We face austerity from the government, privatisation via academies, a toxic influence on our students online, the attacks of the populist right in Trump and Farage — but we are growing, in number, in militancy — and we have shown we cannot be beaten, says NEU general secretary DANIEL KEBEDE
Social mobility is no substitute for social change
Opportunity, as an ideology, can never replace equality as a lived experience, writes STEPHEN LOW
A cleaner outside 10 Downing Street
In a revealing speech, Trump’s economic adviser has exposed the actual strategy behind the tariff policy: forcing other countries to provide financial support for US world hegemony, reports MARC VANDEPITTE
Activist Angie Zelter has been arrested more than a hundred times. She’s not stopping now, writes LINDA PENTZ GUNTER
Natalia Marques looks at last week's ruling that Khalil can be deported and its implications
We are not here to advocate for the arms industry or its CEOs, writes STEVE HANDFORD, and that means we must take a stand against the government’s spending on war
As Labour mimics Tory welfare cuts while ignoring crumbling schools, educators must collectively resist the government's priorities and fight for an inclusive, creative system that values all children, writes NEU president SARAH KILPATRICK
Although our sector is hearing better things from the current government, the recognition that what we do is education in its own right, rather than just childcare, is still not reflected in policy, writes LUCY COLEMAN
SOCIAL mobility in Britain has, in the words of the government’s own commission on the matter, been “stagnant” in recent years. The question the left should be asking about this isn’t so much “how is this to be tackled?” so much as “why do we need social mobility?”
Social mobility is all about saying we should have an equal chance in the rat race. Well we all know who rat races are for. Better that we look toward social equality and a better life for everyone.
Social mobility has its advocates everywhere.
Take sometime education secretary Justine Greening declaring “improving social mobility is a defining challenge for us as a nation.” Yet when it comes to tackling the most serious issues facing us talk is, at best, misplaced. At its worst it is a smokescreen designed to obscure a determination to preserve inequality and unfairness.
More from this author
STEPHEN LOW details how the Scottish Greens’ retreat from full opposition to the Bill gives the SNP the opportunity to revive this toxic legislation and push through privatisation under the cover of popular reforms
They have done it again, laments STEPHEN LOW, as the Scottish government passes another intrusive Act, this time on ‘hate crimes,’ that seems so unworkable even those announcing it could not describe it accurately
What the SNP-Green administration is asking politicians to do by voting on the new care service legislation, without being clear on what it even is, totally undermines Holyrood, writes STEPHEN LOW
What could have been easily explained away and apologised for has instead ballooned into an embarrassing cover-up scandal for the Scottish political scene, reports STEPHEN LOW
