UK Educators Rank-and-File Safety Committee members discuss: Are schools safe?
Helen Clarke is a member of the UK Educators Rank-and-File Safety Committee and a primary school teacher. She has been researching deaths of educators from COVID-19 in the face of official concealment and obstruction. She submitted the article published below to the Committee, which is responded to by its secretary Tania Kent.
Pressure has been mounting on the UK government and the Office for National Statistics (ONS) to release data on COVID-19 cases and deaths of school staff. No wonder Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty snapped at a BBC interviewer two weeks ago, when he was asked why teachers weren’t being prioritised for vaccinations. Whitty claimed teachers were “not at a greater risk of acquiring COVID than other professions”, although data had recently been released showing teacher infection rates in some places were more than four times the average.
UK Educators Rank-and-File Safety Committee warns of packed schools amid an escalating pandemic and third lockdown
The UK Educators Rank-and-File Safety Committee met last Saturday under conditions of a pandemic escalating out of control. The UK has the highest death rate in the world, with a catastrophic 1,325 daily deaths reported immediately prior to the meeting and now totalling over 95,000. Hospitals are days away from being overwhelmed.
Special needs teacher Tania Kent explained, “the belated and misnamed ‘national lockdown’” announced January 5 “will have little impact in the surge of infections. The new variant of Covid is taking prisoner after prisoner in a one-sided battle.
Committee for Public Education (Australia) online meeting discusses global struggles of teachers and educators
The Committee for Public Education (CFPE) held a successful online panel discussion on November 29, to discuss the implications of the ongoing pandemic, focusing on the tasks confronting educators and students and the working class more broadly, especially the fight for educator and student safety. Over 40 people participated, including educators, students and supporters from across Australia, as well as France, Britain, the United States and South Korea.
The panellists were CFPE national convenor Sue Phillips, a member of the Socialist Equality Party (SEP) national committee and long-standing educator in the primary sector; Renae Cassimeda, a member of the SEP in the US and of the US Educators Rank-and-File committee, San Diego and Los Angeles, and a secondary school history teacher; Tania Kent, a member of the SEP in Britain, chairperson of the UK Educators Rank-and-File