Education

Sywell strikes against academisation

The first the staff knew about this decision was from a leak in the local pub. An ex-governor had told another ex-governor that the Governing Body had made this decision in December 2019. The news spread like wildfire and therefore the governors had to announce it to the community in January 2020...

Grades in 2021

The government has said GCSE and A level grades for 2021 will be done on teachers’ assessments.

That may be better than the botched algorithm attempted in 2020. But every school will seek to report results a bit better than 2020 or 2019. A student’s grades will depend as much on their school...

Workers' Liberty Model Motions for NEU Confernce 2021

If you support one of our motions get in touch with us to discuss the upcoming National Education Union conference and try to pass one of our motions through your local NEU meeting. Motions must be submitted by districts by midnight 3rd December.

Grades? Let the students into uni!

By a London Teacher

Scottish school students received grades for Nationals, Highers and Advanced Higher courses on Tuesday 4 August.

Grades had been estimated by schools after exams were cancelled due the Covid pandemic. 125,000 grades, or a quarter of the total, were lowered by the Scottish...

School history and Black Lives Matter

A good historian and history teacher is a blend of detective, lawyer, and story-teller. At its simplest history is story-telling with evidence, though for many years history in schools was simply the story of rulers, of so-called great men. The stories of the little people, often far more interesting, were neglected. And the more oppressed the people, the more likely that their story remained untold in history books. Imagine for a minute you are a trans man or woman, or a black trans man or woman. You have all the experience of isolation in a cruel world full of prejudice and, to add salt to...

University jobs at risk

The pandemic, and the fall-off in international student fees which will come as a consequence, has tipped an already unsustainable model of university expansion into crisis. It will speed up marketisation, and bring on cuts harder and faster than they would have come before. The government has brought forward some payments due to universities to avoid a cash-flow crisis, but as yet has refused to provide extra funding to fill what could be a £1.7bn gap. It is unlikely to want to see universities closed outright, especially in marginal constituencies. But some of the more vulnerable...

Return to school?

The National Education Union has produced five tests for the reopening of schools. They are: much lower numbers of cases; a national plan for social distancing; comprehensive access to regular testing for staff and pupils; a commitment to testing a whole school when a case occurs; and the option for vulnerable staff, or those who live with vulnerable people, to continue working from home. These are fine as far as they go. A more general slogan being used by teacher and school worker trade unionists about the reopening of schools is “not until it’s safe.” This really has to be understood as...

The SWP and high-stakes testing

For the last four years members of the Socialist Workers’ Party have fought militantly AGAINST the National Union of Teachers (NUT) and then the National Education Union (NEU) balloting its members to boycott SATs and the other high-stakes test in primary schools.

For a National Education Service

To produce the goods and services we need efficiently and without exhaustion and destruction – to reshape our economy to avoid climate catastrophe – to add beauty to life – to be informed about our social conditions and equipped to debate and decide on them – we need education. Decades of battle by the labour movement have won us universal, free education to secondary level, and even the chance for many young working-class people to go on to university. But the Tories have been stunting that and winding it back. The huge increase in student fees in 2010 has hit older and part-time university...

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