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Tuesday, 23 February 2010
School Places for All
Parents, children and school governors will be joining a lobby on Thursday at Manchester Town Hall to protest at the shortage of primary school places in the city. The problem, I’m told by friends, is particularly bad in Levenshulme.
It really is a scandal that we have young children with no school place – or having to travel long distances every morning and evening to get to a school with a spare place for them. This is a problem that should never have been allowed to develop.
We should remember that this is no accident. It was only a few years ago that the City Council was happily closing schools – both primary and secondary – claiming that they had to deal with the ‘problem’ of surplus places. I remember Manchester teachers and parents opposing these closures at the time pointing out that this future shortage would be inevitable if the council pushed ahead with it’s mass closure programme. These sensible words of warning were dismissed as ‘scare-mongering’ by the council at the time. Teachers and parents were accused of ‘living in the past’ and told they didn’t understand the ‘changing population of Manchester’.
Sadly, being proved right won’t bring back the closed schools. So it looks like we’ll need to campaign to ensure that ‘education for all’ is made a reality in the city. And a shortage of school paces isn’t just a Manchester problem. My friend Salma Yaqoob has written on her blog about a similar crisis in Birmingham. These problems are the result of the crazy way we fund education – where money follows pupils in a semi-market system - rather than funding being based on strategic planning of the education needs of each local community.
We should remember that this is no accident. It was only a few years ago that the City Council was happily closing schools – both primary and secondary – claiming that they had to deal with the ‘problem’ of surplus places. I remember Manchester teachers and parents opposing these closures at the time pointing out that this future shortage would be inevitable if the council pushed ahead with it’s mass closure programme. These sensible words of warning were dismissed as ‘scare-mongering’ by the council at the time. Teachers and parents were accused of ‘living in the past’ and told they didn’t understand the ‘changing population of Manchester’.
Sadly, being proved right won’t bring back the closed schools. So it looks like we’ll need to campaign to ensure that ‘education for all’ is made a reality in the city. And a shortage of school paces isn’t just a Manchester problem. My friend Salma Yaqoob has written on her blog about a similar crisis in Birmingham. These problems are the result of the crazy way we fund education – where money follows pupils in a semi-market system - rather than funding being based on strategic planning of the education needs of each local community.
The crisis in education is just one more example – if another were needed – of why the ‘market-knows-best’ mantra of the both New Labour and the Tories ultimately undermines our services rather than improving them.
School Places lobby – Thursday 25th February, 4.00pm, Manchester Town Hall.
School Places lobby – Thursday 25th February, 4.00pm, Manchester Town Hall.
We call for:
- Enough primary school places in the city
- More primary schools
- More qualified teaching staff at schools
- Lower class sizes
- The ability of children to walk to their local school
- Every child to attend the school of their choice
More details from schoolplaces4all@googlemail.com
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