Goerge Binette writes On 18 December - one day before the autumn school term closed - a member of an interim executive board, which effectively runs St Paul’s Way Community School in Tower Hamlets, dismissed Adrian Swain, a highly competent teacher with nearly 35 years experience of working in ‘tough’ London secondary schools. Swain’s apparent crime? He continued to wear trainers at work in defiance of a dress code arbitrarily imposed by the interim head teacher, Lorraine Page, who herself left St Paul’s Way on 19 December. Adrian Swain was also one of the school’s NUT representatives, where he had worked since the early 1990s, teaching maths, PE and science. Recently, Swain had been working with ‘special needs’ pupils including profoundly deaf young people. As an NUT activist he was central to a walkout by staff and pupils at the start of the US and British-led assault on Iraq in March 2003, while last summer he persuaded NUT members to support picket lines mounted by UNISON members fighting a cut in their real pay. Adrian has not been the only staff member to incur management’s wrath in recent months. In fact, seven other employees, both UNISON and NUT members, have faced serious disciplinary action since summer 2008, pointing towards a co-ordinated attempt to scapegoat staff for the alleged failings of a school where more than 80% of pupils are of Bangladeshi origin and a majority are eligible for free school meals.
Perhaps it was the lack of domestic news during the Christmas/New Year period, but whatever the reason Adrian’s sacking generated a flurry of both regional and national media interest with coverage ranging from the ‘News of the World’ to ‘The Guardian’ alongside interviews on BBC Radio 4 and two London regional newscasts.
Members of Adrian’s NUT school group voted 32-nil on 10 December for a strike ballot – not just for a day’s protest, but for discontinuous action. Unfortunately, they are still waiting for a ballot and the leadership of the East London Teachers Association, a supposed bastion of the left in the NUT, has thus far failed to give Adrian meaningful support. The situation contrasts unfavourably with a broadly similar case in neighbouring Hackney where management at Haggerston School for Girls dropped measures against a teacher for wearing an eyebrow stud in response to the threat of action by the school group, fully backed by her local association.
- Please send messages protesting Adrian’s sacking to the new headteacher:
Mr Grahame Price
C/o St Paul’s Way Community SchoolShelmerdine CloseLondon E3 4AN.