Dan Warrington, Aldershot Socialist Party and NEU executive candidate (personal capacity)
Schools across England and Wales are bracing themselves for the worst round of education cuts since the coalition government, following Rachel Reeves’s 26 March Spring Statement. Although Reeves was keen to blame 14 years of Tory rule for the state of “crumbling” classroom roofs, her statement failed to deliver any extra funding that would reverse more than a decade of Tory cuts.
With school costs expected to rise by 3.6% next academic year, the expectation that schools will be able to absorb increasing costs through ‘efficiency savings’ just doesn’t reflect the reality of an education system already cut to the bone. As a result, school leaders will be forced to choose between running deficit budgets or making cuts to staffing.
The intensification of Tory austerity policies is a far cry from what many Labour voters expected from Starmer’s government and it is hard to see how Labour’s manifesto commitment to recruit 6,500 additional teachers will be possible when schools are forced into hiring freezes. The crisis in recruitment and retention will only be exacerbated by further increases to workload, as schools try to balance budgets. Meanwhile, a further 50,000 children face being pushed into poverty due to welfare cuts.
Unions must take the lead
Local authorities and academy CEOs will bemoan the lack of education funding, but that is where their resistance will end. It will be up to education workers, through the education unions, to mount an effective challenge to the government. The National Education Union (NEU) is currently running an indicative ballot of teacher members on the issue of funding and pay. As the largest education union, workers will be looking to the NEU’s national conference on 14-17 April for leadership. NEU should not only move towards a formal ballot of teachers, but build a campaign that includes school support staff, nursery workers, sixth form lecturers and school leaders. Education workers in other unions such as NASUWT, Unison and GMB should demand the same. The 2022-23 strike wave showed the power of mobilised workers to affect government policy. A united front of public sector workers will have the best chance of forcing Starmer to fund public services rather than pander to the super-rich.
The NEU needs to elect a fighting leadership that gives a consistent and bold national lead. NEU National Executive elections open on 3 April.
Socialist Party members Sheila Caffrey and Louise Cuffaro have been re-elected unopposed to the National Executive of the National Education Union. Two other Socialist Party members are up for election, Sean McCauley in District 8 and Dan Warrington in District 11.
