Liz Smith | ukwatch.net

Britain’s Teachers and Civil Servants to take One-Day Strike Action

Ellie Keen — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 00:00:00 +0000

For the first time in 21 years, teachers in the National Union of Teachers (NUT) will come out on a one-day strike on April 24 in opposition to the government’s imposition of a 2.45 percent pay award. With the current rate of inflation running at 4.1 percent this represents a pay cut in real terms. To make things worse, the pay award offered in January runs for three years—with a 2.45 percent increase in September, and just 2.3 percent in each of the following two years.

Members of Europe’s largest teaching union will be joined by over 100,000 civil servants in the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS) covering ten government departments and further education college lecturers in the University and College Union (UCU) in more than 250 colleges in England. Over 20,000 Birmingham City council workers will also begin strike action on April 23.

The government claims that pay restraint is necessary in order to keep inflation down. Schools Minister Jim Knight went so far as to tell the Times Educational Supplement that “it is because teachers have mortgages too that I know that they understand the need for a pay deal that helps deliver low inflation, low interest rates and a stable economy.”

Workers need higher pay precisely because they are facing rising mortgage, food and fuel costs, as well as credit card debts.

Teachers and other workers are not responsible for the financial crisis of the banking system, or the looming recession. Yet, while the Brown government is making available between £50 billion and £150 billion to the banks to cover their bad debts, and has spent billions more on the military occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq, they are insisting that workers accept below-inflation pay rises for years to come.

The starting pay of a teacher in England and Wales, at September 2008 would be £20,627 and in London’s Inner/Outer/Fringe this only rises to £25,000/£24,000/£21,619.

Students and newly qualified teachers are beginning their working lives unable to afford a mortgage and with debts from student loans averaging £20,000. The interest rate on student loans has just been raised to 4.8 percent.

According to the BBC, “grants to cash-strapped teachers from the Teacher Support Network charity rose 70 percent in the first quarter of 2008,” and more teachers struggling with their mortgages sought help from the benevolent fund run by the National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers (NASUWT).

Chief executive Patrick Nash of the Teacher Support Network, which gives hardship grants in addition to advice to teachers who are struggling, told the BBC, “More of our callers are having to seek help simply to make ends meet, showing that the national credit crunch is having a very real effect on teachers in particular.”

However, the NUT is not mounting a serious challenge to the government’s pay award. This is a one-day token strike to provide a focus for the rising anger of its members, after which the union is merely asking teachers to lobby local councillors and MPs leading to a protest at parliament in June. The summer break takes place for six weeks in July/August, so nothing further is likely to take place until September when the pay rise comes into effect.

The very fact that the NUT has not led a national strike in 21 years testifies to its refusal to oppose the constant attacks on teachers’ wages and working conditions. Indeed, over the past two decades the union has collaborated with successive governments in a massive overhaul of education, which includes the following:

Implementation and extension of the proscriptive and unwieldy National Curriculum, without consulting teachers and with no reference to child psychology.

Statutory annual tests for children at all ages including SATS, which have made children in the UK amongst the unhappiest in Europe, according to a recent United Nations report.

The setting of arbitrary targets in line with continual testing of children, dressed up as “raising standards” and “inclusion” of children from poorer areas, which again bears no relation to how children develop. Teachers have to waste precious time that should be spent with children compiling meaningless test data about children as young as five years old. This information is sent to the government, to be used as a stick to beat teachers whose classes are not performing up to standard.

The introduction of Performance Management as a way to smuggle in payment by results. Newly qualified teachers no longer automatically climb up the pay scale with experience, but have to prove they are worthy of a pay increment by being monitored. This is reinforced by regular OFSTED inspections.

The drafting in of untrained classroom assistants, a so-called “army of mums,” as a cheap labour workforce on temporary contracts who can even replace, at the discretion of the school head, trained teachers in the classroom.

The merging of the departments of Education and Social Services, using the pretext of the tragic death of Victoria Climbie, that will pave the way for further cuts to the social welfare budget.

The introduction of privately run academies headed by dubious outfits such as the Vardy Foundation that favours the teaching of creationism.

Education has been used as an opportunity for big business to make huge amounts of money. Not only have schools been forced to run as businesses with their own budgets, but they have to buy in privately run services like school meals, repairs, educational psychology support, whilst the government hands over millions to the building industry in its Buildings Schools for the Future (BSF) programme.

Alongside the lack of funds for school and support services, schools have been transformed into instruments for the social policing of children with severe social and psychological problems—with unqualified “mentors” substituting for trained social workers.

The role of the NUT in allowing this to take place is only eclipsed by that of the NASUWT and the smaller Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL).

The NASUWT has opposed strike action, with the spurious claim that its members are more concerned about their increased workload. Its members will be carrying out business as usual on Thursday, with no challenge from the NUT. The ATL have said that under no condition must their members take strike action. (The lecturers in further education are striking for pay parity with teachers that were promised to them four years ago!)

One must add that the National Union of Students (NUS), which is Labour controlled, will do nothing to support the lecturers or teachers. The only listing for April 24 on its website is for a Student governor “toolkit day.”

Essential lessons must be drawn from these experiences. The attacks on the pay and conditions of teachers since Labour came to power in 1997 have taken place in the midst of a boom. Today the UK and world economy stand on the brink of a recession after the eruption of a banking crisis that is routinely compared with the Wall Street Crash of 1929. This must herald an ever more savage assault on the public sector by Brown.

Organisations that could not defend their members under an expanding economy will never do so when the recession really bites.

The working class must build its own organisations of class struggle.

Teachers’ pay is only one aspect of a broader fight to defend education from its systematic undermining by Labour and its big business backers. For this to be successful demands that this struggle is taken out of the hands of the trade union bureaucracy through the creation of rank and file organisations of teachers that cut across the carefully-cultivated sectional differences that divide and weaken workers in education.

NUT members must do what their leadership has refused to—oppose the collaboration with the government by the NASUWT and ATL and campaign for joint action by all teachers. This should be extended to all other workers in education. At the same time, support must be built amongst parents to reject the claims by the government and the media that the teacher’s action is endangering children’s education.

Only when working people organize a mass, independent political movement and assert their own social and class interests can the immense wealth of society be utilized to provide high quality schools and public services for all.

Government Targets Child Asylum Seekers

Ellie Keen — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 16:16:08 +0000

Under the guise of “more compassionate treatment for children,” the Home Office Border and Immigration Agency is tightening up procedures to forcibly remove an extremely vulnerable group of children to their countries of origin.

Proposals outlined in its document, “Better Outcomes: The Way Forward Improving the Care for Unaccompanied Asylum Seeker Children [UASC],” are the outcome of a period of consultation with key agencies such as children’s charities, health and Local Authorities. In spite of concerns raised by these organisations, the Home Office seems determined to step up the persecution of these vulnerable children in order to satisfy its policy objective of scapegoating asylum seekers and refugees for all of society’s ills.

Currently, approximately 3,000 children a year arrive in Britain seeking asylum. Many come from war-torn areas, including Iraq and Afghanistan. They travel long journeys to arrive in Britain, are often beaten on the way, and do not know where they are going to end up.

The proposals are a fundamental reform of the way UASC are supported and managed. Currently, their rights are safeguarded by existing children’s legislation, which treats an unaccompanied child under the age of 18 the same as a Looked After Child—with the appropriate Local Authority having a duty of care until they are at least 18 years old and often beyond. UASC are currently given exceptional leave to remain (ELR) until they reach this age.

One of the proposals is for the responsibility for funding UASC care leavers currently carried out by the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) to move to the Home Office, thus increasing the economic pressure on UASC to return to their country of origin or “disappear.”

The Home Office claims this will make it easier “to safeguard children at the same time as managing the immigration system effectively.” It is concerned that too many young people disappear when their claim to remain is refused once they are 18.

The new proposals seek to centralise the dispersal of UASC, who often arrive at the key airports and ports in the South-East of England, and send them for care in regional centres in designated Local Authorities. Alongside this will be a more rigourous approach to age assessment that is currently carried out by each Local Authority. A child will be screened at a unit before being sent to one of the Local Authorities. One of the most contentious aspects of this proposal is the use of dental records in determining age, which has not been ruled out.

On the basis that this will keep children safe from harm, the Home Office also argues for better procedures for identifying and supporting UASC who are victims of trafficking. The document uses the issue of trafficking to tighten up legislation by arguing that “we need to recognise as a rule the needs of children are best served by being with their families.” Not once does the document pose the question as to why families would risk sending their children across to the other side of the world if they did not face profound problems and hardships.

The document assumes that the children who arrive unaccompanied do so in an “organised fashion.” Some are brought as “relatives” and then left somewhere where they know they will be cared for. Others travel in the backs of lorries, not knowing which countries they are travelling through and losing siblings on the way. For many of these children, contact with families cannot be maintained due to the precarious nature of their personal circumstances.

This point was underscored by Donna Covey, chief executive of the Refugee Council, who said, “We’re pleased the Home Office has recognised that it needs to improve the way they safeguard and protect these children. However, we have serious concerns about some of the proposals outlined, and we oppose government plans to forcibly return children to their country of origin. The government should not try to force any child to return against their wishes where their safety and welfare cannot be guaranteed.”

Covet continued, “Any way forward has to reflect the experiences of these children; some are trafficked, some have been politically active, some have been the victims of violence, including torture and sexual violence. These are not children who come here seeking a better life, with their families waiting for them in peaceful homes. Many of them are children from war zones.

“While we recognise age assessment procedures need to be improved, it is clear from the consultation responses and subsequent work that x-rays are not going to be the answer. We hope that further consultation will lead to this idea being dropped altogether.”

Syd Bolton from the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture said in response to the proposals, “Children’s experiences of torture and serious harm take time and expertise to explore and explain. They need to come to terms with their traumatic pasts whilst at the same time struggling in their present lives with a complex and often inadequate legal and welfare situation.

“The only way in which tortured and seriously harmed children and young people have any chance to recover psychologically is through care systems and decision-making processes which emphasise their long term welfare and best interests, not an approach which fits with a hard line immigration control message.”

Recent research by the children’s charity Barnardo’s has found that an estimated 100,000 vulnerable children are condemned to a childhood of poverty, uncertainty and fear after being caught up in a UK asylum backlog that may not be cleared until 2011. This appalling situation is being cynically used by the government and the Home Office to introduce legislation that will intensify the inhuman practices already being carried out against the most vulnerable sections of society.

Report Reveals UK Youth Abandoned by Education System

Ellie Keen — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 02:19:33 +0000

The Bow Group, a Conservative Party think tank, published a report on May 25 entitled Invisible Children. Using the government’s own statistics, albeit selectively, it paints a devastating picture of a whole generation of young people being abandoned by the current educational system.

The report states that up to 100,000 children and young people are losing out on an education. It indicts the Labour government for failing some of the poorest and most deprived young people in the country.

The benchmark that schools in England and Wales use to measure success is how many pupils pass five GCSEs (General Certificate of Secondary Education) with grades A to C. In 2006, 59 percent obtained five good GCSEs, 14 percent more than in 1997. The report states that this has been achieved at the expense of less-able students. Almost a quarter (129,700) of all pupils taking GCSEs do not gain any grade above a C.

Whilst the number of pupils not gaining GCSEs has declined from 45,000 in 1996-1967 to 29,800 in 2006, this is misleading since many pupils are being kept out of the “no qualifications” statistics by achieving a single grade. The reports then add to this the number of those who do not turn up for exams, which is estimated at 70,000.

A closer look at this phenomenon, it continues, reveals that 43 percent “of pupils do not reach the expected level in reading, writing and mathematics when they leave primary school. The knock-on effect is that pupils are permanently playing catch-up.”

Between Key Stage 2 (age 7-11) and Key Stage 3 (age 11-14), 84,100 pupils make no progress or fall backwards in English—38,100 in math and 145,000 in science.

Almost a fifth of 14-year-old boys have the reading age of a seven-year-old.

This is in spite of various initiatives and strategies such as the literacy and numeracy hours in both primary and secondary schools, and numerous initiatives spent to combat truancy. The number of unauthorised absences has risen by 189,749 since 1997. These include persistent truants, which make up 60.9 percent of all truancies.

A substantial number of those who have “disappeared” from school are those who have been permanently excluded and who are not accounted for in the alternative education provision of a Pupil Referral Unit (PRU). The numbers of those attending PRUs have dramatically increased “from 3,860 in 1997 to 7,080 in 2006.” Of these, only 56 percent are entered for a GCSE.

Britain ranks 37th out of 40 in a league table of major industrial nations of 17-year-olds staying in full-time education. But of particular concern to the Bow group are the numbers of pupils not in education, employment or training (NEET) at 16, which is currently one in six. A large proportion of these engage in crime or use of illegal drugs.

The figures produced are indeed an indictment of the Blair government’s education policy. But the Bow Group’s use of them is cynical. Its aim in focusing on the plight of vulnerable young people under Labour is to advance alternative proposals for education and training that will only worsen the situation.

The strongest condemnation within the report focuses on the money “wasted”—e.g., on areas such as PRUs (currently £263.3 million)—and the fact that young people are dropping out because they are “uninspired by what they see as an overly academic curriculum, or a curriculum that does not engage with what they want to do, or the way they want to learn.”

The authors of the report claim that the primary aim of the research is the setting up of a national database to track what happens to young people of school age. This has been planned by the current government since 2002. However, their proposals to address the massive underachievement that exists is the implementation of a weeding-out process, through streaming and setting—by ability—(which already takes place at 40 percent of secondary schools) at an earlier age so that those children can be identified for vocational courses and “hands-on learning.”

Current practice allows young people from 14 to opt for a vocational route of which three days are spent in school studying core subjects and two days on placement.

The main thrust of the report is “to raise the status and quality of practical learning in schools.” This is to be achieved not by giving schools more money to build the facilities necessary to carry this out, but by creating in every local authority “Enterprise Portals” run by small businesses—in return for an exemption on business rates.

One would normally expect a strong rebuttal of such a report by the Labour Party. Yet, even as a departing Prime Minister Blair boasts that education is one of the success stories of his administration, no reply has been made.

This is because the drive by the Tories for greater selection, channeling those deemed unsuitable for academic courses through setting and streaming and encouraging private investment, are policies Labour is in full agreement with and does not want to publicly reject.

The government is currently encouraging all schools to either become privately run academies (run by industrial or Christian organisations), or trusts, or to move to foundation status, which takes the school out of local authority control. Some of these will be able to establish their own admission policies; some will use selection.

Labour’s silence on the Bow report also suggests that, as so often in the past, it is already planning to adopt policies initially pioneered by the Tories. This time, what is at stake is the final reestablishment of a two-tier system, similar in all essentials to the old grammar schools and secondary moderns where, from at least the age of 14, academic education would be denied to millions of children.

First Woman Convicted Under Terrorism Act

Tim Holmes — Sat, 15 Dec 2007 16:29:19 +0000

On December 6, Samina Malik, a 23-year-old from Southall, West London, became the first woman in the UK to be sentenced under the Terrorism Act 2000. Malik was sentenced to 9 months, suspended for 18 months, with the condition that she be supervised for the whole period and undertake unpaid work. She has already spent 5 months in custody and 1 month under house arrest after her conviction.

Passing sentence, Judge Peter Beaumont said that Malik’s offence was “on the margins of what this crime concerns” and said he was taking into account her family background. “You are 23, of good character till now and from a supportive and law-abiding family who are appalled by the trouble you are in,” he said.

Following her trial in November, the jury at the Old Bailey found Malik guilty, by a majority of 10 to 1, of “possessing records” likely to be used for terrorism. She was convicted of having articles “likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism.”

Malik, who worked airside at a WH Smith newsagent at Heathrow Airport until her arrest in October last year, had written and posted poems on the Internet that the court deemed extremist. She had earlier been found not guilty, under Section 57 of the Act, of possessing an article for a terrorist purpose. Malik denied the charges.

The jury was told that Malik, who dubbed herself the “Lyrical Terrorist,” had written “extremist poems” praising Osama Bin Laden, in support of martyrdom and beheading.

One of her poems, “How to Behead,” was extensively quoted in the media and used by the prosecution to arouse a sense of repugnance in the jury. It states, “It’s not as messy or as hard as some may think/ It’s all about the flow of the wrist. No doubt that the punk will twitch and scream/ But ignore the donkey’s ass/ And continue to slice back and forth/ You’ll feel the knife hit the wind and food pipe/ But don’t stop/ Continue with all your might.”

The court also heard she had written on the back of a shop till receipt; “The desire within me increases every day to go for martyrdom.”

Court prosecutor Jonathan Sharp said, “These communications strongly indicate Samina Malik was deeply involved with terrorist related groups.” Police said they had found a “library” of extreme Islamist literature in her bedroom including The Al-Qaeda Manual and The Mujahideen Poisons Handbook. Deputy Assistant Commissioner and head of the Metropolitan Police Counter Terrorism Command Peter Clarke said, “Malik held violent extremist views which she shared with other like-minded people over the Internet. She also tried to donate money to a terrorist group.

“She had the ideology, ability and determination to access and download material, which could have been useful to terrorists. Merely possessing this material is a serious criminal offence.”

Following the verdict, Judge Peter Beaumont QC, the Recorder of London, told Malik, “You have been in many respects a complete enigma to me.”

In her defence, Malik said the poems had been “meaningless,” and that she had only called herself the “Lyrical Terrorist” “because it sounded cool,” explaining that it did not mean she was actually a terrorist or wanted to be one.

During the hearing, Malik explained that she started writing love poetry under the name “Lyrical Babe” while at Villiers High School in Southall. She then began writing rap poems in the style of artists Tupac Shakur and 50 Cent. Of one of her many poems, she said: “This does not mean I wanted to convert my words into actions. This is a meaningless poem and that is all it ever was. To partake in something and to write about something are two different things.”

Malik was prosecuted for a thought crime, and her conviction represents a grave threat to democratic rights. As offensive as her poems may be, they were the thoughts of a troubled individual and not a terrorist.

The decision by the jury was taken against the background of a hysterical media barrage around the so-called terrorist threat, while the ink was still drying on the Queen’s Speech in which the government made clear its intent to deepen the assault on democratic rights and civil liberties. In the same week, Jonathan Evans, the head of the secret service MI5, gave his first speech in which he spoke of Al Qaeda targeting young teenagers in particular.

It was clear from the evidence presented in court that Malik’s interest in Islamist fundamentalist publications never amounted to any actual plans to cause injury or a conspiracy to commit a terrorist attack. She did not possess any explosives or weapons, nor was any evidence presented that she attempted to procure them.

The attraction to Islamic fundamentalism of a section of Muslim youth is a political problem, not a criminal issue. It is a politically confused response to the actions of the imperialist powers in the Middle East and Africa, exacerbated by the social difficulties and racism faced by young Asians in Britain and throughout Europe.

In the absence of a socialist political movement of working people against war, social inequality and racism, and with a nominal Labour government instrumental in all of these attacks, it has been possible for Islamist reactionaries to portray themselves as a genuine anti-imperialist force. Far from combating Islamism, the anti-terror laws not only undermine the democratic rights of everyone but also help push a layer of young people towards it.

This situation is exacerbated by the failure of many civil rights groups to strenuously defend the democratic rights of Muslim youth and the growing closeness of the most high-profile, Liberty, to the government. Protest against Malik’s sentencing was generally subdued and came from only a small number of writers and journalists.

The fact that downloading Internet material is a “criminal offence in itself” means that millions of people throughout Britain could potentially be tried and convicted on the basis of what they or someone else entirely might do with it.

See Also:
Britain: Queen’s Speech signals attack on civil liberties
[14 November 2007]
Britain: Youth convicted under antidemocratic terrorism acts
[25 September 2007]

Youth prison death

Sun, 23 Jul 2006 14:28:59 +0000

The public inquiry into the killing of Zahid Mubarek in Feltham Young Offender Institute six years after his death has revealed the shocking circumstances which allowed Robert Stewart to bludgeon his cellmate to death under the noses of the prison authorities.

Mubarek was murdered just hours before he was due to leave prison. Stewart had completed his sentence the day before, but remained at Feltham as an unconvicted prisoner on remand awaiting trial on charges of harassment. He was known to various authorities as an extremely disturbed young man who had displayed racist behaviour.

When finished his report, Mr. Justice Keith, a public law specialist who spent a decade at the Hong Kong Court of Appeal, said he was “shocked and dismayed” by what he had heard and seen.

The public inquiry was ordered in 2004 following an appeal to the House of Lords by Mubarek’s lawyer for an independent investigation into the circumstances of Mubarek’s death under the European Convention on Human Rights. Prior to this, internal inquiries were carried out by the prison service in 2000 and the Commission for Racial Equality in 2003.

The Home Office actively opposed a public inquiry. Dexter Dias, the family lawyer, said, “It brings great shame on the Home Office for trying to conceal these failings from the public’s scrutiny…. Robert Stewart was a deeply disturbed young man. He was mentally disordered, he had that excuse for what he did. And the question posed by the Mubarek family is this—Robert Stewart had that excuse, what excuse does the Home Office have?”

Mubarek’s uncle Imtiaz Amin said, “He died because of institutional murder. The report exposes a litany of failures from prison staff to senior management, all of which are culpable for the circumstances in which Zahid was placed in a cell with a known racist and psychopath. It was obvious what would happen.”

Robert Stewart’s problems were known from an early age. The report catalogues years of gross neglect on the part of the prison authorities in failing to provide him with any support, highlighting how many potential tragedies there are waiting to happen due to the lack of identification and treatment of mentally ill prisoners.

Homicides in custody in Britain are rare. Much more prevalent are suicides. In the period 1990 to 2001 there were 26 homicides compared to 759 suicides. The report states that this is why there is a greater focus towards prisoners at the risk of self-harm, but fails to ask the question why there are so many mentally ill prisoners.

Justice Keith points repeatedly to institutional failings, suggesting a system that, at the time of the murder at least, did not appear to function. Failings include incomprehensible levels of ineptitude or muddle when it came to simple matters like passing on security information about the dangers prisoners posed. The Mubarek inquiry found that prison reception officers very often had no clue about a new inmate, other than his name and most recent offences.

In his summing up, Justice Keith described the care of Feltham inmates with mental health problems as “unacceptably poor.” During Stewart’s eight previous spells in jail he had set fire to his cell, been involved in a riot and was strongly implicated in the stabbing of another inmate.

“Stewart should have stood out from the crowd,” said the chairman. “Because of a pernicious and dangerous cocktail of poor communications and shoddy work practices, prison staff never got to grips with him.”

The report states that racism was at the heart of the inquiry, not simply because Stewart was a racist but “because of the need to explore whether explicit racism on the part of individual prison officers had been the reason for Zahid sharing a cell with Stewart in the first place or continuing to share a cell with him.”

The two previous investigations had found that the Prison Service in general and Feltham in particular were institutionally racist.

The report ruled out that there had been a “gladiatorial” aspect to the placing of such a known racist as Stewart in the same cell as Zahid, but stated, “the possibility of the practice existing cannot be excluded, even though no hard and fast examples of such a practice have been given.”

The inquiry discovered that explicit racism on the part of individual officers was found to be prevalent at Feltham from a series of focus groups held in 2001 by the Hounslow Racial Equality Council. For example, in the report, Black Minority Ethnic (BME) prisoners were called “monkeys” and “black bastards” and were told that “they should be sent back to their own country.”

Black prisoners were sometimes accused of racism themselves in order to divert attention from what was going on. And black staff would sometimes turn a blind eye to what was happening in order to fit in. The inquiry also discovered that the problems they faced throughout the Prison Service had been highlighted by a critical report from outside consultants commissioned in 1998, which contained disturbing findings about the blatant discrimination on the part of some white officers.

Whilst racism was undoubtedly a key aspect of the poisonous atmosphere that existed in Feltham at the time of Mubarek’s murder, the overriding reason for his death is a penal system that incarcerates thousands of young people as a solution to a much wider social crisis.

The same day that the report was published it was revealed that the prison population had reached an all-time high of 77,865 in England and Wales, up from 61,000 in 1997 when Labour came to power, and was now close to the breaking point. It was also revealed that nine out of every ten prisoners have mental health problems.

In the case of Robert Stewart this was something that was repeatedly ignored. From an early age Stewart showed signs of being troubled—including fire setting and flooding. During his second year at secondary school, he was expelled for setting fire to the sports hall. At 13 years Stewart was given a supervision order for 12 months for arson. By the age of 17 he had amassed many convictions, mainly for burglary, joyriding and stealing from cars. In September 1997, Stewart entered the prison system and from that point on was almost continuously incarcerated in different institutions.

At no point did any of Stewart’s troubled past—including an early diagnosis that he had the makings of a personality disorder or a reported lack of care for his safety—reach his prison files. Letters were seen that were racist and threatening, but these were not monitored.

During his stay at Altcourse in 1999, Stewart was seen by a registered mental health nurse who noted, “In my opinion he has a longstanding, deep-seated personality disorder. He shows a glaring lack of remorse, feeling, insight, foresight or any other emotion. He has an untreatable mental condition and I recommend no further action. Only time will have any influence on his personality and behaviour.”

This conclusion was reached after a conversation with Stewart and without reading his security file detailing previous assaults on other prisoners and himself. Letters of Stewart were found after the murder written at the same time as he was interviewed by the nurse, referring to “niggers” and a “Paki bastard,” which also contained swastikas and the letters “KKK.”

Months later, during his first stay at Feltham, racist correspondence was found which should have been confiscated and the Race Relations Liaison Officer informed but which were instead given back to Stewart. He had a history of assaults on cellmates and had used cell furniture as weapons, but this had not been recorded.

In the search of Stewart’s cell after Zahid’s murder, weapons were found that Stewart had made from his table and bed. Some weapons had been found the day before the attack, but this was not reported and no further search was carried out, leaving Stewart at liberty to attack Zahid.

Feltham has been likened to a gigantic transit camp. Following a visit in December 1998, the chief inspector said, “This report … is, without doubt, the most disturbing that I have had to make during my three years as HM Chief Inspector of Prisons. I have to disclose to the public [that] the conditions and treatment, of the 922 children and young prisoners confined at Feltham are in many instances totally unacceptable. They are, in many instances, worse than when I reported on them two years ago and reveal a history of neglect of those committed to their charge and a failure to meet the demands of society to tackle the problem of offending behaviour.”

The type of person attracted to a job that involves incarcerating young men, many of them mentally ill, and shunting them around like cattle is bound to include many right-wing and racist elements, people who have little or no empathy towards those with whom they are working.

The inquiry made a total of 88 proposals to tighten up procedures and establish responsibilities within the prison system. At the press conference given to launch its findings, Keith said, “Either you keep the prison population down by changing sentencing policy or you accept that the prison population will increase, and you inject sufficient funds into the system to ensure that prisoners are treated decently and humanely. They pointedly demand of government to think very carefully the point of prison and whether putting more people in jail achieves anything if nobody is prepared to put the money in too.”

Youth Prison Death

Alex Doherty — Thu, 20 Jul 2006 16:45:43 +0000

When finished his report, Mr. Justice Keith, a public law specialist who spent a decade at the Hong Kong Court of Appeal, said he was shocked and dismayed by what he had heard and seen.

The public inquiry was ordered in 2004 following an appeal to the House of Lords by Mubareks lawyer for an independent investigation into the circumstances of Mubareks death under the European Convention on Human Rights. Prior to this, internal inquiries were carried out by the prison service in 2000 and the Commission for Racial Equality in 2003.

The Home Office actively opposed a public inquiry. Dexter Dias, the family lawyer, said, It brings great shame on the Home Office for trying to conceal these failings from the publics scrutiny…. Robert Stewart was a deeply disturbed young man. He was mentally disordered, he had that excuse for what he did. And the question posed by the Mubarek family is thisRobert Stewart had that excuse, what excuse does the Home Office have?

Mubareks uncle Imtiaz Amin said, He died because of institutional murder. The report exposes a litany of failures from prison staff to senior management, all of which are culpable for the circumstances in which Zahid was placed in a cell with a known racist and psychopath. It was obvious what would happen.

Robert Stewarts problems were known from an early age. The report catalogues years of gross neglect on the part of the prison authorities in failing to provide him with any support, highlighting how many potential tragedies there are waiting to happen due to the lack of identification and treatment of mentally ill prisoners.

In his summing up, Justice Keith described the care of Feltham inmates with mental health problems as unacceptably poor. During Stewarts eight previous spells in jail he had set fire to his cell, been involved in a riot and was strongly implicated in the stabbing of another inmate.

Stewart should have stood out from the crowd, said the chairman. Because of a pernicious and dangerous cocktail of poor communications and shoddy work practices, prison staff never got to grips with him.

The report states that racism was at the heart of the inquiry, not simply because Stewart was a racist but because of the need to explore whether explicit racism on the part of individual prison officers had been the reason for Zahid sharing a cell with Stewart in the first place or continuing to share a cell with him.

The two previous investigations had found that the Prison Service in general and Feltham in particular were institutionally racist.

The report ruled out that there had been a gladiatorial aspect to the placing of such a known racist as Stewart in the same cell as Zahid, but stated, the possibility of the practice existing cannot be excluded, even though no hard and fast examples of such a practice have been given.

The inquiry discovered that explicit racism on the part of individual officers was found to be prevalent at Feltham from a series of focus groups held in 2001 by the Hounslow Racial Equality Council. For example, in the report, Black Minority Ethnic (BME) prisoners were called monkeys and black bastards and were told that they should be sent back to their own country.

Whilst racism was undoubtedly a key aspect of the poisonous atmosphere that existed in Feltham at the time of Mubareks murder, the overriding reason for his death is a penal system that incarcerates thousands of young people as a solution to a much wider social crisis.

In the case of Robert Stewart this was something that was repeatedly ignored. From an early age Stewart showed signs of being troubledincluding fire setting and flooding. During his second year at secondary school, he was expelled for setting fire to the sports hall. At 13 years Stewart was given a supervision order for 12 months for arson. By the age of 17 he had amassed many convictions, mainly for burglary, joyriding and stealing from cars. In September 1997, Stewart entered the prison system and from that point on was almost continuously incarcerated in different institutions.

At no point did any of Stewarts troubled pastincluding an early diagnosis that he had the makings of a personality disorder or a reported lack of care for his safetyreach his prison files. Letters were seen that were racist and threatening, but these were not monitored.

During his stay at Altcourse in 1999, Stewart was seen by a registered mental health nurse who noted, In my opinion he has a longstanding, deep-seated personality disorder. He shows a glaring lack of remorse, feeling, insight, foresight or any other emotion. He has an untreatable mental condition and I recommend no further action. Only time will have any influence on his personality and behaviour.

This conclusion was reached after a conversation with Stewart and without reading his security file detailing previous assaults on other prisoners and himself. Letters of Stewart were found after the murder written at the same time as he was interviewed by the nurse, referring to niggers and a Paki bastard, which also contained swastikas and the letters KKK.

In the search of Stewarts cell after Zahids murder, weapons were found that Stewart had made from his table and bed. Some weapons had been found the day before the attack, but this was not reported and no further search was carried out, leaving Stewart at liberty to attack Zahid.

Feltham has been likened to a gigantic transit camp. Following a visit in December 1998, the chief inspector said, This report … is, without doubt, the most disturbing that I have had to make during my three years as HM Chief Inspector of Prisons. I have to disclose to the public [that] the conditions and treatment, of the 922 children and young prisoners confined at Feltham are in many instances totally unacceptable. They are, in many instances, worse than when I reported on them two years ago and reveal a history of neglect of those committed to their charge and a failure to meet the demands of society to tackle the problem of offending behaviour.

The inquiry made a total of 88 proposals to tighten up procedures and establish responsibilities within the prison system. At the press conference given to launch its findings, Keith said, Either you keep the prison population down by changing sentencing policy or you accept that the prison population will increase, and you inject sufficient funds into the system to ensure that prisoners are treated decently and humanely. They pointedly demand of government to think very carefully the point of prison and whether putting more people in jail achieves anything if nobody is prepared to put the money in too.

Children in Prison

Alex Doherty — Wed, 22 Mar 2006 13:35:00 +0000

A recent report of an inquiry into the treatment of children in penal custody in England and Wales details the inhuman conditions facing many vulnerable young people in state institutions.

The inquiry was convened following the death of Gareth Myatt. The 15-year-old collapsed and died when three staff members at the Rainsbrook secure training centre, where he had been detained for just four days, restrained him in a double-seated embrace.

Headed by leading lawyer Lord Carlile, the inquiry found that such physical interventions, including the use of handcuffs, strip searching and segregation, are widespread in childrens prisons.

Launching their report, Carlile said, We found that some of the treatment children in custody experience would in another setting be considered abusive and could trigger a child protection investigation. If children in custody are expected to learn to behave well, they have to be treated well and the staff and various authorities have to set the very highest standards. My team of expert advisers shared my shock at some of the practices we witnessed.

The inquiry examined three different types of custodial institutions for young people in England and Wales: young offender institutions (YOIs), secure training centres (STCs), and local authority secure childrens homes (LASCH). Together, they are generally responsible for children aged between 12 to 18 years of age.

In deciding in which centre children should be placed, the Youth Justice Board (YJB) makes a vulnerability assessment taking into account available places and the childs age and needs. Of the 3,423 children in custody in September 2005, 41 percent were found to be vulnerable, one as young as 11 years old. The majority of these were held in YOIs although 80 percent of those in LASCH were assessed as vulnerable.

The report found that the culture in the majority of establishments was antithetical to normal teenage development. Many of the young people had chaotic and abusive childhoods that intensified their feelings of frustration, fear and anger. With this in mind, the inquiry was concerned that in some cases, there appeared to be a culture where dissent was not tolerated and that physical restraint was used to secure conformity.

Evidence supplied to the inquiry by the Youth Justice Board showed that physical restraint was used 5,133 times on children in prisons between January 2004 and September 2005; in secure training centres, it was used 7,020 times on children; and eight local authority units used restraint 3,359 times.

Lord Carlile reported that some of the restraint techniques had been practiced on him during the inquiry. They ranged between the broadly acceptable and the frankly unacceptable, he said.

The most unacceptable was not a technique which involved painit involved three members of staff placing themselves in martial arts challenging poses before me. They way in which they positioned themselves was supposed to de-escalate the situation and it made me a little bit frightenedand I dont frighten easily.

It was found that in some establishments, staff training focused on physical management of aggression and violence rather than developing skills to avert conflict. Concern was also raised that the only compulsory component of prison officer training is physical control and restraint.

The inquiry team also attacked the lack of physical exercise and outdoor activity available to children in the establishments visited, which it considered contributed to the build-up of frustration and anger.

They drew attention to the United Nations Rules for the Protection of Juveniles Deprived of their Liberty, which states, Every juvenile should have the right to a suitable amount of time for daily free exercise, in the open air whenever weather permits, during which time appropriate recreational and physical training should normally be provided.

The only time many children ventured outdoors was to walk from one building to another. The limited exercise equipment provided consisted mostly of indoor gyms focused in the main on pumping iron.

Of particular concern is the use of handcuffs on children in the STCs. A 14-year-old boy told a member of the inquiry team that the handcuffs hurt his wrists because they are too tight. When asked whether he felt humiliated by being put in handcuffs, he said he was a Gypsy and was used to being degraded.

Both staff and children reported that disobedience or refusal to comply with an order could result in physical restraint.

Daniel, aged 14, who is in an STC, told the inquiry, If you dont go to your room, they press the red button on radio and people come. Loads of themat least 10. Its like back-up really. They restrain you. They take everything out of your room. They kick your clothes out, they go in the corridor. They lock your door so you cant go in the bathroom, and they take your curtains. Someones got your arm and head down like that. It makes you want to struggle cos it hurts. Someone has their leg in front of your leg, and your heads like that. It puts pressure on your neck. I get aches on my neck from being restrained…. About a month ago or a month and a half ago I had a bad neck [from being restrained] and it only just gone a couple of weeks ago. I told the staff Ive got a bad neck; I need to talk to the nurse. The nurse said Getting restrained makes your bones more fragile. I still have bad necks but theres no point in complaining.

More disturbingly, the report cites the high prevalence of past abuse among children and young people held in custody, particularly by adults ostensibly in positions of authority. Some of the young people were profoundly damaged by these experiences and sought physical restraint in order to satisfy their needs. Even more worrying were allegations made in one submission that staff often baited children into situations that would result in restraint for their own gratification.

Even despite the past sexual abuse suffered by many of the young people held1 in 3 girls and 1 in 20 boysstrip-searching was still being routinely used. The inquiry was given no substantial evidence from any of the establishments that strip-searching was necessary for security reasons. Finds tended to be tobacco rather than weapons or drugs. One LASCH reported the relief on the childrens faces when told they did not have to be strip-searched.

Solitary confinement is also used under differing labelse.g., Intensive Supervision Unit, Reorientation Unit, or Care and Separation Unit. The inquiry found that most segregation units in prisons were little more than bare, dark and dank cells that were inducements to suicide.

The number of self-harm incidents in prison segregation units was a major concern. There were 117 incidents of self-injury recorded by prisons. In January 2005, 16-year-old Gareth Price took his own life whilst in the Care and Separation Unit of Lancaster Farms YOI. There have been 29 self-inflicted deaths by children in penal institutions since 1990.

Chris Callender, a lawyer with the Howard League for Penal Reform, which is taking legal action against a number of institutions for placing children in solitary confinement, said, My experience is that there are a lot of kids finding themselves in segregation units because they havent received sufficient mental health support. They should be receiving psychiatric support, not prison.

The Howard League delivered a petition to Prime Minister Tony Blair following the reports publication, protesting the conditions.

Carolyne Willow, the national coordinator of the Childrens Rights Alliance for England and a member of Lord Carliles advisory panel, said, We are not talking here about children being hurt in the rough and tumble of restraint. Staff have permission to deliberately hurt children. As a former child protection social worker, I am stunned that this is allowed to happen.

Education Bill Extends Privatisation of Schools

Tue, 04 Oct 2005 14:29:49 +0000

Prime Minister Tony Blair used the occasion of a visit to the City of London Academy at the start of its new school year to reaffirm his commitment to establish 200 academy schools across England by some time around 2010.

Blair expounded on his vision of a totally privatized secondary education system, which will be advanced in plans to be outlined in next months government White Paper on education.

Stating that both the education system and the National Health Service are going through the most systematic process of reform since the war, Blair added, In each case, the reform programme is roughly halfway through.

Comparing the academy schools, of which there are presently only 27, to state schools, Blair said, What really makes academies different is their ethos, their sense of purpose, the strength of their leaders, teachers and support staff, the motivation of their parents and pupils.

Schools that have been reopened as academies are testing grounds for the new-style school system that Blair envisages. Schools are to be totally self-financed and governed independently of national control, accountable only to their shareholders.

The academy schools that have either been set up or proposed are all in areas of high social disadvantage. Up to now they have replaced state schools deemed to have failed to meet academic standards. These schools tend to be the most expensive to run.

Sponsors are invited to contribute up to £2 million to the capital costs for building new schools or remodeling existing ones. The government provides $25-30 million pounds. However, it was revealed by the Times Education Supplement that if a sponsor is prepared to take on more than three schools, the sponsor will gain control at the discount rate of £1.5 million.

Running costs are paid directly to the school by the government, which means the academy can be independent of the local authority. The academies can be flexible on what they are allowed to teach and they can also set their own pay and conditions.

Almost all of the companies involved with academies have been set up specifically to run them. These companies can get round the usual difficulties faced by schools in socially deprived areas by expelling problem students instead of working with them. Kings Academy in Middlesborough, which the government holds up as a success story, expelled 10 times the national average of students last yearmany of them with special educational needs.

In the last few months, a number of articles and research reports have been published which contradict the governments claim that the closed schools were failing. They also make clear that the academies are not the educational success that Blair would like the public to believe. Former head teachers at some of the closed schools have spoken out and produced papers to show how their schools were set up and primed for takeover.

Willesden High School in London, which is now Brent Academy, is typical of the kind of school being targeted. It was the only local authority-run school in an area where all the others were grant maintained. The latter were state schools that opted out of local authority control and voted to obtain funding directly from the government. This made the school responsible for all of its assets, income and admissions. Most such schools have now opted for foundation statusthe foundations being for the most part religious bodies that set admissions criteria.

Funds for Willesden High School were cut by the local council in 1993 and between 1997 and 2003. As the only school with spare places, Willesden had a high socially disadvantaged intake, but it was still able to exceed targets set by outside agencies.

However, once the school was identified as a possible academy, the parents of children at the school, who were two-thirds Muslim, were given a straight choice of an academy or a Church of England takeover. Further details of this are evidenced in a document entitled Willesden High School, the Last Decade: a Story of Success Against the Odds.

Blairs speech propagates the myth that academies are a growing and increasingly successful movement in our secondary schools. The accounting and consulting firm Price Waterhouse Cooper wrote an interim report before the programme was rolled out last year, stating grave reservations. The government has steamed ahead in order to pursue its privatization agenda, whereby eventually all schools will no longer be under the guidance of the Local Education Authorities (LEAs).

The White Paper, expected in the autumn, will ostensibly discuss how to improve the choice on offer to parents, by which is meant a higher degree of academic selection in school admission and an enlargement of private capital in the education sector. Academies will be expanded, as will places at the most popular schools. How this will be funded is yet to be explained, but the implications are clear in the funding provisions allowed to academies. It paves the way for extreme cost-cutting within schools, places the burden of funding onto parents, and makes education dependent on business sponsorship, rather than the state.

Another feature of the academies is that the majority are to be run by Christian organizations. The most notable are the Vardy Foundation, which teaches creationism as a valid theory and carries out Bible checks, and the United Learning Trust. The ULT was set up to operate the academies as a subsidiary of another charity, the United Church Schools Trust, which runs a number of private fee-paying schools. Its stated aim is to offer students a high quality education based on Christian principles of service and tolerance. ULT is already involved with six academies and a further four are in the pipeline. Its interests are clearly bound up as much with privatized education as with proselytizing.

Since the Blair government came to power there has been a 30 percent rise in faith-based schools. There are currently around 7,000 in England600 secondary and 6,400 primary schools. The vast majority (6,995) are Christian, with 36 Jewish, 5 Muslim and 2 Sikh schools.

Immigrants Suffer

Mon, 18 Apr 2005 15:54:36 +0000

Organisations involved in protecting immigrants rights are calling for a public inquiry after compiling 35 cases of alleged assaults by immigration personnel against asylum seekers.

Details of the alleged abuses are contained in a report drawn up by the Campaign Against Racism and Fascism (CARF), Stop Arbitrary Detentions at Yarls Wood (SADY), and the National Coalition of Anti-Deportation Campaigns (NCADC). Charges of assault have been made against Group 4, Loss Prevention International, United Kingdom Detention Services and several other agencies involved in the detention and removal of immigrants.

The interim report into the use of excessive and gratuitous force gives a glimpse of the horrendous conditions that detainees face. A full report is due out in June 2005.

Most of the cases relate to the transport of asylum seekerseither between detention centres or during deportation. Evidence of the assaults is taken from cases referred to four legal firmsBirnberg Peirce & Co, Hickman & Rose, Christian Khan and Harrison Bundey. Many of the detainees involved have been persecuted, detained and tortured in their home country and fear further persecution on their return.

Some of the cases reviewed in the report are taken from Harm on Removal: Excessive Force against Failed Asylum Seekers by the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture, which found that 12 out of the 14 cases investigated showed that excessive or gratuitous force had been used. The detainees conditions included loss of consciousness, bruised and swollen limbs and ligaments, testicular pain and inability to eat solid food.

The Medical Foundation found that the injuries could not have resulted from the use or misuse of established techniques. In a number of instances, force was used even after the removal attempt had been abandoned. In one of the incidents cited, a detainee complained that whilst she was handcuffed, her head was banged against a fire extinguisher (causing a scalp laceration), pressure was applied to the angle of her jaw, and she was slapped, whilst an officer pulled and twisted the handcuffs.

The majority of cases covered in the interim report came to light through the observations of visitors to immigration detainees. Most of these visitors are volunteers, who are only able to visit the immigrants in their spare time, which results in them seeing only about ten percent of all detainees.

Visitor and support groups report that they receive calls from distressed and injured detainees on a daily basis. The most serious cases are referred to solicitors. However, the authors of the report believe that visitors get to see only the tip of the iceberg. Consequently, the report gives only a glimpse of what the fuller picture may be. In addition, the report states that most detainees who are assaulted are removed from the UK, which means many incidents of violence never come to light.

The reports findings show that 34 percent of the allegations have been made against the private security firms Group 4, owned by Global Solutions Limited (GSL), and Loss Prevention International.

Most of the cases documented involve allegations of abuse at the airport or during transit to the airport. The injuries sustained include: cuts, bruises and swelling; nerve damage (from handcuffs); sexual assault; urethra/groin damage; cracked shoulders; fractured fingers; serious head injuries, and the exacerbation of psychological problems.

The report points out that independent doctors have documented these injuries in a small number of cases, but that it is extremely difficult to find available and appropriately qualified doctors to go into detention centres at short notice to conduct an examination free of charge.

The reports authors state, [B]y the time we have been able to find such a doctor, the detainee has already been removed. Independent doctors can be commissioned by a solicitor as and when a legal action is initiatedthe doctor is then funded by legal aid. However, often by this stage injuries are no longer visible.

There is a financial motivation if a successful removal occurs, and because there is no monitoring of removals, there is little come back on the perpetrators of violence.

There is also evidence that some asylum detention staff enjoy using force. This was made explicit in the BBC documentary Detention UndercoverThe Real Story, in which undercover researchers caught on camera scenes in which staff employed at two GSL-run operations committed violence against detainees, or boasted about participating in violenceincluding sexual abuse.

The report points out that most of the cases covered were reported to the police. Of these, five percent resulted in an arrest and five percent are still under investigation. In 25 percent of cases, the results of the police investigation are not known, and in the remaining 65 percent of the incidents reported to police, no further action was taken.

The authors also have concerns that emergency call facilities have been withdrawn from immigration centres. Whilst calling for a full public inquiry, the authors of the report show how the Home Office has failed to demonstrate that it has acted on the outcome of previous reports of assault allegations in any meaningful way. The case of the Prison Ombudsman Inquiry into allegations of violence and abuse at Yarls Wood, which concluded that most of the allegations were true, is a case in point

The report also points out that most allegations do not result in a solicitor taking up a case because detainees are not aware of their rights or no action is possible.

This is made worse by the fact that many detainees do not have any friends, family or visitors to help them progress a claim. Some feel intimidated by the perpetrators of the assault; some detainees have been threatened with counter prosecution for actions they may have taken in self defence. In addition, detainees may not be able to identify which contractor employs the person that assaulted them, and may conclude that without direct evidence of an assault, they will not be believed.

None of these reported incidents are an aberration. Rather, they are the continuation of procedures practiced under both Labour and Conservative governments entailing brutal methods against immigrant workers.

In July 1993, Joy Gardner, a Jamaican mother of two, was killed during an immigration raid on her home. A Workers Inquiry initiated by the International Communist Party (forerunner of the Socialist Equality Party) and held in November 1995 found that Joy had died as a result of the restraint methods employed by three officers from the Alien Deportation Group (ADG), a secretive police unit that specialised in forcible deportations under the authority of the Home Office.

In the aftermath of her death, a concerted cover-up was organised to exonerate the police officers involved and cover over any connection between the practices of the ADG and government policy towards asylum seekers and immigrants. Twelve years on, the situation has degenerated to a point where physical attacks on asylum seekers and refugees take place on a daily basis.

Privately-Run State Schools To Expand

Alex Doherty — Tue, 15 Mar 2005 15:29:45 +0000

According to an article that appeared last month in the Guardian newspaper, the government of Prime Minister Tony Blair withheld an officially commissioned study that raised criticisms of privately-run academy schools. It did so in order to press ahead with plans to increase the number of such schools to 200 by the year 2010.

Since they were first introduced in 2000, the publicly-funded but privately-run schools have been a central plank of the Blair governments drive to privatise huge sections of the state education system.

Currently, 17 academies are operating, and a further 40 projects are underway. Run by private sponsors outside of local authority control, the schools are targeted at areas of disadvantage. Sponsors are invited to invest up to £2 million in an academy, whilst the running costs of each facility are paid directly to the school from central government funds, enabling the school to be run independently from the local authority.

Each academy specializes in a subject that reflects the interests of its sponsors, which are usually business- or faith-based. They are not required to teach the National Curriculum, but only to provide a broad and balanced curriculum with a particular focus.

Last year, it was found that the Bexley Business Academy had allocated one day a week completely to business studies, whilst at the two academies run by the Christian fundamentalist Peter Vardy Foundation, creationism is taught as a valid scientific theory. Blair personally opened one of the Vardy Foundation schools in March 2004, praising its prospectus as one of the best examples of modern social justice that I can think of.

The sponsors are able to determine staff pay, conditions, and the education curriculum at each academy, and need have no prior experience running schools.

The Guardian claims that the study by consultants PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) was given to ministers in November 2003, eight months before the government announced its expansion programme. The study included the warning: There are significant concerns in the research literature about the extent to which quasi-markets can contribute to the development of a two-tier system which results in an increase in stratification of students by social class.

The report also refuted government claims that academies would lead to innovations in teaching and learning, saying that any improvements were modest. Furthermore, it noted that staff in academy-style schools spent more time on non-teaching jobs, such as marketing and profiling the school, than their counterparts in state schools.

Despite these criticisms, a government devised Five Year Strategy for education proposed that academies be introduced in areas of low educational standards and disadvantage where there are insufficient good school placeseither replacing existing schools where other measures havent helped them improve, or creating wholly new schools.

The academy initiative will do nothing to resolve the problems faced by such schools, as it does not address the social deprivation that is at the root of the problems many of them face. The project has met with opposition from teachers and parents.

A major concern of schools in regions targeted for new academies is that their newer buildings and better resources could draw pupils away from local authority-run faculties, possibly causing the closure of some schools.

There have also been objections over how the new schools will be governed. Currently, state schools are governed by elected parents, teaching and non-teaching staff, local councilors, and people living in the area. In contrast, the governors of academy schools are to be appointed by their sponsors, with a minimum requirement of one elected parent governor, one Local Authority governor, and one member of the teaching staff.

Because the academy schools are classed as independent, they are not bound by national agreements on teachers pay and conditions. Teaching unions report that some of their members in the academies are forced to work longer hours.

Similarly, unlike staff in state schools, those employed in the new institutions are not required to register with the General Teaching Council (GTC), leading to complaints that teachers disciplined by the GTC could avoid further regulation by taking up positions in academy schools.

At the end of 2004, a government-backed initiative to turn Northcliffe school in Conisborough, South Yorkshire into another Vardy academy was repulsed by teachers, governors and parents after they waged a public campaign to oppose the measure. Organisers of the campaign said they believed that the Vardy Foundation had been promised the Conisborough School as part of a backroom deal with the government and local politicians.

Research carried out by the Guardian on the proposed sites for some of the latest academy schools showed that in Sheffield, two secondary schools sited in an area with one of the highest levels of child poverty in Britain are being vied for by the Christian United Learning Trust, which was developed specifically to run academy schools in England.

The government hit back by claiming that the academies were subject to a lot of myth-making. Schools Minister David Milliband claimed, The role of the sponsors has been completely misrepresented. Their sponsorship is purely philanthropic. They contribute to the capital cost of the academy and that is important. But more important is the successful experience they bring from outside.

In reality, there is growing evidence of an intermeshing between corporate interests and the governments agenda for schools and education. The Times Educational Supplement discovered in August last year that the governments leading adviser on academies is employed by a firm that has been working with three of the new schools.

Sir Bruce Liddington, who was appointed by the Department of Education in 2000 to give professional advice on the development of academy projects, is a freelance associate for Veredus Executive Resourcing. Veredus had been selected to find senior staff, including head teachers, for three London academy schools. Veredus, a part of the Capita group, is responsible for recruiting senior managers to posts across the public and private sectors.

Cancer Deaths Reflect Social Divide

Alex Doherty — Mon, 21 Feb 2005 15:35:48 +0000

A report from the all-party Public Accounts Committee, Tackling cancer in England: saving more lives, shows that survival rates from cancer in England are well below the best in Europe, especially for people living in the most deprived areas. The report does not cover Wales and Scotland, which if factored in would show an even greater discrepancy.

At some point in their lives, more than a third of Englands population develops cancer. There are more than 220,000 new cases a year and 128,000 deaths. Cancer is the countrys biggest killer, accounting for a quarter of all deaths.

The report states that people in northern England are now twice as likely to die of cancer than those in parts of the south. There are clear and unacceptable inequalities in outcome between different parts of the country. There is a North-South contrast in mortality rates suggestive of inequality between affluent and poorer areas, although the degree varies between individual cancers, it notes.

Research carried out in the late 1990s established that survival rates for 44 of the commonest 47 cancers were worse in deprived areas. Further research in 2003 showed that whilst rates improved generally during the 1990s, the five-year survival gap between better- and worse-off has widened for both men and women, for the majority of cancers studied.

The figures provided in the report are based on an analysis of mortality rates between 1998 and 2000. These show almost 200 deaths amongst 100,000 people in Manchester, compared with 100 in the wealthy Kensington, Chelsea and Westminster London boroughs.

The 10 worst areas for cancer death rates are all those in the former industrial heartlands of northern England and the Midlands. Employment factors alone cannot explain the regional disparity, however, especially as the report explains that England (together with Wales and Scotland) has traditionally suffered high cancer mortality rates compared with other European countries.

The discrepancy has more to do with the lottery that now exists within the National Health Service (NHS). The report states that Variation in the stage at which the cancer is diagnosed is an important contributory factor in explaining some of these inequalities both within England and between England and other countries. In particular, people in less affluent areas seem more likely to be diagnosed at a more advanced stage.

It continues that a key factor is the tendency of some patients, especially the old and those from deprived areas, to be diagnosed at a later stage of the disease.

Factors contributing to this are lack of patient awareness of possible symptoms and delays in onward referrals from general practitioners (GPs) for treatment and in diagnostic tests being carried through.

Research has yet to be published about why patients with symptoms delay consulting their GPs. A contributory factor must be the emphasis made by health ministers discouraging visits to the GP unless deemed essential. Furthermore, in densely populated areas with a high elderly population, it is not uncommon for someone to have to wait over one week to see a GP.

Half of the GPs that responded to a recent survey said they did not find existing guidance on the early identification of cancer symptoms helpful. Others found such advice unnecessaryan attitude described as complacent in the report. Crucially, the report notes, patients referred as urgent by GPs are usually seen by specialists within two weeks, but the one third or more not deemed as priority cases can take several months to be seen.

This is further complicated by delays in diagnostic tests, which are common throughout England, partly due to lack of training and staff shortages of radiographers and pathologists.

In the last 30 years, cancer rates have increased across the developed world. Between 1971 and 2000, total cancer incidence increased by 21 percent for men and 39 percent for women. At the same time, mortality fell by 18 percent for men and 7 percent for women. The larger fall amongst men is attributable to a sharp decline in cases of lung cancer, whilst for women, a decrease in breast and bowel cancer rates has been partially offset by an increase in lung cancer mortality.

The increase of incidences are mainly due to a growing aging population, but despite the fall in lung cancer, smoking remains the largest single factor influencing the overall level of cancer incidence and mortality.

In spite of government claims that its Stop Smoking programme is successful, the report points out that the Department of Health considers that a person has successfully quit smoking if he or she abstains for four weeks. The effectiveness of this seems even less credible as the report also shows that it is estimated that only about 30 percent of people quitting will still not be smoking 12 months later.

Women receive routine screening only for cervical and breast cancer. Screening for bowel cancer is due to be introduced in 2006, but only in those older than 60. The report makes clear that more skilled staff will have to be recruited to make this possible.

Similarly, whilst surgery remains the main curative treatment for a large majority of cancer patients, research shows that the best results come when surgery is carried out by specialist surgeons.

For the most prevalent cancers, such as breast cancer, specialisation in surgery is becoming the norm, it states. But in relation to prostate cancer, out of 133 Trusts where prostatectomies were carried out in 2002-03, only 12 Trusts carried out more than 50 operations. There are also insufficient specialist surgical resources to increase surgery for lung cancer to desirable levels.

It is also noted that many lives are being put at risk because radiotherapy waiting times in many parts of the country are too long to conform with clinical guidelines on the maximum acceptable delay before the start of treatment.

Nationally, there is also considerable regional variations for the provision of scanners and the availability of chemotherapy treatments. The local NHS Cancer Networks say this is due to the lack of specialist staff, unsuitable pharmacy accommodation and variations in clinical practice in the prescribing of approved drugs. Joanne Rule, chief executive of CancerBACUP, the patient charity, said, We need clarity about who is responsible for ensuring that money and treatments reach cancer patients.