OVER the past week, lecturers have been on strike against sackings, parents are occupying schools to stop their closure, and students, angry at high tuition fees and the threat of even bigger ones, have joined lecturers in opposing the axing of courses.
They find themselves fighting against the Labour government, which is imposing its privatisation plans and cuts in education funding, because of the government’s huge indebtedness as a result of the financial collapse and growing slump.
Last weekend the National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT) voted overwhelmingly to ballot its members for a boycott of the hated SATs tests. Already the largest teaching union, the National Union of Teachers, has adopted a policy of boycotting these tests.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown was left in no doubt about the anger felt by teachers and parents at the privatisation and cuts in education when he talked about ‘parent power’, in south-east London, on Tuesday.
Christine Blower, the General Secretary of the NUT described it as ‘simply another piece of populist spin’. She added: ‘Secondary schools are already subject to enough myths about how good or bad they are.’
Brown faced an even more direct and outspoken opposition from parents in the area, who have been staging an occupation on the roof of Lewisham Bridge Primary School.
They are fighting against the closure of the school and its replacement with an ‘academy’ for 3-16-year-olds. They shouted: ‘Lewisham Bridge, Here to Stay!’ and ‘Occupy is the Way, Occupy your School Today!’
By Thursday, the education battle front extended to the London Metropolitan University (LMU), the largest in the capital. It was brought to a standstill by a lecturers’ strike, organised by the University and College Union.
The lecturers are fighting against the sacking of 550 lecturers and course closures. They were joined on their picket lines by students who are aware that the whole future of the university is at stake.
LMU is not alone. Most institutions of Higher Education are planning cuts because of a lack of funds. Eight departments are under threat of closure at the University of Liverpool.
On top of this, students who are already paying £3,100 a year in tuition fees, face the prospect of a huge hike in fees, with some Russell Group universities calling for an increase of £5,000 a year!
Teachers, parents, and school, college and university students, are fighting for universal, free state education, from nurseries to universities.
Education is a right, not a privilege. It is not something to be bought and sold, a ‘skills’ commodity dictated by business sponsors. That is why there is huge opposition to ‘academies’, controlled by big companies, the reorganisation of schools into competing ‘trusts’ and universities run as businesses.
Teachers want leaders in their unions who will fight for free state education and defend their pay, terms and conditions, and professional expertise.
It is clear that the conditions exist to defeat the Brown government, and its privatisation policies and cuts, by uniting teachers, parents and students in this fight.
Councils of Action should be formed in every locality to unite the struggles to defend jobs and vital services, like education, bringing together the trades unions with community campaign groups and working-class political parties.
The fight for the right to education is not merely the responsibility of teachers’ and lecturers’ unions, but the whole trade union movement. All workers demand schools, colleges and universities that will provide that right to education for their families.
It is clear that this struggle is an all-out fight to defeat and remove the Brown government, that has handed over billions to the banks, but insists it will not provide proper funding for education, resulting in schools being closed, the axing of university courses, the sacking of teachers and lecturers, while students are plunged deeper into debt.
The whole trade union movement must organise mass industrial and political action to kick out the Brown government and replace it with a workers’ government, which will implement socialist policies and fund free state education for all, at every level.
