Education policy betrayal

Published: 9 December, 2010

An open letter from Camden teachers to their students

• WE write in response to the open letter from students from Camden School for Girls to their teachers (Why students must protest, November 25) and we write on behalf of NUT teachers in all Camden schools to all the students across Camden who took part in the protests.  

First, we must be clear: we cannot support a call for students to leave their classroom during the school day; we would always prefer you to be in school learning. 

But that does not mean we do not fully understand your anger and sense of betrayal at the government’s plans to raise fees, remove state funding for universities and cut Education Maintenance Allowance.  

We share all of your anxieties about a future in which university is the preserve of the privileged and the state school system we serve is robbed of vital resources and sold off to private companies to be run for profit.  

For us as teachers, and also as parents, the government’s negligent disregard for the needs and rights of students from deprived backgrounds – indeed, their apparent disinterest in the needs and rights of anyone who does not share their astonishing levels of privilege – is genuinely terrifying. 

We are horrified that this week Camden Council has had to cut children’s centres, special needs provision and sports services in order to meet the demands of the Tory-Lib Dem coalition.  

We are proud of our students’ insistence that their voice be heard. 

We are inspired by their commitment to campaigning against these grossly unfair cuts. 

And we wish to work to call a protest where students and teachers, parents and support staff, governors and all those who oppose the government’s disastrous changes to education, can march shoulder to shoulder to demand a fairer future for us all.  

CAMDEN NUT COMMITTEE 
on behalf of teachers in Camden