NSW: Students to protest against amalgamations at M1 rally

AAP General News (Australia)
04-10-2001
NSW: Students to protest against amalgamations at M1 rally

By Karen Tso

SYDNEY, April 10 AAP - Students as young as 14 say they will boycott classes and join
a planned blockade of the Australian Stock Exchange to protest against the amalgamation
of inner Sydney schools.

The militant anti-globalisation protest group M1 is planning to march through the Sydney
CBD and converge on the Stock Exchange on May 1.

Student representatives from Hunters Hill High and Newtown High Schools today said
they were calling on all students to join the protest and express their opposition to
the NSW government's planned "superschools".

They rejected suggestions they were being used as a rent-a-crowd for M1.

"The whole of NSW must stand up and join the M1 protest, in order to stop the corporate
takeover of public schools," said Stephen Nemeth, a Year 12 student from Hunters Hill
High School.

Hunters Hill is one of the schools earmarked for closure after enrolments fell below 500.

Pamphlets will be distributed to encourage students and teachers to boycott class and
march down George Street with the M1 group.

"The option's there and if people feel strongly about it they may take a day off," Stephen said.

Hundreds of school students were expected to rally behind M1 on the issue of education,
said 14-year old Lauren Carroll-Harris from Newtown High.

She said school closures based on efficiency were directly linked to global capitalism,
which is what M1 was set up to oppose.

"Corporatisation of education is obviously really on the front of what the government
is planning for us," Lauren said.

"We can see that from these high school closures that it is not just a one-off, its
part of the bigger picture, its part of the inherent social economic structures of capitalism."

"Just because we're young doesn't mean we are too young to protest."

A protest in Melbourne by the M1 group, then under the banner of S11, ended in violence
when demonstrators clashed with police outside a meeting of the World Economic Forum last
year.

AAP tso/jjs/gmw/br i

KEYWORD: M1 SCHOOLS

2001 AAP Information Services Pty Limited (AAP) or its Licensors.