Teachers to fight trust schools

By Gary Eason
Education editor, BBC News website, at the NUT conference, Torquay

Blair says trust schools will build on the success of academies

Teachers have raised the possibility of action including a national strike in England in opposition to the government's education bill.

Delegates at the National Union of Teachers annual conference, in Torquay, condemned the proposed "trust schools" as a threat to comprehensive education.

Parents are to be leafleted and MPs can expect to be bombarded with e-mails, as a first step to raise awareness.

There were also calls to copy French street protests against workforce laws.

Proposing a priority motion on behalf of the NUT executive, Martin Reed said the union should campaign against the "pseudo-arguments of choice and diversity".

He denounced "phoney notions of market-driven choice" and "bankrupt post-war policies of division by ability and everything such educational bigotry brings".

The bill will fail the very group of school students that it purports to help Jerry Glazier NUT

He won a standing ovation when he sent a defiant message to the education secretary, Ruth Kelly.

"Many in the government thought that we would not fight," he said.

"Big mistake, Mrs Kelly. We will."

The government has said that the proposal to give trust schools greater independence within the state system is about building on the success of its specialist schools and academies, to benefit the most disadvantaged pupils.

A DfES spokesman said: "Strikes achieve only one thing - disruption to pupils' learning. This is a retrograde step based on arguments that don't stack up. The NUT have opposed many significant education reforms which have subsequently brought about the highest ever standards in schools."

Another member of the NUT executive, Jerry Glazier, said structural change was not the answer.

"The solution is to treat the causes of the problems, not the symptoms," he said.

"The bill will fail the very group of school students that it purports to help."

'Two-tier system'

A teacher from Radnor, Mary Compton, said it was clear from World Bank reports that what was happening in England was part of an international trend in which education systems were being dismantled and handed over to entrepreneurs.

"In fighting this bill, we are part of a international struggle to wrest education from the privateers and the profiteers worldwide," she said.

Hazel Danson got a standing ovation

Liam Conway from central Nottinghamshire foresaw an increasingly divisive, segregated, two-tier education system.

"The bill is the academies programme writ large so the union should be contemplating pre-emptive industrial action to stop it," he said.

Citing the French street protests, he added: "I implore the executive to become fluent in French."

There was another standing ovation for a teacher from Kirklees, Hazel Danson.

She stressed that although much of the commentary on the bill had focused on secondary schools, it applied to primary schools as well.

Usually quite a calm person, this was making her agitated, she said.

Let our soapbox slogan be: 'educate, agitate, organise' Teacher Hazel Danson

The guardian of education standards in her classroom was not Ruth Kelly, her local MP, Ofsted inspectors or anyone else.

"The guardian of high standards in my classroom is me," she said.

"Let our soapbox slogan be: 'educate, agitate, organise'."

The resolution adopted by the conference called for a widespread campaign against the bill and in favour of comprehensive schooling, to include a lobby of Parliament.

The union's leadership will explore the circumstances under which industrial action, including a national strike, could be taken to highlight the strength of opposition.

NUT general secretary Steve Sinnott said afterwards it was clear the main concern was to step up campaigning, by mobilising the opposition of parents, teachers and local authorities.

"The best way of convincing members of Parliament is to explain the impact that the Education and Inspections Bill will have on their communities, their schools and the community of schools from which they came," he said.

And he said the debate had served as an important reminder that primary schools were affected by the government's proposals just as much as secondary schools.