“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 - so much for parental choice.

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-Ofsted review but their target was the LA for having the nerve to suggest closing their local secondary school.

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-back is neutered.

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-eat-dog world in which the children of the poor receive vastly inferior education provision whilst the ability of their champions - teaching staff and others - is neutered.

The Lib-Con coalition government came into power offering to liberate schools. Academy status would remove the deadening hand of the local authority and allow teachers to teach.

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 - the same banks who are still paying fat bonuses to executives but lending very little money to people who need houses. So its clearly a much bigger government priority for bankers to have lashings of champagne whilst school children sit in sub-standard classrooms and their teachers face pay freezes and reduced pensions.

To add insult to injury, Michael Gove mistakenly informed 25 schools, including 9 in Sandwell, that their building programme was safe in Lib-Con hands.

Many of the new schools were promised for socially disadvantaged areas such as Ollerton where the proposal for the re-building of The Dukeries School has been shelved. Teachers there - as everywhere - are doing a fantastic job with no sign of the incompetence displayed by Gove on July 7th. But there is a desperate need for new buildings and every student and member of staff there deserves better treatment than that dished out by Gove and his public school pals.

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.