“Notts NUT is determined to defend your pay, your pension and the Education Service against the plans of the Government to make teachers and the education service pay for the economic crisis.”
Any illusion that schools will be exempt from the cuts was quickly dispelled by Notts
County Council’s announcement on November 1st that they intend to close the Gedling
School. If they get away with it Gedling parents will be denied a local community
school for their children -
The council probably wasn’t expecting a campaign to save the Gedling School to begin
so soon but a big protest outside the school was held on Wednesday, November 3rd,
hitting the front page of the Evening Post the following day. A few days later 600
people turned up to a post-
Notts NUT will be linking up with this campaign and we urge staff, parents and students to fight to keep the school open. We can and will defeat these proposals. You can play your part. If you live in Gedling contact your MP Vernon Coaker and local councillors to voice your opposition. Gedling children should not have to pay the price for the ruthless cuts planned by the Tory County Council. The NUT will stand by parents, staff and students at the school.
The attempt to close a school serving a largely working class community epitomises
the approach of the Tory government. Cameron and Clegg want to create a world in
which the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, whilst their ability to fight-
This is a world in which schools deemed to be ‘outstanding’ in middle class areas will take the bulk of the cash whilst the rest go hang.
This is a world in which the collective bargaining arrangements with a local authority through recognised teachers and other unions like the NUT is replaced by school based bargaining, in which the pay of most staff is held down whilst the pay of those at the top is kept secret and trade unions are locked out at the school gates.
In short this is a dog-
The Lib-
Even before the huge cuts (25%) are announced in October's spending review the writing is on the wall.
Over 700 schools will now have to wait indefinitely for the privately owned construction companies to arrive on site. So it won’t be just public sector workers facing tough times because of public sector cuts. That’s £7 billion worth of investment in construction and related jobs down the drain.
Just over a year ago the previous government spent about ten times that bailing out
the banks -
To add insult to injury, Michael Gove mistakenly informed 25 schools, including 9
in Sandwell, that their building programme was safe in Lib-
Many of the new schools were promised for socially disadvantaged areas such as Ollerton
where the proposal for the re-
Notts NUT will be urging all teachers and school based support staff to stand up to the Government’s miserly policies. Unite with parents, students and the Unions to fight against these pernicious cuts and the divisive academies programme. We aim to defend schools like the Gedling School and fight in support of a good local school
for every child. The stakes are very high here but millions of parents,
staff and students have concrete reasons for fighting the
government all the way in interests of high quality, free,
comprehensive education.
Gedling School NUT members strike again, October 20, 2010. This is the way to resist bullying
governments and management.