[Education For Tomorrow: No 98, 2008]

Burston Strike School Rally 2008

 Though torrential rain lashed down on this year’s rally, spirits were high, attendance was good and some excellent speeches were made. Here’s one of them (edited) from National Union of Teachers President, Bill Greenshields.

“There really can be no peace or victory for us which does not bring with it freedom for the countryside, liberty and life for the labourer and prosperity and plenty to his home and family. The labourer must henceforth take his place industrially, socially and politically with the best and foremost of the land. He must do this himself — by the force and power of his union. And he can!"           Tom Higdon, quoted in The Labourer, January 1917.

When Tom and Kitty Higdon began the process of giving the children of “the labourer" the educational tools they’d need to be able to best fight to take their place industrially, socially and politically, they — of course — faced the anger and enmity of the local establishment, the landed gentry, as a result. They also faced the endemic inequalities and barriers of the economic and political system of the time — presented then, as now, as things that are part of the natural world, not possible to change. As well as their refusal to regard education as a process of teaching children to know their place, the Higdons challenged those social inequalities… and from that time on their card was marked.

We’ve come a long way since those days of course. But we have not put an end to the fundamental inequalities in our society, and the barriers they create. There is a huge and growing wealth/poverty gap. By government figures 1 per cent of the population of Britain owns 34 per cent of its total wealth. The richest 10 per cent owns 71 per cent of that wealth. The poorest 50 per cent of the population (hello everybody) owns 1 per cent of the wealth between us.

The logic of such a society is that the wealth gap is huge between those at the very top and those at the very bottom — and the gap is widening, the process is accelerating, what little social mobility there was is declining. The education of millions of children is severely damaged and hampered as a result.

Back in 1931, RH Tawney wrote, “The hereditary curse upon English education is its organisation along lines of social class … the barbarous association of differences of educational opportunities with distinctions of wealth and social position."

Research
Since then, decades of research have proved him right, and the barbarous association has continued in ever new forms, but with the same effect.

Amongst the most recent research is that by Leon Feinstein of University College, London, who shows there is a direct correlation between class and the level of child development at 22 months, educational progress at ten years of age, and educational qualification throughout life. By correlating the child’s class and 22 month developmental score, it is possible to accurately predict their level of educational qualifications at 26 years of age.

The Government recognises the link. The Department for Education & Skills, publishing the Five Year Strategy in 2004 wrote, “We also fail our most disadvantaged children and young people… internationally our rate of child poverty is still high …. The links between poor health, disadvantage and low education outcomes are stark."

In the same year in the Child Poverty Review, Gordon Brown wrote, “No child should ever be left out or left behind. Yet the concentration of poverty amongst households with young children is the greatest indictment of our country in this generation and the greatest challenge of all. We know that an infant who grows up in a poor family is less likely to stay on at school, or even attend school regularly, less likely to get qualifications and go to college, more likely to be trapped in the worst job or no job at all, more likely to be trapped in a cycle of deprivation that is lifelong, unable to reach their full potential — a young child’s chances crippled even before their life’s journey has barely begun."

Ending child poverty
The Government’s stated target is to halve child poverty by 2010 and eradicate it by 2020.

In 2004, as Gordon Brown put pen to paper, there were 3.6 million children living in poverty by his own figures. Now in 2008 there are 3.8 million. Even before the “credit crunch" the government was failing in its target. Now with prices rocketing, greater job insecurity and below inflation pay impositions, the situation is worsening daily.

So if the Government has education standards and achievement at the top of its priorities, if it recognises the link between poverty, disadvantage and underachievement, and if it has specific anti-poverty targets, why is it not making these its priorities?

Those in government have as their educational priority, in fact and without doubt, privatisation. They are preparing the ground by attacking the national pay and conditions of teachers and non-teachers within the service, by promoting “workforce flexibility" — i.e. substituting unqualified staff for qualified teachers — by undermining the professional control of the service and putting into the hands of statisticians and accountants… and a whole lot more. They have the privatisation process underway through their Academies programme, through PFI, through Local Education Partnerships. And all this is just the start.

Education International says “In the wake of other major public services which have been subject to extensive privatisation and deregulation, public education is increasingly being targeted by predatory and powerful entrepreneurial interests." It is these predatory and powerful entrepreneurs who are calling the tune … and the government seems only too pleased to accept the invitation to dance.

So how do they square this privatisation priority with their recognition of the link between poverty and educational underachievement? By simply standing the whole thing on its head.

When we argue that schools cannot solve the questions of poverty and deprivation, we are said to be “excusing failure". It’s now not the actuality of poverty that damages children the government seems to argue, but low teacher expectation of those who are living in those conditions, a teacher culture of complacency.

Ed Balls, Secretary for Schools, Children and Families (god help us all), put it like this recently “A culture of excusing poor performing pupils on the basis of deprivation will let another generation fail."

We might put it another way. “A culture of excusing poor performing governments on the basis of blaming teachers will let another generation of politicians get away with it."

So, if it is all the fault of teachers and schools, the priority must be to give them a good shaking up ... “workforce reform", performance related pay, league tables, Academisation, privatisation, narrow “vocationalism" for many children. But this smoke screen behind which they seek to give our schools away to millionaires and big business is not very effective. More and more parents and whole communities are seeing through it.

The struggle for education for all
So we teachers, we teacher trade unionists… while needing to defend our pay (and we will) and to protect our members from crushing “reform" workload (and we will) will not lose sight of the real struggle that has always been the underlying theme of the history of education — the struggle for education for all, and particularly for the children from the toughest backgrounds, the most deprived areas. The struggle for education has always been a central strand of the struggle for a more democratic society, and for the rights of working people. Clearly that struggle is nowhere near completion.

The very rich and powerful still call the shots, pay the piper. The unpalatable and politically unpopular fact is, in my view, that class advantage and disadvantage, the growing wealth/poverty gap — far from being aberrations in our free market, dog-eat-dog, private not public society — are economic imperatives that government feels unable or unwilling to challenge. If it is money that makes the world go round, it is inequality in wealth and power that keeps it turning the way that we are encouraged to think of as normal.

We teachers need to be part of a wider movement that rejects the fundamental systemic inequalities of society, rejects the social mechanisms that sustain inequality, and works strategically against them. We need and want to reflect the values of the ordinary people of Britain, not those of the ruthless “free market".

Policies for raising achievement
And maybe the Labour Government could respond to that movement. There ARE things they could do if they listened to the ordinary people instead of big business, all of which would have dramatically positive effects on educational achievement.

How about the development of an integrated policy on education, training, youth employment and apprenticeships?

How about legislating for security of employment rather than promoting insecurity — particularly affecting low paid workers — in the name of “workforce flexibility."?

The level of the minimum wage, and benefits too, should be raised to a level necessary to support dignified and secure living.

There should be a new commitment to high quality affordable council housing — and no child should, under any circumstances, be sleeping rough.

There should be the extra £4 billion pounds put into Child Tax Credit that the Institute of Fiscal Studies says would give a “50:50 chance of halving child poverty by 2010".

And there should be established a progressive, redistributive taxation system. If the super-rich, non-doms and big companies are so keen on our schools, here’s a message — you don’t need to buy them — just try paying your taxes.

All are fundamental to raising educational achievement. How about that as a budget for a Labour Government?

Another world is possible
There are some more things they could do. How about free uniform and school equipment for every child? A free breakfast and lunch for all children and school workers? A nurse permanently attached to every school, and a rota of visiting doctors to give regular checkups? Guaranteed work or training for all education leavers?

Is this a bit “pie-in-the-sky"? Well if it can be done in Cuba, a developing country embargoed by the richest and most powerful nation in the world for the last 40 odd years, you think we might be able to match it… that’s if education was a priority. I’m very pleased to be part of the line up of speakers today and particularly want to say thank you to Reinaldo Valdes from the Cuban trade unions for the daily demonstration that another world really is possible.

Deprivation and poverty are not immutables — though they may appear so in our current society. But in the struggle for education, whether it be that of Kitty and Tom Higdon, or in the current fight against pay cuts, or in opposing an Academy plan, or in resisting the channelling of working class kids into narrow vocationalism… in the course of those struggles it becomes clearer from our own experience too that another world is possible.

So Tom Higdon was right in the momentous year of 1917 that, “There really can be no peace or victory for us which does not bring with it freedom, liberty and life for the labourer and prosperity and plenty to his home and family." 

Bill’s Burston speech in full, his NUT presidential speech together with other articles, speeches and blogs can be found at www.billgreenshields.org.uk.

Back to index