Link to this page: http://www.socialistparty.org.uk/issue/435/5129
From The Socialist newspaper, 13 April 2006
Hands off Cardiff's schools
PARENTS, PUPILS and teaching staff in Cardiff are outraged at the city council's plans to close 17 secondary, primary, infant and nursery schools across the city.
The council's proposed 'education reforms' will shut some schools and merge others while expanding a few more. The plans, which are far bigger and with more far-reaching effects than teachers, pupils and parents expected, could hit every school in the city.
In Whitchurch, the biggest school in Wales will see its lower school site closed and relocated to the same site as its upper school. A parent asked incredulously how could the whole school be squeezed into the upper school's site?
Parents are also worried about children's schooling being disrupted, longer school runs and job losses for teachers. The council claims that action was needed to solve the problem of falling pupil numbers but many teachers were angry at the number of teaching posts to be lost over the course of the plan.
They ask why Cardiff council is not looking at reducing school class sizes, for long a basic aim for teaching trade unions, rather than savaging schools and jobs.
Even though the council made the announcement at the time of the Easter holidays, banners of protest were hung out in protest at the closures at some schools. That is a good sign that a campaign of opposition to these plans involving education unions, school students and the local communities can be built.
More in future issues of The Socialist
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In The Socialist 13 April 2006:
Socialist Party campaigns
Bush eying regime change in Iran
Socialist Party election campaign
Huddersfield - the bandwagon is rolling!
"Standing up for working people"
Election campaigns boost sales of the socialist
Fighting fund target smashed - again!
Socialist Party review
1926 General Strike - Workers taste power by Peter Taaffe
International socialist news and analysis
Mass struggle in France forces government retreat
Build for 1 May general strike in the USA
Italian opposition scrapes home but workers must stop the return of Berlusconi
Kazakhstan Riot police repelled by shanty town residents
Socialist Party workplace news
Stop New Labour's old Tory policies
Organise to defend jobs at Visteon
New deal in the offing in local government?
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