This year's NUT Conference takes place after a year in which the government has won three important victories.
• SATs go ahead - the threat of boycott has been avoided
• Classroom assistants are doing the jobs of teachers
• Merit pay is being put in place
But these are only the tip of the iceberg. The school system as a whole is being fundamentally transformed, with only limited resistance. The balance-sheet of New Labour's 4 key objectives is this:
• Economic competitiveness has been established as the overriding purpose of education
• An even more divided and unequal structure of schools has been put in place to provide a differentiated future workforce
• Teachers are tightly controlled by a Taylorist regime of performativity' and a cult of management
• Private companies are integral to policy making as well as implementation An end to comprehensive education
The school system is becoming even more differentiated, hierarchical and unequal. Half the secondary schools are now getting extra funding as 'specialist schools' at the expense of the rest, heavily subsidised 'academies' are planned for every town, and many new Church of England schools are planned.
The economy-driven selectivity of the school system is most dramatic at age 14, when the National Curriculum ends and with it any hope of common access to knowledge and culture through school. What awaits the majority then is a dumbeddown work-related curriculum in which foreign languages and the humanities (including history and the arts) are optional.
It is mainly schools in working-class areas which will abandon these subjects, while they remain an indicator of academic success in middle class schools, thus reinforcing social inequality.
And we need to remember just how unequal schooling is. According to the Education and Child Poverty report, published in March 2003 by the End Child Poverty group, the attainment gap between poor and better-off children is evident at just under two years of age and widens during school, until at GCSE poorer children are one-third as likely to get 5 A*-C GCSEs. Tests
Pressure from the anti-SATs campaign has forced the government to make concessions on the tests for 7 year olds, but SATs are still in place. In the meantime the testing regime has been extended to 5 year olds who will be given numerical scores in the Foundation Stage Profile tick-list. Opposition to SATs remains widespread, but without a boycott we are winning the argument but not the by teachers for learning, not league tables. School inspections framework actually means even more freno effect on achievement. It must be community. Remodelling the teaching force to do so. A Gradgrind curriculum
'Excellence Enjoyment' admits that creativity is being crushed out of primary schools, but fails to recognise that battle. There is an alternative - assessment the blame lies with the
of targets, learning objecThe new supposedly lighter inspection quent Ofsted visits. The bar has been raised by redefining 'satisfactory' as unsatisfactory. The number of schools in 'special measures' has substantially increased. Yet research shows Ofsted demoralises teachers and has replaced by school self-evaluation, monitoring and support by LEA advisers, and Privatisation accountability through dialogue with the
A combination of a hierarchy of grades, merit pay, staff without qualified teacher status teaching whole classes, and the threat of super-size classes. This battle is not yet lost but it will require sustained industrial action
Wing to industry sources.
The new government policy document
and government's own policies Market forces won't help these lads lear tives, tests and league tables. It faces a funda mental contradiction - prescriptive control means bored and failing children and teachers leaving the profession, but relaxing control risks teachers going 'off-message' Teachers want to be trusted professionals for profit. not government puppets, working in collaborative school cultures not managerialist regimes dominated by a cult of leadership
Opposition to privatisation has focused on PFI and LEA takeovers. The government plans to use PFI to improve every secondary school. That means every one of them will be owned and run by private companies, making huge profits at public expense.
According to the Guardian (5 September 2003) 'Construction companies engaged in the private finance initiative expect to make between three and 10 times as much money as they do on traditional contracts', accordBut there are two aspects of privatisation which challenge the idea of school as a public service even more deeply. One is academies In spite of recent government protestations -'watch my lips' - it is dear that they are a half-way house to US-style Charter schools run by Education Management Organisations
The other is the role of private companies in the making and implementation of every government policy initiative. For example, the continuing professional development of teachers, far from being under their control, is increasingly tied to government objectives and outsourced as a lucrative money earner to private companies. From words to actions
Too often resolutions at NUT conference opposing this government agenda are not followed up by action. The three left groupings in the union - the STA, the CDFU, anc the SWP - are united in demanding effective resistance, both at conference and in their joint support for the left candidate for General Secretary, lan Murch, in the forthcoming election.
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soclalist re Istance April 2004 7
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