Posted by At the 2019 Labour party conference Angela Raynor’s new announcements were commitments to abolish OFSTED and turn the Social Mobility Commission into the Social Justice Commission.
Two education motions were passed. One to integrate private schools into the state sector, take away their tax privileges, seize their assets and limit the number of privately educated students at university.
The SEA conference motion this year pushed forward on the commitment made last year to end the academies programme and establish an integrated and locally accountable school system. This year conference passed the composite motion which contained all three demands from the SEA conference motion passed at our AGM:
- Ensure Local Authorities establish reformed, democratically accountable local education committees with stakeholder representation.
- Ensure all publicly funded schools be brought back under the control of these new local education committees.
- Ensure the newly empowered local education committees will be the default providers of services and will be appropriately funded.
This is a major step forward. Conference has affirmed that schools and central services need to come back to local authorities. We now need to make sure that this becomes a manifesto commitment. It will be a vote winner. It will be an effective answer to privatisation, bringing services back into public ownership and under democratic control in a way that will appeal to parents, who are increasingly dissatisfied with a system that is now unresponsive to communities.
Melanie Griffiths
SEA Chair
Socialist Educational Association 