Support the teachers in their struggle! For a National School Student Union!

The National Union of Teachers (NUT),
the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL) and the National
Association of Head Teachers (NAHT) are balloting their members for
strike action. It is likely that as a result of this we will see
sometime in June or July strikes of teachers up and down the country.
For school students this raises the question of what the response should
be.

The reason for the ballot is over pensions, which the Tories and Lib
Dems are trying to cut throughout the public sector. Teachers and other
public sector employees have been portrayed in the media as presiding
over "gold-plated" pension schemes which they greedily cling to, whilst
workers in the private sector are sacrificing their pensions, wages and
conditions for "the good of the nation."

This song is being sung by all capitalist governments, not least in
the United States, which earlier this year saw a mass movement of public
sector workers take to the streets of Wisconsin and occupy the state
senate against the Republican’s attempts to dismantle collective
bargaining rights for trade unions. The same is true in France, where in
the Autumn of last year millions of French workers went on indefinite
strike in opposition to President Sarkozy’s plan to raise the age of
retirement. Similar conditions produce similar results.

The global economic crisis of 2008 manifested itself in a crisis of
the banking system in different countries throughout the world. The
banks were bailed out with the money that working people contribute
towards the state so that a myriad of public services are maintained;
the roads, the fire service, refuse collection, the National Health
service, and, of course, state pensions and a state education system.

Politicians like to describe the nose dive that the economy plunged
into in 2008 as akin to the onset of “unpredictable bad weather". It is
just "one of those things", there is no-one to blame, yet "the storm
must be weathered". We would state that the Marxists predicted the
crisis in advance. What made this crisis so deep and widespread was the
attempt by the capitalist class over the preceding decade to postpone
the inevitable crisis by pumping into the system vast amounts of cheap
credit in order to sustain demand artificially from businesses, workers
and families.

Of course if we are experiencing a bout of bad economic weather then
what is required is that we all huddle down together in order to get
through it. "We are all in this together…" is what we are told. Yet this
is not true, as anyone with the slightest acquaintance with the
phenomenon of bankers’ bonuses will understand. Hence, on a daily basis,
the media tells us that we all need to pull together and make
sacrifices. But that is not enough. Along with that we are told that
some greedy and selfish public sector workers are spoiling it for the
rest of us and not playing fair.

The attack on Pensions

In fact this attempt to divide private and public sector workers is
taken to the point of actually blaming public sector workers for the
dire state of the nation’s finances. Public sector pensions are too
lavish and, what’s more, people are living too long!

But what is a pension? Is it a frivolous fringe benefit raised
through general taxation, yet siphoned off to an undeserving and
ungrateful public employee? No, it is the deferred wages of the worker
paid on retirement. In that respect any attacks on pensions must be seen
as part of a general attack on wages. Of course the government doesn’t
just stuff the pension contributions made by its employees under the
mattress for forty or fifty years. Generally speaking, it uses the
contributions as a source of ready cash in order to pay for the
functions of the state, which in theory is balanced against the
projected money the government believes it will have at its disposal
when the day comes to pay the pension out.

Is it therefore inconceivable that public sector pensions have gone
towards the cost of bailing out the banks? As Christine Blower, General
Secretary of the NUT, said recently: “Government plans to finalise
pension increases by June this year. The 3% increase [in contributions]
for teachers is not about funding the scheme, it’s a tax to help pay
down the deficit and represents a significant pay cut for teachers."

The other argument that has caught fashion recently is that "people
are living too long." Anyone who has seen the film ‘Logan’s Run’ will
know that there is a very simple solution to that! Bismarck famously
introduced the concept of a pension in 1889 for all those who lived to
the age of 70. Yet many workers pensions’ contributions at that time
ended up subsidising the state as the average life expectancy was only
45!

The idea that our ageing population demands cuts in living standards is a lie, as Daniel Morley shows in his article "Pension costs – myth and reality" (18th November 2010):

"Generally speaking, labour productivity
and GDP rise faster than we age – the whole basis of human society
consists in our ability to develop and expand what we can produce
quicker than population rises, although as capitalism declines it has a
good stab at dragging GDP rates down with it! This situation is backed
up by numerous facts. The Government’s own documents prove it: "The
changing demographic structure of the UK’s population – especially the
ageing aspect – is projected to have only a limited impact on public
spending over the coming decades". (Fiscal Sustainability and the Ageing
Population, page 49).

“Nigel Stanley has also compiled this
useful table, demonstrating the lessening drain of public service
pensions in relation to GDP (that is, if capitalism can guarantee that
GDP continues to rise!)

"Part of the confusion that is created
around this question is fostered by the media and politicians
deliberately quoting ever increasing pension payments as time goes on
and then implying this is due to ‘the ageing society’, forgetting to
mention that GDP also rises as time goes on. Mark Weisbrot in The
Guardian makes a similar point with regard to the struggle unfolding in
France: ‘France’s retirement age was last set in 1983. Since then, GDP
per person has increased by 45%. The increase in life expectancy is very
small by comparison. The number of workers per retiree declined from
4.4 in 1983 to 3.5 in 2010, but the growth of national income was vastly
more than enough to compensate for the demographic changes, including
the change in life expectancy.’"

What we see over time is an increase in wealth, and the potential to
create further wealth, within society. This should furnish society with a
lower retirement wage and a comfier retirement. The question then
arises – if the productivity of labour is growing faster than pension
claims, where is the problem? The answer lies in the growing proportion
of GDP going toward private profit and the anarchy that reigns in
production, which sends society into periodic economic crises such as we
are experiencing now.

The Education System under attack

So while the immediate issue of dispute for teachers is one of
pensions, this cannot be artificially separated from the general issue
of the capitalist crisis. It is part and parcel of a range of attempts
by the ruling class to make ordinary working people bear the brunt. And
it is not the last when it comes to education.

A recent joint survey by the NUT and the UCU (University and Colleges
Union), investigating the impact of the cuts among Further Education
(16-plus) institutions, states that 96% of colleges have been told that
their budgets are to be cut in 2011-12. A similar figure said this would
impact negatively on their colleges. Three out of every four colleges
reported possible teacher and staff redundancies. Most reported the
threat of courses being closed as a result and an increase in class
sizes, with 40% threatened with reducing the number of hours per course.

Job cuts means an increased workload for the teachers that retain a
job, with teaching as it stands already widely acknowledged as one of
the most stressful of professions. In particular the introduction of the
market into education through the notorious "league tables" has exerted
enormous pressure on teachers. An increase in class sizes will have its
impact felt hardest in inner city areas that are already under strain
with classes fit to burst. Fewer teaching staff will mean a further
increase in teachers "filling in" on courses that they do not specialise
in, despite course closures.

The survey also showed that three-quarters of respondents say that
there will be a reduction time in activities such as sports, dance,
music and drama. So we can see which teachers face the chop. Culture is
not regarded as a profitable investment; rather it is portrayed as the
icing on the cake. And in these austere times there is certainly not
time for cake. It reveals the shallow regard for which the ruling class
view culture. They see it as something, not integral to society, but as
something expendable, like the many working class youth who will have
their road barred to the arts and culture.

The general education system to the bosses is not seen as fundamental
right, as the working class views it. It is seen as any other
commodity: it receives investment when there are profits to be made. Why
invest in education now, from the point of view of the ruling class?
The country is awash with hungry graduates chasing work. As long as
graduate A and graduate B, and the 50 or more others chasing each
graduate job vie with each other to be as "flexible" as possible, and
work for as little as possible – even on a year’s unpaid internship,
after which they can be replaced afresh – what need is there to invest
more? We are "over-supplied" with cheap, fresh, non-unionised, skilled
labour. In other words it is another feature of the overproduction in
the capitalist system.

For the public (private sector) schools state funding is of course
not a problem. Private schools are generally regarded as the preserve of
the wealthy elite in Britain. And so while the children of the working
class will have to give up the idea of learning to paint or dance, the
bosses’ children needn’t worry.

However, the idea of privately-funded schools being the preserve of
the elite is about to change. With the introduction of businesses
running schools in the form of Academies, what we will not see is "new
Eton’s" spring up for working class children. We will see the same thing
that happens every time the private sector takes over public services –
cutting corners to cut costs. Here is an opportunity for investment in
education! But it means taking government money and providing
communities with an education which has been produced as cheaply as
possible in order to pocket the difference.

Teachers who find themselves working in Academies will also find
themselves placed outside the NUT’s collective bargaining agreement,
which covers public sector teachers who have one employer – the state.
Once the education system is broken up into fragmented pieces the union
will have to fight on many different fronts with different employers for
each academy. Of course this problem is not insurmountable; unions in
the past have waged single campaigns that involved many different
employers. However the Academies, as well as being the deepest
penetration of business into education than has taken place since the
Second World War, must also be seen as a manoeuvre against the teacher
unions.

The future for school students

The key struggle for school students must be the fight against the
cuts to the Education Maintenance Allowance (EMA). Already the
government has backtracked on the total abolition of EMA following the
wave of indignation it caused in society, and the determined militancy
of school students who took to the streets late last year.

The Tories might argue that if teachers were worried about the swathe
of redundancies increasing the workload, here is the solution. A cut of
two-thirds to EMA will mean stopping a large layer of students
continuing their studies after 16, hence lowering class sizes! The
NUT-UCU survey found that not one single respondent answered that the students in their college found the new EMA proposal adequate. 68% of those surveyed believed their college would be adversely affected by the proposed cuts.

Further along, the road is blocked to university with the
introduction of £9,000 tuition fees set to hit the current crop of
school students. The NUT says that "they [the government] said that
fees of £9,000 per year would be the exception but everyday £9,000 is
looking increasingly like the norm… at a time when youth unemployment is
at 20%, the Government should be actively encouraging continued
participation in education rather than hiking fees and cutting
university budgets. The government has already felt the political
backlash. That, however, is of little comfort to the students who now
face leaving university with astronomical debt or not going at all."

In the university system we can see the logical conclusion of the
Academies system. Universities were already privately-run institutions
which received an amount of government funding per student. In 1998 New
Labour made Higher Education a form of debt by insisting that students
take on loans to partly fund their course. Today, with £4billion (50%)
of government funding for universities cut, they have almost without
exception set their fees near the £9,000 limit. Why? Because the minimum
£6,000 barely covers the costs and each university is in competition
with each other. They are in the market to make a profit and reinvest in
order to capture a larger share of the market in the future, like any
other business. This might seem a long way off in the case of secondary
education at present, but this is where the logic of introducing
business into education gets you – a complete dismantling of any
illusion in the idea of "meritocracy", and a pulling up of the ladder to
Further and Higher Education for all but those who can afford to pay
for it.

For a National School Student Union!

It is clear what the future for young people is under the rule of a
Tory government. It is a bleak future where most are faced with a choice
between the burden of personal debt with no guarantee of employment at
the end, or joining the dole queue where youth unemployment stands at
one in five in Britain today .

The choice is to fight back. This is not a fight that school students
can wage alone, but only in combination with the forces of the working
class – the organised labour movement. The working class alone has the
economic muscle to challenge the will of the bosses.

The contradiction that must be resolved for school students up and
down the country is, on the one hand, the pressing need to fight against
the draconian actions of a Tory government that wish to cast a whole
generation onto the scrap-heap, and on the other hand the as yet
meagre organisational resources that school students have at their
disposal. The school student union must be built! The question is how?

A first national meeting of school students was held in April which
established a set of basic principles around which school students can
organise. A very important point that was established was that "school
students should work with, and participate in, the wider student, trade
union and anti-cuts movement." NUT General Secretary Christine Blower
has already extended the union’s hand to the new National Union of
Students President Liam Burns in order to campaign against the
government’s education policy. The ATL, which was originally founded as a "moderate" (no-strike) union,
is balloting for industrial action – a very significant development.
Now the NAHT (National Association of Head Teachers) has also voted to
ballot for strike action.

These early developments mark the entry of the working class into the
political arena following the biggest trade union demonstration in
British history on March 26th. As the Marxists have often pointed out,
throughout history we can see examples of movements of the youth acting
as a barometer for the discontent brewing in the depths of society. The
movement of the youth last year has acted as the prelude of the movement
of the British working class. The same was seen in Russia before the
first revolution of 1905, during the Spanish revolution of the 1930s and
most famously before the magnificent movement of the French workers in
1968, the biggest general strike in history. With the working class on
the move again, where do the school students stand in relation to all
this?

One thing is clear and that is that school students should not stand
aside. The movement of the youth late last year was not the end of the
story. Thousands of school students were politicised through that
movement, and the conclusions they drew on those cold days and nights
have not gone away.

If the teacher unions go on strike, the responsibility of the school
students first and foremost must be to assist the teachers and where
possible act as an auxiliary to their struggle. The school student union
must turn its face toward the working class, starting with the teacher
unions. Through this act of solidarity the school student union will
show itself to be a relevant focal point for a larger layer of school
students. In this way the task of supporting the teachers at the same
time becomes the task of building the school student union around the
basic principles which the school students have already established.

With this task in mind, Militant Student makes the following suggestions for school students to consider:

1) Organise meetings of school students interested in fighting the
cuts in your school or local area. Discuss out the political questions
so that as many students as possible are aware of the arguments and
understand what you are trying to achieve. Discuss what activity you can
take, which could range from producing leaflets raising awareness of
the issues at stake for students at your school, to solidarity action in
the form of fund-raising activities for the strikers (teachers will
lose pay when they strike) to student strikes, joining the teachers on
the picket line.

2) Approach the union shop stewards in your school and/or area. Make
the union reps aware of the School Student Union and its basic
principles of opposing all cuts to education – this includes attacks on
teacher pensions. Make sure the union, as well as any other sympathetic
teachers, are aware that the students consider their struggle as the
student’s struggle.

3) On the basis of having organised activity in support of the
teachers, arrange a follow-up meeting (where striking teachers could
even be invited) to discuss the strike, draw a balance sheet of how
things went and discuss where the School Student Union can go from here.
In this way you have the opportunity to bring new students who have
been met during the course of the strike into a meeting of the School
Student Union.

Militant Student stands in full solidarity with all school students
who support the teachers in their struggle, and puts at its disposal
whatever resources it can to assist them. Through this solidarity action
of teachers and students we are confident that school students around
the country can go forward and lay the basis for a strong, nation-wide
school student union.