THE earliest recollection I have of the development of my political consciousness is when I was a student. It was then that I recognised the injustice of exploitation of the many by some in positions of relative privilege. 

With the guidance of some of my teachers I determined to act against such injustice and contribute in some small way to ensure that everyone, regardless of their background, would be able to live a life full of dignity, contributing to society in accordance to their ability and being rewarded in accordance to their need. 

I became determined to contribute to the achievement of social justice and peace for all.

This is what led me to becoming a teacher unionist and eventually a leader of my union. Both roles became my pride and passion and that is largely due to the fact that I consider quality education for all and a fair system of industrial relations to be two key pillars in the achievement of a decent society.

I became driven by the fundamental belief in the transformative power of education and what it means to each individual child and the global village in which we live. That’s embodied in the idea of a free, secular and universally accessible school in every community which would set the standard for high quality education — after all, equal educational provision can only be achieved if such schools set that standard. 

Of course that means they would need to be appropriately resourced to deliver with qualified teachers in every classroom and a rigorous, rich and rewarding curriculum to provide every child with the opportunity to achieve his or her full potential.

Unfortunately, this ideal is under greater threat today than it has ever been.

The greatest threat to high-quality education for all is the continuing push for the commodification, marketisation and ultimately the privatisation of education.

The market now seems to dominate all aspects of life, with boundaries between public and private breaking down. Around the globe there is an accelerating use of market mechanisms to drive social policy. Schooling which once appeared to be one area that may have been immune from this is now under considerable threat.

The Global Education Reform Movement (Germ) is now largely controlled by the corporate world, with deep connections to conservative politicians. We are now seeing the growth in “edu-businesses” across the world that have enormous power and influence. 

We should all be deeply concerned at this agenda and the threat of privatisation.

We are already seeing the effects of this agenda with the break-up of traditional school systems, such as the growth in charter schools in the US and more recently in New Zealand, free schools in Sweden and academies in Britain. Worse still, we are witnessing the emergence and spread of for-profit schools.

Advocates of privatisation argue that applying the free-market principles of choice and competition to the running of schools will drive standards up across the system. The argument goes something like this: removing schools from state control and transferring public funds to private organisations to run them will see their results improve and compel state schools to work harder to keep up with them.

But this is demonstrably not true. Even the OECD warns against applying market mechanisms to the provision of schooling, arguing that it leads to a growing segregation of students which has a negative impact on educational outcomes.

We are at a pivotal time for the future of education. We must not let quality public education slip away as a top priority for governments. It is our job to keep pressing the core message that without properly resourced high-quality education for all, society itself will be fundamentally damaged. 

We must create a new narrative, articulating again why public education has such an important role in each of our societies and why it cannot be outsourced to the private sector. We must make it clear to our political leaders that the commercialisation and privatisation of education are not the answer.

It is truly alarming to hear people at the World Bank claiming that low-fee, for-profit education will help poor countries achieve their education for all targets. 

Are they really suggesting that charging fees will increase access and opportunity for all? Are they really proposing that the poor must choose between feeding their children, giving them medication or sending them to school?

Yet we can’t challenge this alone. The global political landscape requires us to engage in a new deeper strategic analysis of what needs to be done if we are to resist and, more importantly, reverse current trends. 

We are dealing with global players the size and reach of which we could not have predicted some years ago and the teacher union movement is in its sights. This is because we remain the last barrier between global capital and its desired unfettered access to the limitless and sustainable resource of children and their education.

In recognition of this reality we need to commit to a new style of unionism — social movement unionism. 

As a beginning, we need to get our our house in order by building teacher union unity, membership density and therefore strength. 

We also need to reach out and build alliances in a way we have never done so before, between parents and the broader community. There is no more natural alliance than the one that can and should exist between parents and teachers because after parents it is teachers who have the greatest interest in the well-being of children.

But of course we have to reach further and deeper than that. 

We need to forge closer alliances with the broader union movement, given that all workers are feeling the negative impact of global capital and its desire to redefine and reduce employment standards and conditions. 

And of course we need to build alliances with other social movements that share our broad objectives.

We require a new style of doing business. More of the same will not deliver us success. We have to make some hard decisions.

We can continue to organise campaigns to protest or we can build a movement to protest — and win.

n Angelo Gavrielatos is federal president of the Australian Education Union