“Notts NUT is determined to defend your pay, your pension and the Education Service against the plans of the Government to make teachers and the education service pay for the economic crisis.”

Freedom for teachers was the “big society” message of the new government back in May just after the election. A few months on and it’s clear that the Lib-Cons need a short sharp lesson in misuse of the English language.

No freedom for teachers, or parents, or students it seems when deciding the key building blocks for our education system. No freedom to teach without the punitive straight jacket of the SATs regime. No freedom to escape from the Gestapo like Ofsted Inspection Regime. No freedom to participate in decisions about whether to pursue academy status. And no freedom to teach in a working environment that is not decaying all around them.

Instead the Government plans to run headlong into territory that no Government has ventured into before - and without so much as a by your leave from the trade unions which represent over 90% of classroom teachers. They will privatise the whole school system and the services therein, not to parents groups, but to a range of pre-selected private companies, most of which have already created chaos in the sole interest of lucrative contracts.

This is a world in which the pay gap between those who deliver or help deliver education (teachers, teaching assistants, cleaners, caterers, technicians, office staff etc) and those who manage schools (company executives, senior leadership teams etc) grows wider and wider.

This is a world in which schools deemed to be ‘outstanding’ in middle class areas will take the bulk of the cash whilst the rest go hang.

This is a world in which the collective bargaining arrangements with a local authority through recognised teachers and other unions like the NUT is replaced by school based bargaining, in which the pay of most staff is held down whilst the pay of those at the top is kept secret and trade unions are locked out at the school gates.

In short this is a dog-eat-dog world in which the children of the poor receive vastly inferior education provision whilst the ability of their champions - teaching staff and others - is neutered.

The Lib-Con coalition government came into power offering to liberate schools. Academy status would remove the deadening hand of the local authority and allow teachers to teach.

Even before the huge cuts (25%) are announced in October's spending review the writing is on the wall.

Over 700 schools will now have to wait indefinitely for the privately owned construction companies to arrive on site. So it won’t be just public sector workers facing tough times because of public sector cuts. That’s £7 billion worth of investment in construction and related jobs down the drain.

Just over a year ago the previous government spent about ten times that bailing out the banks - the same banks who are still paying fat bonuses to executives but lending very little money to people who need houses. So its clearly a much bigger government priority for bankers to have lashings of champagne whilst school children sit in sub-standard classrooms and their teachers face pay freezes and reduced pensions.

To add insult to injury, Michael Gove mistakenly informed 25 schools, including 9 in Sandwell, that their building programme was safe in Lib-Con hands.

Many of the new schools were promised for socially disadvantaged areas such as Ollerton where the proposal for the re-building of The Dukeries School has been shelved. Teachers there - as everywhere - are doing a fantastic job with no sign of the incompetence displayed by Gove on July 7th. But there is a desperate need for new buildings and every student and member of staff there deserves better treatment than that dished out by Gove and his public school pals.

Notts NUT will be urging all teachers and school based support staff to stand up to the Government’s miserly policies. Unite with parents, students and the Unions to fight against these pernicious cuts and the divisive academies programme. The stakes are very high here but millions of parents, staff and students have concrete reasons for fighting the government all the way in interests of high quality, free, comprehensive education.