company chief executive now earns 175 times as much as the average worker, who in turn is £50 per week worse off in real terms than in 2008 – the longest fall in real wages since records began. The rich have grown richer, the rest of us have grown poorer and as a result, can’t afford to buy the goods and services we produce. With many of Britain’s trading partners following similar economic policies, the Government’s ‘export led recovery’ is not going to happen. So there’s more pain to follow.

The claimed fall in unemployment is the outcome of forcing the unemployed to take any job going or face a benefits sanction. Employers are able to offer work at minimum wage rates and with terrible conditions. Hundreds of thousands of jobless people have opted for self-employment, competing for casual work with other desperate people and often taking home less than the minimum wage. It’s no wonder that the number of working days lost due to stress, depression and anxiety has increased by 24 per cent since 2009.

Last month’s public sector strikes followed by the magnificent ‘Britain needs a pay rise’ marches and rallies were a promising response.

They were sympathetically received on the streets even if they were largely ignored by the media but

they must be seen as just the start of a fight back.

Much more is needed to get the message across that ordinary people have been robbed of rights, benefits and wealth that it has taken generations to accumulate.

There’s no doubt that there is a rising level of working-class consciousness. The affiliation of the National Association of Headteachers to the TUC is a significant development, as was the presence at rallies of large numbers of members of the unions like the Royal College of Midwives and the Royal College of Nursing, as yet not affiliated. Alas, the Labour Party leadership stayed away, so were unable to hear UNITE General Secretary Len McCluskey tell the London rally: ‘Britain needs more than a pay rise. It needs a government that fights for working people like the Tories fight for the rich.’

Don’t give up the fight The Commons Education Committee recently took evidence from education trade unions on academies and free schools. Teachers were represented by the NASUWT and the NUT unions and support staff by UNISON and the GMB. It was reported that the committee Chair’s opening question was along the lines of: ‘Academies are here to stay, whatever the outcome of the next election, so how wise is it for you all to oppose academies? Wouldn’t it be better to engage in the debate rather than just oppose the whole idea?

He got a robust response; Academies and free schools are publicly funded but lack local democratic accountability, the consultation process for their establishment is shrouded in secrecy and frequently runs counter to local parental and community wishes, staff in them frequently work longer hours with poorer pay and conditions, while vast amounts of public funds have been spent on establishing them, there is no evidence that they improve the outcomes for pupils and the academisation process has proved a ‘huge distraction from teaching and learning.’

Promoting inequality and privilege, mired in scandal and secrecy, academies and free schools should have no future – like the rest of the privatisations carried out by successive governments, they have been used as a device to rob working people of their gains. It’s time to demand them back and start building a secure future.

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Some thoughts on TUC Congress

In many ways, unfortunately, the most significant thing about this year’s Trades Union Congress (TUC) was the absence of Bob Crow following his untimely death. He was a titan of the Labour movement and showed us all that creating a fighting but disciplined union was the way to win members, not lose them, and also the way to defend pay and conditions in the present situation.

This situation is one in which the super-rich have massively increased their wealth whilst the 99.9 per cent have suffered a serious decline in income, or, at the very best, managed to stand still. The TUC responded with the slogan ‘Britain needs a pay rise’ (Well, the vast majority of us anyhow).

The question the TUC has to face, as we all do, is how to do this? It won’t be done by allowing health and education to be privatised. It won’t be done by keeping our railways, water, electricity, etcetera in private hands. It won’t be done as Bob and RMT constantly reminded us, by staying in the EU. It won’t be done by relying on a neutered Labour Party that indicates that, if elected, it will continue with the same financial policies as the Tories.

We will need to increase and work harder to ensure more of our class understand class and class interest. They understand theirs. As Warren Buffet said: ‘There's been class warfare going on for the last twenty years, and my class has won’. Well it's not over yet. There are recent stirrings with more protests and industrial action.

A strategic review is necessary. As a motion from the TUC young workers section noted: ‘trade unions lack a clear strategic vision about how these young workers can be recruited and organised’.

We have to reverse the massive decline in TUC membership, but particularly of the even greater decline in young members and, within them, of young activists. It is the existential problem. This needs a whole trade union movement response and the prioritisation of it, not piecemeal separate union responses. The essence of our strength is in the two pillars of our unity and our numbers.

The unity issue can be met, albeit not easily (but special times demand special means) by abolishing competitive recruitment within the TUC. We have seen how ludicrous and wasteful this is within the education sector. We need to maximise our intake and retention of members. We

should seek the affiliation of the National Union of Students to the TUC. All students could be given on graduating, a free membership card for a period for the relevant union for their sector. The TUC could set up a system where membership automatically moves when you move job. All the unemployed could be recruited in a TUC-wide scheme covering all unions by extending the AMICUS union’s community idea.

These are just a few ideas. The TUC needs to conduct a strategic review involving all unions and to get our class on a war footing. If people are still unaware that the super-rich have declared class war against us, and it will only get worse until we organise the strategic counter offensive, then it’s time to tell them ‘wake up and smell the coffee’.

Hank Roberts Education and democratic accountability Mary Bousted, ATL general secretary spoke at the TUC to the motion on democratic accountability. She said: ‘Congress, we now have a Secretary of State, Nicky Morgan, who thinks that running schools for profit might be a good idea.

I would commend to Ms Morgan the TUC's excellent research paper Education Not For Sale – it's on the TUC website and freely available to download because the TUC believes that its intellectual property should not be kept for profit but should be freely shared. If Ms Morgan pays careful attention she will learn a lot about how forprofit schools in America have increased social segregation. If she reads the Miami Herald she will learn a lot about how pupils in for-profit schools have had to pay extra to be taught the core curriculum, how they have been taught in sheds, how they have had to pay to graduate.

But Ms Morgan doesn't need to think carefully about establishing for-profit schools because profit is being made from state schools in England, today, as we sit here right now. Lots of profit. So much so that the Public Accounts Committee's most recent report into the funding of academies and free schools expressed fundamental 4

concerns about how money is being spent, and on what, in some free schools and academies. The Committee expressed grave concern that the Education Funding Agency [EFA], the body which distributes money to academies and free schools, doesn't have a clue about how that money is being spent. In particular, the Public Accounts Committee is worried about conflicts of interest. I quote directly from the report: 'The EFA does not know enough about conflicts of interest in academies and the risk they pose to the proper use of public money . . . The committee was concerned that individuals with connections to both academy trusts and private companies may have benefited personally or their companies may have benefited, from their position, when providing trusts with goods and services'.

Congress, the Public Accounts Committee is right to be worried about private profiteering from state education. Let us take some examples.

Take the Aurora Academies Trust, which currently has four primary schools in Sussex. It was established by Mosaica Education Inc, a company notorious in the US. Why would such a company set up in England, which apparently does not permit state schools to be run for profit? Because Mosaica can drive a coach and horses through what is now called the connected party requirements in the Academies Financial Handbook, that's why. Mosaica charged no less than £213,000 for the use of its proprietary curriculum model in those schools. Forget about the obscenity of making a school curriculum private property. I'd love to hear someone explain to me how that curriculum, which has been used in Mosaica schools for years, was provided 'at cost', as required by the rules.

Or let's look at Leigh Academies Trust run by Frank Green, appointed by Michael Gove as Schools Commissioner, which has paid over £111 thousand for consultancy work since 2010 to Shoreline, a company founded by…can you guess?

None other than Frank Green himself.

Or let's look at the notorious Kings' Science Academy free school in Bradford. Alan Lewis, Vice Chairman of the Conservative party provided a site for the school containing warehouses that were largely derelict and empty. He then received £10 million pounds worth of public money to build the new school. He will receive £6 million over a 20 year period for rent after which the school building reverts back to his sole ownership.

Yes, it seems that if you are a Conservative party donor you get well rewarded for your

connections to academy and free schools.

But it's not just individual Tory donors' firms and charities which are making money from the academies and free schools they govern.

The analysis in the TUC's Education Not For Sale shows that millions of pounds of our money has been spent on legal, accountancy, management consultancy and property service support to set up academies and free schools – between May 2010 and December 2013, £76.7 million pounds paid to 14 private firms.

Congress, let's be clear – the evidence shows that spending vast amounts of money on supporting the creation of academies and free schools is a colossal waste of money. The Institute of Education has very recently released a report into the performance of different types of schools and finds that there is no evidence that increased parental choice and school autonomy are effective ways of improving the educational attainment of children from poor backgrounds. The differences in educational standards of different types of schools are overwhelmingly related to the backgrounds of their pupils.

Congress, the government is wasting billions of pounds creating a schools' market when there is no evidence that this improves educational standards. We want transparent, fair and equitable funding of schools. School governors should not be able to provide 'services' to the schools they govern – as Margaret Hodge cried 'it's just plain wrong'.

Congress – public funds must not be used for private gain. I move.

Private Eye 1377

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7. All those whom we employ to educate our children should have qualified professional status.

Continuing professional development should be an entitlement and requirement for all staff.

Unqualified staff should be given appropriate training to become qualified.

Reclaiming education a better future for our schools

‘Picking up the Pieces’ is supported by the Campaign for State Education, the Socialist Educational Association, Information for School and College Governors, Forum, Comprehensive Future and the Alliance for Inclusive Education in conjunction with other campaigning groups and trade unions. More information can be found at www.pickingupthepieces.org.uk

Below are the seven principles agreed at a House of Commons meeting on April 8th 2014 that the ‘Picking up the Pieces’ alliance will be campaigning for in the next General Election. We want to ensure that Education is a high priority topic in the debate and that the future of state education does not fall into the hands of profiteers who would deny a high quality education to everyone.

1. The National Curriculum should be what it says – a curriculum for all children in all English schools. As originally promised, it should be a curriculum to which all children are entitled, broadly based, balanced and designed to promote children's emotional, as well as intellectual, development.

2. No school should be allowed to choose its pupils.

Admission to schools should be fairly administered according to well understood rules drawn up by a locally elected education service. Selection tests must end. No child should be branded a failure at 11.

3. Inclusion and equal opportunities need to be at the heart of education provision and discrimination and segregation tackled in all their forms. The needs of every child, including those with SEN and disabilities, should be fully met.

4. All schools should be treated equally and funded according to a common formula which responds to pupils' needs.

5. All schools within the same area should work together, rather than compete against each other. A locally elected education service should guide, support and monitor schools as well as take decisions on school places.

6. The inspection system, perceived by schools as hostile and threatening, should be replaced by one which is supportive, as well as rigorous. Standards should be agreed through a national consultation process and inspectors should help schools by developing and sharing successful practice.

Private Eye

A common sense approach to term-time holidays Over 60,000 families have been fined by local authorities for taking children out of school for holidays during term time. The Local Government association has called for the removal of the blanket ban and it has been reported that Education Secretary Nicky Morgan has backed the NAHT headteacher union’s new guidelines which cover weddings, funerals and religious events.

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stalled.

Millions Wasted on Unproven School Improvement Experiment

Free Schools Failure Exclusive analysis in the Independent revealed what we’ve known all along about the free school programme – that it’s wasteful, risky and badly planned. Over £1m was spent on schools that never even opened while ‘inadequate’ schools have cost over £50m. The figures show that a third of the 79 first and second wave free schools were judged as inadequate or requiring improvement by Ofsted.

This compares with one in five of schools overall. Figures show that 79 per cent of pupils in local authority-run schools reach the required standard in reading, writing and maths tests for 11year-olds – compared with 70 per cent in free schools.

The failing free schools have now been handed to new sponsors; with one exception: IES Breckland - the country’s only for-profit state school. Although Ofsted described governance as inadequate and said it failed to ensure that the school met safeguarding requirements, the same Trust continues to run the school.

The National Audit Office (NAO) has warned that despite £382m spent every year on monitoring schools and interventions, there are weaknesses in government efforts to raise school standards. The NAO questions how much the Department for Education knows about problems at school level, in a system with increasing autonomy for individual schools and academy chains.

However when democratically accountable local authorities use their powers to intervene there’s an immediate improvement at the next Ofsted inspection in two thirds of cases – far more successful than the Department for Education’s ideologically-motivated strategy: insisting on sponsored academy status.

Christine Blower, General Secretary of the NUT said ‘The government’s evidence base has often been shaky, particularly when justifying academy conversion as a route to school improvement. Parents know that academies and free schools often “fail” and many state-maintained schools are deemed “outstanding”. Academy status is not a magic solution.’

Working Practice The Independent has reported on the findings of Public Concern At Work (PCAW) that academy and free school staff are making a disproportionate number of calls to the whistleblowing charity.

PCAW said the rise in calls from education staff . . . ‘indicates a worrying lack of oversight in the sector. Teachers are often confused about where to go in a rapidly changing sector. For example, for many of those working at academies, it has not been made sufficiently clear that local authorities remain responsible for safeguarding children. It is not clear at all who they are supposed to approach if they have financial concerns.’

NASUWT members at two academies are now saying enough is enough to changed working practices. Escalating strike action is underway in Lincolnshire and in Salford.

Academies Slow Down Anti Academies Alliance research showing the declining popularity of academy conversions was picked up by Warwick Mansell writing in the Guardian recently. There’s no doubt we’ve passed ‘peak academisation’ for secondary schools and the vast majority of primary schools have chosen to remain with their local authorities. The research shows that the peak of secondary conversions occurred in 2010-11 and for primaries in 2013. Now more than ten years after the very first academy opened the academies programme has failed to convince the majority of schools.

Whilst initially schools were bribed to convert, with extra funding of hundreds of thousands, now that the money has dried up, conversion rates have

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Reviews Corporation, which, in turn is one of the major global financial services centres, and represents and lobbies on behalf of transnational financial services.

TheCityUk also directly dictates UK input into EU trade policy at EU level via EU bureaucrats. In the US, corporations were formulating their policies to 'advise' their government for these trade agreements as early as 2007. The Cameron government operates for the City...

What is known about TTIP discussions and disputes has largely arrived in the public domain via leaks. ' STOP TTIP' is an organisation campaigning against the TTIP and CETA agreements. It has produced this pamphlet called 'Stop TTIP' which is full of very useful detail about TTIP and campaigning ideas. It deals with all aspects of these agreements and clearly demonstrates why we must campaign against TTIP - and urgently!

1) TTIP threatens democratic power and control by demanding regulatory bilateral harmonisation of trading rules, thereby restricting individual constituent governments' ability to make policy. Essentially, it is deregulating trade in favour of trans-global corporations. Where regulatory standards are higher, for example, like in Europe for health and safety, and food quality control, the lower ones, in this example those of the U.S., will be the corporate choice, thereby unfettering them from more stringent regulation.

2) Part of TTIP provision is the Investor State Dispute Settlement (-ISDS) which allows  transnational corporations to sue governments for any regulations they attempt to use that could limit transnational corporations' profits. Examples of what this implies can be seen from other of these bilateral trade agreements wherein, in one instance, the Egyptian government is being sued by Veolia for increasing its minimum wage, and in another, the El Salvador government is being sued by the Australian/Canadian gold mining firm Pacific Rim for trying to protect its main water supply from contamination! The ISDS elevates transnational capital to a status virtually equivalent to that of a sovereign state. ISDS disputes will be adjudicated by ad hoc supranational arbitration panels in private and made up of three trade lawyers, and disputes will be decided against free trade criteria only. So far, in similar bilateral agreements, just under a third of disputes have been won by corporations, and about

STOP TTIP TTIP is a Trans-Atlantic Trade & Investment Partnership agreement currently under negotiation (formally, since February 2013) between the EU and U.S. It is due to be agreed in 2015. EU governments and the U.S. government will be allowed to accept or reject it, but not amend it. It is the same type of bilateral trading agreement currently being negotiated between the EU and Canada known as CETA, which had been due for agreement in September 2014, but was postponed because of a last minute objection from Germany.

There are other similar bilateral agreements between the EU and African countries, and the EU and other Mediterranean countries, and others between the U.S., Canada and Mexico known as NAFTA, and between the U.S. and Pacific rim countries - the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the TPP. All of these are described as 'freeing trade' by their proponents, but actually, apart from easing tariffs on goods, they are concentrating on 'liberalising' services - including health and education services and, on binding signatory countries by their rules.

Actually, all of these trade agreements serve the profit-making and control interests of trans-global corporations, and do nothing for the interests of the working classes anywhere.

It is widely thought, and probably rightly, that the TPP was initiated to stem the influence of China and to, eventually, force it to submit to U.S. capital interests and domination. These agreements were initiated after the WTO Doha round of talks (2001) stalled because the existing WTO practices were allowing China and the other BRICS countries more influence, and these countries tended to have greater concerns for emerging and poorer nation's interests than the heretofore dominant western capitalist governments had. A stated aim of those promoting TTIP is to establish TTIP trade provisions as GLOBAL rules, to be imposed on the rest of the world.

TTIP has been negotiated in secret between the U.S. government and a designated government department in each EU country in one body in the  (unelected) EU Commission. In Britain the relevant department is the Department for Business Innovation and Skills; it is 'advised' by TheCityUK which is a lobbying front for the City of London

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40% have been successfully defended by states, though states have had to bear the huge legal costs.

The remaining cases have been 'settled' with compensation for the corporations - so, nearly 2/3 of cases have actually been 'won' by corporations!

This also looks like a recipe for bankrupting states.

The biggest ISDS award so far -$1.77 billion to Occidental Petroleum for Ecuador's termination of a contract - has now swelled to over $3 billion with the addition of compound interest calculated from the date of the Country's 'violation'!

3)TTIP would give transnational corporate access to government spending. The number of services that investors can provide cannot be limited, or the number of providers. It is easy to see how the recent Tory Health and Social Care Act (2012) - that fully released the NHS privatisation floodgates was tailored to meet TTIP demands!

AND there's no going back (-unless we change things, of course), the TiSA (-Trade in Services Agreement), also currently under negotiation, will apply a blanket National Treatment rule to all services, namely a 'standstill' clause preventing any backtracking, and a 'ratchet' clause forcing further liberalisation. So, the privatisations underpinning the liberalisations will be irreversible. In September, at its policy forum meeting, the Labour Party reaffirmed its commitment to excluding the NHS from the TTIP agreement. This is important and a start, and hopefully, enactable, but what about everything else too?!

Apart from undermining democracy by these measures, no national parliament MPs, of any of the participating countries that the EU commission is negotiating on behalf of, will have seen the negotiating documents during the

negotiating period.

This is Western-style democracy, (that our governments export gung-ho around the world), in action at home!

There are several organisations here and across Europe and in the US campaigning against TTIP. In May, Unison produced a briefing document in which it outlined the threats posed by TTIP to employment and trade union rights. The U.S. has not ratified a number of the most important Labour Organisation Conventions, including the rights to freedom of association and collective bargaining.

It has also passed 'Right to Work' legislation in 24 US states which clamp down on unions' capacity to bargain and organise. Be warned! TTIP provision, enables transnational corporations to favour the lowest standards of worker protection for pay and conditions they can get away with, and to relocate, at will, to exploit cheaper labour. Unison suggests members and branches campaign alongside local War on Want and World Development Movement and other local anti-TTIP campaign groups. The TUC Congress decided in September on 'outright opposition to TTIP and CETA'. Finally a brief, and timely, warning from the CPB website TTIP briefing - it is important for the TU movement, (and other campaigning groups) to avoid being drawn into positions where they are supporting 'their imperialism' against a 'rival imperialism'! As well as an EU-wide campaign this is a world-wide class issue.

STOP TTIP pamphlet is available from: Democrat Press, PO Box 46295, London W5 2UG. @ £1.00 each, or 75p each for five or more copies; STOP TTIP can supply leaflets and the use of a banner as well as their pamphlet. All the abovementioned organisations have information about TTIP on their websites.

Elizabeth Jones 9

Trotskyists’.

I personally think his fear of an ultra left takeover of the NUT is unfounded. Christine Blower won the election for General Secretary hands down. And I have no doubt Kevin Courtney will win the election for Deputy General Secretary and deservedly so. Both have represented the whole union and not just a fraction or faction.

Fred makes the case that strike action should not be the ‘be all and end all’ of union action. He recounts the hugely successful campaign for comprehensive education, which united a large number of organisations and individuals, had mass support and was very successful. We should indeed learn from this and emulate it today.

However, he also led the union in strike action that led to the highest pay increases ever.

Fred has been and is dedicatedly pro-Europe – from common market to the EU. I am surprised that he cannot see that the pro worker veneer that the common market/EEC had early on, has long since been eroded. The EU is both forthrightly implementing the austerity package and rapidly eroding civil and political liberties, as well as supporting anti state education, health and everything else, including moves like the TTIP ( Tr a n s a t l a n t i c Tr a d e Investment Partnership).

Fred’s passions for photography, football, France, and the horses are all well and interestingly covered though these passions are personally inexplicable to me. Excepting that I note that France, in some areas at least, appears to have preserved a greater collectivity than us. He also does a very touching chapter about his wife Anne Jarvis, who was a formidable campaigner and he acknowledges, more radical politically than him.

The two chapters which I think are the highlights of the book, are 'Teachers United' and his final chapter, 'Where the Hell is Education Going'.

In the first chapter, Fred recounts that, when he was chair of the TUC, he said in his speech. ‘In the case of teachers, over the years of disunity, thousands of pounds which could have been better spent serving members, have been spent on

You Never Know Your Luck

by Fred Jarvis, Published

by Grosvenor House Publishing Ltd Fred Jarvis, doughty education campaigner and former National Union of Teachers General Secretary, writes that this is his ‘first and probably only’ book. At the age of 90 he is most likely right.

However, he has been for many years, and remains, an outstanding supporter of, and campaigner for, a comprehensive, not-for-profit, state education system.

His book, autobiographical, but with numerous sallies into issues and arguments that motivate him, makes for an interesting and well-written read. He came from a less well off working class background and got an early interest in political views from his ‘Uncle Arthur’.

He left school at the age of 16, as his parents couldn’t afford for him to stay on in the sixth form. He joined the Army and saw action in the Second World War. After leaving the Army he joined the Labour Party and became a Ward Chairman, then joined the Liverpool University Labour society and the Labour Party’s National student organisation. He then went to Oxford University and became Deputy, then National President of the NUS. Politics within the NUS at that time was divided between pro-Communist and anti. Fred sided with the antis or, one could say, led the antis.

He recounts his reasons. His attitude softened later when he had to deal with communists, not only on his NUT Executive but those elected to be President. People like Max Morris, Jack Chambers and June Fisher. He says, ‘I enjoyed a good working relationship with each of them. The CPers were always much more realistic about what the union would or should attempt to do and much more aware of the nature and potential of the union’. He has nothing nice to say about ‘the 10

competing for them. Yet with growing threats to public education and teachers jobs and rights, in no area is unity more desperately needed.’ How prescient.

He writes about the united education unions in Finland, Norway, and Canada. He concludes, ‘I would not want to suggest that creating a single united teacher organisation is going to be easy . . . but at the end of the day the profession as a whole needs to consider what is best for the good of all teachers . . . Teachers united – a team that could take on all comers.’

In the final chapter Fred starts with, ‘Where the hell is education going? That’s a question, you may well ask. I certainly do. We are now witnessing an unprecedented fragmentation of our education system, if not its destruction . . . It is irresponsible to encourage the employment of unqualified people as teachers to see free schools open in closed down shops, pubs, offices and factories in a country which once took pride in the quality of its school architecture . . . . Finland has no time for market forces, has no private schools, no inspection regime, far fewer examinations, a highly qualified and much respected teaching profession, no selection and no free schools . . . It is ironic that politicians say how keen they are on localism, while pursuing policies that reduce the power and responsibilities of local authorities.’

The chapter concludes with him making his own book recommendation – Finnish Lessons by Pasi Sahlberg and some key points which Pasi holds accounts for Finland’s undoubted educational success, of which I think the three key points are • collaboration not competition • less accountability more trust and • less school choice and a greater emphasis on equality.

In the last chapter Fred also effectively lambastes academies, OFSTED, student loans and much more. Most interestingly, given the progressive labour educational views that this long time ardent campaigner has always had, Tory, Liberal and Labour education policies have moved so far to the right that they all would probably say he was an extreme leftist! This is an interesting book and well worth a read.

The School of Freedom, Burston, Norfolk (1914-1939) & its Legacy Anne M. May (nee Potter) (with David A. Berwick) 2014 is the centenary of the start of the longest strike in British history. Anne May has produced a well researched, seventy-six page book which draws on historical background and family reminiscences to tell the story of the Burston School Strike. It is a valuable contribution to the rich, often forgotten, history of the British working class.

Thirteen year old Violet Potter led the strike of the school children in defence of their teachers, Annie and Tom Higdon, who had been sacked by the local squirearchy and clergy on trumped up charges.

Life in rural Norfolk in the nineteenth and early twentieth century was not easy for working people. Most agricultural workers lived in ‘tied cottages’, so if the landowner decided that you were surplus to requirements you were evicted.

Malnutrition was common. It was bad enough trying to feed a family when the average wage in Norfolk in the early nineteenth century was between 55p and 65p per week. However, the rector at Burston had an average weekly income of £11.

Annie and Tom arrived in Burston in 1911.

Annie as head-teacher and Tom her assistant. The couple were active Christian socialists. They very quickly integrated into village life. Annie worked to improve the state of the school building. An outbreak of whooping cough led Annie to close the school to prevent it from spreading. She was also lighting the fire in the school, on wet days, to dry the children’s clothes as many of them had walked considerable distances. Tom was active in trying to improve the wages and working conditions of the agricultural labourers and encouraged them to establish a branch of the farm labourers’ union. He was then approached to stand in the forthcoming parish council elections. He encouraged local labourers to stand and they swept the board and so the dye was cast. The Higdons were ‘trouble’ for the rector and the local landowners - they had to

Hank Roberts (Organising Secretary, UNIFY)

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go. Trumped up charges were brought against Annie and the couple were sacked.

The villagers, outraged at the injustice, made plans for the children to go out on strike. The parents were taken to court and fined for failing to send their children to the council school. A temporary school was set up in a carpenter’s shop on the village green.

Well-wishers rallied and helped to pay the fines. Soon the strike was headline news in the national press and trade union supporters, nationally and internationally, became involved.

Eventually the money was raised and a brand new school was built on the village green.

This little book is inspirational. The villagers, the children and the labour movement closed ranks to tackle the injustice and this in turn inspired others to join the struggle.

The Burston School Strike has lessons for those in struggle against injustice today. ‘There are a number who, even a hundred years on, find its political and class undertones far too uncomfortable to handle. And yet, one would think that the essence of Burston’s defiant struggle to assert right over might, would be a tale worth bringing to the fore in local education.’ This would be a valuable resource in schools.

Available from David McLean (Strike School Treasurer) £6.50 + p&p Email: cemac@hotmail.com

Voice and Vision

Voice and Vision is a two-CD collection of radical songs compiled by the General Federation of Trade Union Educational Trust together with Topic Records in order to celebrate this important label’s 75th year and 115th anniversary of the General Federation of Trade Unions. It is an educational tool and a cultural call to arms.

Dedicated to the memory of Bob Crow and Tony Benn, these songs reflect a collective experience of hundreds of years of social development. Deep meaning is conveyed in beautifully-crafted tunes and words. These performers are singing about us improving our fortunes as a class, not to make a fortune for themselves.

This collection begins with a ballad reflecting on the first socialists who emerged during the midseventeenth century revolution The World Turned Upside Down and ends with a reggae song called War, a call to arms against the neoliberal blitz on the people and all we have achieved.

There are songs about organising workers, work and leisure, fighting back against class oppression and heroes such as Joe Hill and mythical characters including General Ludd, Robin Hood and Captain Swing.

The CD contains legendary performers like Anne Briggs, Norma Waterston, Ewan McColl, Paul Robeson, Martin Carthy, Roy Harris, Chumbawamba, Banner Theatre, Roy Bailey and others and combines them with brilliant young artists such as Fran Morter, Mat Boulter and Piers Haslam and lesser-known veterans that demand a wider audience such as Jack Forbes, Brian Denny and Kiti Theobald whose work today shows the relevance and delights of this singing tradition.

Like Joe Hill, these songs will never die. Our hope is that this CD will keep them alive by inspiring another generation to take on the fight of our lives. Part of this fight is to ensure that they do not extinguish our history.

Keep music live. Keep songs alive.

For more information go to www.gftu.org.uk or www.topicrecords.co.uk

Hazel McCaul

Doug Nicholls (General Federation of Trade Unions General Secretary) 12

Private school pupils' stranglehold revealed The privately educated make up 7 out of 10 judges and over half the Civil Service RESEARCHERS revealed recently the stranglehold on power in Britain held by the tiny minority of people who went to fee-paying private schools.

The state-funded Social Mobility and Poverty Commission condemned the ‘stark elitism’ that had resulted in privately educated people making up seven in 10 senior judges, six in 10 military officers and over half of Civil Service permanent secretaries and top diplomats.

A third of the Cabinet and a third of MPs also went to private schools, the commission’s analysis of 4,000 top posts showed. That’s despite fewer than one in 14 people in Britain having a private education. ‘Our examination of who gets the top jobs in Britain today found elitism so stark that it could be called social engineering,’ the commission wrote.

So-called poverty tsar Alan Milburn — who promoted NHS privatisation as a Labour minister before jumping ship to rake in the cash as a consultant to a private health firm — said the continued over-representation of privately and Oxford and Cambridge-educated individuals had a ‘profound influence on what happens in our country . . . Locking out a diversity of talents and experiences makes Britain’s leading institutions less informed, less representative and ultimately less credible than they should be.

‘Where institutions rely on too narrow a range of people from too narrow a range of backgrounds with too narrow a range of experiences they risk behaving in ways and focusing on issues that are of salience only to a minority but not the majority in society.’

But the report was short on answers to solve the problem. It merely suggested a ‘national effort’ by the government, within education and among employers to ‘break open’ Britain’s elite.

The findings are hardly surprising. — it explodes the myth that we are ‘all in it together’ and illustrates how the anti-democratic influence of a privileged elite pervades society. But then, if shelling out thousands upon thousands of pounds every term to educate your children didn’t put them at an unfair advantage, even the wealthy

wouldn’t bother doing it.

The ‘Elitism so stark it could be called social engineering,’ which the commission says it found, simply describes the way the ruling class ensures it continues to rule. That’s why the ‘national effort’ it calls for to improve social mobility is unlikely to help.

Social mobility in Britain has actually gone backwards since the 1970s — which reflects the massive increase in inequality since Thatcherite neoliberalism became the creed of governments of both parties. While we have capitalism there will be inequality and while there is inequality the rich will make sure their children have the best start in life.

That isn’t to say we can’t do anything about it. University education should be equally accessible to all. A ban on fee-paying schools would make an immediate difference and help redress the balance towards the working class. Sadly, Labour is as far from adopting such a progressive stance as are the Con-Dems themselves.

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International news enough to meet the bureaucratic demands for results. Cheating spread through the system like an infection.

Children arrived from junior schools with strong results that didn’t match their performance.

Secondary teachers assumed the primaries had artificially improved their results.

So to show enough ‘improvement’ for these children, they began cheating at the edges. First they started ‘teaching to the test,’ bending their lessons to what was likely to appear in the many exams.

Soon they were getting illicit early copies of the test papers and exclusively teaching the necessary answers. But to show annual improvement on the fixed tests, they had to fix even more, until slowly they were actually physically altering test papers with rubber and pencil.

Along the way some whistleblowing teachers and secretaries, and even a guilty head, tried to tell officials what was happening. But local authority managers who were getting bonuses and being celebrated at events throughout the state did not want to know. They turned a deaf ear to the whistleblowers.

Finally, in 2009, the local newspaper, the Atlanta Journal, showed that school test improvements throughout the state were statistically improbable. The improvements and patterns in the Criterion Referenced Competency Tests – their version of Sats tests – strongly indicated fakery.

A subsequent state investigation found the cheating was taking place at 44 out of 56 secondary schools in the state. Investigators found a ‘culture of fear, intimidation and retaliation has infested the district, allowing cheating – at all levels – to go unchecked for years.’

All the obsession with numbers and improvement had just erected a vast illusion, a stage set, displaying schools that returned better results without actually improving. The testing hadn’t been matched by new investment in schools, nor was there any investment in welfare services for children from poor communities.

The number-crunching ‘reformers’ just created a ‘feedback loop’ based on an epidemic of lying and bullying. The children did no better and many teachers were ruined. School administrators and heads are currently being charged with fraud and racketeering.

USA Schools scandal exposes rampant cheating in a system the British government is bringing into our schools Last summer the New Yorker magazine carried a major article on cheating in US schools.

Rachel Aviv’s 9,000-word story is a masterpiece of long-form reporting. I’d encourage anyone to read the piece on the New Yorker website. It’s important in itself, but also has a serious lesson for Britain.

Aviv tells the story of teachers in one school in Atlanta, Georgia, who ended up cheating to meet the targets set in the US’s No Child Left Behind Act. They meant well, but did wrong.

Aviv shows the Atlanta case is part of a wave of fake results created by No Child Left Behind. The bad news is British school reforms are modelled on No Child Left Behind.

Our laws imitate theirs, which means we too are very likely to be sitting on similar educational fraud. School reform has created a fake ‘improvement’ in the US, involving both goodhearted and bad-minded teachers and officials. We might be building the same fool’s paradise in our schools.

The New Yorker story focuses on one secondary school in Atlanta. Teachers were improving a weak school in a tough neighbourhood but not enough to stave off the threat of the US equivalent of special measures. They slowly slipped into ever more cheating until a group of teachers were systematically changing pupils’ exams, breaking into offices and altering papers, erasing wrong answers and pencilling in the right ones. One teacher recalls: ‘I couldn’t believe what we’d been reduced to.’

The context was the No Child Left Behind Act which applies ‘a series of escalating sanctions, including state monitoring, a revised curriculum, replacement of staff and restructuring or closure of the school’ to schools who don’t get ever improving results.

The local authority was run by one of the ‘reformers who believed that the values of the marketplace could resuscitate public education. She approached the job like a business executive: she courted philanthropists, set accountability measures and created performance objectives.’

The headmaster was obsessed with the stats.

The teachers were making improvements. But not 14

Finland

Atlanta is far from the only schools scandal of this kind in the US. Similar reports are found in dozens of cities and most of the 52 states, which is worrying because No Child Left Behind is the model for our school reforms.

Instead of real investment in schools or child welfare, or real concern for education, there is just a ratchet of tests and ‘special measures’ and takeovers and academisation and ‘executive heads’ helicoptered in to drive more tests. And already we hear reports of this fake ‘reform’ creating phoney ‘results.’

The fake ‘Trojan horse’ letter says that Tina Ireland, headteacher of a Birmingham junior school, had been sacked as part of the Islamist conspiracy. But this July Ireland admitted widespread faking of Year 6 maths Sats test results to boost the school’s league table position. She resigned from the school after a probe into these fake Sats results.

She is far from the only schoolteacher driven to faking results by the testing regime. The British government’s standard and testing agency has actually reported increasing faked Sats and other results. The number of ‘maladministration’ cases where schools tests were tampered with went up by 26 per cent to 370 cases in the latest annual figures.

Fraud began to flow through the US system when kids with artificially high results arrived from primary in secondary schools, causing a kind of ratchet of cheating, with inflated grades in junior schools pumping up yet more grade inflation in high schools.

We can see the spread of questionable techniques into the British secondary system too. In July the Observer reported that academy schools run by a Michael Gove-backed ‘superhead’ got advance notice of supposedly surprise Ofsted inspections. They used the advance notice to create a false impression of ‘improvement.’

In one case, at Ormiston Victory School in Norwich, the Observer reported the school had drafted in teachers who did not previously work at the school to do example lessons for Ofsted inspectors. The very real danger here is that the testing regime has erected a number of ‘Potemkin villages’ — schools that look good on paper, but are not really improved at all. Instead of improving education, the testing regime has just improved the art of forgery.

NUT delegation report Finland is widely recognised as having one of the best education systems in the world. It is consistently ranked at or close to the top in the PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) tables and other international education league tables, a fact which has made it a focus for educationalists all over the world who want to study the secrets of its success.

In March 2014, the National Union of Teachers (NUT) sent a delegation to Finland to meet with educators, politicians and the OAJ teachers' union. The objective was to examine the reasons for the success of Finland’s education system and to consider what Britain could learn from the Finnish approach to education. Lessons from Finland is the official report of this delegation.

It presents a detailed overview of the Finnish system and sets out some key conclusions and lessons for Britain.

As the NUT Ex-President Beth Davies notes in her foreword, the Finnish system is one that places the child ‘at the heart of the process’. The Finnish approach is characterised by co-operation, collaboration and trust between all stakeholders. It is also a system that is built on a commitment to high quality teacher education, with most teachers qualified to Masters level or above, and a respect for teacher professionalism and autonomy.

While it would be unrealistic to think that we can simply recreate Finland’s education system in Britain, some approaches could easily be adopted, given the political will to do so. Other measures, though requiring more long term development, are equally relevant to the British context and could be applied here if there were commitment to seriously consider the long term benefits they would bring about and how they could best be applied to our education system over a longer time scale.

In her forward to the report, NUT expresident, Beth Davies, quotes Pasi Sahlberg, the leading authority on Finland's educational reform strategy. In his book, Finnish Lessons he writes: ‘The Finnish way reveals that creative curricula, autonomous teachers, courageous leadership and high performance go together . . . furthermore, makes plain that collaboration, not conflict, with teacher unions, leads to better results.’

Beth Davies comments; ‘In England in particular, although Wales is not exempt from this, we have become infected with the 'GERM', the

Solomon Hughes, Morning Star, 29/8/14

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Global Education Reform Movement, where competition, choice, test-based accountability and pay related to performance is high on the agenda, driving school systems around the world, stifling creativity and the autonomy of teachers. We now have a generation of teachers who are under more scrutiny than ever before and a generation of children who know nothing but summative tests.

Not so in Finland!

Imagine working in an education system where there is no fear of inspections, where the interpretation of the curriculum is entrusted to you, where assessment is used to inform children's learning only (not to judge your performance and determine your future pay) and where you are highly respected, and work in an environment of trust; where the school day is much shorter and where childcare and early childhood education is guaranteed for all children.

Imagine a system where reform, such as a curriculum review, is driven by collaboration with educators, politicians and unions with one objective in mind, to place the child at the heart of the process; where the curriculum is not overloaded, it is broad based and where teachers teach less and children spend less time studying.’

Robin Head Vice Chair of the NUT’s Education and Equalities Committee, comments; ‘Finland’s lofty status in PISA rankings makes it a politician’s favourite system from which to cherry pick. What an eye opener it was. We hear a great deal about it but when you see it up close in action the simplicity instantly hits home. One word emerged again and again from all those we met – teachers, politicians, the education union, academics and students – trust. Trust in schools to get it right. Trust in teachers to define appropriate student learning at the right time. Trust in learners to engage. Trust in politicians to sit down and negotiate in a consensual fashion based upon educational need rather than the rhetoric of political dictat.

One union (The OAJ) makes for a much broader approach for the profession to make its stance accessible. There is no opportunity for the divide and rule tactics we see in Britain or the drive to appeal to different sectors or mind sets of staff.

One union. One voice. One cohesive approach to negotiations.’

The full report can be read at:

West Africa Ebola Virus Devastates Education

Children in several West African countries are paying a terrible price for the Ebola epidemic sweeping the region. As well as being threatened and sometimes succumbing to the virus themselves and losing family members, they are being forced to stay at home during school time as education has ground to a halt. Schools and universities in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea are closed indefinitely.

Meanwhile schools in some parts of Nigeria remained closed after the summer holidays and their resumption was further postponed by the Nigerian Union of Teachers because the state government had failed to provide thermometers and hand sanitisers as a precaution against the spread of the disease. They finally opened in late October. Where schools are open they are in the front line of efforts to contain Ebola. Meanwhile heroic and underpaid health workers are doing their best to help victims and contain the spread in under-resourced facilities in the three most affected countries.

Ebola is a disease which is difficult to catch and is best contained by good health facilities, clean water and a healthy population. The immiseration of the populations of West Africa by economic policies dictated by the international finance institutions and corporations, with the connivance of local elites, has provided a situation in which the disease can flourish. Meanwhile, presumably because Northern governments imagine that their populations are relatively safe from the virus, the help required for the people of West Africa has been too little and too late.

See more at: http:// www.teachersolidarity.com/blog/ebola-virusdevastates-education-in-westafrica#sthash.YdaxLwO3.dpuf

http://www.teachers.org.uk/educationande qualities/finland

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