Class Struggle's blog

By Duncan Morrison, Assistant Secretary Lewisham NEU

After a meeting with the National Education Union’s Action Committee, school workers in Lewisham hope the committee will allow us to have another indicative ballot on boycotting high stakes testing in primary schools in December.

That should...

From representation of support staff to combating antisemitism, from carrying forward the fight against testing to building solidarity with the oppressed Uyghur in China Workers' Liberty school workers have a huge range of motions for you to read and consider supporting for NEU conference 2020....

Christine Blower, former general secretary of the National Union of Teachers (NUT), has been made a peer in the resignation honours list.

She follows other once-left union leaders into the halls of privilege, people like Hugh Scanlon, once left-wing leader of the engineering union (now part of...

Patrick Murphy (personal capacity)

On Friday August 30th the Tory government announced an increase in funding for schools over the next 3 years. They spun it as a £14bn increase and Boris Johnson boasted that this would “make sure every child receives a superb education regardless of which school...

Patrick Murphy (personal capacity)

The NEU Executive met on July 13th to consider the full detailed results of the recent indicative ballot on high stakes primary testing. Much of the information discussed was confidential but the basic picture was fairly clear. Opposition to the testing regime...

School workers in the National Education Union at Harbinger Primary School are taking strike action against a bullying headteacher. We reproduce their statement in full below. Please send messages of solidarity to harbingerneu@gmail.com

NEU Members at Harbinger Primary School have voted to take...

The system of testing in our schools is a form of state-sponsored child abuse. The process of testing which begins in year one destroys a love of learning, humiliates children and stifles developing minds. English school children are now among the most tested in the world. Motion 16, ‘Boycott...

On 29 March, the day the UK was due to crash out of the European Union, the pro-Brexit right mobilised in central London.

Thousands marched for Brexit and the SWP front, Stand Up to Racism (SUTR), protested in opposition. There were about 50 anti-racists who were barracked and taunted by the...

By the government’s own reckoning over 2000 pupils with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities are not getting access to necessary resources and equipment because of funding cuts. Since 2015 £5.4 billion has been cut from school budgets in England. The most vulnerable have been hit hardest....

According to the 2018 NEU survey, 81% of teachers said they have considered leaving teaching in the last year because of the pressures of workload. That’s pretty much most teachers!

In the NEU survey, one teacher commented: “I don't know how I can change how I work, I don't know how long I can...

Support motion 14 and amendment 14.1.

Support motion 38 and reject amendments 38.1 and 38.2.

Teachers are not the only workers in schools, and the National Education Union is not just a union for teachers. The merger of the NUT and ATL that resulted in the NEU represents an unprecedented...

The first National Education Union (NEU) conference will take place in Liverpool on 14th – 18th April. The conference will decide the direction and policy of the new union that organise 450,000 workers in schools. It is the fourth largest trade union in the UK. Workers Liberty members are very...

We've done some great work so far in the run up to conference. Motions written and submitted by Workers' Liberty activists and supporters on representing support staff, boycotting tests and fighting the anti-union laws are top of their sections on the agenda and will be debated.

There's still...

The latest ESN meeting took place on February 9th in Leeds. There were just over 20 people present from Leeds, Lewisham, Leicester, Hull, East Riding, Wakefield, Coventry, Bristol, Warwickshire, Nottingham and East London.

The Network met shortly after the results of an indicative ballot on the...

Lewisham NEU (National Education Union) have voted to send a motion entitled “No child should go hungry in our schools” (motion 109) to our union's national conference this year. We are calling for action to rectify the shameful situation in which some of the poorest and most vulnerable children in...

By a London Teacher

A potentially very positive consequence of the ATL/NUT merger to 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...

It’s hard to work out with any reliability the political balance in the first ever National Executive of the National Education Union (NEU). As the fourth biggest union in the UK and the first to organise all school and college workers the direction of the NEU will be hugely important for the trade...

The National Education Union (NEU) is the largest union for school workers. It has been formed from the National Union of Teachers (NUT) and the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL), currently it carries forth the existing leaderships of both unions.

The ATL’s leadership is conservative...

Scottish teachers marched in Glasgow on 27 October demanding an austerity-busting 10% pay rise. 30,000 attended the march organised by The Educational Institute of Scotland, excellent numbers considering there are around 50,000 teachers in Scotland.

The campaign Scottish teachers are waging is...

Workers' Liberty schoolworkers have written a raft of motions for NEU conference, covering a range of issues from testing and teachers' pay through to union democracy and the representation of support staff, fighting the anti-union laws, defending free movement and more!

See if you can get one or...

The self-styled 'revolutionary party' the Socialist Workers' Party (SWP) are much diminished from their 80s and 90s peak. They have been, rightly, shattered by their decision to put protecting their organisation and leading members of it ahead of ensuring a fair hearing for young women in their...

The self-styled 'revolutionary party' the Socialist Workers' Party (SWP) are much diminished from their 80s and 90s peak. They have been, rightly, shattered by their decision to put protecting their organisation and leading members of it ahead of ensuring a fair hearing for young women in their...

In what has become a pattern, the government announced their decision on the 2018-19 teachers’ pay award at the end of July when most schools had closed for the summer break.

Teachers do not have negotiating rights over national pay and, instead, annual awards are decided by the Secretary of...

As in so many areas the Corbyn leadership and the 2017 manifesto marked a, welcome and significant, sea change in the party’s direction and vocabulary on education.

Gone was the talk of driving up standards by competition, increased observation and greater punishment of teachers who didn’t make...

Diane Reay’s book Miseducation sets out to chart the working-class experience of education in Britain, making a forceful argument for reform and highlighting both historical and contemporary barriers to genuinely comprehensive education. All criticisms aside, it is an important book which can e/quip...

Our school, a medium-sized secondary, must now be running at about 40,000 detentions a year. The assistant principal in charge of the system tells me that the flagship school in our MAT, slightly smaller than ours, has even more.

In our school, certainly, the escalation of detentions to the tens...