Dan Warrington, Surrey NEU district membership secretary, personal capacity
Schools across England and Wales face redundancies as a result of a continuation of Tory austerity by Keir Starmer’s Labour government.
The National Education Union (NEU) estimates that school costs will rise by 3.4% next year, costing £700 million. Yet the government has declared its intention to make schools fund next September’s teacher pay rise of 2.8% from their existing budgets. The NEU estimates that 76% of primary schools and 94% of secondary schools will not be able to cover their costs for the next academic year.
After 14 years of Tory austerity, many schools have nothing left to cut other than staffing levels, as a survey of primary schools in Calderdale, which was leaked to the Observer, showed. Of the schools surveyed, more than 70% planned to make support staff redundant and more than half were planning teacher redundancies. If Labour’s plan to impose further austerity comes to fruition, we will see schools across the country faced with the same decisions.
Schools have seen their funding squeezed for years, while at the same time picking up the social consequences of local services being laid to waste. Education workers now not only educate, but also act as quasi-social workers and mental health first aiders, all with scant training and fewer resources than 15 years ago. The result is a teaching profession so overworked it is unable to replace its own losses, so that many schools now rely on recruiting overseas staff just to keep classes open.
Many education workers were hopeful that the Labour government would bring increased funding and roll back the worst effects of Tory austerity. However, Starmer and Rachel Reeves have shown themselves wedded to pro-capitalist policies. The result, if not fought, will be public services, including schools, coming ever closer to collapse.
Industrial action is inevitable in the coming months. Local strike action is taking place in several schools already, but to take on the government needs a national campaign.
Vote for action in indicative ballot
The NEU is holding an indicative ballot to take action against the unfunded pay award. This is a positive first step, but at the same time the NEU leadership has entered into a partnership agreement, ‘Improving Education Together’, with the government and education employers. Union members facing redundancy in the coming months will no doubt question the commitment of union leaders expected to lead strike action against the government one day and work as partners with them the next.
There are many within the NEU leadership who see their role in this dispute as ‘saving Labour from itself’. Yet it has been clear from the outset that Starmer’s Labour won’t do what workers desperately need and we need to fight for it. That should include the NEU contacting independent and pro-worker MPs to establish a bloc in parliament that will fight for NEU policies – an important step to establishing a new workers’ party on a platform of renationalising and rebuilding our services.
Dan is one of four Socialist Party members seeking nomination to stand for the NEU Executive Committee:
- Sheila Caffrey District 12 standing for re-election
- Louise Cuffaro District 16 standing for re-election
- Sean McCauley District 8
- Dan Warrington District 11
