Louise Cuffaro, NEU Executive member, personal capacity
The last full National Education Union (NEU) Executive meeting of the academic year took place on 17 July.
It has been a year full of increasing crises for education in the wake of the election of the Labour government in July last year.
We have seen the ongoing crisis of funding cuts. We have an inadequate pay rise of 4% for teachers, less for support staff, which is not fully funded. We have millions of pounds leached out through privatisation and academies. In many London boroughs there are increased threats and actual closures of schools, and in others there have been unprecedented levels of restructuring and redundancies.
Under a Labour government, we should expect falling rolls (due to lower birth rates, and a lack of affordable housing driving working-class families out of London and other large cities) to be an opportunity for smaller classes and better ratios of staff to pupils.
Even more so in the case of pupils with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), when SEND funding is acknowledged by local authorities and headteachers to be in a worsening crisis. Families of children who need SEND support are being triply failed by Starmer’s Labour, which is doing nothing to address their social care, medical and housing needs on top of education cuts.
Unfortunately, in Daniel Kebede’s general secretary report, which included a review of the year, this was barely mentioned.
The strategy of the NEU continues to be ‘lighting fires’ in individual schools and Multi-Academy Trusts (MATs). Socialist Party members on the exec support all strikes in schools to defeat workload increases, toxic management, bullying and redundancies.
But we make the point, alongside others on the exec, that this should not be instead of a national strategy of action. That is what is needed to retrieve the funding being diverted to private companies, and to increase the funding needed for full restoration of pay, and all the necessary resources to upkeep and improve the breadth of the curriculum, which is being eroded. PE specialists, music and art educationalists, support staff for SEND pupils, cleaners and dinner supervisors are often the first to lose their hours or jobs.
The problem of falling rolls, lack of funding and subsequent restructures and redundancies is a national problem, even though it is unevenly spread at the moment. It can only be resolved by a national strategy and national action.
Yes, all these services were driven down by Tory governments every time they have been in office, but much of the privatisation started under Tony Blair and it is being continued under Keir Starmer’s Labour government. We have the worst levels of funding and class sizes in all of Western Europe. And yet Starmer has no plan even to undo any privatisation to take back academies, supply agencies, teacher training, catering, cleaning etc under properly funded and democratically accountable local authorities.
At the beginning of this year, Starmer invited the NEU leaders and officers to sit at the table with Labour ministers and academy bosses in a partnership arrangement called ‘Improving Education Together’. But how can there be a consensus with these people over, for example, reversing privatisation and academisation?
Socialist Party members on the Executive would have welcomed at least a reference in Daniel’s review of the year to the recent announcement by Zarah Sultana of the intention to co-found, with Jeremy Corbyn, an alternative to Labour. We will be proposing that the NEU seriously engages and discusses with other unions about how a party based on trade unions in the interest of all workers can come about.
NEU staff dispute
In previous exec meetings, Socialist Party members have raised concerns that exec members were not kept informed and were not being allowed to discuss a dispute which has led to three days of strike action by members of the majority union of our own NEU staff, Unite.
Daniel had assured us that the 17 July meeting would discuss the dispute, but it was not on the agenda again. We were given a sketchy report on the restructure, and told we would ‘hear more’ in September – but so far we have not had any opportunity to be informed and to discuss. Decisions seem to be made by senior staff and a consultant from New Zealand (not in education). Negotiations with Unite were dismissed as unreasonable, including by an SWP exec member!
In contrast, and in solidarity with the staff, we and others on the exec questioned a strategy we haven’t been party to, and called for the restructure to be paused pending full negotiations with staff and consultation with NEU reps and officers. Any restructure should then follow NEU policy, not like most of the restructures that are taking place in schools.
