On
Tuesday, 20 September, Standing Up For
Education, the latest publication by Spokesman Books, was launched in the Five Leaves Bookshop in Nottingham.
It provides an excellent compilation of insights from different perspectives
including students, teachers, trade unionists and parents into the devastating processes of
destruction of primary and secondary education. Emphasising the situation in
Nottingham, the volume provides a snapshot into processes affecting also other
local communities across the UK. In this blog post, I will report on the
contributions by four of the authors, who were present at the book launch.
Tom
Unterrainer, the editor of this excellent volume, opened the presentations. Academies, he
asserted, are not about improving education. They do not focus on the human
need to grow. Instead, they focus on ensuring the supply of a willing future
workforce. Additionally, Academies have caused a deterioration in working
conditions for people. Cleaners at some Academies in Nottingham are paid 30
pence less per hour than at schools still under the control of Local Education
Authorities. Overall, Academies have not tackled poverty, inequality and youth
unemployment in Nottingham.
Tom Unterrainer, Photo by Ivan Wels |
Nevertheless,
there are alternatives, Unterrainer pointed out. Rather than asking what kind of
workforce industry needs, the emphasis should be on what might be best for our
children. In turn, the question should then be what the world of work should look
like in order to reflect these needs. In other words, human needs must
determine work and not the other way round.
Nadia Whittome, Photo by Ivan Wels |
Sam
Keely, in turn, reflected on his personal experiences in secondary education
and here in particular the failure of Djanogly City Academy, Nottingham. ‘When
I enrolled [in 2008], Djanogly City Academy was one of only a handful of
academies across the country. It was a pioneer in many of the Practices now
common throughout the education system – the employment of unqualified
teachers, not recognising teaching unions, and the involvement of
business people in school governance, often to the exclusion of parents and
community representatives’ (P.58). Completely independent from a national
curriculum, the main emphasis was almost solely on preparing children for the
workplace with teachers’ autonomy undermined. The fact that 20 per cent of
teachers had been employed without any training goes hand in hand with a
Victorian kind of reliance on rich benefactors in funding the Academy. Clearly,
academisation, introduced by New Labour and pushed by the current Conservative
government, is not a way of improving the education system and caring for
children’s needs.
Sam Keely, Photo by Ivan Wels |
The
presentations were concluded by Louise Regan, a primary school head teacher and
currently Senior Vice President of the National Union of Teachers (NUT). She
reported on how not only children are subjected to an ever more intrusive
testing culture, teachers too are faced with constant monitoring. The naming
and shaming strategy of ‘non-performing’ schools by Ofsted represents a kind of
terror regime, making teachers afraid to leave the official path, even if they
realise in their professional capacity that children’s needs differ.
Louise Regan, Photo by Ivan Wels |
Instead
of the rather arbitrary rating of schools and teachers by Ofsted, schools
should be accountable to their local community and the parents of the children, Regan pointed out.
If in trouble, these schools should then be assisted by teachers from other
schools, creating a positive environment of nurturing good schools.
There
is hope, Unterrainer concluded. The Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn has
provided a much clearer opposition to government policy, departing drastically
from New Labour education policies, which had introduced Academies in the first
place. The fact that Corbyn is one of the contributors to this volume confirms
his commitment to a different kind of education policy:
Andreas Bieler
Professor of Political Economy
University of Nottingham/UK
Andreas.Bieler@nottingham.ac.uk
Personal website: http://andreasbieler.net
28 September 2016
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