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News and Comment December 2019

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5 December (Part 1) - St. Catherine’s School strike

There was a time when I thought my extended family were all school teachers, eleven of them (only two male) with a school secretary and Council officer in the Waltham Forest education department thrown in for good measure. Retirement and mortality have taken that total down to three and the secretary but teachers used to form more than 50% of working adult family members.

Politically all were Pinkos to some extent, two of them fully paid up members of the Communist Party and had been best mates with the Communist MP for Clydebank until his death in 1965, two years after I first met them. In the 1960s and 70s they would regularly take mysterious expenses paid holidays in the U.S.S.R. I fear they were up to no good. My memory of that period is that the mildly Pink would complain that the Crimson ones were leading the profession to disaster. The net result is that I view the teaching profession with a good deal of suspicion and regard its malign indoctrination of the young as an affront to democracy.

For the record the school secretary and former Council officer are very far from being Pinkos now, with age comes the ability to see through the lure of the Left.

School strikeAbout a month ago I became aware of a teachers’ squabble at St. Catherine’s (Girls’ Catholic) School. I took little notice of it, didn’t even know where the school was and a bullying Head allegedly abusing her position seemed to be entirely typical of bosses promoted until they eventually reach a position of total incompetence. I was at work long enough to see how that system worked but it was not a Bonkers’ issue, Academies are nothing to do with Bexley Council.

However over the past handful of weeks I have been sent enough snippets of information from parents to persuade me that I should pass on their views. It is quite possible that I was not the only observer to draw all the wrong conclusions - or at least be totally unaware of how some parents feel about the situation.

I am told that here have been twelve strike days so far with four more scheduled. Can you imagine the disruption to family life that that will be causing to say nothing of the lost education?

As I understand it from comments received a letter was sent to parents at the start of the school year. It explained that due to staff dissatisfaction following a staff dismissal and two suspensions, the teachers would be striking on 28th October. A meeting with the teachers, Head, governors and the National Education Union (NEU) at the Advisory Conciliation and Arbitration Service (ACAS) did not remedy matters so the strike went ahead.

The teachers claim is that staff were fired without due process. Independent investigations by outside HR companies upheld the dismissal but not one of the suspensions, a union rep. who has returned to work. I remember from my time at GPO/BT how it was almost impossible to sack a Union Rep.

The Union was demanding the reinstatement of two members of staff as the price of calling off their child damaging strikes.

At their daily pickets outside school, teachers and NEU members have apparently relished the opportunity to talk to the public about the “culture of fear” and “bullying” behaviour of the Head but no one reports them calling for her suspension or resignation which was one of the stories promulgated on Social Media.

A report sent to me says that the governors have received 34 complaints from staff about the Head since her appointment in September 2016. The governors investigated and the school trustees and their lawyers all deemed no further action was required and that the complaints ranged from those not warranting a suspension to the 100% “frivolous”. As an Academy, Bexley Council has no power to intervene.

The NEU does not represent all the teaching staff and so some are not striking, some are said to vehemently oppose the strike. Apparently the “culture of fear” does not impinge on non-NEU members. Strange that.

Meanwhile, parents on Social Media have been splitting into various factions. A deep divide has been created with frenzied calls to topple the Head on one side and suspicion of teachers and unions reminiscent of my own forming on the other.

A small but growing group are forming a counter-protest on strike days opposite the picket line. Parents are finding it hard to know where to turn for help. The Diocese has been told not to get involved.

All parents are naturally very worried about their children’s lost education. Has a strike of this length ever been seen at a British school before?.

After a meeting with Governors where some parents insisted on further investigation of the Head the NEU inexplicably moved the goalposts from requiring reinstatements to insisting a second investigation could not go ahead and the strike could not be ended until the Head is suspended. Only that would enable a second investigation.

The Governors convened an emergency meeting this week and voted unanimously not to suspend the Head as there is no evidence of any wrongdoing. With three of them having daughters at the same school they presumably know exactly what the true situation is. A very recent communication says three striking teachers returned to work yesterday.

A Conservative Councillor told me that the Labour candidate in Bexleyheath and Crayford, Anna Day, has been joining the picket line and backing the NEU. A sure sign of how a Corbyn victory in a week’s time will take us straight back to the 1970s and freebie trips to Moscow.

So for now it is stalemate with neither side willing to move. The teachers are at pains to explain this is “not about the girls”, but it’s hard to see how the students are not the ones suffering the most.

With thanks to various contributors for their insight into what appears to be going on. If there is another side to this story I have not heard it directly but there are some Social Media comments to be read. @ST_CCSPG and @OfficalVeritas for example.

 

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