In Rise, we wholeheartedly support Protest Against School Fines. Fines penalise families with very legitimate reasons for keeping students off from school such as for prolonged illness and medical appointments. Furthermore, they aim to shift blame away from the decades of damage inflicted on education in the form of budget cuts, ballooning classroom sizes and the ravages of privatisation draining school resources.
Natalie, the founder of Protest Against School Fines, makes a very sympathetic case for opposing school attendance fines. Raising an autistic daughter with a Pathological Demand Avoidance Profile (PDA), Natalie knows all too well how what might seem like simple things such as morning routines, packing a school bag or leaving just in time to beat the traffic present massive challenge for neurodiverse students leading to massive distress, aggravated further by an increasingly high stakes testing and a punitive culture within schools.
Thanks to the rigidity of the law, students who are even just a few minutes late to school can also be fined. Schools have to declare an AM and PM attendance mark to local authorities. If a student arrives a few minutes after the AM register closes, it still counts as half a day’s absence regardless of traffic, weather or any other reasonable consideration.
Whilst we support any efforts to challenge and change legislation, we also recognise that there is a far deeper rot at the heart of our public services which has been brought about by years of quasi-privatisation transforming schools into mechanical employment training grounds rather than community assets. Academisation has helped to hollow out even basic levels of parent, community or trade union democratic input. High stakes testing, particularly in the areas of maths, English and science, often at the expense of sports and creative arts, has helped to develop a much more narrow and suffocating student experience. There is a growing crisis of legitimacy affecting schools. Parents and carers are able to see more clearly than ever that budget cuts, 40,000 teachers leaving the profession every year and rocketing levels of student mental health crises indicate that something is fundamentally wrong.
And what of life beyond high school? Parents are increasingly aware that their children do not have even the mild degree of career choice and flexibility they once had. Astronomical student debt. Wage stagnation. Redundancies. Job insecurity. This is the reality with which families and students are confronted. With zero indication that things are going to get any better, it is understandable why levels of school avoidance and alienation are growing.
Rise, much like the Protest Against School Fines, recognise the bleak situation, but utterly refuses to believe it has to stay that way. At the start of the Labour government, Sir Keir Starmer awarded a 5.5% teacher pay increase to avoid a possible repeat of the strikes in 2023. This was a tactical decision to ensure the government did not have too many sites of organised resistance as they mostly continued with the attacks made in the previous 14 years of Conservative rule. Their cut to the winter fuel allowance being a case in point. With the prospects of a renewed teachers strike on the horizon, there has never been a better opportunity for the demands of anti-school fine campaigns to be heard more widely and build stronger organisation as a result. The 2.8% pay increase is set to be unfunded by government. This means schools will have to make more cuts to fund the difference. This can only mean more attacks on essential provision and schools becoming an even less hospitable place to be.
Rise will happily help to support the building of greater cooperation between unions and anti-fine campaigns, but we also call upon campaigns themselves to reach out to local National Education Union (NEU) branches to build connections and support as NEU members are now embarking on an indicative ballot. This presents an opportunity to build support within teaching unions at a time when they can apply pressure on the government and invite wider popular support. Likewise, Rise also calls upon NEU members and reps to reach out to any anti-school fine campaigns in their area. For a strike to be successful, it will need a strong base of support within communities, made up of working class people who also believe education should be a fulfilling and rewarding experience rather than the terminal rot and decay that teachers, students, parents and communities are forced to tolerate.
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It is clear to everyone that our society does not work for us all. Working class people, who produce the wealth, and without whom nothing works, have seen their wages, living standards and quality of life collapse. At the same time, the wealth of a tiny minority in society grows without restraint.
The Origins and Importance of May Day. On this May Day we send fraternal greetings and solidarity to the struggling working classes around the world and re-commit ourselves to the pursuit of working class liberation, socialism and world peace.
Palestine will continue until the structures of apartheid and colonialism are dismantled. There will be peace, but only when Palestine is free, from the river Jordan to the Mediterranean Sea. Rise will work tirelessly to hasten the day.
