Although education cuts have been with us since the Barber budget, the NUT leadership have just realised that it is time to take action against them.
Regular readers of the NUT publication, The Teacher, will have noticed how next years’ estimate for the number of unemployed teachers has risen progressively. Presently its estimate stands at 8,000.
Now the education cuts are hitting everywhere. Birmingham banned rising fives from entering primary school last week — an action which many local authorities have already taken. This week the ILEA announced that there would be no jobs for new teachers in primary schools next year. Everywhere nursery schools are being aced.
This is the thin end of the wedge; the non-compulsory sector of education must inevitably be the first sector to receive the worst of the cuts. This has several advantages for the government. Firstly, that sector tends to be the most badly organised and therefore the weakest. Secondly it falls into line with government policy on employment and the bosses need to reduce the number of women in the workforce.
One way of forcing them back into the home is to make women look after their children 24 hours a day. With this aim in mind, the bosses have also launched an ideological attack to reinforce their cuts campaigns. The anti-abortion lobby and the variety of ‘disquieting’ reports in the papers concerning the effect of working mothers on their children are the best orchestrated examples of these.
The non-compulsory sector is bearing the brunt of the cuts but all areas are suffering and are shortly to be hit even harder. Nearly all local authorities are considering various ways of implementing the cuts, often under the guise of a ‘standstill’. The number of new teachers to be trained over the next few years is proof that the cuts are intended to be permanent. The present 30,000 student teachers will be cut to 12,000 by 1977. Even with full restoration afterwards, it would take the education system at least ten years to recover from the teacher shortage this cut would produce.
The union’s proposals
For a long time the NUT has been making ‘left’ noises about the cuts. At last the union leadership have proposed some action. However this action is of such a limited nature and is bound with such stringent conditions that it will be, at best localised and as such totally ineffective. The union executive has argued that if parents want a decent education service, they will have to pay for it through increased rates. This argument completely accepts the ruling class’s ideology that the government cuts are inevitable and necessary.
The union officials’ proposed action is to stop covering for teachers absent for more than three days. But without a fight from the rank and file to extend action and make it unconditional, the campaign will not be implemented. This will enable the executive to say that there was not enough support and call off sanctions altogether. According to the executive any action must be “disciplined and controlled”.
Rank and file
The effect of the crisis on the rank and file teachers organisation (R&F) has been disastrous. This organisation has held the belief that as the crisis deepened their would be a corresponding and automatic growth of militancy. In reality there has been a 50% drop in R&F’s membership and an unequivocal hammering of its candidate in the Vice-Presidential elections. R&F has one tactic only — the Right to Work Campaign. Its agitational paper has failed to come up with any answers to the crisis and has made no demands on the Labour government.
Build a united front
The political objectives of cuts and wage restraint is to make the working class pay for the capitalist crisis. This involves concentrated attack on the living standards of the class. To combat this attack in the educational sphere, an independent rank and file movement must be built through the trade unions but cutting across the sectionalism of these unions.
The rank and file of all unions must find a working class answer to the crisis — an answer which means that school kids will not pay for the bosses’ crisis. Thus a rank and file movement must be built around a programme of demands which unites as many workers and teachers as possible.
We must demand that:
- All cuts be restored.
- Parity between Local Education Authorities be achieved by a general levelling up.
- Nursery facilities be made available to all children between the ages of three and five years.
- Maternity leave and reinstatement after pregnancy.
- Contract security for all teachers must be established. Abolish all short term contracts and establish a permanent pool of supply teachers.
- All teachers have a guaranteed marking time of a fifth of their timetable.
- All qualified teachers must be employed.
The only way that these demands will be secured is by militant action. The formation of a genuine united front to fight for these demands is the only way to solve the crisis facing the working class at the expense of the bosses. It will also aid the building of an effective, independent rank and file movement of all trade unionists.
