AUTHORITIES ABANDON RURAL SCHOOLS

 

AUTHORITIES ABANDON RURAL SCHOOLS

Unpublished article for Landworker magazine of Unite the union

Increasing numbers of rural schools are threatened by demographic changes, inadequate funds and a lack of long-term planning. In North Yorkshire 34 rural primary schools have closed since 2018 and St Hilda’s in Ampleforth will be next. The impact locally is devasting for working class families.

Following the ending of a fertility boom, school pupil numbers are projected by the Education Policy Institute (EPI) to fall by 436,000 by 2028-29.

So, with school funding being allocated on a per-pupil basis this will seriously impact on already-strained school finances. The EPI calculates a drop of £1.1 billion nationally by 2029-30.

London local authorities have been affected by falling pupil numbers, meaning school closures have already begun there. E.g. Lambeth

But with their already-low pupil numbers, rural schools are especially vulnerable to declining pupil numbers and subsequent cuts in funding.

One of the hardest hit will be schools in Calderdale which featured in the Happy Valley TV series and includes many small rural villages. Funding will fall by 11.73% as a result of a 15.89% fall in pupil numbers between now and 2028-29. Schools will need to consider a raft of cost-cutting measures, including mergers and potential closures

As the biggest English county then many communities across North Yorkshire, 85% of which is considered rural, rely on agriculture as the primary employment source. These communities badly hit by school closures include Burnt Yates, Rathmell, Ingleby Arncliffe and Skelton. Dozens of schools with under 100 pupils remain threatened.

According to NEU (National Education Union) official Gary McVeigh-Kaye school closures “are devastating for families, especially those without a car.  The nearest school might be ten miles away. As the Tories have wrecked any integrated transport system across the countryside it can be a real time, effort and cost getting children to school. “

The impact on teachers and staff, many of whom work part time and live locally, is also “ruinous to people’s health and livelihoods.”  Where similar jobs exist elsewhere, they are based in the 32 Multi-Academy Trusts, which have poor records for supporting disadvantaged pupils, that according to McVeigh-Kaye, an English teacher for 25 years, want to “centralise education as much as possible.”

The NEU, aware that pupil numbers fluctuate, want no more rural schools closed. The union feel it is only when there is little hope of schools remaining open that authorities organise meetings to discuss events.

“Even if a school has sat at the heart of a rural community for 150 years It is more or less a fait accompli on such occasions”, claims McVeigh-Kaye. “We require longer term planning allied to additional funds for education, including for improved wages of all staff. Plus, we require a willingness by government to recognise that a good education, provided locally, is key to the future of pupils and the economy.”

THE EUROPEAN REFUGE DREAM Human Capital by Laura Robson, published by Verso (RRP £25)

 

THE EUROPEAN REFUGE DREAM

Human Capital by Laura Robson, published by Verso (RRP £25)

The ‘Fatal Policies of Fortress Europe’ of border militarisation, asylum laws, detention policies and deportations has resulted in more than 52,760 refugee deaths in the 30 years until 2023. Thousands more are never found.

Bodies surface on European shores, stowaways are discovered in trucks and, lacking any hope, asylum seekers kill themselves. It’s the consequence of allowing politicians to slam shut doors and their eyes whilst pretending through funding aid programmes, to  recognise and guarantee the rights of displaced and dispossessed people.

In fact, as historian Laura Robson reveals in Human Capital, there has been century-long containment policies allowing the global mercenary exploitation of refugees as cheap, disposable, highly transportable migrant labour. Similar policies – widely admired elsewhere - when millions were forcibly moved to remote locations, were undertaken in the USSR up until 1991.

WWI produced large-scale displacement in the wake of which Russian and Armenian refugees could not be repatriated while British, American and French officials all agreed they could not be absorbed in the West. With the Middle East in turmoil following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, France chose to move 100,000 Armenians as physical markers of French territorial claims in Calicia, part of Syria that was contested by Turkey. Americans donated funds to build factories whilst also offering loans to refugees to open businesses. The project came to a disastrous end when Turkish nationalists laid claim to Calicia, slaughtering around half of the 20,000 Armenian residents in Marash city.

In 1921 the newly formed International Labour Organisation (ILO) agreed to exempt colonial territories from international labour standards if they reabsorbed refugees into the global workforce.

Caused by war, the population exchange between Greece and Turkey in 1923 then resulted in Anatolian Greek refugee resettlement in Macedonia being funded by floating public funds – refugees now held out the possibility of turning a profit for investors in countries where they were never going to be allowed to reside.

It was now open season at looking to send refugees to remote, often agricultural, locations that  needed low waged labour. Robson examines from Roosevelt’s secret plans to use German Jewish refugees as labourers in Latin America until contemporary European efforts to deploy Syrians as low-wage workers in remote regions of Jordan.

Most of these attempts have proved economically unsuccessful. Nevertheless, similar attempts continue, especially across the Middle East and in Saudi Arabia where migrant labour with hardly any rights is widely employed.

Meanwhile, there have been fresh developments in containing workers.

Massive, almost-permanent refugee camps have been established by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR)

Aid is offered to refugees in return for them not seeking asylum in Europe or the US. And when the UNHCR, which is even providing support to border guards across parts of Europe, does look to relocate refugees it is generally forcibly back to the unsafe places people have escaped from.