Defeat

We have lost out battle to stop our Federation converting into an academy. We fought hard. We were on strike for the best part of half a term as our genuine concerns -as well as the vast majority of those stakeholders who shared theirs- were completely ignored. A parent recently asked me online about whether the NEU would release a statement after the failure of the strikes to gain leverage and, in fact, imperil the education of a generation of children who had already suffered enough missed schooling under Covid.

This was my answer:

As far as Covid goes, we teachers were on the front line, working at school most days for key workers, and working at home (every day and evening) to do as much as we could for our pupils (prepping and marking work, calling children and parents to make sure they were ok in the most surreal of atmospheres in school), and home-schooling our own children. I am proud to have been an educator during those dark days. It seems as if the government and the GB have conveniently forgotten about our hard work and resilience back then, and keep using the Covid card to vilify us.

And now this. Each time, we went to ACAS, the counter-proposals of the GB got worse. They deflected and wasted time, it would seem because they knew that the government was helping move the MAT conversion on behind the scenes. There is not much we can do against ministerial intervention. We (members of the NEU and GMB) were genuinely fighting for a system we deem to be fair (certainly fairer than that of MATs) and equitable for staff, yes, but also for our students and their families. Maybe this MAT will manage to exist respecting the Federation’s ethos. The way it got to this stage makes me doubt this. 

It will take me a while to process these past few weeks. At the moment, I feel betrayed and depressed. But I also feel great pride to have fought this fight. We have lost the MAT struggle. But we have our heads held high and know we have our integrity intact.

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Once I have fully digested our defeat, I will hopefully be able to write about this experience in more depth. I certainly will be sharing some of the lovely messages of solidarity that have been received over the next few days. Thank you to all the wonderful families, community and union members who have had our backs from the beginning of our anit-academisation campaign.