Schools

A S Neill, founder of Summerhill School, died in 1973 at the age of 90. In his practice and in his writings he was the most uncompromising advocate of freedom in education. “Their reaction to freedom is rapid and tiresome. For the first week or two, they open doors for the teachers, call me ‘sir’, and wash carefully. They glance at me with ‘respect’, which is easily recognised as fear. After a few weeks of freedom, they show what they really are. They become impudent, unmannerly, unwashed. They do all the things they have been forbidden to do in the past: they swear, they smoke, they break...

Recent press reports claim that “problem” pupils are on the increase and are holding schools to ransom. At Manton Junior School, Worksop, governors overturned a decision to expel a boy. The NASUWT threatened to strike if he stayed. The school had to find £14,000 from its own budget to provide isolated one-to-one tuition. Eventually, after much conflict, the whole school was closed. It is simplistic to blame “bad” boys and girls for these incidents. There are many causes of “bad” behaviour in schools. Class size is one of them. As classes of 35-40 become common in primary schools, insecure...

Nigel de Gruchy and the union he leads, the NASUWT [National Association of Schoolmasters / Union of Women Teachers, the second biggest teachers’ union], are campaigning to win members from the National Union of Teachers. The NUT is not in favour of vilifying children. De Gruchy’s high profile, sensationalist media campaign will clearly make a recovery in the Ridings School more difficult. But it is not just De Gruchy and the NASUWT. The Tories and Labour are vying with each other for profile, despite having only minimal differences in policy. In the run-up to the general election the...

The business about Ridings School and other things in the press about the “indiscipline” of children reflect a real problem — but it’s a problem that’s partly being used as a cover for other issues: a lack of resources in schools, lack of support for teachers, underfunding and selection. Possibly some of the ministers concerned in the debates are jolly pleased to have these issues to blast the headlines with. If they can make it appear that the education system is breaking down because the UK’s youth are impossible, violent and delinquent, and so forth, then they don’t have to look too closely...

The Educational Institute of Scotland (EIS), the Scottish teachers’ union, has called a march and rally in Glasgow on Saturday 6 March under the slogans “Why Must Our Children Pay? Invest in Their Education!” Like other services in the public sector, education in Scotland is threatened with major cuts in spending as the Westminster government attempts to make public sector workers and public services consumers pick up the tab for bailing out the banks. There are already 2,500 fewer teachers in classrooms than there were just two years ago. The number of teaching support staff has also been cut...

It’s been a long time coming but the National Union of Teachers and the union that represents most primary Heads, the NAHT, have finally agreed to hold a joint ballot to boycott this year’s SATs tests in primary schools in England. The ballot will open on 15 March and close on 16 April with the national executives of both unions meeting soon after to decide whether they have a mandate to proceed. The ballot timetable, the question and the constituency being balloted will be identical for both unions. Members of what in schools is known as the leadership group (Heads, Deputy Heads and Assistant...

Last year Workers' Liberty members took part in the occupation of Lewisham Bridge primary school in south London - an action which successfully prevented the closure of the school. Below is a report by Eleanor Davies of Permanent Revolution, whose children attend Lewisham Bridge. Children around Britain have been cheering on the snowy weather this week in the hope that their school would be closed. However in South East London there was one school, which was keen to open. The young students at Lewisham Bridge Primary School were gathered round the school gate at 8.45 this morning eagerly...

Local community campaigners in the Hyde Park district in Leeds recently occupied the site of a school building in an attempt to save it for their use. The school, Royal Park Primary, was closed five years ago against the will of a popular local campaign. There were two previous attempts by the local authority to close the school which were defeated by parents, school workers and local activists. During the campaign, in one of the most deprived areas in the city, the campaigners were able to demonstrate the building was extensively used by the local community including for English language...

For the past three years a team from Cambridge University comprising fourteen lead-authors and scores of researchers has undertaken the most comprehensive and thorough-going analysis of the state of Britain’s Primary education service since the ground-breaking Plowden Report of 1967. The team published their Final Report on 16 October. Democracy is its key theme. It cannot be an accident that the Cambridge Primary Review is one of the most democratically-based pieces of academic labour ever carried out in Britain. The team produced 31 Interim Reports looking at, among other things, the primary...

Tali Janner-Klausner, an activist in the London School Students' Union, talked to Solidarity about the union. How did the London School Students' Union start? LSSU was founded in February this year, at a meeting where it was agreed that we [school and FE students] needed a structure to defend our rights and work to improve education. School student activists in Edinburgh had already set up a union group, and we were inspired and encouraged by looking at the successes of the mass student unions in the rest of Europe. At the meeting, we discussed the issues that we needed to campaign on, such as...