French school students right now are fighting for smaller class sizes as part of their struggle against a failing education system. Currently, French classrooms regularly pack in 35 students at a time.
Sounds familiar. In Britain, over the past decade, secondary school classes of over 30 students have increased by 75 percent!
In my GCSE year, my school was forced to combine my maths class with another. This resulted in 60 students being ‘taught’ by our head of maths.
Young people in France are also at the barricades for more supply teachers. Again, sounds familiar. I remember we had a PE teacher step in to teach us geography because my school could not find (or more likely afford) a proper geography supply teacher.
Government research has found that 78 percent of secondary schools have increased their demand for supply teachers since 2020. But research has also found that the majority of students find it harder to learn with a supply teacher – no doubt because these teachers are being made to cover subjects they are unprepared for!
French students are also fighting to make their classrooms liveable. During countless heatwaves this summer, classrooms in France regularly reached temperatures of 38°C.
In Britain, more than 1,000 schools either closed or sent pupils home early this summer.
Do we think British students feel the heat less than their French counterparts? That they notice overcrowded classrooms less, or feel less angry that their classes aren’t being taught properly?
We don’t know when protests will break out in Britain, or what the trigger will be.
But two years ago, French farmers protested by spraying manure outside government buildings – and a year later, tractors rolled through my university campus protesting worsening conditions for farmers here in Britain, too.
I remember when Black Lives Matter protests in the UK were mirrored by Justice for Adama protests in France, and likewise for countless other movements that crossed the channel.
The same conditions facing young people in France face us here in Britain – and so does the same burning desire for change.
Sam, Oxford
Another scandalous visit from ‘the trust’!
This week, the special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) school I work in was visited by five executives from our management trust to ‘review the quality of our education and support’ (read: protect their profits and keep the money flowing).
Arriving late because they ‘couldn’t find the car park’ (in the school that they own), these execs were welcomed with pastries, fancy fruit, teas, coffees, and a carefully curated pile of books and action plans to scrutinise for three hours.
Meanwhile, staff had spent the entire week working their arses off staying late to get classrooms, paperwork, and planning up to scratch because there just isn’t enough time during working hours.
After their audit, the trust’s representatives waddled around classrooms taking pictures of ‘their’ achievements – and blithely dysregulating our students who struggle with crowded spaces.
When I asked colleagues what they thought of the trust, everyone was on the same page: these people haven’t worked in education for years and haven’t got a clue about it. All they understand is money. To them, every child is worth £23,000. Walking, talking moneybags. Nothing more.
And the cherry on top? Their latest plan to ‘better meet the needs of our children at lunchtime’ has resulted in support staff having our lunch breaks cut by a third!
We now have just 20 minutes to eat our lunch – with the students – before taking our classes outside. How this constitutes a ‘break’, only God knows.
Supposedly, this change was decided through a ‘democratic’ vote – which most didn’t even know was taking place!
Slashing staff break times will not provide a real solution to the education crisis. We need an education system built around the needs of young people: a system with proper staffing, resources, and larger school grounds where SEND children can thrive.
But, under capitalism, education is for profit, and everything else comes second.
These management trust fat cats, having done their dirty work, left with smiles on their faces – while staff and students had to deal with the consequences.
It is long past time we took matters into our own hands, like the students and teachers in France. We need to fight to completely upend the failing education system that these parasitic trustees at the top rest upon – by overthrowing the whole capitalist system itself!
An overstretched SEND support staff worker
