We won't stand by and let this happen

5:02pm Monday 30th June 2008

OVER the course of the past six weeks, The Bolton News has highlighted events at both Withins and Hayward schools - from strikes to pupil walkouts, and strike ballots to acrimonious meetings.

In all of this, your readers may well be bewildered by the sudden eruption of issues in the field of education and the escalating turn of events.

The facts are that the council decided that, in order to obtain money from the Government to build new schools, it would establish two so-called academies at Withins and Hayward.

There was no need to set up academies to get the money, the latter had already been promised at the last General Election, with no strings attached.

Our unions oppose academies as we feel, as do the majority of people who have an interest in education, that the development of our youth should be in the hands of accountable and democratically elected people with an over-arching, non-sectarian view of our children's potential.

We can quibble about the extent of accountability, the low turnouts in voting and what children should and shouldn't learn.

We can also debate the finer points of what is, or is not achievable in terms of results. But what should not be in question is that education empowers people and should be part of a dynamic relationship between pupil, parent and people who work in schools with children.

The academy turns all of this on its head. It enables rich people, as sponsors, who have never shown the slightest interest in education except in so far as it provides labour for their businesses, to manage and control a child's development without referring in any way, shape or form to parents, pupils or staff.

It may also be of interest to your readers to know that their taxes, which have gone into the land and buildings of both Hayward and Withins schools, are now removed from their control.

It may also be of interest to know that the council does not know the value of the land it is losing control of!

The trouble at Withins and Hayward erupted because staff who had chosen to work for the local authority, chosen to work for a family of schools within an education community, suddenly found themselves being railroaded into a private set-up.

It was this change of employer that triggered the trade dispute; the anxiety of having their terms and conditions put into question.

An added issue was the lack of consultation. The council seemed to think that simply by giving out information it had consulted. In the context of Hayward School, the speed of closure and implementation defies description.

To this day, the overwhelming majority of parents in all the schools affected simply have no idea what is going on.

Parents don't know how their children will be educated, what plans the sponsors have for the schools and how their own ideas over the future of their children fit in with those of the new owners.

And this will not be the end of it for other parents and school workers.

The Government has become a serial accuser, so far as education is concerned. Nothing anyone does seems to satisfy our ministers, which is a convenient excuse for simply shifting schools into private control and washing their hands of responsibility for our youth.

This is why our members have drawn a line in the sand and now call on parents, governors, pupils and others concerned with education to support them.

As unions we are not going to stand by and watch valuable public resources flushed down a private toilet to satisfy some mad economic idea that only those who have made shed loads of money in business somehow have a monopoly of knowledge in every other aspect of life.

Barry Conway, secretary of the NUT, and Bernie Gallagher, secretary of UNISON