Workers' Liberty NEU Conference Bulletin 2021
All the articles in one place from our conference bulletin at NEU conference 2021.
All the articles in one place from our conference bulletin at NEU conference 2021.
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...
Following protests outside Batley Grammar School, a teacher has been suspended and there is a school investigation.
Delegates to the National Education Union (NEU) Conference will meet online on 7-9 April, 9.30am to 3pm each day. A "Defend NEU Reps" fringe meeting, Thursday 7pm, provides an opportunity to show solidarity and build the campaign to defend NEU Reps who are facing victimisation. The fringe meeting...
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 have just republished a 2019...
In the campaign in defence of victimised NEU [National Education Union] rep and NEU National Executive member Tracy McGuire, local trade unionists and councillors have signed a press release, and plans are afoot for community activists to seek a meeting with Tracy’s school, Rydal Academy in...
The NEU [National Education Union] Left was launched as “a membership organisation” on Saturday 13 March. It was “launched” as a brand over two years ago, at the NEU conference.
Over those two years, it has existed as a nebulous bureaucratic lash up between the Socialist Teachers Alliance (STA)...
Cleaners in the United Voices of the World union (UVW) at La Retraite Catholic girls’ school in south west London have secured a 24% wage increase, full contractual sick pay, and the repayment of withheld wages, just three days into a planned 40-day strike.
The strike, which involved cleaners...
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...
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...
Financial cuts and local falling rolls in Lewisham, south-east London, are threatening school workers’ jobs. At Conisborough College, a secondary school, a proposed re-organisation is threatening to lose six teacher roles. It is thought that a second re-structure of support staff may follow. In...
Karen Lewis, leader of the 2012 Chicago teachers’ strike, died of cancer on 7 February 2021. An obituary in Labor Notes here describes her role in building a rank-and-file caucus in the Chicago Teachers’ Union and then leading the CTU.
Pushed by school workers in the National Education Union (NEU) refusing to comply with school reopening on 4 January, the government on the evening of 4 January announced a new lockdown.
It is vital now for the labour movement to take the initiative and campaign on our own program, rather than...
Across the UK different regional governments have taken different approaches to the sitting and grading of school exams in the summer term of 2021.
In Scotland the National 5 (GCSE equivalent) exams have been cancelled and grades will be determined by “teacher judgement supported by assessment”...
The SWP's policy in the NEU of toadying up to the bureaucracy and siding with it against militant industrial trade unionism has exposed the organisation for the fraud it is time and time again.
In the latest episode Chris Denson (who?), a third rate SWP hack and bureaucrat who seems to be...
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...
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...
From 5 January all secondary and primary schools moved to being physically open only to vulnerable children and the children of key workers. Learning for other students is being offered online.
There continue to be struggles over the specifics of this. Firstly, the government has tried to widen...
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.
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...
By Natalia Cassidy
The National Education Union's Officers Group has nominated Debbie Hayton for the position reserved for a trans representative on the TUC LGBT+ Council. This has caused much outrage in the union given Hayton’s views that she has consistently aired about trans people and trans...
By a primary school teacher and NEU activist in Lewisham.
On 30 May, four scientists from the government’s SAGE advisory group went public saying that the Tories’ easing of the lockdown, including the wider opening of schools, is unwise at this time.
The number of cases and the infection rate...
1. Todd Hamer
To the casual observer there is something very odd about what is happening in the National Education Union. For some weeks the NEU leadership has rightly argued that it would be unsafe to reopen schools until there is a lower number of Coronavirus cases making possible tracing and...
The big union Unite has signed up to the “education unions' statement on the safe reopening of schools". This statement calls on the government “to step back from 1 June” and identifies the following core principles:
• Safety and welfare of pupils and staff as the paramount principle
• No...
The education unions are right to say schools should not accept further mass return of pupils until the five tests are met. We should fully support any school workers who will take action on health and safety grounds from 1 June to keep their workplaces open only to vulnerable and key workers’...
The government’s aspiration to open schools to all Year 6, Year 1, Reception and Nursery children on 1 June is likely to be largely unrealised.
That is good. We all want children back in our schools, but the number of cases and the continual spread of the virus indicate that it is not...
The debate about schools re-opening has intensified in the last week. It is clear that the government and their closest media friends have decided to ramp up the pressure to open. On April 30th Johnson let it be known that he would make a major announcement the following week on government plans to...
By Duncan Morrison
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.
That’s...
By a Lewisham school worker
When the schools closed on 20th March the national union had already asked reps to set up WhatsApp groups for their school groups. In Lewisham we encouraged our reps to do this. The branch has weekly Zoom meetings open to all activists. These meetings enable us to...
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