‘IN a country like ours, how can it be that one in five children lives in poverty? How can it be that one in three children doesn’t own a book?’
This is one of the questions that NUT leader Christine Blower put to the NUT conference yesterday afternoon.
She added: ‘How can it be that, when we knew they were a huge success, that 400 Sure Start centres have closed?
‘How can it be that something called the Welfare Uprating Bill will actually push 200,000 children into poverty and that the Institute for Fiscal Studies predicts a growth in child poverty of 400,000 between 2011 and 2015, a total of 800,000 by 2020, the very year in which the Child Poverty Act commitment to end child poverty is supposed to be realised.
How is it that 72 per cent of teachers in a Children’s Society/NUT survey said they had experience of children coming to school with no lunch and no means to pay for one and, that in the same survey, two thirds of teachers said they had given children food or money because they were clearly hungry?’
She answered: ‘We, in this hall, know the answers to these questions. There are far too many people living in poverty, including the working poor.
‘Children whose parents are in work, earn little but are unable to claim free school meals.
‘We have a government that has priorities which are not ours. They have the wrong priorities – tax cuts for the rich, job losses and benefit cuts for the poor.
‘Boardroom pay advancing at way above inflation while millions live on less than it takes to keep body and soul together.
‘We are a hideously unequal society, with the rich getting richer and the rest left behind. And now the bedroom tax. Taking money from tenants because they have the temerity to live in accommodation with an extra bedroom.
‘By contrast, the new Governor of the Bank of England, whose salary scale starts at £375,000 a year, will be receiving a housing allowance of £5,000 a week.
She added: ‘The forced academy programme is clearly about ignoring parents and the school community . . .
‘Gladstone Park Primary in Brent have accused Michael Gove of setting “attack dogs” on them.
‘At Roke School in Croydon, parents launched a campaign to prevent takeover by Harris, despite the fact that Ofsted found that the school was making “satisfactory progress”.
‘At Thomas Gamuel School in Walthamstow, hundreds of parents signed a petition to oppose academy status and in a specific poll, 164 were opposed and only six in favour . . .
‘Conference, we in this hall and the many thousands of NUT members, as well as the parents at Downhill, Roke and Gladstone Park, are not the “enemies of promise”, we are not lacking in aspiration and ambition for children and young people.
‘We just have the temerity to assert that the Secretary of State is wrong. That academisation and the onward march towards complete privatisation of our schools and our education system is wrong. And many, many parents agree with us.’
Earlier, the NUT confernece unanimously passed a motion of no confidence in Education Secretary, Michael Gove.
Nick O’Brien from Norwich told teachers: ‘It is Mr Gove and his government who have broken the hearts and futures of our brilliant young people by fixing exam results, scrapping the education maintenance allowance and being part of a vicious government whose policies have caused mass young unemployment.
‘How dare he. Gove must go.’
