Annual General Meeting of Islington National Education Union Thursday 19th May 2022 5.30pm
Meeting Agenda (copies can be downloaded from the foot of the page)
AGM – Fixed Business
It is proposed that this remains at
5% of the National Fee 7.Nomination for vacant Inner London National Executive seat (This must be a woman)
Guest Speaker – Robin Tear – Chair of London Region International Solidarity Network and recent winner of the NEUs Blair Peach award will speak on Care4Calais
8. Motions submitted by Members a) Care4Calais (See Below) b) We Demand Better (See Below) – Jess Edwards NEU Executive Member for Inner London will join in discussing this motion. c) No More Exclusions – practical action! (See Below) d) No School based police officers (See Below)
A A) Motion on Care4Calais Islington NEU recognises the fantastic work done by NEU members visiting Calais to support Care4Calais with distributions and warehouse work. We note the report from Human Rights Watch, “Enforced Misery:The Degrading Treatment of Migrant Children and Adults in Northern France” which documents repeated mass eviction operations, near-daily police harassment, and restrictions on provision of and access to humanitarian assistance. The authorities carry out these abusive practices with the primary purposes of forcing people to move elsewhere, without resolving their migration status or lack of housing Care4Calais are currently distributing 485 food parcels per week at a cost of £15 per parcel. This is a cost of £7275 per week or £378,300 per year. Islington NEU agrees to: i) Donate £500 to Care4Calais ii) Encourage members to take part in /organise a delegation from the district to Calais iii) Continue to show solidarity with refugees wherever possible and commit to raising refugee issues in schools. B) We Demand Better Islington NEU welcomes our union’s recent national conference decision to prepare members for an indicative ballot on continuing and deepening real pay cuts as an ongoing result of austerity, inequitable tax increases and rocketing inflation. We also welcome the WE DEMAND BETTER demonstration called by the TUC and supported by other unions, including the NEU on Saturday 18th June and endorse the TUC statement backing the demonstration that: “Working people have had enough. Everything’s going up but our wages. Join the trade union movement in London to tell this government: we DEMAND better! We agree: 1. That building for this march and the following pay ballot should be a key priority for Islington NEU, its officers and school reps. 2. To encourage school NEU groups to hold meetings in the coming weeks to mobilise for the demonstration and start preparing for the pay ballot in the autumn term, and to send an officer or Committee member to attend the meeting, where possible, to outline the issues behind them. Decisions by school groups to attend the demonstration together, possibly with their own banner, marching behind the Islington one will be very welcome. 3. To place a bulk order of flyers, posters and sticker for the demonstration and distribute them to schools as a matter of urgency. 4. To organise a street stall on Sat 21st May at the Angel - as part of a London-wide initiative - to hand out leaflets and to petition in support of the march and the campaign. We welcome the decision at April’s Islington Trades Union Council meeting to encourage members of other trade unions in the borough to join the vent with their own publicity materials. 5. To support and encourage members to attend an Islington or North London mobilising meeting for the 18 June demonstration should one be organised - as discussed by Islington Trades Union Council at its recent meeting. 6. To organise, when appropriate, a borough rep meeting to promote the We Demand Better union campaign and the ensuing strike ballot. 7. That building for the demonstration and next term’s pay ballot need cannot just be left to Islington NEU officers but that we should seek to involve as many reps and members as possible.
C) No More Exclusions - practical action! This union branch notes: 1. That we have previously passed a number of motions committing to working to end school exclusions in Islington Schools, and also to supporting the work of No More Exclusions (NME), a Black-led anti-racist organisation working to build an abolitionist grassroots movement in education. 2. NME has published a new guide to abolishing school exclusion in the education system: “‘What about the other 29?’ and other FAQs: demystifying abolition in the UK education system” (Jan 2022). 3. NME is also carrying out a programme of monthly community stalls in areas of high exclusions around London. The Islington stall took place in March. 4. There has been a dramatic increase in exclusions from Islington schools in the wake of the pandemic.
This union branch resolves: 1. To promote NME’s guide “‘What about the other 29?’ and other FAQs: demystifying abolition in the UK education system” by publishing an electronic version on the website. 2. To purchase (cost price) and send copies to every union rep in every school – to encourage conversations on this issue in every staff room. 3. To write to other local NEU branch secretaries with a model motion and to encourage them to do the same. 4. To promote future No More Exclusions community stalls and encourage members to attend. 5. To continue to work with Islington
Councillors and Council Officers to encourage Islington to become a No More
Exclusions borough. D) No school-based police officers This branch notes 1. The recent increase in the number of school-based
police officers across the country. 2. That any conversation around crime must be placed into the context of a decade of austerity which has seen cuts to social
services, public services and education. It’s also seen real term wages
decline, rents and child poverty increase. 3. The institutional racism in both the criminal justice and education system
with significant disparities faced by black students and communities. 4. Studies from the US suggests that school-based police officer have no impact
on school staff and student safety. However, the consequences of having
school-based police officers can be unintended and damaging where: - Students and staff previously willing to disclose information may be
reluctant due to an onsite police presence. - The criminalisation of black students and their behaviour - Creating the perception of a school needing an onsite police officer where in
reality cases of knife crime and assaults are extremely rare. - Students and staff may have had previously traumatic experiences with the
police and witnessed police brutality over the summer on social media and in their own
communities. - The surveillance of students to build intelligence that may contribute to
gang databases, which we know to be racially discriminate in make up through the
criminalisation of non- criminal behaviours (culture, interests e.g. music). - The harmonisation of the education and the criminal system –where half of the
children prison population is BAME and seen in the development of ‘secure schools’
replacing Youth Offender institutions and run by multi-academy trusts. 5. In some areas, including Islington, local Copwatch groups have been set up to monitor the activities of the police. This union branch resolves to: 1. Support alternatives to school-based police officers including pastoral support, properly funded restorative justice, social workers and funded
education and public services. 2. Oppose the appointment of any school-based police officer in this school and
the local authority or local multi-academy trust. 3.Support campaigning for police free schools in Islington, London and the
country as a whole. 4. Support campaigning against child poverty and for full employment, democracy
in the workplace and community, a real living wage, end to precarity in work, trade
union rights, access to housing, rent controls and properly funded school and public
services. 5. Invite a speaker from Islington Copwatch to our
next branch meeting to explore how we could work together.
9. School and Workplace Reports 10. AOB
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