The Obama administration’s budget proposal for 2011 contains sweeping changes to funding for primary and secondary education. New rules would radically alter the guidelines for the distribution of funding to schools with high concentrations of low-income students, punishing students and teachers in these schools for failure to meet “college- or career-readiness” goals.

Obama will ask Congress for $49.7 billion in discretionary spending for the 2011 fiscal year for the Department of Education (DOE), a modest $3.5 billion or 7.5 percent increase over 2010. To put this into perspective, Obama’s request for spending in 2011 for the Department of Defense is $708.2 billion.

Opposition among parents, teachers and school employees is mounting as school districts across the US state of Michigan prepare to close schools, lay off teachers and privatize services in response to the huge funding cuts imposed by Democratic Governor Jennifer Granholm and the state legislature.

The situation facing public education in the state is catastrophic. Because of an expected $400 million shortfall in the school aid fund in fiscal year 2010-2011, the state is preparing to chop at least another $268 in per-pupil funding to school districts. This is in addition to a $165-per-pupil cut in the previous state budget. Districts are also being forced to contribute more to the state employee retirement fund. Even more drastic cuts are expected next year, after money from the federal stimulus runs out.

Over 200,000 young people are to be denied a place at English universities in the next academic year due to huge funding cuts imposed by the Labour Party government.

Under conditions in which official unemployment among young people stands at nearly 1 million, demand for university places has increased substantially in the last year. Seven applications are expected for every one place at the 20 leading Russell Group universities. At least 200,000 and as many as 300,000 prospective students may be denied a place at universities this year as a result of the cuts.

Steve Smith, vice chancellor of Exeter University and a representative of Universities UK, said the numbers being denied a university place are set to escalate. “Last year about 160,000 students who applied didn’t end up going to university. This year, we already know that there are about another 75,000 applying for university,” he said.

The Rudd government’s launch of its My School web site on January 29, publicly ranking government and private schools across the country according to standardised tests, marks an enormous acceleration of the shift toward a market-based, fee-paying model of education.

The measure, opposed by virtually the entire teaching profession and many parents, and which the former Howard government proved unable to introduce, is now being carried out by a Labor government, with the enthusiastic backing of business and the media, and the assistance of the teachers’ unions.

Exactly as intended, My School’s data was immediately turned into media league tables of “winning” and “losing” schools. This process is designed to stigmatise those schools at the bottom and create an inevitable stampede of parents seeking to enrol their children at higher-scoring schools.

The World Socialist Web Site interviewed parents, students and teachers who attended Wednesday night’s Panel for Educational Policy vote at Brooklyn Tech High School on the closing of 19 public schools.

Evelyn Rosario teaches at PS 19 on Staten Island and has been a teacher for 11 years. She told the WSWS, “We are here to support our colleagues in Brooklyn, the Bronx, Queens and Manhattan fighting against the school closures. There are about 80 teachers who came on three buses from Staten Island. The 20 closures are not good for the students. To improve the quality of education, they are supposed to have smaller classrooms, but if they are closing down schools, how will that happen?

At 2:40 a.m. Wednesday morning, at the end of a crowded and angry nine-hour public meeting at Brooklyn Technical High School, New York City’s Panel for Educational Policy (PEP) voted 9-4 to close seven middle or elementary schools and 12 high schools.

Over 10,000 students will be affected by the closures. The vast majority of the students at these schools come from poor and working-class backgrounds.

The PEP is the governing body of the city’s Department of Education (DOE), which is controlled by the city’s billionaire mayor, Michael Bloomberg. The DOE has managed the largest American school system since 2002, when the city’s elected Board of Education was abolished by the state legislature, and control turned over to Bloomberg and his schools Chancellor, Joel Klein.

Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick signed into law January 18 a measure that will increase the cap on the number of charter schools allowed in the state and will double the number of charter schools allowed in the poorest performing districts. The law has its roots in an initiative begun in 2007, but its passage this month was hurried so that the state can qualify for a small amount of the Obama administration’s “Race to the Top” (RTTT) education funds.

Under Massachusetts law, charter schools are publicly funded but privately run. With an exception for certain special education students, the law stipulates that a charter school be provided as much public funding per student as the student’s home district would receive.

This article is being distributed at today’s national lobby of parliament to defend education and jobs, organised by the University College Union.

Following spending reductions in December totalling £398 million for 2010-11, it is estimated that total education cuts over the next three years in Britain will be around £900 million. According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, the cuts may reach £2.5 billion.

The following article is being circulated as part of an ongoing campaign by the Socialist Equality Party to oppose the Abbeydale Grange School closure.

The Liberal Democrat-led Sheffield Council voted unanimously to close Abbeydale Grange School on December 9. The decision was met with anger and dismay by many staff, students and parents who have campaigned tirelessly to save the school since the proposal for closure was officially announced in July.

The school will close its doors to new pupils by September 2010. A skeleton staff will then remain to enable the Year 11 students to complete their studies by the end of the 2011 school year. At this time, the entire school will then shut. The proposed closure is a blow to all those directly concerned with the future of the school and who oppose the never ending assault on public education.

Join the International Students for Social Equality!

The following statement is being distributed by the International Students for Social Equality in the US as schools open for the new semester.

The state of world affairs as mankind enters the second decade of the 21st Century shatters any hope that the new millennium would put an end to the wars, violence, and poverty of the 20th Century.

Despite the integration of world economy and great advances in technology and communications, billions live in hunger and humanity is beset by unending wars. The decade began with an earthquake in Haiti, the Western Hemisphere’s poorest country, whose death toll shows the horrible effects of social inequality.

University of California, Berkeley (UCB) students Angela Miller and Zach Bowin have been suspended from school, and Miller threatened with eviction from student housing, for participating in a protest that occurred outside of UCB Chancellor Robert Birgeneau’s campus home on Friday, December 11, 2009. (See: “Police crack down on California student protests: California governor denounces ‘terrorism’”)

The catastrophe that is engulfing the people of Haiti is more than a natural disaster; it is an international and historic crime. The party chiefly responsible for the death and suffering in Haiti is the United States.

The pervasive poverty, the lack of infrastructure, the corrupt, impotent, and anti-democratic political system—all of which have immensely compounded the devastation wrought by the earthquake—are all the products of more than a century of US imperialist domination of the island nation.

Community colleges in Michigan are witnessing record enrollment, a consequence of the state’s unemployment crisis as workers attempt to gain education in the hope of finding new jobs. Courses have filled in record time, and the schools, which are oriented to working class students, have in many cases been forced to stop enrollment.

Similar conditions are confronting community colleges across the US. The American Association of Community Colleges (AACC) December 2009 Policy Brief reported a 24.1 percent increase in full-time enrollment at US community colleges for the period between fall 2007 and 2009.

In citywide public hearings sponsored by the New York City’s Department of Education (DOE), parents, teachers and students voiced their anger and opposition to the plans of the DOE to close 20 schools. Dozens of demonstration have taken place throughout the city to protest the DOE’s move.

With virtually no advance notice, the DOE released statements at the beginning of last month notifying each school of the decision to close it down. While no overall rationale or plan for the closings has been released, the schools are being phased out ostensibly because of low rates of four-year graduation and poor performance in other criteria, including the DOE’s annual school performance report cards, which are in part based on student scores on standardized tests.

Some of the 20 schools have shown marked improvement even by the DOE’s limited and artificial criteria, while others that performed more poorly have not been slated for closure.

The Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) has announced significant cuts in the funding of science in the UK. The STFC funds science projects, including the allocation of university research grants.

Space missions and projects across astronomy, nuclear and particle physics will all face the brunt of a cut of £115 million. The inroads into physics and astronomy research are particularly wide-ranging.

Space projects are to be slashed by £42 million and astronomy projects by £39 million. A cut of £32 million is being made to particle physics projects, and nuclear physics projects will face a cut of £12 million. The STFC plans to implement a further £11 million in internal cost-cutting.

Lord Peter Mandelson, the secretary of state for Business, Innovation & Skills announced massive cuts in university funding just before the new year.

In a letter to the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE), cuts totalling £398 million for 2010-11 were outlined. The figure exceeds by £135 million the £180 million cuts and £83 million in “efficiency savings” announced in the 2009 budget. This was to cover “additional pressures, in particular the higher than expected costs of student support during the economic downturn,” said Mandelson. An £84 million cut has been made in the capital funds allotted to universities for improvements in buildings and infrastructure. Overall some £50 million is being slashed from teaching budgets during the next year. The cuts total 6.6 percent of the Higher Education budget.