Education will come under the spotlight at the ILP’s next Unbalanced Britain seminar on 4 March when writer and campaigner Melissa Benn will speak about the Labour Party’s response to the education reforms of the last 10 years.
Benn will outline how changes to the education system have helped to increase inequality and widen the gap between the privileged few and the majority. She will also look at Labour’s response over the last decade or so, and how it should now oppose the current government’s intention to bring back grammar schools into the state system.
Benn is currently chair of Comprehensive Future, a cross-party group campaigning for an end to selective education, is a vice president of the Socialist Education Association, and a founder member of the Local Schools Network.
Her latest book, The Truth About our Schools, written with Janet Downs, was published in 2015 and described by journalist Owen Jones as “a superb, crucial, blistering expose of all the myths about our education system that are all too often used to attack it”.
Julie Thorpe, schools programme manager at the Co-operative College, will speak about the growing movement towards co-operative schools as one response to the recent changes. The programme she heads is working towards establishing co-operative values in the mainstream education system across the UK.
‘Unbalanced Britain: Education, Inequality and Labour’s Response’ is a one-day free workshop to be held at The Circle in Sheffield on Saturday 4 March.
There will plenty of opportunity for audience contributions and group discussion.
More information about the event and details of how to book are available now via Eventbrite.
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Read more about the ILP’s series of Unbalanced Britain seminars here.
