On May 10, just as 100,000’s of public sector workers took strike action, that destructive pair of Michaels - Gove and Wilshaw - decided to launch into speeches attacking classroom teachers.
To add insult to injury, they chose the privileged gathering of the conference of independent school heads at Brighton College to make their attacks.
How dare Michael Wilshaw, head of Ofsted, use such a venue to tell teachers working in under-resourced community schools that poverty and cuts are just ‘excuses for poor performance’ ?
How dare he tell overworked heads and classroom teachers alike that they don’t really know what ‘stress’ is!
How dare Michael Gove publish his speech on the DfE website (read it for yourself, if you can face it on: http://www.education.gov.uk/inthenews/speeches/a00208822/brighton-college ) under the title “a coalition for good - how we can all work together to make opportunity more equal” !
Yet Gove’s speech makes clear the advantages that a private education can deliver - if you are one of the privileged few who can afford it. Contrast that with cuts to EMA, growing unemployment and rising tuition fees facing most young people.
Gove went out of his way to attack trade unions as one of the “vested interests” that hope “the Coalition fail”.
Yes, we do want to see them fail - because their real agenda is certainly not to help equality ! These are calculated attacks on state education to pave the way for even more privatisation, Academies and Free Schools - at the expense of both young people and teachers.
1 comment:
Hi Martin,
Thanks for you comments defending teachers and keep up the good work.
Do you know if anyone has collated the attacks on teachers over the last two years? It would be really interesting to see them all in one place - when read together I am sure people will be able to see that it is a concerted attack and that it can't possibly be for the benefit of our children.
Best wishes
Jon.
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