SCHOOLS and colleges must cut sponsorship ties with arms companies worth millions of pounds every year, the National Education Union’s (NEU) conference moved today.

Delegates backed a motion calling on the union to affiliate with the Disarm Education campaign as well as develop resources to raise awareness of the Palestinian genocide in schools.

The campaign calls on schools to publicly commit to banning careers collaborations and partnerships with arms companies.

BAE invested £100 million in education skills and early careers in 2022 alone, conference was told.

Oxfordshire delegate Carmen Tracey-Ramos said: “The case for Disarm Education is quite simple: companies that produce technology used to hurt and kill people, that profit from war crimes and genocide, have no place in our schools.

“This is an issue for me, that these disgusting arms companies are in schools and colleges.”

Delegates also blasted the Metropolitan Police’s heavy-handed policing of the January 18 national pro-Palestine march in London, which saw Palestine Solidarity Campaign director Ben Jamal and Stop the War Coalition’s Chris Nineham charged with public order offences.

Nottingham delegate Louise Regan said that the force banned the planned protest at the BBC’s headquarters, adding: “The BBC has both failed to report and misrepresented the genocide that we have witnessed.

“The heavy-handed and violent policing on the day was shocking.”

Delegates heard that those called in for police interviews included “most shamefully” 87-year-old Holocaust survivor Stephen Kapos as well as MPs Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell.

She added: “Our society is better for the protests that have come before us.

“If they stop us protesting for Palestine they will stop us protesting for other issues.

“They wanted to intimidate us. We are not going anywhere.”

Warwickshire delegate Justine Valentine hit out at a Times piece that called NEU general secretary a “militant and anti-Israel,” adding: “The BBC and Western media should be held accountable for its blatant bias.”

The start of the debate was interrupted by a pro-Israel heckler as Oldham delegate Susan Piper told of “the apartheid infrastructure, the checkpoints, the illegal settlements” she saw on her first NEU delegation to Palestine in 2017.

NEU general secretary Daniel Kebede urged the government to “ensure international law is complied with, that the siege of Gaza is ended; that the Israeli hostages are released; and that attacks by Israeli settlers and armed forces in the West Bank are halted permanently.”