Dan Warrington, NEU Executive member, personal capacity
At the end of February, the members of the National Education Union (NEU) will be asked to vote in a national indicative ballot on funding, workload and pay, in what is the most ambitious national campaign the union has embarked upon since 2023.
The decision to ballot, finalised by the National Executive in January, comes in response to a brazen attempt by Starmer’s Labour government to reinstate austerity measures in education.
The NEU will ballot all members within state education (both teachers and support staff) for the first time since 2022, in a campaign to “Save Education”.
Socialist Party members on the exec have worked hard, with allies, to win agreement for a strong campaign that brings together education workers in a fight for funding and over workload as well as teacher pay.
Labour’s cuts
The ballot announcement comes on the heels of the government’s submissions to the School Teachers’ Review Body (STRB), which provides government with non-binding recommendations on teachers’ pay and conditions. This year, the government has tasked the STRB with making a recommendation for the next three years.
The government’s evidence to the STRB pushes for a 6.5% teacher ‘pay rise’, spread unevenly across the three years and without additional funding, being paid for instead from existing school budgets. Not only would this likely result in teachers’ real-terms pay cuts due to inflation, but the lack of additional funding would put intolerable strain on school budgets already cut to the bone by one and a half decades of austerity.
Redundancies would be the only way that many schools would be able to make ends meet, with school support staff likely to take the brunt. The government evidence acknowledges this, calling on schools to “optimise deployment” of support staff!
Workload
It gets worse, as the government also asks the STRB to review the longstanding limit on teachers’ working hours, known as ‘directed time’. The government’s own evidence shows that teachers work on average more than 50 hours per week (with many far exceeding this), yet it is clearly the intention of government to make even longer working hours easier to implement.
In short, the government’s offer for education workers appears to be work harder and longer for less, with the ever-present threat of redundancy as a means to keep workers disciplined. It is the worst government submission to the STRB since Covid and would see education plunged further into austerity, which will inevitably lead to bigger class sizes, a loss of experienced educators and, ultimately, worse education for children.
We can win
But the experience of the 2022-23 strike wave shows that we can take on governments and win. The NEU teacher strikes of 2023 saw a hostile Tory government under Rishi Sunak almost double its offer on teacher pay and school funding after only seven days of national action. More could have been won if the education unions had held their ground.
Now, Starmer’s Labour government offers nothing to workers beyond more of the same. Workers are fed up with paying for capitalism’s crises and the memory of 2023 is still fresh.
A united nationwide campaign by teachers and support staff can deliver a huge first step in challenging austerity. However, to win long-term success trade unionists must be ready to build political power, to present an alternative to Labour, Reform and the Tories, by standing and backing candidates committed to returning funding to public services.
Fight racism and austerity together
Louise Cuffaro, NEU Executive, personal capacity
The NEU exec in January agreed to make a very large combined donation of £350,000 to the new ‘Together Alliance’ and Stand Up to Racism.
It is essential to combat racism and fight to undercut support for the right-populist Reform UK and far-right groups. Socialist Party members in the NEU have long argued that the trade unions should be at the front of that struggle.
I spoke in the discussion on this item to stress that it is vital that spending on such a scale should be accountable to the elected lay leadership of the union.
I anticipated that this union money would be spent on the national Together demonstration on 28 March for ‘Love, Hope and Unity’, and then on leaflets for the May elections saying ‘don’t vote Reform’.
TUC demo against austerity
But I pointed out that the TUC (Trades Union Congress) agreed back in September that it would call a national demonstration against Labour austerity. That’s what this 28 March demonstration, supported and funded by the unions, should be. That would have a much greater effect on undercutting Reform than simply talking about ‘love’.
Vote for who?
And in the elections – saying ‘Don’t vote Reform’ means therefore vote for who? The main parties are collapsing in support because they are destroying people’s lives through austerity. We can’t ask people to vote for that.
We should use our union’s money to encourage our members to stand and back candidates that commit to not make more cuts, and instead fight for funding, jobs, to cut rents etc. That would be much more effective than just saying ‘Don’t vote Reform’.
The TUC agreed in 2018 to campaign on ‘Jobs, homes, services, not racism’. What we spend our money on should lead with those trade union, anti-austerity demands.
General secretary Daniel Kebede thanked me for these important points. We want serious and ongoing accountability.
Victory in West Midlands schools strike
Ted Woodley, Birmingham Socialist Party
National Education Union (NEU) members working for Arthur Terry Learning Partnership (ATLP) schools in Birmingham, Coventry and Staffordshire have scored a stunning victory.
It’s not often that workers secure a total capitulation from the bosses. But in this case it appears that NEU members have not only forced ATLP to reverse all of the proposed job cuts, but the leadership of the trust have resigned en masse.
The chief executive and chief financial officers have stepped down, along with the trust chair and vice-chair. The union has also been strengthened, with committees agreed to be set up in every school, and a reported doubling of membership from 400 to 800 in the course of the dispute.
Nicky Downes, former NEU executive member, who has been building support for the strike in Coventry, said: “The victory at ATLP will send ripples across Coventry schools. Heads and CEOs know that the NEU will be fighting for negotiating bodies in Trusts and better working conditions for all staff. We will not rest until there’s an end to the siphoning-off of funds centrally to pay CEOs and senior leaders exorbitant wages.”
Jane Nellist, also a former national executive member from Coventry, said: “This victory against the threat of more than 100 redundancies at over 24 schools demonstrates the widespread anger of education workers across the country over the lack of funding and increasing workload.”
Scrap academy system
This should add further strength to education workers’ and community demands that the government scrap the parasitic academy system altogether and return all schools to local democratic control, so that every penny is spent on education rather than bonuses for fat-cat bosses.
A striking teacher told us: “It gives me and my colleagues great comfort to know that there were members of the Socialist Party and public fighting with us and offering support. It meant the world to know this.”
