education

The NUT and NASUWT unions in the East Midlands, West Midlands, Yorkshire and Humberside and the Eastern regions are on strike on Tuesday October 1.

The strikes are over pay, pensions, workload and conditions. If you live or work near a primary or secondary school do your best to show your solidarity.

PAY

As of 1st September this year, schools are now free to implement performance-related pay. This will in effect result in the depression of wages and not the proposed improvement in 'quality of teaching'. Teachers will be subject to a new performance management cycle, including Oftsed-style observations, that will determine whether they will make their progression on the teachers pay-scale. Some boroughs and local authorities have decided not to adopt the new format, but many academy heads are using their new found autonomy to effectively pay whatever they want from next year on.

Later this year, teachers in the NUT and NASUWT will take part in a series of one-day strikes against attacks on their pay, pensions and conditions, not to mention a raft of pro-market, anti-pupil polices flying out from the DfE. Until now, the universally hated Mr Gove has been able to swan about the country opening academies, praising private involvement in education and pontificating on the future of the curriculum. Last week however, Mr Gove ran into a small obstacle.

Workers opposed to privatisation at the university of Sussex decided to ballot for industrial action after uni bosses refused to stop the ongoing outsourcing process. The move comes less than three weeks after the Pop-Up Union, an unconventional rank-and-file initiative, became officially listed as a trade union.

Talk by 2 members of the FAU, the sister organisation of the Solidarity Federation in Germany, in English, about why you should join an anarcho-syndicalist union. It includes first hand experience from a FAU member of two small, but successful teachers' struggles using direct action tactics.

Classroom assistants were out on strike on Tuesday 26th at Horizon and Downsview special schools in Hackney, over a regrading issue which would see low paid staff lose out by around £200 a month.
All the permanent classroom assistants were out on strike. Classroom assistants on probation and agency staff went in but held up messages of support at the windows.
The classroom assistants, who do a lot of the frontline work with special needs children, told us how they felt the management didn’t value their work or care about their wellbeing at all, even when they get hurt at work. They said they stayed in the job due to love of working with children, but they felt totally undervalued.

COME down for 1pm and join in the LARGEST demonstration (so far) against privatisation at Sussex University, and to show that universities nationwide are NOT FOR SALE!

Facebook event

IF coming from outside of Brighton, please organise a coach to come down from your local area. Stay in the occupation the night before and if you please, stay for a celebration afterwards...

Free coach from London.

With encroaching privatisation across campuses, we need to stand up and make it heard: OUR UNIVERSITY IS NOT FOR SALE!

more details to follow, including speakers, but get planning!

The University is a Factory - SHUT IT DOWN!

@occupy_sussex

London Metropolitan University made the news worldwide last year when, due partly to their connections to the London School of Business and Finance, they were investigated by the UKBA and were prevented from recruiting international students.  (for details see Education Worker 9, London Met UNISON’s website or Andrew McGettigan) Now that the dust has settled from this scandal, London Met is again in the news, this time because it has suspended three of its workers, in very suspicious circumstances.

An EWN member participated in a school sit in in Almensilla, southern Spain organised by Marea Verde, a grassroots movement to defend public education.

Discontent has been brewing at Halesowen College, Birmingham, following the summary dismissal of no fewer than four Maths teachers in the last month, including Dave Muritu, the College’s UCU Branch Secretary. The College has seen pickets, lobbies and widespread condemnation for its persecution of teachers, seemingly solely for raising issues of genuine concern to do with their students’ educations.

The College management’s reasons for the sudden firings remain unclear.  They point to the apparently poor performance of the lecturers, despite the fact that their performances were above the national average, and the College itself rated all four as ‘good’ teachers in its own internal observation system.  Management also accepts that there is no case for gross misconduct for any of the Halesowen Four, and they also failed to follow both their own disciplinary procedure and that of ACAS, the work disputes mediations body.