Neither Hunt nor Cameron will stand up for education. We will!

An opposition spokesperson who really cared and understood about education would have been in the news today condemining the Prime Minister's speech announcing yet another expansion of academies. Instead, Tristram Hunt was in the news for insulting a Sedgehill parent, Tom Mann:

The Socialist Party issued this press release this afternoon, giving my response to both Hunt and Cameron: 

Within months of election Labour’s Tristram Hunt insults teachers and parents

Tristram Hunt confirmed Labour’s contempt for teachers with his tweets to a concerned South London parent. On the day Cameron is to announce greater moves to academies which threaten teachers’ working rights, Hunt insults teachers and concerned parents.

Hunt, Labour's shadow education secretary, tweeted to a parent and a teachers’ group to “stop moaning” and “do some work” in response to a query about the details of Labour’s education policy.

Martin Powell-Davies, National Executive of the National Union of Teachers, the largest teachers’ union, said:

“The Tories’ latest announcements show that they are determined to take the whole of education out of democratic local control by turning even more schools into academies. Clearly Labour has ruled out repealing any of the Tories’ major school reforms if they form the next government. In Lewisham, however, teachers and parents are determined to stop these attacks.”

Martin is a teacher and active campaigner in Lewisham, South London. He is also one of two members of his union’s executive standing as parliamentary candidates for the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) - which is more than for any other party. Martin is challenging in the Lewisham West and Penge constituency.

Martin explains why as a teacher trade unionist he is standing as a candidate in the general election. “Teachers’ strike action has already seen off one pro-academisation education minister. Both Nicky Morgan and Labour’s Tristram Hunt should take note. Building on this includes standing to give a voice to the millions who oppose academies.”

Martin explains the fight against academies in Lewisham: “Campaign meetings have heard from students, parents and staff who know from their own experiences that academies are no solution to educational issues. In fact, they make things worse. Staff pay and conditions are threatened. Parents complain about how their children have been treated in schools that are like ‘exam factories’.

“Lewisham NUT has now balloted its members in five schools for strike action against the threat that their employer might change to an Academy Trust. A first day’s strike is due to be called on Thursday 12 February. News has just come through that one of the schools, Bonus Pastor, has announced that it isn’t going ahead with its academy plans! So that’s one down, four to go!”

http://www.socialistparty.org.uk/articles/20027/02-02-2015/tristram-hunt-insults-teachers-and-parents

Don’t look to Tristram Hunt and New Labour if you want to defend education

Parties of poverty, privatisation and privilege

Millions of voters, angered at the poverty, privatisation and privilege promoted by this Coalition, hope that Cameron and Clegg will be thrown out of office this May. The question is, who they can vote for that offers any real alternative instead?

Far from reversing austerity, Ed Miliband has made crystal clear that severe cuts will continue under New Labour, as he declared this week that “ours is a plan to cut the deficit every year”. In practice, of course, these recessionary cuts will continue into the future but the deficit will remain.

Under New Labour, “Academies are here to stay”

When it comes to education, Shadow Minister Tristram Hunt has also made very clear that very little will change under New Labour. As he put it last March "I don't think you want to waste political energy on undoing reforms, that in certain situations build actually rather successfully on Labour policy". In other words, the support for academies that began under Tony Blair, and then expanded by Michael Gove, will continue if a Labour government is elected in May.

The NUT’s education manifesto – endorsed by TUSC – calls on a future government to “stop the forced academies programme immediately” and “return oversight of all state funded schools to local authorities”. In contrast, the 2014 ‘Blunkett Review’ of party education policy made clear that, under New Labour, “Academies are here to stay ”.
 

Why? Even the Department for Education has had to admit that sponsored academies do no better than comparable local authority schools. As a Southwark Governor writing in the ‘New Statesman’ asked recently in frustration "Why didn’t Labour jump on this? What could be better than exposing the Tories’ deceitful use of statistics at the same time as denouncing forced academisation as a waste of money, devoid of an evidence base, anti-democratic and a clear statement that the government thinks it knows better than parents what is best for their children?" (http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2014/11/coalition-s-flawed-academy-programme-political-gift-labour-refuses-accept)

The answer, regrettably, is that New Labour is now fully signed-up to the pro-market policies of the international Global Education Reform Movement. Like other GERM adherents, Hunt, Blunkett and their ilk will argue that the 'type of school is irrelevant’; it’s just ‘the quality of teaching’ that matters. Firstly, that approach is designed to put the blame on teachers, ignoring the effect of class, poverty, and the ever-widening inequality that continuing ‘austerity’ will bring. Secondly, it is a policy designed to promote the hiving-off of schools to edu-businesses and the removal of democratic local authority organisation of schools. Above all, it is a policy that will divide and worsen education, not improve it.
 

NO ACADEMY - YES to DEMOCRACY

The recent efforts by Lewisham Labour Council to impose an Interim Executive Board at Sedgehill School provide clear evidence of the way New Labour policy is going. It also shows that it isn’t enough just to argue for schools to be returned to Local Authority control. We also need to extend how that local democracy operates. I think we should rebuild the traditions of the directly-elected London School Board that did so much to develop education at the end of the nineteenth century. An accountable Board including elected representatives of school staff, parents, governors, local trade unionists, community organisations and secondary school students could work together to genuinely develop community schooling.

Tristram Hunt – a Tory in disguise?

Given the lack of real difference in policy between all the main parties, it’s not surprising that in a YouGov poll commissioned for the NUT a year ago, 25% of teachers already didn't know which party they could bring themselves to vote for. That figure can surely only have increased after what Tristram Hunt has had to say in the last twelve months:

• Tristram calls for teachers to pass ‘re-licensing’ tests or face the sack

Instead of calling for schools to be given the time, support and resources they need to meet students' needs, last January Hunt joined with Gove in blaming teachers for the problems of education. It seems that New Labour are happy to adopt the same punitive, demoralising policies designed to pressurise teachers into maintaining their intolerable workload for fear of being 'failed'.

Just one of the many tweets to Tristram

• Tristram’s insulting ‘oath’ for teachers

In October, Tristram Hunt called for teachers to make an 'oath' declaring their commitment to the profession. His suggestion was met with widespread derision and anger. To question teachers’ commitment, so soon after the NUT’s workload survey had exposed the reality of the excessive workload facing teachers, took some doing. In fact, it was new Tory Minister Nicky Morgan that first realised she should acknowledge that there was a genuine teacher workload issue to resolve, not Labour’s ‘opposition’ spokesperson.

• Gimmicks instead of genuine action to counter private school privilege

In November, Hunt called on private schools (where he received his own education) to do more to support state schools. Back in 2006, Gordon Brown was at least prepared to make the ( now long-forgotten ) promise that a Labour Government would aim to match the spending per pupil in private schools in the state sector. In 2014, Hunt just offered gimmicks like making private school pupils play football with state schools.

• Hunt turns to Winston Churchill and his ‘British spirit’

In December, Hunt made a speech calling on schools to “do more to build pupils' character and resilience”, referencing Winston Churchill and the ‘British spirit’. As a historian, you’d think Hunt might remember that Churchill was thrown out decisively in 1945 by workers demanding a real ‘land fit for heroes’. The ‘British spirit’ shown then was the determination of working people to demand a decent future for their families, not some stoic acceptance of poverty and inequality. Our community schools do everything they can to support young people. What they need is for politicians like Hunt to stop making empty speeches and to start investing in the jobs, homes and education needed for their futures.

• New Year – and another vacuous pro-market article

Hunt’s New Year article in the Observer was trailed as one that might finally start to win back teacher support. In reality it was devoid of any significant changes. Another blog has already exposed its empty rhetoric, offering “no reversing of structural reform, no halting of curriculum changes, and no ending of the assault on teachers through PRP”  
https://disidealist.wordpress.com/2015/01/03/tristram-hunts-observer-piece-replying-to-nothing-is-hard/

So who do teachers vote for in May?

In May, do voters just have to make-do with the ‘lesser evil’ of Labour, particularly when Tristram Hunt’s education policies hardly seem ‘less evil’ at all?! There has to be a better alternative for teachers and parents to vote for!
 

Some teachers will look to the Greens, who undoubtedly have a far better education policy than Labour. Like TUSC, they have endorsed the NUT’s Manifesto for Education. However, it has to be pointed out that, when elected, the Greens have failed to make a stand against Government cuts. Brighton’s Green administration, elected on a mandate to 'resist austerity', is on course to have cut £50 million from jobs and services in the last three years.

I believe that we need elected representatives that will refuse to implement cuts and use their positions to build a mass movement of workers, service users and communities to demand services are properly funded by central Government. That’s the policy of the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition, supported by the Socialist Party and others such as the RMT Union - and the late Bob Crow. 

I believe that we need to rebuild genuine representation for trade unionists and working people in Parliament and in our local Councils, to provide a voice that the Labour Party no longer provides. That's why I will be supporting – and hopefully standing myself - for TUSC in the General Election this May.

A weekend to teach teachers - don't 'wait for Labour', rely on our own strength

Yesterday, Ed Milliband finally cut through the last remaining threads tying the Labour Party to its roots as a party created to provide a political voice for the trade union movement. Today, Tristram Hunt went onto the Sunday Politics show to announce that a future Labour Government "won't repeal Gove's school reforms". 

If any teacher was in doubt, this weekend has provided further evidence that we can't rely on any Government elected after the next General Election to willingly reverse the direction of education policy. Instead, we will need to rely on our own strength to force politicians to think again.

Scandalously, but not unsurprisingly, Hunt is quoted on http://www.politics.co.uk/news/2014/03/02/we-won-t-repeal-michael-gove-s-school-reforms-admits-labour as saying "I don't think you want to waste political energy on undoing reforms, that in certain situations build actually rather successfully on Labour party policy" 

Meanwhile, yesterday, the special Labour Party conference voted to further dilute the ability of the affiliated trade unions to influence the direction and policies of a future Labour government. 

So, while most teachers rightly want to see the back of Gove, Osbourne and Cameron, this weekend will make even more question who they can vote for at the next General Election. However, these events can also help convince teachers that we have to take strike action on March 26 and beyond. 'Waiting for Labour' is simply not an option.

Regrettably, I believe that the Labour Party has been fundamentally changed  from the Party that I joined as a teenager to campaign for a real alternative to Thatcherism. 

I believe that the struggles that we will have to wage in the months and years ahead will convince ever wider layers of trade unionists that we need to rebuild our own political voice. Hunt's comments make ever clearer that the Labour Party is not going to provide it.

Hunt joins Gove in the teacher-blame game - NUT must oppose 'licensing' plans

Tomorrow's Times will carry the headline "Labour will tell teachers to improve or face sack"

In an announcement that will be a further blow to teacher morale, Tristram Hunt has made clear that he will revive the idea floated under the last Labour Government of regular 're-licensing' of teachers, or as the Times puts it "teachers will have to be licensed and will face the sack if they fail tough new checks on their abilities under plans drawn up by Labour".

Shamefully, Tristram Hunt and New Labour are lining-up behind Gove's agenda of blaming teachers for the problems of education - and wider society. It is these same politicians that should accept responsibility for the root causes - for cuts, for underfunding and for poverty. 

If Tristram Hunt took the time to talk to teachers, he might realise that the real problem that needs addressing is not the myth of 'under-performance' but the fact that huge numbers of excellent teachers are leaving the profession because of the impossible demands we face.

Instead, Hunt is joining in with a blame-game designed to keep up the pressure on teachers so that they will put up with impossible hours for fear of being 'failed'. Under Gove, the threat is that we won't be awarded a pay-rise under his performance-pay legislation. Under Hunt, the threat will be that we won't even keep our jobs!

Quite rightly, when Ed Balls floated this idea in 2009, it was firmly rejected by the NUT. Disappointingly, tonight the immediate response from the NUT was far too ambivalent, suggesting that the Union's attitude will depend on the 'detail' of the proposals.

By now, we should know enough about New Labour's politics to know that the details will not be ones that will make the plan acceptable. Yes, it will be presented in a more polished manner than Gove, using the excuse that the plans will help teachers maintain their 'professional development'.  But New Labour will maintain a very similar programme of  spending cuts as the present Government. Schools and teachers will not be provided with time and resources for genuine training and development, let alone the time to plan, prepare and develop initiatives. It will mean more observations, more imposed targets, more Ofsted-inspired gradings of lessons.

This 'licensing' plan will be another way to impose both excessive workload and whatever particular teaching models are favoured by Government onto a beleaguered teaching profession. Just like Gove's PRP, it will be a scheme wide open to unfair, discriminatory and arbitrary decisions by hard-nosed school management.

Hun't proposal is also reflected in policies adopted in the USA and in other countries infected by the GERM, the Global Education Reform Movement, where teachers are graded and bullied with the threat of losing their jobs if they aren't deemed to make the grade.

If unions adopt a policy of trying to appease New Labour into being slightly less harsh on teachers than the Tories, then such a  policy will fail teachers  - and fail education. Instead, we have to firmly reject both Gove and Hunt's plans and urgently put in place the national action that teachers have been promised will take place before February 13 - and follow that up with an ongoing campaign of strike and non-strike action. 

Our action campaign needs to be combined with a nationwide campaign to explain to parents what's really at stake - and to build a movement which can defend education from the attacks of all the main parties.

An electoral footnote:
The New Year YouGov poll showed that 25% of teachers already didn't know which party they could bring themselves to vote for. That figure can only have increased after Hunt's announcement tonight.