Staff at my school returned from the holiday expecting our head teacher to lead a training session on behaviour management. Instead she was attending a summit on gang culture at 10 Downing Street.
In their first week back after the summer holidays, 22 Edinburgh schools were faced with the threat of closure. This amounts to one in six schools, and the greatest impact is on some of the poorest parts of the city.
Some 27 teachers in the NUT union at South Chadderton School in Oldham went on strike last Thursday over changes to pay and the suspension of their union rep.
There have been many calls recently for an end to the testing regime for pupils in our schools up to the age of 16. Because of this an opportunity has opened up for teacher activists to liberate spaces in the curriculum.
Employers have offered Further Education (FE) lecturers 2 percent in August with a further 1 percent in February – an offer negotiators could not accept as they had been mandated not to accept any below inflation offer.
Almost 100 lecturers at Harlow college in Essex have been made redundant, or refused to re-apply for their jobs on contracts that would mean less pay and longer working hours.
Unofficial solidarity action by teachers in support of low paid kitchen staff severely disrupted Haggerston School in Hackney, east London, on Wednesday of last week.
