Helen Johns: “all internal processes have been exhausted and failed.”
Striking Tutors and union officials, together with stake-holders, finally took to the street outside Swansea Council last week, to protest punishing cuts to Education Other Than at School services (EOTAS), and challenging “plans” to cut the number of staff in the department by 45%, where the numbers of vulnerable children needing to use the service has not changed and there is already a waiting list for home-tutoring.
The high level of support for the well-respected home-tuition service put paid to cuts last year, but now they’re back with a vengeance.
Unions had pulled planned strike actions twice in the last weeks in the optimistic hope that a meeting with Lindsay Harvey, Head of Education, would lead to a shelving of these plans, pending scrutiny. That meeting was held at the Council in early May. “Let’s just say it was unsuccessful,” said Paul Bedford, Swansea NUT divisional secretary. “We’d hoped common sense would prevail and the proposals would be put on hold, and subjected to due diligence. Tutors only took this action because looking at the big picture, the damage to the service means that it is unsustainable”.
Teacher Helen Johns, Assistant Secretary of NASUWT Swansea, echoed the profound disappointment in the consultation process “Strike action is a very unusual step, for some of us it’s the first time we’ve ever done this and it’s only because all internal processes have been exhausted and failed.”
Former beneficiary of the home tuition service Sorcha Jewell estimates that she would have been at least two years behind without home-tuition when physical illness prevented her from attending school. “My tutors were amazing and without them I wouldn’t have got my GCSEs” she told me. Now finishing the first year of A levels at 17, Sorcha has set up an online petition to save EOTAS.
A common concern among those I spoke to was the lack of sight of the consultation documents, even in summary, and in spite of requests. Rex Phillips (pictured above), divisional secretary of the NUT, confirmed that they had also asked for the process to be put on hold until the scrutiny committee had completed its audit of the whole service. “These are the most vulnerable pupils in society here and they’re being now denied a very successful provision, but decisions will be taken at high levels in terms of budgets” Rex said, “and they seem to have taken this decision, demonstrating total disregard for the scrutiny process. We believe that we must now engage with the scrutiny committee.”
screenshot from Swansea Council’s website – Equality document
The perceived urgency for examination of transparency and accountability doesn’t end there though. Helen Johns voiced what several others also told me: “The review that took place was not independent and was influenced by insiders”, she said. “On the panel was the head of service and there is a direct family link there. We are hoping to influence people who can actually do something about changing the proposals and to get scrutiny. The cabinet members need to listen to scrutiny. We’d like an independent investigation of the management and EOTAS altogether.”
Paul Bedford reemphasised this concern adding the observation that the one area that didn’t appear to be facing cuts, across large swathes of significant reductions across the whole of education, including schools, was “Pathways”, the department containing this ‘direct family link’ quoted above.
Finally I spoke to a tutor who preferred to remain anonymous and who commented that she was “very disappointed. When you go into teaching you do expect fair play and I don’t think this is fair play. I feel that the service isn’t doing the best for vulnerable children. So many people are opposing this, why is it being pushed through?” she asked. “Why aren’t the council listening?”
Questions about the lack of independence of the panel, as well as a widely reported prevalence of dynastic relations precluding transparency except in regard to the unequal distribution of hard cash, aren’t persuading the council to pull back and take further stock. But wouldn’t any democratically elected council be wise to think more than twice about the economics of slashing an exemplary service, which “provides well for its pupils”, especially when those pupils are vulnerable children, many of whom would otherwise not be able to benefit from formal education?
screenshot from Swansea Council’s website – Equality document
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