Workers' Liberty

In France, and especially in the Parisian region, students and teachers are continuing a huge strike against the Sarkozy government’s planned attacks on education.

On Our Work in the Lycées – from the JCR's 2008 Congress Second Discussion Bulletin

Forty activists attended Education Not for Sale’ s “Education for Freedom” dayschool at the University of East London on Sunday 21 October.

by Colin Waugh

674,700 Work-based learning and community education places have been lost through government funding changes in 2005-06.

A thousand lecturers and students gathered at parliament at the end of February to lobby MPs over plans to restrict access to free English language courses.

In October last year Bill Rammell, minister for education and lifelong learning, announced massive cuts in the funding of 'English as a Second or Other Language Courses'. On the 15th January, the University and Colleges Union held a public meeting in London of a mounting coalition of trade unionists, ESOL teachers and migrant and refugee organisations to 'launch' the 'fight back'.

This is a longer version of a leaflet given out at the UCU left conference in London on June 24th 2006.

Read all about it here.

Read about it here.

Education not for sale!

Unfortunately, the strike was postponed due to legal threats from college management. Read the details here.

Read about the original strike plans here.

By Ruth Cashman

Anyone who's watched TV or walked past a phonebox recently will be acquainted with the series of adverts produced by the Government to advertise the national launch of Further Education Maintenance Allowances for 16-18 year olds this September. In these works of modernist genius, a private detective-type, badly disguised as a fire hydrant, dinner trolley, etc, leaps out to give unsuspecting 15-year-olds the skinny on the new allowance.

Members of the National Association of Teachers in Further and Higher Education (NATFHE) staged a 24-hour strike on Thursday 26 February in seven Further Education Colleges. The strike had been triggered by the failure of management in those colleges to implement a nationally agreed pay deal.

By Uduak Udofa, Westminster Kingsway Student Union Executive

The Battersea site of Westminster Kingsway College in south London has just been threatened with closure. The college wants to sell the Battersea Park Road building and is also considering totally withdrawing from the area as a provider.

By Chris Allen

NATFHE lecturers at Leicester College are in their fourth week of strike action in response to management trying to by-pass the union and get lecturers to sign up to new contracts which increase their workload and cut holidays.

The college has used local media to pretend that the strike is ineffectual. A visit to the college tells a different story. The Abbey Park campus looks like a ghost town. Management have infuriated students by insisting they come into college when many lectures are simply not happening.

By a NATFHE member

NATFHE members at Leicester College, which has 42,000 students, were due to begin an all-out, indefinite strike on 2 February over management attempts to browbeat them into giving up four days of their annual holidays in return for a one-off payment of £1,800.

Between 5,000 and 10,000 students gathered in London on 20th February 2002 for the UK National Union of Students' national demonstration for reform of education funding.

On June 8, the Labour Government pushed through its plans to scrap student grants and bring in fees. 34 Labour MPs voted against the Government, in support of an amendment from Dennis Canavan MP to save the grant.

In London, on Wednesday 26 November, thousands of students will march, alongside workers and other campaigners, against Labour’s plans to scrap student grants and introduce tuition fees in higher education.