This article is the view of the writer and not of Leicestershire NEU. If you have a different view and would like to write about it, get in touch. We hope this will be the first of a series of opinion pieces that looks at the long term aims of the NEU, and the future of our education system. We hope to represent the entire spectrum of political opinion that our members hold, so please do contact us if you wish to write for the website.

A member writes: What is to be done? Moving beyond school funding

There is a war against the principle of free universal education going on in this country. The funding crisis which schools face isn’t the result of global economic crises , deregulated banks, or low levels of economic growth. It’s part of a deliberate by-partisan policy that aims to dismantle the welfare state, privatise its resources and expand market principles ever further.

The underfunding of schools can only be understood in the context of academisation, which was a successful attempt to take education outside of democratic control. You could vote to change members of your local council if you didn’t like how they ran your local schools, but you can’t do anything to a MAT’s CEO. Academisation therefore provides the political cover required to bankrupt our schools. A fight for sustainable school funding has to also be a fight against academisation. A happy side effect of our current education system is that it is possible for the elites who took control of schools to leech funding from education into their own pay packs.

Some took hope from the teachers strike. Whilst acts of solidarity between workers are always to be welcomed, we should not allow ourselves to be over excited. It has been government policy since at least the coalition government, to take teaching jobs and transform them from middle class professions that give workers a degree of professional and financial freedom, to a job more a kin to a zero hour contract role. The fact that after this, a few one day strikes were held, should not get us over excited. This might seem to be overly gloomy given quickly governments of both parties folded when faced with strikes. It is true that our political elites were vulnerable to even occasional one or two days strikes, but this was the result of various self-inflicted wounds, like Brexit negotiations and Covid rule breaking, not the result of an organised working class starting a meaningful fightback. It is a sign of how weak the workers movement is that the ruling elite mess their own bed through allowing Liz Truss to govern. This is not something they would risk if they were being held to account.

Undoubtedly the leadership of the teachers unions have played a role in holding back teachers from making real progress, but that has to be a given in any political discussion. To complain about the leadership would be like complaining about gravity making things fall.

What do we need now? We need a non-hierarchical grass roots campaign that focuses on worker and community control of schools. Right now, that seems to be beyond the political imagination of our movement, let alone its political aspirations.