TEACHERS VOTE TO HOLD PAY STRIKE

BBC; 2 April 2008

Lead Story | General

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1ST NATIONAL TEACHERS' STRIKE IN 21 YEARS WILL HIT PUPILS PREPARING FOR THEIR EXAMS

Nicola Woolcock, Alexandra Frean  The Times; 2 April 2008

Lead Story | General

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TEACHERS TO STRIKE FOR FIRST TIME IN 21 YEARS

By Graeme Paton, Education Editor The Daily Telegraph; 2 April 2008

Millions of children will be turned away from school as teachers confirmed their first national strike in 21 years.   Pupils aged five to 16 will be locked out on Thursday, April 24, after members of the National Union of Teachers voted for industrial action.  Around 200,000 teachers will stage a one-day strike over pay following the Government's refusal to improve a 2.45 per cent offer.  The action by the NUT - Britain's biggest teaching union - will cripple classrooms across England and Wales, forcing thousands of parents to arrange alternative child care.  Analysts say it could cost the economy millions of pounds in lost productivity as many mothers and fathers take the day off work to look after children.

General

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NUT STIKE IS A LESSON IN IRRESPONSIBILITY

The Daily Telegraph; 2 April 2008

A return to an earlier political age, dominated by fear of economic decline and industrial strife seems to be hoving into view.  Harking back to what seems a long-gone unlamented era, members of the National Union of Teachers have voted for a one-day strike over pay on April 24, in spite of the fact that the pay settlement that they are rejecting arises from a consultation process in which all the teaching unions (including their own) participated.  The fact that the ballot for strike action was supported by less than a quarter of the NUT membership - which constitutes about a tenth of the whole teaching force - counts for little in what is clearly an attempt by the NUT leadership to exercise political muscle. Steve Sinnott, the general secretary, has delivered a characteristically bellicose challenge to the Government to "think again" and to recognise the "continuing workload pressures" on teachers.  His insistence that the 2.45 per cent pay rise on offer constitutes a "real-terms pay cut" is at odds with the views of other teaching unions: Chris Keates, leader of the NAS/UWT responded to the NUT vote with the observation that his members recognised that, compared to other public sector employees, teachers had fared quite well.  John Dunford, head of the Association of School and College Leaders, hinted that the NUT was in effect highjacking the relationship between government and teaching unions by seeking to "impose its viewpoint" on the negotiation process.

General

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MAJORITY OF NURSERY STAFF ARE POORLY QUALIFIED

Rosemary Bennett, The Times, 2 April

The education of young children is being compromised because so few nursery staff are educated beyond secondary school level, a report suggests.  Only 7 per cent of nursery heads, nursery nurses and assistants have post-secondary school qualifications, the report found. The vast majority finished their training having passed GNVQ level 3, a vocational qualification that is equivalent to an A level.  The poorly qualified early-years workforce is in sharp contrast to much of Europe, and elsewhere, where the majority of staff are qualified to degree level, or have three years of intensive training in child development before they start work.  New Zealand is retraining its entire childcare workforce so that they are all of degree standard by 2012.  The skills crisis has come to light only months before the introduction of a new curriculum for all under5s in September, part of a government plan to raise standards in nurseries.  Education experts fear the curriculum will become a box-ticking exercise if staff do not have the skill or confidence to interpret the new rules. The report, which will be published this week by the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), also identified a gulf between private and voluntary nurseries, which make up about 70 per cent of the sector, and govern-ment-funded nurseries attached to schools.  More than 80 per cent of staff at school-based nurseries are educated beyond secondary school level.

Times

Primary

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PARENTS SET UP THEIR OWN PRIMARY SCHOOL

The Daily Telegraph; 2 April 2008

A group of parents fed up with classroom overcrowding is investing £20,000 to set up their own primary school. Katie Despres, 35, and nine other couples are planning to convert part of a derelict school into an independent site for 20 pupils aged four to seven. They claim current state primary schools near their homes in Clifton, Bristol, are over-subscribed and cram up to 30 children in each class. Mrs Despres hopes her four-year-old son, Xavier, will get the "best possible education" at the new school, which will feature one-to-one teaching when it opens in September. She said: "Students at our school will have at least two teachers and a number of classroom assistants between them. They will be getting one-on-one schooling, which just doesn't happen any more." The group have already earmarked a building, a four-room former caretaker's house at the disused Old Fairfield School in Montpelier, Bristol. They are in negotiations with Bristol city council over rent, and estimate £15,000 of the initial £20,000 investment will be needed for renovation work. The other £5,000 will be invested in learning equipment. A full time £24,000-a-year trained primary teacher has already been lined up. Two other teachers will volunteer to work up to three days a week for the first year while the school is established. Parents will also help out in lessons. Running costs and wages will be paid by fees, which they are hoping to keep at £25 a day per pupil - around £500 a month for full-time education.

Primary

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RESIGNATION CALL OVER SCHOOL TEST

BBC; 2 April 2008

Secondary

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PAID WORKERS MAY REPLACE SCHOOL VOLUNTEERS

Graeme Paton, The Daily Telegraph 2 April

Thousands of volunteers running state schools may be replaced by paid professionals, under proposals being considered in a Government review. The move to replace the traditional school governors, who are all volunteers, with salaried workers, is aimed at boosting education standards. It comes amid growing fears that the existing system of running schools is no longer "fit for purpose". More than 300,000 volunteers are currently responsible for primary, secondary and special schools in England and Wales, but critics claim many are not cut out for the increasingly complex role. Some schools - often with multi-million pound budgets - struggle to recruit suitable volunteers, prompting concerns they are failing to hold under-performing head teachers to account. Last week, the NASUWT teachers' union said that "massive investment of public money should not be in the hands of untrained volunteers, however well-meaning". Ministers are believed to be considering replacing some existing governors with a new generation of full and part-time staff as part of a wide-ranging review. It could herald the introduction of paid governors for the first time. The inquiry will also investigate plans to introduce smaller, more specialised groups - and improve the training they receive.

Primary | Secondary

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LECTURERS RALLY OVER PRIVATE DEAL

BBC; 2 April 2008Lecturers have staged a rally over Glasgow Caledonian University's plans to join forces with a private company to recruit overseas students.  Unions said they feared the partnership with educational company INTO amounted to "privatisation via the backdoor".  But the university said the deal would not be publicly funded and money would be put back into educational provision.  INTO has already formed partnerships with Exeter, East Anglia and Newcastle universities.  The partnership would see a new international foundation college established at the university, offering preparatory courses for undergraduate and postgraduate study in Scotland.  Glasgow Caledonian said the initiative would be a 50-50 joint venture partnership and the university would ensure academic quality for the programmes offered.  In a statement, it said that while a formal agreement was yet to be reached, the university was strongly committed to the idea. BBC

Lead Story | FE/HE/ Skills | Independent/ Private Sector

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