Further Education

Issues in further and adult education

Round one to workers and students at Newcastle College

At the beginning of the year Newcastle College announced plans to cut 171 frontline jobs, 17% of the workforce. Students found this unacceptable as this would ultimately affect their education so set up SOS (Save Our Staff) to support lecturers. We began with a banner drop at one of the colleges open evenings to raise the profile. After this management became aware of us and tried various scare tactics to prevent us from taking any other actions. Our next planned campaign was to organise a student walk out but because most staff were scared into silence many students weren’t aware of the...

Taking action for language teaching

On Thursday 24 March the campaign Action for ESOL called a day of action against the cuts in funding for ESOL (English for speakers of other languages) courses. Government plans will see full fee remission restricted to students claiming “active benefits”. All students claiming “inactive” benefits, such as income support, disability allowance and housing benefit will have to pay up to £1200 a year for their English classes. Students on low incomes, spouses of low-wage workers or benefit claimants and refugees and asylum seekers will also be obliged to pay. Around 500 people attended a teach-in...

Protests push Tories back on EMA

Immediately after the TUC anti-cuts demonstration, Tory education secretary Michael Gove announced a concession on the government’s abolition of Education Maintenance Allowances for sixth form students. The so-called replacement for EMAs was planned to amount to only about 10 percent of the £560 million the old scheme cost. Now Gove has produced funding of £180 million. He also announced that those who began their courses in 2009-10 will receive EMA at full value for their second year, and a more generous “phase out” deal than before for those who began their courses last autumn. All this is...

24 March: strike across post-16 education

University and College Union members in both higher and further will be on strike over the next ten days over pensions, pay and jobs. University strikes over pensions will take place in Scotland on 17 March, Wales on 18 March, Northern Ireland on 21 March and England on 22 March. Then on 24 March university lecturers across the UK will strike over pensions, jobs and pay, alongside members in further education striking over pay. The 24th is also the national day of action in defence of ESOL provision. Bringing in virtually the whole of UCU, this is the most significant industrial action yet...

These student protests will grow with or without Aaron Porter's support

An average day in the occupation at Newcastle University begins early. First on the agenda of each general meeting are a selection of messages of solidarity. We continue to be inundated with messages from local activists, teachers, parents, school students and academics, offering practical support and sharing advice from previous actions. It was in such a meeting that we heard news of NUS president Aaron Porter's statement of support for the anti-cuts occupations that are ongoing in many of the country's universities and look likely to grow. A ripple of polite applause crept across our lecture...

NUS president makes U-turn to support direct action, and occupations

NUS president Aaron Porter today did a spectacular U-turn apologising for lack of support for students taking part in the national day of action called by National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts on Wednesday. A the "spineless" lack of public support for university occupations around the country. Porter was speaking the occupation at University College London following criticisms of him from occupiers over Twitter. Porter said: "For too long the NUS has perhaps been too cautious and too spineless about being committed to supporting student activism. Perhaps I spent too long over the last few...

24 November: school students lead the way

School, college, and university students took to the streets on 24 November, in a show of protest to make it clear that students are not going to accept this government's attacks. The response to the call for the day of action by National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts has shocked politicians, police and student leaders even more than the size and anger of the National Demonstration on 10 November. Students have made sure that the Royal Wedding didn't force the cuts off the front pages! It is will be hard to find a school, college or workplace not talking about this action in the next days...

Apprentices - substitute labour at £2.50 an hour?

The coalition government announced its Skills Strategy on 18th November. It will pump £250 million into the Apprenticeship programme. But what will apprentices be paid, what will they do, and what training will they get? The £250 million is not new money, but has been shifted over from "Train to Gain", which focussed on developing NVQ programmes. The "strategy" contains few surprises, and differs little from what we would have had expected had Labour still been in power. Still, the increased availability of Apprenticeships is a good thing. With the cuts to higher education funding, many young...

Tony Benn: the time to organise resistance to this government of millionaires is now!

We reject these cuts as simply malicious ideological vandalism, hitting the most vulnerable the hardest. Join us in the fight It is time to organise a broad movement of active resistance to the Con-Dem government's budget intentions. They plan the most savage spending cuts since the 1930s, which will wreck the lives of millions by devastating our jobs, pay, pensions, NHS, education, transport, postal and other services. The government claims the cuts are unavoidable because the welfare state has been too generous. This is nonsense. Ordinary people are being forced to pay for the bankers'...

Further education: we need to challenge the union leaderships and link up with the community

An hourly paid ESOL teacher at Hackney College reflects on an ongoing fight to save jobs. Earlier this year 68 members of staff at Hackney Community College were threatened with redundancy. After two successful, solid strike days, negotiation and many voluntary redundancies there are now only a handful of people facing compulsory redundancy. But I am one of four hourly paid workers in English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) fighting redundancy. Many staff at the college will not realise that we are still struggling for our jobs because the management has been on a propaganda offensive...

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