Religion and schools

Religion and schools

Fit for capitalism?

By Liam Conway In 1976 James Callaghan made a famous speech attacking schools for their failure to deliver a workforce suited to the needs of the economy. Callaghan was talking nonsense of course — schools had nothing to do with the failure of British capitalism to meet the crisis generated by the massive oil price hike of the early 70s. Still teachers and schools proved a useful scapegoat, along with lazy workers and militant trade unions. But the Callaghan speech was a starting point for successive government drives to vocationalise the curriculum in response to business demands. In many...

Anti-SATs campaign

By Patrick Yarker, Norwich and District NUT How best to take forward the campaign to end over-testing in English state-schools? 'Research, alternatives, action!' was how the strategy was summed up at the second anti-SATs Conference on 12 June, when teachers, parents, governors and academics met to consider activity after the NUT's abortive boycott-call. The recent Daugherty Report looks likely to ensure the scrapping of all SATs in Wales. Professor Daugherty has been particularly robust in his dismissal of KS3 SATs, calling them a waste of money. His recommendations will enable assessment to...

Where now for the SATs campaign?

By Patrick Yarker , Norwich and District NUT 2003 ended with a setback for teachers, parents and students campaigning to abolish the restrictive, unreliable and overly-stressful national testing system in English state schools. The ballot by the National Union of Teachers (NUT) of Key Stage 1 and 2 teachers (essentially teachers in primary schools) saw a substantial majority in favour of boycotting the tests. However, the turnout failed to meet the union's requirement of 50% of those eligible to vote. More than 30,000 teachers voted for action, with about 5,000 against, but only some 34% of...

SATs survey: maximum return required!

By Patrick Yarker All NUT members should by now have received a copy of the union's survey of members' attitudes to SATs. The survey is due to be followed by a boycott ballot, so ensuring as large as possible a return of the survey can be seen by activists as a dummy-run for the vital boycott-ballot itself. Now is the time to touch base with school-based reps or isolated members, to check that everyone has received their survey, to chase up the survey's return and to make contact with the broad-based National Anti-SATS Alliance which is campaigning across the country for an end to the wasteful...

Teachers organise for SATs boycott

Stop the testing torture! By Patrick Yarker Conference against SATs 11.30-3.30, Saturday 28 June South Camden Community School, Charrington Road, London. Nearest Tube: King’s Cross/Euston More: 01727 835554 or secretary@hertfordshire.nut.org.uk See www.teachers.org.uk for NUT anti-SATs material The conference of the National Union of Teachers (NUT) at Easter voted unanimously to ballot members for a boycott of all SATs. That ballot is expected next term. Activists are working now to lay the groundwork for a positive vote and to make the national campaign of opposition to SATs as powerful as...

Charles Clarke lies about SATs and funding

By Liam Conway Charles Clarke stumbles from one cock-up to another. But, clearly, the Government has no plans to take the funding crisis seriously, otherwise it wouldn’t have set up a committee led by Two Jags Prescott to investigate what happened to the £500 million Clarke says has been siphoned off from schools’ budgets. Recent history tells us that this government is adept at sleight of hand when it comes to public sector funding. Schools have been victims of this “now you see it, now you don’t” approach, on more than one occasion. A few years back Blunkett made a big show in the Commons of...

Parents and teachers tell Clarke: We don't want SATS

Education Secretary Charles Clarke faced an audience of concerned and angry parents in his local constituency, Norwich, on 9 May, as he attempted to defend the Government's policy on testing and targets in schools. Clarke admitted he hadn't expected such a large meeting at Parkside primary school. Perhaps he was under the impression that parents welcome their children being tested in more public examinations than any other children in Western Europe. Or that parents appreciate the results published in school performance League Tables. If so, he was about to learn the truth. One after another...

Time to challenge the testing culture

The NUT National Executive has agreed to canvass its members for a boycott of some SAT tests. Teachers must now renew their campaigning against the testing culture. Pat Yarker looks at the background to the years of testing and targets in state schools. "I do remember the teacher coming in and saying 'We're going to be doing a little test today' and we were sat down and it was really really quiet". That is the abiding memory of the first Key Stage 2 test from a student who was part of that cohort upon whom all the testing and target-setting regimes from 1988 until now have been imposed: SATs...

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