Socialist Educational Association

The issues around faith schools have been of concern to SEA for a long time. It’s therefore very relevant that Labour Humanists is hosting a discussion, led by Fiona Millar, on Labour & Faith Schools, on Saturday 1st April. All SEA members are invited.

It’ll start at 3pm upstairs at Morpeth Arms, 58 Millbank, London SW1P 4RW (http://www.morpetharms.com).

The event is free!

If you have any queries, please get in touch with Lee Stacy, Secretary, Labour Humanists, 07971 265835/ 020 8802 4946

The next SEA meeting will be in Jack Jones House (the Unite offices), Churchill Way, Liverpool on Saturday 4th March.

The focus for the members meeting, beginning at 1.30 pm, will be on the next elements of the SEA manifesto. We will be looking at special educational needs and disabilities and at  inequality in education in all its aspects. Background material will be posted on the website in advance of the meeting.

All SEA members are invited to join the meeting. If you can’t be there but would like to have your say on these issues, do send your ideas to socialisteducation@virginmedia.com.

The next SEA members meeting is at The Priory Rooms Meeting & Conference Centre, 40 Bull Street, Birmingham, B4 6AF on Saturday 7th January from 2.00 to 4.00 pm.

At this meeting we will be starting our series of policy debates looking at

1. How we ensure there are enough good teachers – covering recruitment, training, CPD and retention

2. How we can develop a better system of monitoring and supporting schools which is not punitive and genuinely promotes improvement.

Background papers can be found at https://socialisteducationalassociation.org/sea-manifesto-2017/

All SEA members are welcome.

SEA believes there is an urgent need for Labour to develop a comprehensive education manifesto which challenges the current orthodoxy. We know we are facing crises in teacher supply and in school places. Curriculum and examinations are wholly unfit for the 21^st century and the privatisation of schooling is destroying democratic accountability and enabling an unprecedented level of corruption. Teaching is increasingly driven by the demands of the accountability and inspection regime rather than by the actual needs of children and our wider society. We need to respond to all these issues with a new and radical agenda.

SEA has decided to work towards its own policy statement which we aim to publish around next year’s Party Conference. Our work will be based around these ten themes:

1. providing enough good school places and providing fair access to them for all in ways that strengthen rather than weaken social cohesion
2. ensuring there are enough good teachers – covering recruitment, training, CPD and retention
3. improving the quality and availability of early years provision
4. reducing inequality in educational outcomes – or should this be a theme which runs through all the others rather than something on its own?
5. improving provision for those with special educational needs
6. a curriculum (5 to 14) which adequately prepares young people for their adult lives and an assessment regime which supports learning and does not dominate teaching
7. post-14 education and training which offers all students a full range of academic and vocational opportunities
8. ensuring that there is adequate funding fairly distributed, less waste and that resources are properly used for the benefit of young people
9. restoring opportunities for local communities to determine how their local school system is organised and who schools are run
10. a system of monitoring and supporting schools which is not punitive and genuinely promotes improvement.

The debate will begin in our Birmingham meeting on 7^th January when we will look at issues around the teaching profession and around monitoring and accountability.

We would be delighted to receive ideas from our members and indeed from anyone who is interested in making a contribution. All material received will be available on this website under Resources/ SEA manifesto 2017

The Birmingham meeting will be at the Priory Rooms, 40 Bull Street, Birmingham, B4 6AF. The policy debate will begin at 2.00 pm and all members are welcome.

The latest edition of the SEA journal “Education Politics” is now available in the resources section of this website.  A key theme in this issue is the grammar school debate including an article by Angela Rayner, a report on how SEA’s motion on selection was passed at Party Conference and an account of the fiasco that is 11+ testing in Buckinghamshire by Rebecca Hickman. There are also reports of Danny Dorling’s Caroline Benn Memorial Lecture and the annual Reclaiming Education conference and a commentary on the development of a new Welsh curriculum.

The Green Paper, Schools that work for Everyone, contains the government’s proposals for expanding grammar schools, promoting more single faith schools and involving independent schools and universities in the state school system.

SEA believes that these proposals are deeply damaging and need to be resisted.

The consultation period on the Green Paper runs until 12 December. We would urge as many people and organisations as possible to respond.

To support this we have prepared a draft response which can be found here:

green-paper-consultation-document

It’s really important that as many responses as possible are made so that ministers realise how little support there is for these ideas.

Forty years ago, Prime Minister James Callaghan gave a speech on education at Ruskin College. It was a landmark statement which changed political attitudes to schooling. Previously politicians had not commented on what happened inside schools. Since the speech they have hardly stopped doing so.

On 17^th November a seminar in the House of Lords will explore the speech and its significance. Was this the turning point towards the regime of hyper-accountability and performance tables we now see dominating English education?

Speakers will be Lord Bernard Donoughue, Head of the Number 10 Policy Unit in 1976, Lord David Blunkett, Secretary of State for Education 1997-2001, and Fiona Millar, journalist and broadcaster. Chair Professor Richard Pring, University of Oxford.

The event will run from 1600 to 1800 hours. Full details and booking form and be obtained from www.soss.org.uk – click on the Eventbrite box to book a FREE TICKET.