Recent victories show what is possible. Now activists should link up with other unions and build for joint strike action across the sector.

After years of inaction, Unison members finally have the chance to send a message to the Tories that workers are prepared to fight the destruction of our education system

A RECENT survey found a third of young women in mixed secondary schools have experienced sexual harassment. A majority complained about the use of misogynistic language and 24 per cent reported unwanted sexual contact. Whilst these results can hardly be surprising given the rife sexism in our society, they should serve as a wake-up call […]

By a London teacher The recent decision by an East London primary school to ban pupils from wearing the hijab shows how Islamophobia subjects Muslim women to a double dose of racism and sexism. Although protests forced the school to reverse the ban, this is not an isolated attempt to single out Muslims for discrimination […]

MEMBERS OF the University College Union (UCU) have smashed through the government’s strike ballot threshold to declare their support for industrial action over devastating cuts to their pension scheme. Eighty-eight per cent voted to strike after the government announced cuts that would cost the average lecturer £200,000 in retirement. Strikes After the result, announced on […]

JEREMY DEWAR responds to Angela Rayner’s recent comments about white working class boys’ underachievement in school

Wakefield City Academies Trust has announced that it is pulling out of 21 schools, throwing the academic lives of thousands of children across Yorkshire into limbo.

THE UNDERFUNDING of childcare programmes, the privatisation of secondary education

TEACHING ASSISTANTS employed by Durham County Council have voted overwhelmingly for strike action against the imposition of new contracts that would see some workers lose up to 23 per cent – or £6,000 a year. The Labour led Council in Durham voted in May to dismiss all of the 2,700 teaching assistants employed by the […]

By Jeremy Dewar The boycotts of the ridiculous and cruel tests of children as young as five by parents earlier this year, and the public outcry at the threat by Education Secretary Nicky Morgan to force all schools to become academies prove that families would support action Teachers have delivered an overwhelming mandate to strike […]

By an NUT member Education Secretary Nicky Morgan has made a U-turn in her forced academisation programme. This is good as far as it goes but she insists that the Tories’ intention remains to eventually convert all schools into academies. Moreover she is determined to move academies away from national terms and conditions, abolish national […]

“What’s the difference between a subordinating conjunctive and a preposition?” Tory education ministers don’t know so why should 11 year olds? By Bernie McAdam The latest leak of a primary school test online is trying the patience of the Department of Education and causing huge embarrassment. The DoE has linked this to a campaign of sabotage […]

By Jeremy Dewar The biggest and most militant teachers’ union, NUT, has voted for a strike ballot against the threat to turn all 15,000 state-maintained schools into academies. The threat is lodged at the heart of the Tory government’s Educational Excellence Everywhere White Paper. Two other teaching unions, NASUWT and ATL, have also voted to […]

By KD Tait 2014 was the year the student movement moved decisively from the defensive to the offensive. Tax the rich to fund education for all was the demand that mobilised 10,000 students to march on parliament for the first time since 2010. The demonstration succeeded in spite of the sabotage attempted by the national […]

  By KD Tait The ritual central London march for free education, a staple of the student activist’s Autumn calendar for 15 years, has been called for 19 November by a coalition of student campaigns under the slogan ‘no to debt, no to fees – yes to free education’. The defeat of the 2010 student […]

By Bernie McAdam After their humiliation in the EU elections at the hands of UKIP the Tories had to do something to reclaim the mantle of Britain’s number one racist party. The answer was to stir up Islamophobia by attacking Birmingham schools whose catchment area has a large Muslim population. In March an anonymous letter was […]

 The National Union of Teachers has called a national strike in a continuing campaign to defend pay, pensions and conditions: report by NUT member Bernie McAdam Teachers are right to feel angry. That’s why thousands of schools will be closed on 26 March across England and Wales. Our aim must be to use this one-day […]

Thousands of school students strike in solidarity with refugees fighting racist violence and deportation. Tobi Hansen reports  On February 13, more than 3,000 school and university students went on strike to demonstrate their solidarity with refugees on the streets of Berlin. For nearly two years, there has been a camp on Oranienplatz in Berlin protesting […]

This statement was originally published by the Revolutionary Socialists – Britain. Comrades, We – the Revolutionary Socialists , a youth organisation in Britain – send our warmest solidarity to the Berlin school students’ strike in defence of the rights of refugees. From London to Lampedusa those fleeing the violence of poverty and war are hunted […]

  credit: @ailiahrizvi Thousands of students defied the protest ban and demonstrated on the Bloomsbury campus of University of London, before marching to the Royal Courts of Justice to show solidarity with Mark Duggan’s family, writes KD Tait. The police were completely absent – ordered off the streets by their commanders, panicked into retreat by […]

By KD Tait University bosses have launched a crackdown against a wave of student occupations. The suppression of the right to protest signals the start of the final offensive in the struggle to complete the marketization of Higher Education. Injunctions have been used to ban all protests at several universities. Where students rejected the rulings […]