East Dunbartonshire Schools closures/consultation

The Scottish Socialist Party in East Dunbartonshire welcomes the protests against school closures and the extremely flawed consultation process in East Dunbartonshire and offers it’s help in this important grassroots reaction to the policies of Westminster that are impacting negatively on our local community.

The reduced budget sent north by Danny Alexander, Jo Swinson, George Osborne, Clegg and Cameron et al, is now effecting the future of our children (in the face of increased and much higher amount of revenue sent south).  Policy in Scotland, of not just the Scottish Socialist Party, but the SNP and Greens, has been to reduce class sizes and increase the ratio of adults to children.  The reduction of budgets has meant that the Westminster and local councils are at times quoting spurious research that goes against all that the monied class believe, ie, that small classes make no difference.

Cameron and his pals, pay large amounts of their accrued millions for the education of their children in order to ensure their children’s time spent with the teacher is maximised. 

In private schools, class sizes are as low as 8. 

It doesn’t take a mathematician to work out that the amount of time a teacher can spend on children’s personal education is vastly different from a child thrown into new of the huge superschools. State schooling is being reduced to “controlling behaviour” with overcrowding the norm as soon as the new “minimum standard” superschool is opened.  It is a disgrace that the Liberal Democrats and Tories are telling working class/middle class families that their child deserves to be almost chained to a desk in the cramped conditions 32 in a class with one adult overseeing, creates.  Huge, impersonalised schools go against the spirit of the New Curriculum for Excellence – a curriculum designed to help give a child a love of learning, a freedom to explore and child centred/led education.

The present East Dunbartonshire Council, a coalition between vicious, uncaring Tories and New Labourites who have damned us to the thievery of PFI/PPP (which is ensuring our council is paying a huge chunk of your hard earned taxes, on an annual increasing basis, to private profiteers) have been determined to make our parents and children pay ever since the Save Our Schools campaign – a cross constituency united campaign – won their case within a week just over two years ago.  We knew this would come back sometime mid-term in the Council’s life.

The Scottish Socialist Party realise that the demographics of communities change, but at the same time, if that demographic has changed in such a way that ensures class sizes are not more than twenty, then the local schools and children benefitting from this change should be seen as the model for the future.  Not herding children across the constituency to be lost in schools of thousands of their peers.  The Tories, New Labour, and the Liberal Democrats seem to think we should always drive to the bottom, and this has become clear on the English NHS, pensions, welfare and painfully in England, education.

Twenty in a class is plenty – more than plenty. 

Twenty in a class ensures an average of 75 minutes a week of a teacher’s time is spent with your child.  The present 32 in a class means 46 minutes on average (compare this with the private school average of 187 minutes a week – over three hours – are we really “all in this together?”).

Large class sizes are detrimental to our children – and school closures rather than reinvestment in some of the smaller country and urban community schools, ensure our children struggle and have an unhappy school life isolated from their community. Current practise in replacing smaller schools with super-schools impair implementation of the New Curriculum for Excellence, so disadvantaging our children. The marketisation of Education has disadvantaged many low and middle income families.

Research on lower Primary Years (P1-3) gives us much more to think of (while being told that because of our tax money being frittered on Bankers debts we must tighten our belts):

http://www.classsizeresearch.org.uk/results1.html (Department of Psychology and Human Development at the Institute of Education, University of London, UK.)

We were heartened to see the schools campaigners on the streets this weekend, the same weekend the YES Scotland campaign were campaigning for a fairer Scotland.  In an independent fairer Scotland, our children’s future would be placed above the profits of the PPP/PFI companies and budgets would be decided by people closer to where they impact. 

We urge all parents and those concerned with education to unite and fight the Tory/New Labour coalition in East Dunbartonshire Council as it places paying the increasing PPP/PFI bill above the future of our children.  Budgets should ensure maximised child/teacher time and space for children to learn.

To sum up - considerations for East Dunbartonshire Council and it’s current Education policy:

• The rising population in the country, and indeed the rising birthrate in East Dunbartonshire.

• The impact of closures on Class size. The need for larger classrooms, more “schooling space” – ie. indoors and outdoors and smaller class sizes.

• The impact on special needs pupils if forced out of building.

• The impact on mainstream children’s mental health after separation from their peers and established community.

• The financial cost of refurbishment/clustering/ sharing resources rather than closure/ building schools with larger populations.

• The community cost of closure.

• The impact on parents/children regarding childcare.

• The impact on implementation of the New Curriculum for Excellence.

• The impact on children’s journey to schools. Child safety – children should not have to walk/travel far to school. This also affects children’s health, and road safety as those who have cars will tend to drive them.

• The impact on education workers. The diabolical numbers of newly qualified teachers in East Dunbartonshire, and indeed across Scotland, without work. The numbers of other educational workers who will lose work due to closures.

• The impact on receiving schools ability to ensure “McCrone” can be properly operated.

• The impact of the flawed consultations and subsequent 22 closures in Glasgow has already been proven to be catastrophic.

Of course, the Scottish Socialist Party feel that the only way to bring power to communities in Scotland over their budgets that impact our schools, hospitals, pensions and welfare, is to vote YES in 2014.

Yes Scotland Streetwork this weekend!

Please come along and help or come along for a chat with some of the volunteers!

Jo welcomes five more years of Tories at Westminster...

Why the EU referendum means Five more years for the Tories... by Neil Scott, SSP Campsie member.

Cameron has just created his NEXT coalition partners for 2015, UKIP. 

He has just shafted the Libdems bigtime. Kicking a referendum into the medium grass (after 2015) means the Tories will get 5 more years and UKIP, winning some seats, will go into coalition creating the most right wing Government the UK has ever known. 

The unquestioning faithfulness of the Liberal Democrats to the Tory programme, and the realisation that they, in the words of Martin Luther King, prefer a "negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice," has destroyed Clegg and Swinson's party.  An increasingly hammered, impoverished working class will see the yellow albatross's off.  A middle class who this week will see their wages reduced on average by £30 a month after capitulation by the LD's on pensions are leaving them in droves.

Cameron does not want to leave the EU, nor does he really care about re-negotiation.  He does care about power in order to impose a dystopian future on the "UK", and this announcement of a referendum will more or less ensure a weaker opposition and a stronger right-wing coalition.

I don't feel sorry for quisling Libdems, but I did warn Jo Swinson she was a patsy (this article has my twitter conversation with her after the Coalition agreement was signed - HERE). 

The patsies have just overseen the death of their party & the re-election of the greedy, lying, vicious Tories. 

Long may the Libdems be in the wilderness for damning England to Tories part two. 

Martin Luther King's words from the same letter written from a Birmingham, Alabama jail, "Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection."  The working class of Scotland understand these words.

I am so glad we can vote to never have a Tory Government come 2014, and kick Jo Swinson and her Liberal Democrats right out of a job near to power.

The democratic deficit. Remember, our MP was one of those who voted "yes."

East Dunbartonshire Thatcherite

Please use these as you see fit.

Iain Duncan Smith- liar?

A blog post about Iain Duncan Smith by Campsie Socialist, Neil Scott HERE

The REAL Queen's Christmas message...

by Campsie SSP member, Neil Scott

Click HERE

GUEST POST - A Schedule of Shit by Matt Geraghty

Click HERE for Elven Revolution!

John Morrison

We are shocked to hear of the tragic death of John Morrison who led East Dunbartonshire Council from 2003 to 2007. He was a gentleman and a man of great humour.

Report here

Leveson - a very small step...

by Ron Mackay

The 30s was a time of depression,strikes hunger marches etc. Then came the Spanish civil war and Alex Donaldson went off to join the International Brigade. 

Then came WW2. 

I spent 4 yrs. In the Royal Navy. The returning servicemen, having witnessed the senseless slaughter of millions of human beings – Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Dresden,Hamburg, London, Coventry, Clydebank etc. wanted a change. The Labour party responded to the mood and produced a program that seemed to promise a road to Socialism. The major industries were nationalised including transport and energy. The national health service was set up and the welfare state was established.

The Labour Party swept the polls. 

Willie Gallacher and Phil Piratin got into parliament as Communist MPs . In Clydebank 5 Communist councillors were elected. 

Prefabs were brought in to help with housing as left-wing councils set about rebuilding and restoring our damaged towns and cities. It seemed the advance to socialism had begun. 

 Alas one vital service was neglected – the media - was left in the hands of the Tories. The press barons, Lords Beverbrook, Kemsley, Rothermere and Astor controlled the media. The Labour Party, never a Socialist Party, made a mess of nationalisation. The old capitalist bosses were left to run the industries, ignoring the trade unions as usual and blaming every set back on nationalisation which the media exploited to the full and called for the restoration of private ownership. The role of the media played a very significant part in the return of the Tories. 

 As Goebbels said at the Nurenburg trials whoever controls the media controls the policies of countries whether democracy or dictatorship.

Leveson had nothing to say about the ownership and control of the media.

On Alasdair Gray...

email conversation about Alasdair Gray's recent controversial article (more background in the excellent BELLA CALEDONIA article)

Bill... What is your take on the attack on A Gray' in the Scotland on Sunday article? I think (as a recent immigrant) his words were welcoming, thoughtful and are being twisted by Better Together at the moment.

Neil

reply by Bill Newman

I have no concerns whatsoever about Alasdair Gray's comments which seem to me to be factual.  As a sassenach I (and you) have settled in Scotland  and, as Gray says. we are as much part of Scotland as any other immigrant and, of course, immigrants in the past have included Vikings, Irish, Normans and so on.  Colonialists are different and are those who spend time in the colonies of an imperial power, make their money and return home; again, surely a literal description of the English who come to Scotland, take a senior position, pocket the proceeds of his/her activities and goes back to the Imperial power - England.  I wonder if he had the unlamented director of Creative Scotland in mind?  Gray will not be upset by the criticisms - he never is - and he is not a man to change his considered views, nor the way he expresses them.

He is dreadfully underestimated as a writer and artist, probably because he doesn't fit into any ism.  I think that Lanark is the finest novel by far to have been written in Scotland in the 20th century and his visual work merits much higher praise than it receives.  Of his recent work, why isn't his magnificent ceiling and surrounds in the top hall of Oran Mor better known and why is his more recent mural in the booking hall of Hillhead Subway Station not acknowledged as the witty and humane masterpiece which it certainly is.  He is, of course  a socialist, but  of an individual and iconoclastic bent.   A great man!!