Education unions

In 2017-2018, the workers, students and community of Barclay School in Stevenage waged a major campaign to prevent takeover by Future Academies, who have leapt to wider attention recently as a result of the anti-racist rebellion by students at Pimlico Academy. We republish here a 2019 interview about the campaign with Jill Borcherds, who was a teacher and National Education Union rep at Barclay School, and Labour candidate for Stevenage in the 2019 general election; and Josh Lovell, a Labour councillor in the ward. Never published online before, it was originally printed in the Clarion...

Republished from our school workers' blog Class Struggle On Wednesday 31 March, their last day of term, almost a thousand students at Pimlico Academy, the flagship school run by Future Academies, sat down in the playground and refused to go to lessons. The students were protesting a racist school uniform policy, which instructed students with afro hairstyles to cut their hair and students wearing hijabs to cover all of their hair; miserly and “humiliating” free school meal provision; the failure to support students that have been sexually assaulted at school; a whitewashed history curriculum...

A well-attended online organising meeting on 9 March discussed Tracy McGuire’s victimisation by Rydal Academy, Darlington, and since then there have been three days of strikes by NEU [National Education Union] members at Shrewsbury College in defence of NEU rep John Boken. Their strike action is to run for three days every week, over three weeks. The online meeting, hosted by Darlington Trades Council, heard from local and national trade unionists and Labour Party members about the current victimisation cases, and how they can be seen in the wider context of some school bosses clamping down on...

On 6 February, the Chicago Teachers’ Union (CTU) issued a “framework... relating to resumption of in-person instruction” to its membership, and their vote to ratify was reported on 10 February. That framework included familiar features. Every CPS (Chicago Public Schools) facility must have sufficient hand sanitiser, disinfectant wipes, “sneeze guards”, medical grade face coverings, and PPE. But some is unfamiliar — and can be a model for us in schools, and other workplaces too. The framework agreement says: “The Union and the Board [management] will create two levels of Covid-19 safety...