ACADEMIES – DEFENDING EDUCATION IN LEWISHAM

ACADEMIES – DEFENDING EDUCATION IN LEWISHAM
Martin Powell-Davies (Lewisham NUT)
PARENTS AND TEACHERS have been battling against a series of attacks on comprehensive education in Lewisham.
The Council – in the hands of a compliant New Labour Mayor and Cabinet – have been busy putting into practice the new mantra –“Local Authorities are to be commissioners not providers of education”.
A reorganisation of special needs provoked fierce opposition from local parents who rightly feared that ‘inclusion’ was being used as a smokescreen to actually worsen the provision for pupils with special needs. Two special schools are to be closed to be replaced by an all-through school for pupils with ASD. But this won’t be a Local Authority community school – it is going out to ‘competition’ for private bidders to run instead.
When I was given the opportunity to speak to the Cabinet to suggest that another new all-through mainstream school should be run by the Authority as a community school, the New Labour politicians tried to pour ridicule on this ‘outdated’ idea. For them, democratically run comprehensive education is a thing of the past – to be discarded alongside all the other ‘outdated’ ideas that Labour used to stand for.
They’ve also been trying to force through the takeover of a primary school by the existing Haberdashers’ Aske’s Hatcham Academy. This had become a City Technology College under Conservative legislation. Under Blair’s new legislation, it then made the seamless transfer to Academy status.
For years, Aske’s have used their separate admissions procedures to attract a privileged intake at the expense of neighbouring schools. Their high GCSE scores were contrasted with the results of the challenging primary school that was to be taken over. The value-added scores for the 2006 SATs show that both schools performed almost identically. But one is judged as a success, the other ripe for takeover.
Aske’s are a favoured player in the corridors of power. At a recent consultation meeting, I noticed an invitation from 10 Downing Street in the Head’s office! They are now trying to expand their empire into other boroughs such as Bexley.
The NUT managed to link parents and staff in an umbrella “Defend Education in Lewisham Campaign”. The high-point of the campaign was a 300-strong march to the Town Hall in May. But there has also been understandable frustration at the phoney ‘consultations’ – which we may try to challenge legally – and the way that, in the end, Labour - backed up by the other main parties - ended up pushing through their proposals despite opposition.
Many parents have drawn the conclusion that they will ‘never vote Labour again’. But who do they vote for? It’s time for anti-academy campaigns to stand their own candidates.
New Labour’s initiative overload
Phil Clarke (Lewes, Eastbourne & Wealden NUT)
As aN ICT teacher in a secondary school it is becoming more apparent to me that students’ learning is really beginning to get in the way of my job!
My job, of course, being ‘delivering’ the latest government initiative, be it online SATS, functional skills or Diplomas.
All teachers are aware of how the testing regime in ours schools causes disaffection in students and reduces life at school to a treadmill of passing the next exam, getting the next qualification – all at the expense of creating a stimulating learning environment.
The situation in my own subject has, it seems, reached farcical levels.
This time last year my department had to abandon teaching our normal lessons to year 9 in preparation for the new on-screen SAT exams in ICT. This was the future we were told, the school had spent thousands on new equipment to run the test, teachers spent hours preparing resources. Not only would the results of this test make or break our own teacher assessment but soon all the other SATs tests would be computer based following the exam’s sure fire success.
Reality, all too predictably, proved to be rather different. It soon became very clear that this was proving to be an enormous white elephant. The results we got back had up to a third of the students missing, and, rather more quietly than in the build up to the launch of the test, the QCA announced that from here on in they would be ‘optional’. To no teacher’s surprise we now hear nothing of the tests and even less about the millions the government paid the IT company RM to create them, or the even greater sums schools spent upgrading hardware.
Now this year we are faced with functional skills tests for the end of key stage 3 in preparation for the diplomas being introduced. The feeling of deja-vu is incredible. Again a new testing regime is being forced upon students and teachers with seemingly no involvement from those who actually have to deliver the course.
The warning signs over diplomas are already there, despite huge advertising campaigns and bribing schools with extra money to run the courses. Even Education Secretary, Alan Johnson warned Diplomas “could go horribly wrong”. Of course it will be the students who suffer, not ministers.
It is no wonder that it now looks like there will be a very low take up of the new Diplomas; how can teachers expect students and parents to understand the new courses when they themselves don’t, and feel like they have had this initiative thrust upon them.
Again at my own school I feel that we will sacrifice valuable class time preparing for unnecessary exams that lead to qualifications that have been badly thought out and even more poorly implemented.
What can be done about this endless stream of new initiatives that are sent down on by ministers and leave classroom teachers picking up the pieces and dealing with students completely turned off by the education system?
The NUT plays an important role in explaining how education can be so much more than an endless stream of tests and it must continue in this, but while all major political parties are more interested in sound-bites than listening to teachers we will face much of the same.
A new Workers Party in Britain which is so desperately needed, as New Labour continues to fight for the Tories’ ground, would without a doubt breathe new life into the debate on what sort of education system is necessary. A party that genuinely involved classroom teachers alongside other workers and represented the interests of the vast majority of young people would be able expose the knee-jerk polices of the other parties. It could argue for the type of education system we really need, one that puts the needs of students above exam board profits and a ministers’ desire to be on TV launching yet another poorly thought out quick fix.