Hackney teachers urged to falsify coursework marks, claim

Staff at Cardinal Pole school were urged by email to falsify GCSE coursework marks last term, Blood and Property has been told.

(The school and the trust have provided a response to these allegations)

Also, at a staff meeting attended by the school's head teacher, teachers were allegedly told that doctoring GCSE coursework marks was normal practice elsewhere and schools that didn't do it were "too honest".

This alleged advice sparked a vote of no confidence in the school's head teacher, Katharine Hartigan, as Blood and Property reported on 3 July. At the time the background to the dispute had not been revealed and it was still not public when the Hackney Gazette reported it (page 2, July 14).

The dispute threatened to end in a strike after the school's National Union of Teachers (NUT) representative was suspended - but the school withdrew the suspension.

Then, during the summer holidays, it was revealed that Cardinal Pole had achieved its "best ever" GCSE results.

Blood and Property put the allegations about teachers at Cardinal Pole being urged to doctor coursework results to the Learning Trust and to Hackney Council. They were asked to clarify or correct any of the alleged details in the account here.

The Learning Trust commented on behalf of the school and the council: "These matters have been looked into and there is no investigation at Cardinal Pole."

However a comment from the NUT about the conditions surrounding the suspension and the strike threat suggest that these issues are still being looked into.

In a statement issued in July, the union said: "From September the NUT will have a series of meetings with the head and Diocese of Westminster. These meetings will deal with the range of issues Peter (Domokos) was raising when he was suspended. These meetings will also address the issues which were the subject of the vote of No Confidence in the Head."

The chart below shows the percentage of pupils achieving 5 or more GCSEs at A-C including English and Maths in some of the borough's schools.

Hackney bin men exploited - 5.30am start but no job guarantee

The quotes below come from a story in a pamphlet called "No Cuts" - news from the Hackney Alliance to Defend Public Services. It sounded like something out of the Grapes of Wrath.

"Agency and council managers organise the 'morning day labour market' at the depot. This means that temp workers are supposed to turn up at 5:30am and wait 'til about 7:30am. If all regular workers turn up or too many temps arrived, people are sent back home without a job and unpaid - after having been employed at the depot for more than a year."

The author, "a refuse worker", warns that this exploited labour force is too disorganised to defend itself: "At Hackney waste depot around 30-40% of us (bin men, sweepers, drivers) are temps, most of them on the minimum wage, most of them on day-jobs. In addition to this division there are all the "private companies" and "self employed" engaged in rubbish collection - no strike could be successful without including them."

The author warns against this trend toward the casualisation of the labour force: "Demands to force back the cut must include the struggle against this enforced casualisation."

The leaflet looks like it might have something to do with Hackney TUC - it says that there is a meeting on 11 August at 7.30pm at Trinity Centre, Beechwood Road, Dalston.

Hackney Communists predict disorder on poll tax scale and beyond

A post on The Commune blog called "A Ripple in a Storm" reports from a 50-strong meeting held in Hackney at the end of June.

It said: "In Hackney, the meeting was called by the local trades council, having been asked to do so by the local government Unison branch."

Until recently Hackney Unison was not a happy ship dut to the acrimonious "witchunt" of four London reps - including Brian Debus - trade union activist, Hackney Unison Branch Chair whose plight had even won the support of the Daily Mail. (Blood and Property (Are Hackney unions ready for the last stand?))

And according to this post on Hangbitch (July 11), the answer is that Unison will still not take on Labour. The Hangbitch author was at the above-mentioned meeting: "I wonder if the grassroots is up for a fight for public services, though. I want it to be, but that’ll hardly make it happen. Who would lead such a fight? Public sector trade unions? Hah. The PCS may put up a geniune fight, but Unison won’t.

"I attend a meeting of Hackney locals and trade union members which is led by Brian Debus – a man who is walking testimony to Unison’s hatred of popular pro-public service, leftwing activists. Debus is one of the four Socialist party activists Unison has banned from office for demanding that Unison stop funding the pro-privatising Labour party. There is a great deal of difference between what Unison does and what it says. This meeting of about 50 people knows that. It agrees that unions are too weak and too slow to organise effectively against the coalition juggernaut." (Similar but not the same as a Liberal Conspiracy post mentioned before)

The Commune reports: "One speaker said that in order to resist the cuts, if we are realistic, we need organisation of the level last seen during anti poll tax movement, which organised in committees street by street, and workplace by workplace. In my view, we will need to organise demonstrations – and direct action besides – but the ferocity of the impending attacks does bear comparison with the poll tax: so our response must recognise that."

It also said: "In Hackney, cuts have already begun. Cuts to the local college are covered elsewhere in The Commune. There have also been cuts at the local waste depot, and a number of teaching assistants have been made redundant in primary schools. These are not Tory cuts, not yet. They are Labour’s last sigh in government, the first ripple in the coming storm."

So will Unison see industrial action as taking on a Tory government or a Labour council? Or as defending its members?

Other bits on other blogs:

Little London Fields festival..."In a bid to distance itself from current associations with shootings and stabbings and regain its throne as the place Hackney folk can gather

And a movie about various people in Dalston and other places