Education for the masses, not just for the ruling classes
Jeremy Drinkall knows about front line education – he’s a local teaching assistant.
He will be fighting for determined action, locally or nationally, against the cuts of the incoming Labour or Tory government.
There must be no return to the systematic underfunding of the Tory years. We will fight to save every penny of our children’s education.
But Labour hasn’t just invested in education – it’s also giving private companies the ability to run schools with the disastrous City Academies programme. Why should McDonalds or British Airways decide what our children are taught or how much teachers should be paid? They shouldn’t – let’s get rid of this awful system.
And when it comes to Higher Education, Labour has introduced the scandal of tuition fees, putting university education out of the reach of millions of our young people. Meanwhile further education colleges and universities are facing millions of pounds of cuts, shedding hundreds of jobs and closing dozens of courses and even whole departments.
Labour’s whole policy is designed to make education meet the needs of profit and moving further and further away from the ideal of improving our culture, our skills and our happiness.
It used to be claimed that the NHS was safe in Labour’s hands. Nothing could be further from the truth. The last 13 years have seen huge attacks on the NHS and the continuation of the Tories policies of privatisation and fragmentation.
Waiting lists are still painfully too long, while underpaid and overworked staff struggle to meet patient need in crumbling buildings. Hospital infections are still a scourge, as private cleaning contractors fail to meet the basic demands of cleanliness. Ward closures force more and more patients into overcrowded rooms.
More and more facilities are being contracted to private companies to run, sapping money from frontline services. Now the Labour government is looking to transfer whole hospitals to the private sector. Once this happens, there will be no guarantee that services will continue to meet rigorous NHS standards.
Private Finance Initiatives (PFIs) have been used to build £13 billion worth of new buildings for the NHS – but at a cost of £70 billion to the taxpayer. This has been a huge subsidy to the privateers from the working class. While nurses and healthcare assistants struggle to get by, the NHS wastes £350 million a year on management consultants.
It doesn’t have to be this way. We could have a world-class healthcare system with proper investment in services and staff.
Jeremy Drinkall knows about front line education – he’s a local teaching assistant.
He will be fighting for determined action, locally or nationally, against the cuts of the incoming Labour or Tory government.
There must be no return to the systematic underfunding of the Tory years. We will fight to save every penny of our children’s education.
But Labour hasn’t just invested in education – it’s also giving private companies the ability to run schools with the disastrous City Academies programme. Why should McDonalds or British Airways decide what our children are taught or how much teachers should be paid? They shouldn’t – let’s get rid of this awful system.
And when it comes to Higher Education, Labour has introduced the scandal of tuition fees, putting university education out of the reach of millions of our young people. Meanwhile further education colleges and universities are facing millions of pounds of cuts, shedding hundreds of jobs and closing dozens of courses and even whole departments.
Labour’s whole policy is designed to make education meet the needs of profit and moving further and further away from the ideal of improving our culture, our skills and our happiness.
- No more Academies – corporations out of education
- Scrap private schools – nationalise the schools
- Reverse the cuts in school, college, university places – reduce class sizes by recruiting more staff
- Stop the cuts in teachers’ pay
- Abolish league tables and selection, which take resources away from deprived areas and force staff to “teach to the test”
- For parents, pupils’ and teachers’ control over control over education
- Education for life, not just for work.
It used to be claimed that the NHS was safe in Labour’s hands. Nothing could be further from the truth. The last 13 years have seen huge attacks on the NHS and the continuation of the Tories policies of privatisation and fragmentation.
Waiting lists are still painfully too long, while underpaid and overworked staff struggle to meet patient need in crumbling buildings. Hospital infections are still a scourge, as private cleaning contractors fail to meet the basic demands of cleanliness. Ward closures force more and more patients into overcrowded rooms.
More and more facilities are being contracted to private companies to run, sapping money from frontline services. Now the Labour government is looking to transfer whole hospitals to the private sector. Once this happens, there will be no guarantee that services will continue to meet rigorous NHS standards.
Private Finance Initiatives (PFIs) have been used to build £13 billion worth of new buildings for the NHS – but at a cost of £70 billion to the taxpayer. This has been a huge subsidy to the privateers from the working class. While nurses and healthcare assistants struggle to get by, the NHS wastes £350 million a year on management consultants.
It doesn’t have to be this way. We could have a world-class healthcare system with proper investment in services and staff.
- Totally free and accessible healthcare for all – abolish prescription, optician and dental charges
- Halt and reverse all privatisations, including PFI – bring all services and facilities, like the independent treatment centres (ISTCs) and polyclinics, back in house
- Healthcare is not for sale – close the market, abolish the purchaser/provider split and payment by results
- For health workers’ and patients’ control of services – a health service democratically run to meet society’s needs
- The NHS spends £20 billion on drugs each year, because patents and profits keep prices artificially high. Nationalise the pharmaceutical companies under workers’ control
- All management consultants to be given NHS positions and salaries or sacked.