NUT Conference Announces Action to Defend Education

Over Easter weekend the national conference of the NUT was held in Brighton. In the wake of the Tories' announcement last week that they were to privatise all state education, rip up national terms of service and launch an all-out assault on our students' ability to take part in a high-quality education, the mood was of anger and defiance. The decision was taken to begin preparations for national strike action and a political campaign to stop the Wrong Priorities White Paper in its tracks.

We will be balloting members for strike action in the next few weeks. If successful there will be a strike date set for the summer term, with the likelihood of further days in the autumn should the government not back down.

Whilst inside the conference hall delegates were taking serious steps to protect the education of our students, outside a fierce wind blew and the media warned us all about Storm Katie. It made walking along the promenade a tough proposition for a few hours, and part of the beach ended up on it.

Yet after these blasts of air subsided, the only sign of Storm Katie's passing were some pebbles on the tarmac, easily disposed of by hard working local authority employees. Frankly, we should all thank the gods of climate change for providing us with such a convenient extended metaphor for Nicky Morgan.

The ballot ahead of us and the strike action we must take are serious. We have a tough fight ahead of us. The government's white paper has made it clear that declaring war on the NHS is not enough for them. No, in addition to selling off our health service and devaluing our doctors (2,000 of whom had signed a statement in support of our proposed strike action by the time conference ended yesterday), they want to sell off all our schools, take away all meaningful democratic oversight from education and turn teaching into managing the behaviour of stressed or bored students consigned to electronic learning packages that will direct them towards more and more difficult but meaningless tests.

This is a government with form for such behaviour. The sell-off of the Royal Mail was done despite objections that the Treasury gained only a fraction of itsworth and with no regard for its workforce. The Treasury is also attempting to re-privatise the failed banks which were taken over after the crash – again at a fraction of the value which taxpayers paid for them. The previous Tory administrations privatised the railways, and the current one has steadfastly refused to allow them to fall back into public ownership despite the rampant profiteering of the companies which own them and the huge increase in public subsidy since privatisation.

Parents should be under no illusions about these proposals from the Tories. Multi-Academy Trusts are run by 'members' who do not have to have any connection with education whatsoever. There is no place for parent governors or oversight by the local authority to keep tabs on what taxpayers' money is being spent on. There is a whole catalogue of dirty deals and allegations of corruption already associated with existing academies, free schools and academy chains, and it is easy for corruption to begin and can only be stopped with massive intervention from the Department for Education, which takes a long time to happen and is massively disruptive when it does. All the assets of the schools in the chain cease to be held by the school or the Local Authority. They become the property of the Trust and can be disposed of in any way that the chain sees fit. They are under no obligation to ensure that there are sufficient school places in any geographical area, so under these proposals there will be no way to guarantee that your children will have a place or that there will be a reasonable class size should they get one.

The Trusts decide who gets contracts for the entire chain. Even if 'members' don't have a personal connection with these companies and don't financially benefit from them, the pressure on the chains will be to provide the cheapest possible education. Think of rows of children sitting in front of computers while a single member of staff tries to cajole them into completing the next task. This kind of education has been shown not to work in terms of helping students to develop deep understanding or analytical skills. But it is cheap. Much cheaper than a qualified teacher with training in both their subject and how children actually learn, planning a curriculum to engage students and help them develop. This is one reason why the government is now proposing that teachers need not be qualified at all.

Parents, you should oppose the Tories' policies for all these reasons, but also because as well as trying to make education worse for our children they are ignoring the real problems which education is facing because of their actions over the last 6 years:

• A severe and worsening national teacher shortage
• Real cuts to education funding (exacerbated by the academisation programme, which costs local authorities tens of thousands if not more every time they privatise a school)
• There is no evidence that academy chains drive up standards. In fact the information we have suggests that local authority maintained schools are better at improving quickly.
• The chaos created by the high-stakes testing of four year-olds and the ill-thought out and poorly timed changes to the National Curriculum.

Teachers, we urge you to support strike action and return your ballot paper. The Wrong Priorities White Paper that the government has put out is wrong for all the reasons stated above. It threatens all our livelihoods. You might already work for an academy, or a chain and think 'it's not so bad' or have heard the horror stories from your colleagues but feel that you're one of the lucky ones. The proposals in this White Paper will affect you. It removes the blue and burgundy books entirely – that is to say there will be no national terms and conditions which your school is required to follow. An academy chain may, if it chooses to do so, recognise your union. It may give you sick pay, if it chooses to do so. It may pay into the Teachers' Pension Scheme, if it chooses to do so. It may stick to 1265 hours of directed time, if it chooses to do so. If these proposals go through there is nothing requiring the 'members' who run your academy chain to stick to these conditions. They can change your contract of employment. At the end of whatever training they provide, they do not have to give you QTS and with the budget cuts will be under pressure not to do so – even assuming that there is a pay spine for qualified teachers, which again there may not be.

There is no guarantee that a 'member' of your academy chain even work in your school – they may well have corporate offices well away from any of the schools they control. So you may have a good relationship with your head – that's great. Heads may have no power to help you, though. In fact, legally your school no longer exists. Your contract is with a trust that may be geographically spread over a wide area. If you like where you work, you had better hope that there's not a shortage in another part of the trust a hundred miles away – the trust could deploy you there if it wants.

Teachers, this is not hyperbole. This is the reality of what the DfE is proposing. For the sake of our students, for the sake of our profession, we must fight this and we must do it now. The government is talking tough, but in reality it is weak, it is divided. It has no more mandate to sell our children's education than it does our healthcare. Even its own party members are opposed to these plans. We must fight and we can win, if we are prepared to step up to the challenges ahead.