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Unions blast Michael Gove's education reforms

(Originally published by Equal Times)

Head teachers, parents and union leaders blasted education secretary Michael Gove’s education reforms on Saturday at rallies held in Liverpool and Manchester by the National Union of Teachers (NUT), ahead of strikes this summer.

The events attracted an audience in excess of 1000 members, and heard from several speakers including Chris Keates, General Secretary of the National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers (NASUWT).  Speaking in Manchester Keates accused Gove of spreading  “misinformation” about education professionals in order to further his political agenda.

“Today is our chance to tell Michael Gove that we’ve had enough of the myths, the misinformation, the distortions and the downright lies that are peddled every day by him and his coalition ministers about our education service.”

The Conservative minister has been fiercely criticised in recent months over his ‘traditional values’ reforms to the national curriculum, with a heavy focus on rote learning and the memorisation of facts from the age of 5. A further point of controversy has been the introduction of academies - state funded schools which are independently run and can appoint teachers without a formal qualification, a move some regard as an attack on the teaching profession.  

“What would the reaction be if people were told that doctors no longer needed a qualification?”, asked Keates, before receiving a rapturous standing ovation.

The rally also heard the testimony of mother of three and Labour party activist, Angela Rayner, who told the audience she feared Gove’s focus on rigorous academic assessment would cause vulnerable children like her five-year-old partially blind son, Charlie, to be left behind.

“Throughout all his life Charlie has had special support but I’m worried all that is going to go now. He’s not going to be the type of child who puts you up at the top of the league table but he’s a true inspiration to all of us because despite all the odds he continues to fight every day.”

Tension between Gove and his critics has been building for months.  In March 100 academics and education experts signed an open letter in the Independent warning that the new curriculum “could severely erode educational standards.” The sentiment was echoed this month by Britain’s largest teachers’ union, the NUT, who gave the education secretary a vote of no confidence for the first time in their 143 year history. However, Gove has refused to backtrack, further incensing his detractors by dismissing them as “enemies of promise” and “Marxists”.

In response the NUT and NASAWT - which boast a combined membership of over 400,000 - have announced rolling strikes starting in the North-West in June. However, Keates called for Michael Gove to meet with unions to try and resolve the dispute and avoid more strikes. “We have no wish to be moving to escalation to strike action. No teacher wants to be put in that position,” she told the rally.

A spokesperson for the department of education said the speakers at the rally did not represent a majority of parents who back the reforms:

“For too long other countries have been outpacing us. Our reforms are giving teachers more freedom, increasing choice for parents so every child can go to a good local school, and ensuring we have an education system that matches the world's best.

“We have met frequently with the NUT and NASUWT to discuss their concerns and will continue to do so.”

"I’ve been looking for work for almost two years": Meet the UK’s lost generation

(First published on Equal Times)

Finn Richardson is a near perfect embodiment of Britain’s growing youth unemployment crisis. At 19 years old he finds himself among 993,000 of his peers on the unemployment scrapheap, yet his determination to find work runs contrary to popular media portrayals of sedentary youngsters scrounging off the welfare state. 

“I’ve been looking for work for almost two years,” he protests in a soft yet indignant voice, “I’ve handed out over 200 CVs and been to a few interviews but I don’t get any feedback and I’ve not really got anywhere with them.”

Finn has also attended training sessions at a youth charity near his home in Old Trafford, in the north of England. Rathbone offers support to young people across Britain – often with few qualifications - to help them become more employable in a difficult labour market. There is no doubt that Finn wants to work, his supervisor informs me. The problem is that demand for his services is non-existent. 

Since the financial crisis in 2008, youth unemployment has more than doubled in Britain. Last month, as Chancellor George Osbourne announced his budget for 2013, the latest figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) revealed the disproportionate extent to which austerity has hit the young. 21.2% of the country’s youth (between 16 and 24) are out of work, leaving Britain with the third highest levels of youth unemployment in the OECD, behind Spain and Greece. The figure rose by 48,000 in the three months leading up to the budget, meaning that young people now account for around 40% of the total unemployment figure - 2.5 million. 

At a time of steep cuts in public spending and stagnating private sector growth, few employers are willing to take on teenagers like Finn, who left school without a qualification in maths. He is convinced he is being discriminated against because of his age, and suggests an ability to work efficiently should be the main criterion for selection: “Some people get jobs with no experience at all, just because they’re older or just because they’re good at interviews and good at talking. I think they should give people a trial instead of an interview.”

Part of the problem is that the low skilled jobs Finn is applying for are increasingly being taken by university graduates. Louise Thomasson recently graduated with a first class honours degree in English literature from Bolton University. She started looking for entry level positions in marketing six months before graduating, but despite numerous interviews has so far been unsuccessful. “It’s very frustrating”, she says, “It’s not enough to come out with a degree anymore you need a lot of experience to back it up.” 

Consequently Louise has retained her part time role as a retail assistant - a job she has held since she was 16. She claims her situation is not uncommon. “When I think about my partner, he graduated two years ago and went straight into an IT position, but the majority of his friends are still looking for work and some of them are still working in supermarkets and places that had no relevance to their degree whatsoever.” 

The government’s response to the problem has not been without incident. Last year a ‘workfare’ scheme was launched whereby young people who have been unemployed for long periods are given a choice between working for free or sacrificing their benefit payments. Then in February the Court of Appeals ruled the schemes were unlawful and that thousands of young people could be entitled to compensation as they had not been provided with clear information about what they entailed. In response the government passed a controversial emergency bill to amend the rules and apply them retroactively in order to avoid paying out millions of pounds to young people whose benefits had been cut. 

Finn has just been informed by his job centre that if he hasn’t found work by May, he will be asked to do mandatory work. Like many others in his situation, he doesn’t think it’s fair. “I feel that if they send you on a work programme I think you should get paid what you would if you’re in the job,” he argues, “Even if it’s just temporary you should get paid for the amount of work you’re doing.”

Peter Fletcher, director of Rathbone, suggests the government isn’t focusing enough on providing more opportunities for young people. “The government has been doing a lot to put young people on training schemes, to subsidise work and so on, but all that effort is on the supply side”, he says, “The issue is a lack of demand in the economy. Employers are not taking on young people because they haven’t got demand for their services.”

Fletcher believes the coalition should be looking to history in order to create more opportunities for the young. "We need to do something similar to the youth training schemes in the 1980s which is basically a job creation scheme for young people. The key is they need to last at least a year so they have sufficient time to gain skills and they are actually paid a wage so they retain their dignity.”

In nearby Salford, Labour MP and campaigner for young worker’s rights, Hazel Blears, says thousands of her young constituents are also struggling to find work. Blears recently introduced a bill in parliament in an attempt to outlaw the advertising of unpaid internships and end the exploitation of young workers. She argues that one solution could be to make already existing apprenticeships more accessible to young people from poorer backgrounds who currently can’t afford to do them. “There has been an expansion of apprenticeships which is very welcome, but the basic rates are £2.60 and hour. Who can afford to do that?” she asks.

Yet the government’s commitment to austerity combined with poor growth projections for the years ahead leave young Britons with little hope of any significant improvement in the short term. Many are painfully aware they pertain to a “lost generation”, the first since the Second World War expected to be poorer than their parents. Had he been born at a different time, it is possible Finn might have dreamed of success, wealth and the pursuit of a better life for his family. When asked where he hopes to be in 10 years’ time, however, his answer is rather less ambitious. 

“I just hope I’ve got a job that I enjoy in customer service work or retail and hopefully I won’t be unemployed anymore.”

Look Left and Right - but it's pupils themselves who should set course of education

(Originally published by the Independent)

As a rule of thumb the least enlightened views on education tend to be expressed by people who thoroughly enjoyed their experience at school. Those who excelled in a traditional classroom environment are often unable to relate to those who didn’t (the majority). They typically ascribe the failure of their peers to bad teaching, individual laziness or the absence of an abstract concept like “rigour” or “creativity”.

It is a curious and unfortunate fact that whilst those who thrive academically are in a small minority of the population, it is their voice which invariably comes to dominate the entire discourse on how we should educate our children. Those on the right, like Michael Gove, argue we have lost our way and need to return to Victorian era values of discipline, rote learning and individual pupil responsibility. Liberal commentators and Labour party sympathisers shout back that we should be progressing away from repetition and rules, towards a more creative learning environment which also caters for less intellectual children.

The result is an educational pendulum continually swinging between two farcical models, both of which fail to accept and incorporate a fundamental truism; that children are not homogenous and there is a huge variation in the way different individuals learn best. This is seldom mentioned because it is inconvenient for almost everyone in charge. Politicians favour a curriculum which takes little work, both in research and implementation. Those in industry support any curriculum which will produce obedient workers who require minimal investment and training. The resulting system conforms to the interests of both parties and in so doing neglects those of the children.

Few commentators question the extent to which education should mirror the needs of industry. There is no doubt that a modern society requires engineers, scientists and arguably even bankers. It follows that our education system should cater for these needs. What I question, however, is why all children must be subjected to a curriculum which in the great majority of cases utterly fails to encourage the pursuit of individual talent.

To give a controversial example, I am not convinced that every child should be forced to learn algebra. It is not that I am closed to the idea, rather I have yet to be provided with concrete examples that demonstrate why such knowledge is of extreme importance outside of the professions which use it. That is not to doubt its usefulness, but it is worth asking whether children who do not display an aptitude or interest in algebra, as I didn’t, would not profit more from focusing their energies elsewhere, as I believe I would have. 

A common mistake is to put all of the elements which make up the core subjects (maths, English and science) into the same category of essentiality. Whilst I agree it is vital that all children learn to read, write and acquire basic numeracy skills, I do not accept that it is equally essential for them to be well versed in the works of Chaucer. What I propose is that children be encouraged early on to discover what they enjoy and are good at, and be given the tools to explore their interests further. It is, of course, possible to go too far in this direction, and it must be remembered that all children need some structure and guidance in order to learn. But the success of schools which facilitate learning without rigid curriculums and obsessive examination can provide us with a good source of inspiration. 

The Montessori approach, devised in the early 1900s by Italian physician and educator Maria Montessori, is famous for allowing young children unusually high levels of freedom to choose and explore subjects they are interested in, whilst encouraging collaboration over competitively and pressure. In 2006, a US study published in the journal, Science, found that children attending Montessori schools outperformed their peers at traditional schools across a range of abilities including social skills, numeracy and literacy. Under Labour, the number of private Montessori schools in the UK was expanded, and a struggling primary in Manchester achieved impressive results after becoming the first state school to adopt the philosophy. But rather than transform every underachieving state school into a Montessori school, a more realistic approach would be to incorporate some of the radical methods that work into the national curriculum. 

The challenge is to create a system that equips pupils with essential skills, but offers genuine variety and choice in its methods and materials. One that will still produce engineers, in which children who display an aptitude for algebra are encouraged to pursue their talent. But equally one in which children are not made to feel stupid for failing to solve simultaneous equations, and are instead rewarded for identifying and developing their aptitudes. Such a system might help reverse the pressures on education from industry, and conversely force the corporate world to adapt to the individual abilities of children.  

The degree to which this is possible may be reasonably questioned, and it may even be deemed incompatible with a capitalist economy. But if we regard education as valuable in itself, and are properly concerned at the overwhelming number of children and adults whom education has failed, we must be willing think radically in the pursuit of alternatives. The more we avoid doing so, the more our schools will resemble what Noam Chomsky once aptly described as “a system of indoctrination of the young.”

Uncovered: BBC accused of exploiting young workers

(Originally published in the Big Issue)


Hazel Blears, The Labour MP for Salford and leading campaigner against unpaid internships, says she is “very concerned” with the BBC’s practice of running thousands of unpaid work experience schemes every year.

Mrs Blears, who introduced a 10 minute rule bill in December in an attempt to outlaw the advertising of unpaid internships, said young people from poorer backgrounds could be at a disadvantage despite the corporation’s partial move to Salford in 2011.

“I want to make sure that local young people who are not from privileged backgrounds get a chance to get a job at the BBC, and if the route in is through unpaid work then that makes it even more difficult for people without money, so I’m very concerned about it.”

In 2011 a Freedom of Information request revealed that 6,283 people had worked for the Corporation for free since 2007. The BBC jobs website is currently advertising 83 unpaid work placements lasting up to four weeks, and boasts that the corporation “provides more than 1,700 work experience opportunities every year.”

Although the BBC’s official policy states that work experience must not be used as a substitute for paid employment, several former interns claim they did real work whilst completing their schemes, and some online placement specifications suggest successful candidates may be relied upon to perform real work.

One former intern said he was declared bankrupt after graduating as a journalist and taking a financial risk in an attempt to seek employment at the BBC. Before running into financial difficulty he completed several unpaid placements and work shadowing schemes, during which he claims the BBC regularly breached its work experience policy.

 "I produced stories, reported live, read bulletins out, produced packages, spoke to guests. Anything that's part and parcel of being a journalist."

Another graduate who completed a one month placement at the BBC in 2012 said: "I was working with the breakfast team so would have to arrive at 7am, I would work through the day's papers and news websites and look for any good stories, which I would then develop into an idea to pitch at the morning meeting...My manager at the station told me that he was very impressed with my work and that I was ready for a paid role there - but that there simply were no jobs to be offered."

A typical advert for an unpaid, four week placement in June with the BBC Information and Archives department in Salford, asks for candidates with “a willingness to perform routine tasks”:

“Typical duties may include asset logging, locating material in storage, research enquiries and using a variety of databases including Excel and Word.”

Libby Page from the campaign group Intern Aware said: “Despite the good policy we have heard bad examples and it is crucial that the BBC operates within good practice in order to ensure fair access and recruitment. As a public institution the BBC has a particularly great responsibility to ensure best practice when it comes to their work experience programme."

A spokesperson for the BBC said: “The BBC has a clear work experience policy and like most responsible employers, we offer short-term work experience placements. For longer term positions we recruit on merit.

“Work experience placements must not be used as a substitute for paid employment and individuals are under no obligation to work.

“We cannot comment on individual experiences however, if someone was unhappy with their time at the BBC or has a specific complaint, we would urge them to contact us directly.”

Hugo Chavez: Reflections on a divided legacy

No leader who regards social justice and the eradication of poverty as incompatible with western imperialism can expect to escape the smears of his opponents, and to this rule Chavez was no exception. Often described as ‘divisive’, Chavez was nevertheless a staunch democrat who was venerated by poor Venezuelans, millions of whom were lifted out of poverty by his channelling of oil money into social programmes. Naturally, he was reviled by those who had previously benefited from decades of US intervention and market dominance across Latin America, and who saw his influence in the region as a threat to the natural order. 

Inspired by Simon Bolivar, the military leader who led Venezuela and several other countries to independence from Spain in the 19^th century, Chavez’s vision was of a united and economically independent Latin America. He first came to public attention as an army officer in 1992, when he launched an unsuccessful coup against then president Carlos Andrés Pérez. Using the occasion to lay out his socialist vision for Venezuela on national TV, he endeared himself to millions of exasperated Venezuelans, not least a fifth of the country living in extreme poverty.

Six years later, and after serving two years in prison for the failed coup, he was elected president of Venezuela with 56% of the popular vote. Following extensive consultation with the public one of his first moves was to draft and adopt a new constitution including free healthcare and education for all, but he soon began to make powerful enemies. Among his fiercest detractors was US President George W Bush, who had grave concerns over the degree to which Chavez was asserting control over Venezuela’s previously privatised oil reserves. In 2002 Bush decided to follow the old American tradition of covertly backing military coups to overthrow democratically elected Latin American governments.

It failed. It took less than 48 hours before Chavez, backed by overwhelming popular support and military loyalty, was reinstated as president. The message was clear: Nobody but the Venezuelan people would decide on their destiny, and the Bolivarian revolution would continue. Over the next 11 years Chavez stayed faithful to his mission. At home he created thousands of jobs, halved unemployment (from 14.5% in 1999 to 7.6% in 2009), vastly reduced extreme poverty and more than doubled GDP per capita. Abroad he forged strong alliances with other leaders, most notably forming ALBA, the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas – a group of eight progressive Latin American nations striving for the region’s economic integration and sovereignty. 

Not all the criticisms of Chavez can be dismissed as smears, yet even those which are legitimate are often devoid of any context. Today the Guardian outlined what has become one of the most damning attacks on his time as president; namely that in 2007 he sought to censor a private TV station which had been critical of his policies: “Chávez moved to close down RCTV, the country's oldest television channel and a determined opponent of his regime. A hitherto dormant student movement re-awoke, took to the streets and – though it failed to save RCTV – helped stave off a bid by the president to rewrite the constitution yet again, this time along overtly dictatorial lines.”

Like much of the western media, however, the Guardian crucially omitted the allegations that RCTV were in serious breach of the nation’s licensing laws. Five years earlier the station had been involved in the military coup, funding opposition groups which briefly ousted the president. Furthermore, whilst Chavez campaigned for the channel's abolition, the final ruling was not his own, rather that of Venezuela’s Supreme Court of Justice and regulatory body CONATEL. The decision caused a media frenzy with large sections of the international press accusing Chavez of brazen censorship -criticisms which rarely alluded to the fact that no western government would permit a TV station to fund a military coup and get away with it. Last year UK broadcast regulators Ofcom perfectly illustrated the point by revoking Press TV’s broadcasting licence, though the Iranian channel was accused of the somewhat lesser crime of being headquartered in Tehran.

Chavez also formed alliances with world leaders who, unlike him, could be accurately described as despots. These included Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Syria’s Bashar al Assad and Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi to whom he stayed loyal right up to his death. Again those in the international press who demonise him on this basis rarely apply the same standards to their own leaders. Little is written about Uk Prime Minister David Cameron’s strong ties to Saudi Arabia, Uzbekistan, and Bahrain and never in the incendiary language used to describe Chavez. 

Arguably his greatest failure was his inability to control Venezuelan crime, which soared under his administration. In 2011 the murder rate per 100,000 population was 45.1 compared with 25.0 just twelve years earlier. Even the most ardent Chavez supporters could find little to excuse these horrific statistics.

Yet as a leader he lost little sleep over how his actions would affect his international reputation or fuel his enemies. Never was this more apparent than in 2009 when he called for the immediate arrest of Maria Lourdes Afiuni, a 46 year old judge, on suspicion of corruption. Judge Afiuni had ordered the conditional release of a prominent businessman who had been imprisoned under pre-trial conditions for three years after allegedly evading currency controls. The judge argued that under Venezuelan law the maximum detainment time in these circumstances is two years. But in a show of reckless defiance Chávez provided his enemies with ample ammunition when he demanded that Afiuni be locked up for 30 years, adding that his idol, Simon Bolivar would have had her shot.

In Chavez’s absence, the future of Venezuela is uncertain. The degree to which the Bolivarian revolution was dependant on his charismatic oratory skills and political strength will become more apparent in the coming months and years. Depending on who wins the battles, history will either recall him as a tyrannical despot, or the democratically elected, charismatic leader who bravely stood up to US imperialism and proved popular socialism was possible without bloody revolution. He is survived by his four children – Hugo Rafael, María Gabriela, Rosa Virginia and Rosinés.