EI Congress: attacks on profession are global

Attacks on public education and teachers and their unions are international rather than local, and require collaboration and solidarity between teacher unions internationally.

That is a clear message from the 7th World Congress of Education International, the peak body of the world’s teacher unions, held in Ottawa, Canada, between 19 and 26 July. QTU members are members of EI by virtue of their membership of the Australian Education Union. EI now has over 400 member organisations covering more than 32 million teachers and education workers in more than 170 countries.

Different countries, same issues

The congress revealed an underlying consistency in the attempts to commercialise and make profit from education, to reduce the professional autonomy of teachers, to reduce wages and conditions, to interfere politically in curriculum, to reduce government education expenditure and devolve responsibility for the resulting problems to schools, and to attack teacher unions' capacity to represent members. There are different manifestations in different countries, but the policies are the same.

The key concerns of QTU members – job security and workload (as identified in the QTU’s 2014 member survey) – are international. Where standards of teacher education have been established, they are under threat. There is a temptation to simply worry about our own local problems, which are often challenging enough. But as a union, we have always attempted to address issues before they become local problems - prevention is better than a cure. So it is here.

It was interesting to hear statements we have made for years - the professional role, as well as industrial, of teacher unions; that teaching conditions are learning conditions; and of the need to reclaim the profession - being echoed by other unions in the peak meeting of the peak international teacher organisation.

Teachers under attack

Our problems are not the worst. There was an appalling list of teachers who have died in attacks on schools or been assassinated in Pakistan, in Nigeria, in Syria, in Iraq, in Colombia, as well as in the global north. The Korean Teachers Union has been deregistered for allowing nine sacked teachers to remain members. The office of a Turkish union was ransacked by police and computers seized during the Congress. The leader of an Iranian union was arrested and jailed a month ago for attempting to obtain a visa to attend the Congress (go to www.labourstartcampaigns.net/show_campaign.cgi?c=2779 to petition for his release). More than 90 teachers protesting his imprisonment were themselves arrested and only released when they promised never to participate in a “political” rally again.

There is a union saying about an injury to one being an injury to all. That principle does not recognise national boundaries, and the teachers who face these issues deserve our ongoing support, a support pledged by all the teacher unions gathered in Ottawa.

Unfortunately, the few examples mentioned above are but the tip of the iceberg.

Development goals

The gloom is not universal. EI has campaigned internationally for one of the Millennium Development Goals, that of universal free primary education for every child, based on the principle that education is the right of every child and a public good. The goal was adopted by the United Nations and member countries in 2000. As a result, there are 70 million more students in school than before. The development goals are due for renewal by the United Nations later this year and, after intense lobbying, there is hope bordering on confidence for a replacement education goal for the 58 million children who remain out of school.

Education for profit

That achievement faces a new threat from attempts to make profit from education. A nine-year-old girl in Ghana goes to school on Monday, Wednesday and Friday and sells water at a busy intersection on the other days of the week to pay school fees, so that an international edu-business turns a profit. A long-term international campaign against child labour is being undermined by the establishment of for-profit schools in the global south.
How distant is that problem? Not very. It has been reported to the QTU that the previous Queensland Education Minister was contemplating, or at least lobbied, to allow the establishment of for-profit schools in Queensland that could draw on taxpayer funding to help turn a profit. For the present it is off the agenda in Queensland, but not internationally.

The Congress re-elected AEU Federal Secretary Susan Hopgood unopposed to the position of President of EI.

For more information, visit www.ei-ie.org/congress7/en/

Graham Moloney
General Secretary

Kevin Bates
President

Queensland Teachers' Journal, Vol 120 No 6, 21 August 2015, p17