Published in Education for Liberation (Spring 2016):
We face an unprecedented attack on education.
This government’s programme represents the culmination of
nearly forty years of neoliberal education reform. If completed, it will see
the end of state education, the complete deregulation of teacher supply, teacher
qualification and teacher pay, and the replacement of education with a market
system for the production of ‘human capital’ (as the DfE calls it), based on
low-risk strategies to achieve temporary competence in a narrow range of skills
for the purpose of passing tests.
If this sounds like an exaggeration, just look at the
development of testing and charter schools in the US, or the role of
state-funded for-profit education in Chile, or the growth of low-fee
profit-making schools run by big edu-business across Africa and Asia.
The main obstacles standing between this government and its
dystopian vision of education are the education unions. In a very real sense,
we are fighting for the future of the education system itself.
As the experience of the Chicago Teachers Union, the New
South Wales Teachers’ Federation and others has shown, in order to fight
neoliberalism effectively, it is not enough simply to resist. We need to change
our unions, building member engagement and leadership through grassroots organising
strategies. We also need to align our interests with those of parents and
others, basing ourselves on a social justice perspective and organising within
communities for real change.
The NUT has already embarked on a serious programme of
renewal, including investing resources in local organising and developing broad
campaigns alongside parents and others under the Stand Up for Education umbrella.
However, in our context, this
alone will not be enough. Unlike the CTU, the NSWTF and others, in spite of
being the largest teacher union in Europe, we represent less than half the
profession in England and Wales. The others are split between five other unions
– ATL, NASUWT, UCAC, NAHT and ASCL. In addition, unlike many education unions,
we do not accept education support staff as members. These divisions weaken us
when we can least afford to be weak.
At workplace level, the process of three different reps
consulting their members then agreeing a joint approach before they meet
management is simply not strong enough. Even in workplaces where joint meetings
take place and members try to operate as a single unit, we are weakened
because, when things get tough and action is called for, we are back to three
different decision-making processes, potentially with three different outcomes.
If anything, this is even clearer at a national level. While
it is all very good to ask teachers who have no discernible differences at
workplace level to set aside these difference and work together on a specific
campaign, it’s hardly the model for a strong response from the profession. The
moment a tactical difference emerges at national level, we expose a crucial
weakness to a government that is willing to exploit such weaknesses to the
full. And, whatever our commitment to unity, where there are different
democratic structures taking key decisions, tactical differences will emerge.
There is a reason that our organisations are called unions.
By bringing working people together, in all their diversity, and speaking, and
acting, in union on the issues which matter to them most, we give them a voice.
Every division within our movement weakens that voice.
Of course there are differences between our unions. They
represent different balances of state school teachers and independent sector
teachers, some organise in FE as well as schools, and all but the NUT admit
support staff as well as teachers. However, these differences seem far less
significant when you look at the current pace of change in education and
everything there is to fight for.
The report of the Joint Officers Group to be discussed at
ATL and NUT conferences this Easter sets out the principles for a united union,
based on a vision of education as a creative and critical process which enables
learners to understand and contribute to wider society and the world in which
they live, and to change it for the better. It is the complete antithesis of
the neoliberal GERM and our best way of taking the fight forward. But to make
it a reality, we need to win the majority of members in both unions to this
vision.
If we can achieve this, we will fundamentally change the
landscape. Industrially, we will not just have the strength to fight the
battles we know we must, but to win them too. As educationalists, we will be
able to speak clearly for the whole profession and politically, we will be able
to demand that that those in power don’t just listen to us but act on what we
say, whether it is about education or other crucial issues such as housing and
child poverty.
We are presented with an unprecedented opportunity. It is
time we redefined unity and redefined our unions.
Gawain Little, NUT executive member
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