\n<\/p>\n
The leader of the UK\u2019s biggest education union has torn into the government\u2019s record on schools, accusing Labour of letting down the nation\u2019s children and failing to deliver on its promises for education.<\/p>\n
Daniel Kebede, the general secretary of the National Education Union, was unsparing in his criticism of education secretary Bridget Phillipson\u2019s policies in a speech to delegates at the NEU\u2019s annual conference in Brighton on Thursday.<\/p>\n
It comes days after the Green party leader, Zack Polanski, received a standing ovation on the conference stage after he promised radical change, including the abolition of Ofsted, a \u201cserious cash injection\u201d into schools and an end to academisation.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not because we agree with him on everything,\u201d Kebede told delegates in a stirring 35-minute speech before going on to praise the Greens\u2019 vision of an education system \u201cbuilt on possibility rather than scarcity\u201d.<\/p>\n
In a direct challenge to Labour, Kebede said: \u201cIt should surprise no one that the Green party now commands the greatest support among NEU members. People are not volatile \u2013 they are responding to what they see, and to what they do not.<\/p>\n
<\/span>Polanski received at the NEU conference on Monday.<\/span> Photograph: Gareth Fuller\/PA<\/p>\n \u201cSixty-five per cent of NEU members who voted Labour in 2024 now tell us they will not do so again. That is not a statistic to be dismissed or explained away. It is a warning. And history teaches us that warnings ignored become consequences.\u201d<\/p>\n Kebede said he did not want the Labour government to fail. \u201cI want this government to listen. To understand where it has gone wrong. And to recognise what it must do if it is to honour the hopes of those who voted for change.\u201d<\/p>\n Referring to the new Ofsted framework, the curriculum and assessment review, the children\u2019s wellbeing bill, and the school\u2019s white paper, he said while much of the headline rhetoric was welcome, \u201cthe policy detail just does not deliver\u201d. Changes to Ofsted were just a \u201crebranding\u201d exercise, children were still trapped in a culture of high-stakes testing, and the government\u2019s desperately needed overhaul of the special educational needs system was destined to fail without greater investment.<\/p>\n A key element of the government\u2019s special needs proposals is to improve and extend inclusion in England\u2019s mainstream schools, which will be expected to assess pupils and draw up individual support plans.<\/p>\n The Department for Education (DfE) has said it will provide schools and colleges with \u00a31.6bn over three years to improve inclusion. A further \u00a31.8bn will fund local authorities to hire specialists for schools to call on and \u00a3200m will pay for additional teacher training, but education unions say it is not enough.<\/p>\n \u201cYou cannot promise inclusion whilst you starve the services that make inclusion real,\u201d Kebede said, warning that schools were \u201crunning on empty\u201d and saying classrooms had become \u201cthe frontline of every unresolved crisis in our society. \u201cHunger walks in with the children. Anxiety takes a seat at the back of the room. Unmet special educational needs raise their hands every morning and are told to wait and wait again.\u201d<\/p>\n Kebede warned the government that the union would \u2013 if necessary \u2013 take national industrial action. NEU members are voting in an indicative strike ballot due to end later this month, over teacher pay, workload and school funding, but any strike action is a long way off.<\/p>\n The NEU general secretary, who backs a ban on social media for under-16s, also described how schools were being left to repair the damage caused by social media owned by \u201csleazy degenerates\u201d, whose platforms were designed to keep children hooked, amplify misogyny and \u201ctreat humiliation as a business model\u201d.<\/p>\n Another key issue explored by delegates during the week has been the influence of the far right, including allegations of book censorship in school libraries, following reports that a Salford school ordered dozens of books deemed inappropriate to be removed from library shelves.<\/p>\n On Wednesday, delegates voted for a motion calling on the union executive to oppose such censorship and promote the NEU as a union for librarians. Kebede said: \u201cAny move to censor books in school libraries, based on misinformation and fearmongering, should ring alarm bells for all of us.<\/p>\n \u201cThe USA and Hungary are examples of countries which have implemented book bans in schools, primarily targeting books by women, Black and LGBT+ authors, and the NEU is clear that this is not a path we are prepared to follow in the UK.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The leader of the UK\u2019s biggest education union has torn into the government\u2019s record on schools, accusing Labour of letting down the nation\u2019s children and failing to deliver on its promises for education. Daniel Kebede, the general secretary of the National Education Union, was unsparing in his criticism of education secretary Bridget Phillipson\u2019s policies in<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":47802,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[841,166,496,134,135,6805,120,2719],"class_list":{"0":"post-47801","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-education","8":"tag-britains","9":"tag-children","10":"tag-education","11":"tag-labour","12":"tag-leader","13":"tag-letting","14":"tag-national","15":"tag-union"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47801","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=47801"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47801\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/47802"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=47801"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=47801"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=47801"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}