We are promoting the following motion, written by school workers active in the Labour Party, for Labour’s annual conference (21-25 September, Brighton).
If you submit this motion, or want help doing so, drop us an email: theclarionmag@gmail.com
Constituency Labour Parties can submit motions from now up till 12 noon on 12 September. The word limit is 250.
The Clarion is also promoting other motions for conference – see here. (For the motions we promoted last year, for information, see here. For the guidance we published then on submitting motions, see here.)
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Abolish academies: for a democratic, local authority-run schools system
Conferences notes:
1. The mounting series of failings, scandals and collapses engulfing academy schools and trusts. We further note the inspiring struggles against academisation by school workers, parents and communities, many led by Labour members.
2. School workers’ powerful campaign against high stakes testing, focused on primary education but with wider implications for the whole school system, and strongly welcome the party’s commitment to abolish primary school SATs.
3. Labour’s commitment to a democratic National Education Service, for the many not the few.
Conference believes:
1. That the principles of democracy and accountability are directly opposed to the process of school privatisation represented by the spread of academies and free schools.
2. That the culture of competition based on ever more onerous testing and Ofsted inspections is bad for students, school workers and society.
3. That private and grammar schools are also incompatible with an egalitarian and democratic education system.
The next Labour government will:
1. Stop all academisations and the opening of academies and free schools.
2. Abolish all academies, academy trusts and free schools; placing every state school and Further Education institution under local authority control.
3. Restore all funding cuts in schools and FE, and increase funding.
4. Place all private schools into local authority ownership and control.
5. Ensure all schools are open to all, comprehensive and secular.
6. Abolish Ofsted, SATs tests and league tables.
7. Restore national pay bargaining; implement the National Education Union’s maximum class size demands; introduce a national Workload Charter.
(248 words)
Let us know what you think? Write a reply? theclarionmag@gmail.com