Our education system is broken. Our schools are literally falling to pieces. We can’t recruit and retain teachers or college lecturers because wages are too low. Vital support staff are being cut back. Academisation and incorporation has taken away accountability to the wider community, stolen what were shared resources.
Case in point: a Saturday music group I went to when I was a kid had to wrap up after the school that hosted it went from the local authority to an academy chain. They wanted the music group to cough up huge amounts of money where previously the council had provided the space for free. Same with my partner’s dad’s local archery group.
Our education unions have to campaign on pay and conditions but we can’t forget about the questions of who runs our education system, who owns the infrastructure, and what is education supposed to be for anyway?
Duncan Moore, Plymouth Socialist Party
