the Thatcherite nightmare continues....


After 15 years, teachers' leader has a final swipe at ministers, TUC - and colleagues


Will Woodward
Wednesday April 14, 2004
The Guardian

Tony Blair is taking the country towards the nightmare of top-up fees being extended to children in a privatised education system where schools are "marketised, franchised and sponsored", the leader of the largest teaching union warned yesterday.
In a blistering parting shot, Doug McAvoy used his last speech as general secretary to the National Union of Teachers' annual conference in Harrogate to accuse the prime minister of wanting "schools to be run like Tesco stores", where they offered air miles and "two lessons for the price of one.

"The crisis before us is one that stems from a government that is hell-bent on dismantling the public education service," he said in a speech which laid bare the sheer size of the divide between the government and the NUT, which represents 253,000 members.

Mr McAvoy, who stands down in June after 15 years as leader of the NUT, chose to go out fighting at the culmination of a period which leaves the union more excluded from Whitehall than it was even under the Thatcher government. Mr McAvoy's relations with Charles Clarke are the poorest he has had with any education secretary.

He won warm applause and an emotional three-minute standing ovation for his onslaught, although the favourite to replace him, Steve Sinnott, and most of the controlling broad left group on the NUT's executive, want the union to move to a more constructive relationship with ministers.

The government's enthusiasm for bringing in business to schools through the private finance initiative and other schemes was a "nightmare prospect" which amounted to the most radical upheaval since the 1944 Education Act, Mr McAvoy said. "What began with tentative experiments in education action zones and PFI is accelerating into complete deregulation, privatisation, commodification and globalisation. Deregulation is proceeding apace with a virtual abolition of controls over who can teach.

"Private supply will be brought in to meet public need. And the logical extrapolation of that is 'pay more - get more' ... the school of the future will be franchised, branded and sponsored."

He added: "The same logic that the government applies to variable top-up fees for university places will be applied to parental contributions to the education of their children.

"The taxpayer will provide the funding necessary for the base level of education provision. Sufficient, shall we say, for the bog standard comprehensive. Extras will come on top of that ... feeding the soul - music, art, drama, poetry -anything related to free expression [will be] extra."

In a speech that played unashamedly to the leftwing activists at the conference, Mr McAvoy tore into the TUC and other education unions for signing up to a deal with the government to reduce teacher workload which he says will lead to unqualified staff taking whole classes.

The NUT is the only union to oppose the deal.

"Those that went along with new Labour's agenda to destroy the

education service will be rightly judged as having betrayed the profession and the nation's children and young people," Mr McAvoy told delegates.
Mr Clarke rejected an invitation to address the NUT conference for a second consecutive year and has refused to deal with the union because of its opposition to the workload deal.

Mr McAvoy said: "It's deplorable that the TUC, which should be in the vanguard of protecting the interests of children and young people ... is promoting an agreement disrupting the life chances through teaching work being given to those not qualified to teach."

The other unions had been "conned" over the introduction of performance-related pay for teachers which, combined with the national curriculum and performance management, amounted to "a fairly close replica of 19th century systems of payment by results". The "Jurassic Park" of the teaching world was the Department for Education and Skills headquarters.

But as the emotion of his last big moment at conference got to him, Mr McAvoy omitted large sections of the speech that had been handed to journalists shortly before he stood up. There was no sign of a much more personal attack he had planned on TUC general secretary Brendan Barber, or of a broadside against supporters of Mr Sinnott, who is running to replace Mr McAvoy after years of being frozen out by him.

Delegate Moira Grant from Leicester, said: "It's absolutely right and proper that the leader of the NUT should be seen as part of the awkward squad when the government is carrying out a massive assault on education. I think Doug McAvoy's speech puts him as part of the awkward squad. I'd just like him to be a bit more awkward."

A spokesman for the DfES said: "It is bizarre but not surprising that Mr McAvoy has rounded on all the other teacher unions who are working constructively with government to develop and support the teaching profession.

"Mr McAvoy describes a future he knows will not happen in order to gain a few cheap headlines. Most people will see it for the hot air that it is."