ANNUAL CONFERENCE RESOLUTIONS 20031.
Schools are now teaching to the SATS.
This is non-educational, an unproductive use of time and resources,
and a source of stress especially to younger pupils.
Tests should be available for use on a voluntary basis,
with schools being accountable to LEAs and OFSTED.
2.
The SEA calls upon the Government to adopt a funding system for
schools which is transparent, based upon the needs of schools and students
and provides equality of opportunity to all our children.
3.
This Conference is pleased to note the progress towards value-added
assessment of a school's performance and calls for more work to realise
its potential.
4.
This Conference calls upon the Government to end its
strategy of creating specialist schools as its favoured route for
improving standards in secondary education.
5.
The SEA calls upon the Government to bring in legislation to
prevent planning permission allowing the building or extending Academy
Schools on designated public parks and playing fields.
6.
The SEA firmly supports the ideals of comprehensive education
noting the long history of evident success in raising educational
standards. The SEA conference deplores the Government's intention
to undermine the English comprehensive educational system. The SEA calls for: ·
The abolition of arbitrary targets imposed on schools ·
The abolition of league tables ·
An inspection system based on school self review and
evaluation ·
A transparent system of funding for schools.
7.
This Conference calls upon the Government to give its official
backing to David Chaytor's Ten Minute Bill on ending Selection when it
comes up for its Second Reading in July. 8.
The SEA welcomes the formation of Comprehensives Future and
urges all members and CLPs to respond to the "The Best Education for
All" making clear that there should be an explicit reference in the
next manifesto to the abolition of all selection by ability or
"aptitude" for secondary schools. 9.
This Conference welcomes the Government's action to promote the
inclusion agenda and notes the existing policy of SEA on inclusion.
Conference agrees to set up a policy commission to develop this
further in the light of recent legislation and current developments. 10. Britain
used to have a public education system which was decentralised and
accountable to its local community.
Under successive governments it has become highly centralised and
largely unaccountable. The
commercial model avidly pursued by the present Government with large parts
of the service contracted out to private sector increases the power at the
centre and removes even farther the citizen who is the consumer from
decision making. The SEA
calls upon the Government to return education to a national system locally
administered with democratic accountability and a proper professional role
for those working in it. 11. This
Conference is alarmed at the way in which personal wealth is being allowed
to propagate 'creationism" at public expense through the Vardy
Foundation in the North-East and calls on the Government to ensure that
children are taught the difference between fact and opinion, beliefs based
on faith and those based on rigorous scientific evidence. 12.
This Conference condemns all those in the media and at Downside
School who were involved in the disastrous attempt to educate Ryan Bell at
the school and calls for a recognition that private schools such as
Downside achieve whatever appears to be their "success" by means
of substantial extra resources and by catering only for a narrow segment
of the population. They were
unable to cope with the sort of challenges which LEA comprehensive schools
have been dealing with successfully for years. This 'stunt' should have been recognised for what it was from the start and all those involved should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves. We hope that Ryan Bell has not been too adversely affected by the experience and wish him well in the future. 16. This Conference views with dismay the continuing
process of fragmentation being pursued by the Government within the
secondary school system. In
the name of "diversity" we see the development of inequality
through various tiers of specialised schools, academies, faith schools,
beacon schools, foundation schools etc. in addition to the existing
residue of grammar and secondary modern schools (even if the latter now
have different names). All
these elements have different levels of financing and staffing creating
serious disparities of provision. The goal of competitive "diversity" has
replaced the socialist ideal of a single comprehensive system, unselective
and with a broad and balanced curriculum as a right for all children,
developed in various ways to match their individual needs.
In such a system each school can work to its strengths according to
its intake and staffs, and also attend to eradicating its weaknesses in
order to produce the highest possible educational standards.
17. This Conference calls upon the Government to outlaw discrimination in education which contravenes the Universal Declaration of Human Rights statement that “… parents have a right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children … Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms … without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status ” |