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NEWS • VIEWS • INFORMATION • ADVICE





New children’s commissioner won’t plug poverty gap



Cuts to education expenditure and in broader provision for children and young people have led to reductions in the number of Sure Start children’s centres and the scaling back of youth and community services.



Youth unemployment is at a record high and disadvantaged young people are facing greater barriers to accessing further education and training as a result of the abolition of the Education Maintenance Allowance (EMA).



The Coalition has also backtracked on targets for reducing child poverty after admitting that its autumn budget statement would result in a further 100,000 children falling into poverty.



Ministers have announced the creation of a New Office of the Children’s Commissioner for England who will have a strengthened role in promoting and protecting the rights of children. The new commissioner will be expected to act as an advocate for the interests and views of children and young people. However, the NASUWT believes the creation of the role is the antithesis of the Government’s actions in cutting so many of the services on which young people rely.



Chris Keates, General Secretary of the NASUWT, said: “Important though the work of the Children’s Commissioner is, there is a far wider responsibility on the Coalition Government in terms of the impact of all its policies on the rights, wellbeing and life chances of children and young people. In this respect, the Government is falling far short of what is required to meet children and young people’s legitimate expectations and entitlements.”





MASTERS PLAN FEAR



Plans to introduce a master teacher standard could be divisive and lead to major adverse changes in pay.



A Coalition-commissioned Review, which has been accepted by Michael Gove, has recommended scrapping the post-threshold (UPS), Advanced Skills Teacher (AST) and Excellent Teacher (ET) posts and replacing them with a new master teacher standard.



To gain the standard, teachers will have to demonstrate deep and extensive knowledge of their specialism, command of the classroom and have excellent planning and organisational skills. The authors of the Review say the master standard will ‘set out a powerful statement about what it means to be a really excellent teacher’. The NASUWT is concerned that there remains a question mark over what it will mean for pay and conditions of service. The Union is seeking further details about the plans, particularly what the emphasis on subject specialism will mean for primary teachers, who could be seriously disadvantaged by this move.





Military Academies: ‘National Service for the poor’



The NASUWT has rejected suggestions from a think-tank that military academies should be established to tackle criminality and antisocial behaviour among young people.



A Report by ResPublica recommended that the military be drafted in to set up and run academy schools in areas of deprivation as a solution to the issue of young people who are not in education, employment or training (NEET).



The Report suggests that areas hit by last summer’s riots may particularly benefit from the creation of military academies, an assertion that the NASUWT dismissed as ‘cynical’.



“There is no evidence of either the widespread involvement of people from deprived, working class communities in the riots or that they instigated them,” said the NASUWT’s General Secretary, Chris Keates.



“The proposal amounts to nothing more than the disgraceful, unjustified vilification of whole communities, promulgating the view that if you are poor and working class, you must, therefore, be inclined to criminality and antisocial behaviour.”



She denounced the idea as “national service for the poor”, adding: “the answer lies not in this report but in the abandonment of the fundamentally flawed economic and social policies of this Government, which are disempowering, alienating and disenfranchising young people.”