Received from: National Education Union
Merged into composite 10
Congress notes that education is in crisis. Educators, learners and society are losing out.
Congress demands change. Congress welcomes Labour’s pledge to create a national education service. This must cover all education provision (from early years to adults, through schools, alternative provision, post-16 and HE), all education workers, and all learners – whatever their needs, means or age.
The education system requires better funding and the recruitment and retention of sufficient staff. Any national education service must end and then reverse privatisation of education. It should be democratically accountable, locally and nationally, with rigorous financial oversight, providing national pay and conditions for all.
Congress calls on government and all political parties to create the social and economic conditions for young people to succeed, establish consensus for a long-term approach to education, and institute an inspirational, aspirational and principled national education service, delivered locally, and accessible universally:
i. enabling learners to understand and contribute to wider society and the world in which they live and to change it for the better
ii. ensuring parents are a valued part of the education community, including through school/college governance arrangements
iii. seeing education professionals as trusted partners and ethical leaders – redefining their professional identity to guarantee a confident, informed profession of choice with agency and moral purpose, supported throughout their careers and whose work, based on educational research, is valued by society
iv. fostering collaboration, not competition, between education establishments to provide the highest quality education for all, recognising the capacity to learn has no limits.
National Education Union
AMENDMENT
- In paragraph 4, insert new sub-paragraph iii. and renumber the remaining sub-paragraphs:
“iii. recognising that every member of staff has a role to play in creating a supportive and stimulating environment in which learners can flourish and achieve their full potential”
UNISON