Solidarity with teachers
NUT & NASUWT joint one-day strike
Thursday 17 October 2013
Brighton & Hove – BHASVIC picket 8.30am, Pavilion Gardens demo 10.30am
Eastbourne Town Hall rally 11am
Hastings White Rock Theatre rally 11am
Brighton Centre rally 11.45am
Teachers are facing unprecedented attacks by the Coalition. The teachers’ unions, NUT and NASUWT, together represent 90% of teachers. They have responded to Gove’s systematic privatisation of education and unremitting attacks on teachers’ authority, status, pay, conditions and pensions, with a rolling programme of strikes. On Thursday 17 October, NUT and NASUWT members will strike across the South East.
“Teachers have had enough. They’ve had enough of the attacks on their pay, on their pensions and their working conditions. But most of all they’ve had enough of the attacks on education. It’s time to stand up for education. It’s time to stand up for teachers. Please support the strikes.” This blog from Teachers ROAR was written before one of the earlier teachers’ strikes, but it explains exactly why we should all support tomorrow’s strike in our area.
“I stand up all day. Most days, I get to work at around about 7.15am. I often leave at around 5 or 6pm. There is rarely a weekday evening in which I don’t have something to catch up on. Be it marking, planning or correspondence. I am tired.” Is this a daily routine you could keep up til 68 as the Coalition wants to make teachers do? Southampton teacher, Laura Rowlands, gives her personal and professional reasons for striking.
In Brighton & Hove you can support teachers locally by joining a picket outside BHASVIC at 8.30am, supporting the demonstration in Pavilion Gardens at 10.30am, or attending the rally at the Brighton Centre at 11.45am. In Eastbourne, support the rally at Eastbourne Town Hall at 11am. In Hastings, support the rally at the White Rock Theatre at 11am.
It is all the more important to support teachers this week when Shadow Education Secretary Tristram Hunt has betrayed teachers, students and Labour Party members by giving his backing to free schools. We condemn his statement: “We are not going to go back to the old days of the local authority running all the schools – they will not be in charge. We will keep those free schools going.” Free schools have been shown to increase segregation in education without any rise in standards. We suggest Ed Miliband sends Tristram on a trip to Finland to study the success of the world’s top education system – which has fully applied the comprehensive system. Tristram can pop in to see Sweden’s failed free schools on his way home. Then he might consider that we need to have fully qualified and properly experienced teachers running all our schools.