THE government has published its Education Bill, with up to 100 Labour MPs still opposed to it.
The Education and Inspection Bill allows schools in England to set up independent ‘trusts’, which can link up with other schools, which have control over their own assets, and can go into partnership with businesses, charities and private schools.
Groups of parents, businesses, private schools, voluntary groups, charities and religious sects will all be able to set up ‘trust’ schools, within the state system, utilising the taxpayers money provided by the state, free from all local authority control, with the sponsors controlling budgets and admissions, and able to set up federations with other schools.
They will be able to hire and fire teachers as they wish, and have control over the wages and conditions of the staff that they hire.
Many Labour MPs are opposed in principle to taking schools out of the control of local authorities and handing them over to business people to allow the development of an ‘education market’ modelled on the ‘health market’, that has seen private companies being brought into the centre of the NHS.
Many Labour MPs noted yesterday that the concessions, supposedly made by Blair and Kelly, to get the Bill passed and maintain Labour’s parliamentary majority are very limited.
There can still be selection by aptitude, and the Secretary of State for Education is to retain a veto to stop local authorities building community schools, while private businesses, faith groups and charities are being exhorted to do so.
The concept of ‘trust schools’ and an ‘education market’ is also under close examination. Blair has made no secret that these are modelled on the NHS.
MPs have seen how the health market has led to NHS trusts being plunged deep into debt, with many of them facing huge bed cuts and ward closures and even closures of the entire trust as a ‘failed hospital’ as market economics prevail.
Indeed, the Education Bill includes a facility for closing ‘failed schools’ and the building of trust schools in their place. Failing schools are to be given one year to turn around or face being closed and replaced. MPs are asking what about the trust schools that fail to prosper under the education market, are they to be closed as well, like their NHS opposite numbers, leaving their pupils in complete disarray.
Many Labour MPs believe that an education market will be two-tier, with successes and first class schools for the middle class, while the working class will have to put up with the leftovers.
Yesterday, the Tory Party was backing the government, while up to 100 Labour MPs were demanding more concessions, with Blair vowing that there will be none.
Blair’s position is that the passing of the Education Bill will be his ‘defining moment’. He has already stated that he is putting the country before the party, meaning that if it can only be passed with the support of the Tories, so be it.
News Line urges all Labour MPs to vote against the Education Bill and the education market.
It urges the trade unions to bring down the Labour government if Blair brings in his education market with Tory support, as the only way to bar the way to the formation of a national government headed by Blair and Cameron. The way that Cameron is seeking to change the Tory programme to make it identical with Blair’s proves that this is what is on the agenda.
What the working class requires is a workers’ government that will defend the Welfare State and carry out socialist polices. It is this government that must take the place of Blair and Brown
