Education round-up 25/3/12

Threat to shorten school summer holidays
Another libcom poster mentioned this last week and since then NUT have announced plans to strike in Nottingham over the proposals to shorten the 6-week summer holiday to a 4-week one. Nottingham NUT will be striking for three separate days on 29th March, 17th April and 15th April after a 90% YES vote on over 50% turnout.

Apparently Nottingham Council has "threatened to sack any school employee who does not agree to accept the changes to their contract – even though the consultation process has not yet finished. The Council’s own public consultation survey found that approximately half of all respondents did not agree with the Council’s proposals."

To clarify, it does seem at present that the planned two weeks being removed from summer would be added to autumn and May half-term breaks. The strike is over workers not wanting this, and preferring to have the longer summer holidays to fully recharge after an exhausting academic year, and having their voices ignored during the so-called consultation.

Another concern is that all this is coming at a time when academies and free-schools want to extend the working day, which many already do, so losing the longer summer holiday would be particularly detrimental.

No doubt should one council get away with this, others will follow.

Gove tells us all to 'man up!'
Gove is bleating on more nonsense about 'reform' needing to be 'accelerated' because education is stuck in the past or some bollocks like that.

So what sort of reforms is he talking about? Let's have a think.

Scrapping EMA?
Making sacking of education workers easier?
Riding rough-shod over communities in the face of worker and community voice in places like Downhills?
No-notice Ofsted inspections?

So, for those of us who actually genuinely care about education, and actually work as teachers or work in schools (Gove has never been a teacher or worked in a school), who are opposed to these 'reforms' and people who are taken aback by the speed with which they're being forced on workers, students and communities? His message is:

"If people say 'It's all just a bit too much', my view is 'man up!'"

Man up is it? Any day Gove, any day.
Gypsy shared this fantastic example of Gove manning up
[youtube]HAqyf7a4xFM[/youtube]

Gove and his ilk really are pissing all over us at the minute and are no doubt hysterical about how much they're actually getting away with.