Academies

In 2017-2018, the workers, students and community of Barclay School in Stevenage waged a major campaign to prevent takeover by Future Academies, who have leapt to wider attention recently as a result of the anti-racist rebellion by students at Pimlico Academy. We republish here a 2019 interview about the campaign with Jill Borcherds, who was a teacher and National Education Union rep at Barclay School, and Labour candidate for Stevenage in the 2019 general election; and Josh Lovell, a Labour councillor in the ward. Never published online before, it was originally printed in the Clarion...

Republished from our school workers' blog Class Struggle On Wednesday 31 March, their last day of term, almost a thousand students at Pimlico Academy, the flagship school run by Future Academies, sat down in the playground and refused to go to lessons. The students were protesting a racist school uniform policy, which instructed students with afro hairstyles to cut their hair and students wearing hijabs to cover all of their hair; miserly and “humiliating” free school meal provision; the failure to support students that have been sexually assaulted at school; a whitewashed history curriculum...

Members of the National Education Union at Sywell Primary School in Northamptonshire are set to strike on Tuesday 26 and Thursday 28 January over a long-running dispute against the academisation of their school.

Online only Labour Party conference in Brighton (21-25 September) voted to: "Ensure Local Authorities establish reformed, democratically accountable local education committees… Ensure all publicly funded schools be brought back under the control of these new local education committees". Sharper wording had been lost in the compositing, but the clear intention is: bring back all academies and free schools under local authorities. As with some other left-wing policies, however, it looks like the leadership deliberately avoided argument on conference floor so as not to draw attention to it, let...

Since 2010 austerity has ground down working-class living standards for the benefit of the ultra-rich. Life has been made meaner and more insecure. Boris Johnson now says he will end austerity. But that is all a matter of previously-budgeted money being “recycled” and called expansion, and random promises to try to win a general election after which he will be free to do his right-wing worst for five years. The NHS and social care have been squeezed so that waiting lists expand and A&E wait times explode. Hospitals routinely run at the upper limit of capacity, so that an epidemic, or an...

At its 28 February meeting, the National Executive of the NEU (National Education Union), the country’s fourth largest trade union considered a proposal to support two separate international delegations in the coming year. Following a pattern established by the NUT, the countries chosen were Palestine and Cuba. Before the amalgamation which created the NEU, delegations to these parts of the world became a more or less annual event in the NUT. Many union members and activists would like to see the NEU spread its solidarity a bit wider. There is a case for ensuring that the spotlight is kept on...

A potentially very positive consequence of the ATL/NUT merger for the National Education Union (NEU) is that it removed the barrier that the National Union of Teachers imposed on itself not to recruit non¬teaching staff in schools. By doing so the possibility has been created of much more effective workplace organisation in schools. The NEU now claims over 450,000 members, including a significant and growing number of non-teaching staff. The task now is to build an integrated, united and militant union that works for all its members. Unfortunately, led by the dominant and misnamed Socialist...

The striking dinner ladies at Ladywood school in Grimethorpe returned to work on 29 November, claiming victory in their fight to defend their jobs. The school proposed to make all nine of the school meals supervisors redundant as part of a cost-cutting exercise announced in June. Backed by their union, Unison, the women decided to fight back and voted to take extensive strike action to save their jobs. Starting in September they took a hugely impressive 36 days of strike action. For most of that time there was little or no sign of movement from the employer, but the women remained determined...

Parents and school workers at John Roan School are continuing to show the way to resist forced academisation. The school in Greenwich, south east London, is threatened with forced academisation after a poor Ofsted report. A vibrant community campaign, backed up with a significant number of strikes has brought support from local politicians and media attention. This week the National Education Union (NEU) held their eighth strike day. This was reported by the Guardian and Angela Rayner, shadow minister for education, tweeted her support, stating that Labour would end forced academisation. Her...