Education Union stands up to the school bully

Vanguard May 2010 p. 9
Nick G.


The Labor Party’s market-driven attack on public education stooped to new lows in mid-April with Deputy PM Gillard’s call for parents to act as a scab labour force when teachers boycott this year’s national literacy and numeracy (NAPLAN) tests.

Like their Liberal bed-fellows, Labor dances to the tune of the imperialist overlords. From Ronald Reagan to Barak Obama, successive US Presidents have embraced the neo-liberal destruction of public education under the disguise of “accountability” and “choice”. This is then demanded of governments within the US sphere of influence.

The argument that private is better is a huge con job on hundreds of thousands of Australian families who, instead of demanding high quality neighbourhood public schools as a fundamental democratic right, have allowed themselves to be drafted off into a user-pays pen of private education.

NAPLAN shame
To further encourage parents to “vote with their feet” (Rudd), the NAPLAN test results for all schools have been placed on a government website, called ‘My School’. Spurious public comparisons of schools have been used by the media to create ‘name and shame’ league tables of school performance to encourage parental flight to supposedly better performing schools. Rudd and Gillard are delighted by this, essentially saying that “We have put the politics of envy, the old arguments about rich schools and poor schools, behind us by leaving the choice of schools up to parents.”

League tables is the issue
This is why the Australian Education Union is demanding that Gillard put in place measures for the prevention of publication of league tables and for changes to the My School website. The union is holding the high the banner of free and accessible quality public education for all. It is not opposed to the NAPLAN tests, or to making NAPLAN results available to parents at the local school level. However, its federal executive voted unanimously on April 12th to place a moratorium on this year’s NAPLAN tests following the failure of the Government to act over league tables. One participant remarked, “Today’s Federal Executive meeting demonstrated the most unified position I have witnessed in the history of Branches and Associated Bodies forming the AEU. This issue has united States and Territories in a way I have not previously experienced.”

Support from UK teachers
From Britain, where the damaging effect of league tables on communities, on the curriculum, and on student achievement has been well-documented, the National Union of Teachers immediately sent its support. “The NUT salutes the resolve of colleagues in the AEU to frustrate the national tests unless the government agrees they will not be used for leagues tables,” said the NUT’s general secretary Christine Blower. Referring to their own campaign, Blower added, “Here in England our ballot will close on Friday. We are working hard to ensure a positive outcome with the result that there will be no tests in England in the week on May 10th this year.”

Gillard threatens teachers
Gillard is clearly worried about her capacity to get this year’s tests done. On various occasions she has left open unspecified threats against the nation’s public education workers. Asked on January 29th whether she would “bring in outsiders” to do the tests that teachers are threatening to boycott she said “I’m not going to speculate but my determination is absolutely clear. The tests will go ahead.”

Two days earlier she said she would not “rule anything in or anything out” when asked whether she was “talking about strike-breakers”. Three days before that, she had stated she was not ruling “anything in or anything out about individual actions to ensure we deliver national testing”, thus indicating that individual teachers engaging in the boycott could well be targeted. On January 19th she stated “action that’s taken not within the context of bargaining is unprotected and there are sanctions and penalties under the workplace relations law to deal with unprotected industrial action.” Once again, she was “ruling nothing in and nothing out”. On January 20th, asked whether teachers could have their pay docked”, she was “not ruling anything in or anything out”.

Getting parents to scab against the teachers of their own children, the one option that she has now ruled in, is a new low in Australian bourgeois politics. Parents must stand with teachers and defend the right to free, high quality, local public education.