The Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain
Week commencing 14th February 2025
The Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain
Week commencing 14th February 2025
The Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain
MORE THAN 700 members of the National Education Union in south London are taking part in a strike ballot at 18 schools run by the Harris Federation. The Federation was set up in 1991 and now controls 54 primary and secondary academies in London and Essex, and has a sideline in teacher training. It is one of the largest beneficiaries of Tony Blair’s flagship Academies policies which took not very good schools out of local authority control and into the hands of trusts. The Tories had a smaller start with their City Technology Colleges.
This was unpopular with the teaching unions, but their opposition has not been successful as 80 per cent of secondary schools, 40 of primary schools and 44 of special schools are academies in England, and academies are supported by all three major bourgeois parties in Parliament.
In theory they are “self-governing non-profit charitable trusts” support- ed by government funding and possible personal or corporate sponsors. One of the reasons they do not make profits is because their CEOs rake in huge salaries. In the case of the Harris Federation this amounts to at least £500,000 for Sir Daniel Moynihan.
Harris teachers complain about excessive work- loads, an unfair pay progression system, and the mistreatment of Caribbean and other overseas-trained teachers. In particular they complain that the Feder- ation does little to assist Caribbean teachers get the essential English teaching qualifications despite lavish promises when recruiting them. As a result they can be paid up to £10,000 less.
Harris-run schools have long had a high staff turnover. In the Summer of 2023, 27 per cent of teachers departed compared to 15 per cent in local authority schools.
Daniel Kebede, general secretary of the NEU, says that “while members care about education, the work at Harris schools has become unsustainable, prompting over a quarter of teachers to leave last year”.
They could also put in a claim for bigger staff dis- counts at Carpetright, the company founded by Lord Philip Harris of Peckham.
About a year ago it was discovered that the lavishly funded organisation failed to pay its support staff the Inner London Living Wage and expected teachers to work an extra six hours per week for free. While the teachers’ national contract limits workers to 1,265 hours per year, at the Harris academies it means an extra 200 hours.
Because academies are allowed to negotiate their own pay and conditions it changed its policy on pay progression to explicitly linking pay progression to pupil results.
Apart from Sir Daniel’s half million, other senior executives do very well with seven others paid at least £190,000. Consultants also do very well with 70 “consultants” on £60,000 each.
It has reserves of over £33 million, all from Department for Education grants, which suggests a decent pay rise is perfectly feasible.
The NEU has already taken strike action in non-academised sixth form colleges in protest at academised teachers getting 5.5 per cent pay increase while they were offered only 3.5. The strikes affected 32 colleges and took place in the first week of February. This follows seven days of similar strike action late last year. Daniel Kebede, the NEU leader, said “we cannot accept a scenario where college teachers in non-academised colleges are paid less than their academised peers for identical work. It is unreasonable and unfair to under-fund sixth form colleges in this manner, potentially harming long-standing collective bargaining arrangements”.
Across England’s state schools 76 per cent of primary schools and 94 per cent of secondary schools won’t cover their costs next year. The promised 2.8 per cent pay rise will have to come out of existing funds because costs will rise by 3.4 per cent, while promised funding will rise by only 2.2 per cent, the worst figure for 15 years.
At the end of the year one in seven schools was in deficit, the highest rate since at least 2010. And things are only going to get worse.
Pepe Di’Iasio of the Association of School and College Lecturers warns that forthcoming pay awards will force cuts to essential services. Education is a very labour intensive business. Teacher’s pay accounts for 52 per cent of cost, non-teaching staff pay another 30 and non-staff costs at less than a fifth at 18 per cent. Therefore economies will likely mean job cuts and recruitment freezes.
harming education
Paul Whiteman of the National Association of Head Teachers says “schools have already had to make repeated cuts after more than a decade of austerity under the previous government and many parents will be well aware of the relentless budget pressures that their children’s schools have faced. School leaders simply can’t make any more cuts without directly harming pupils’ education”.
The NEU’s Daniel Kebede said “at the last election, people voted in the new Labour Government on a promise of change. It is time for the government to deliver on that promise and that must start with prioritising school funding.
“Schools and colleges simply do not have the capacity to fund pay increases. Fourteen years of funding cuts have left budgets stripped to the bone, impacting on the education of every child. We cannot see another generation of children and young people failed. Urgent investment in our schools and colleges must be a priority for this Government.” We suspect the Government has other priorities.
Across the Irish Sea teachers have rejected a 5.5 per cent pay offer, and are planning strike action. Only the National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT) accepted the offer. The Irish National Teachers Organisation said it “remains committed to finding an uplift that is acceptable to our members”. NASUWT said almost 80 per cent of its about 6,000 Ulster members voted against the pay offer.
North of the Border teachers and other school workers in Glasgow are to take strike action next Thursday in opposition to the SNP-run council’s plan to cut teacher numbers and not to employ probationary teachers who would normally be expected to get a job.
The city’s Educational Institute of Scotland’s branch members voted by 95 per cent for the action which is expected to close most of Glasgow’s schools. Announcing the result, union’s General Secretary Andrea Bradley said, “EIS members across Glasgow remain resolute and determined to fight these destructive and dangerous cutbacks by the Council, which are damaging education provision in Glasgow and causing irreparable harm to the learning experience of thousands of young people in Glasgow’s schools.”
She said “it is not too late for Glasgow City Council to hold their hands up, admit that they have got this very badly wrong, and agree to cancel their programme of deep education cuts. Teachers never take strike action lightly, but are determined to stand united to force the Council to scrap the cuts”.
The union’s Local Association Secretary added that “the Council must listen to pupils, parents, carers and teachers, halt its programme of damaging cuts, and re-commit to working with the EIS and Glasgow’s teaching professionals to deliver a better future for all the young people of Glasgow.”
Another major issue exercising teachers, this time across the country, the EIS and other unions in the Teachers’ Panel of the Scottish Negotiating Committee for Teachers (SNCT) has declared a formal dispute following the failure of councils and the Scottish Government to table any proposals on a timescale for a reduction of class contact time to a maximum of 21 hours weekly, a long sought measure to reduce teachers’ workload.
When a previously agreed deadline to commence talks passed without any response. The SNCT declared itself in a formal dispute.
SNCT Teachers’ Side Joint Chair, Des Morris, said, “It is frankly beyond belief that after years of delay, the Scottish Government and COSLA have been completely unable to even begin to make meaningful progress on an improvement to teachers’ working conditions despite publicly having committed to do so”.
It is not really beyond belief. Years of delay are the norm for the SNP. But, he went on to note, the SNP Government “was elected in 2021 on a manifesto that, among other promises to the electorate, committed to reducing class contact time for teachers to a maximum of 21 hours per week. … Their failure to keep to this promise after almost four years of talking about it, is beyond the tolerance of Scottish teachers”. He added that: “Nor can CoSLA absolve itself of its responsibility in failing to undertake the work required to implement this change, despite having had years in which to do so and despite being signed up as Fair Work employers”.