Further Education

Issues in further and adult education

Hackney College workers fight back

On Monday 21 June students and staff at Hackney Community College joined others around the country in a protest against public sector cuts. University Colleges Union (UCU) and Unison had asked members to organise lunchtime protests. 70 colleges and universities according to the union took part in the protest against £1.2 billion cuts in University funding and the loss of up to 7,000 jobs in further education. At Hackney there was banner making, giant games, budget themed twister, tug of war, food and discussion from 12 pm to 1pm in the college grounds. In February over £1million in cuts were...

Adult education under threat in Lewisham

Community Education Lewisham has been the target of annual cuts under a restructure which has been affecting learners and staff for at least five or six years. Now there has been an announcement of cuts to the ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) courses of around 30% for the 2010/11 academic year. CEL have recently announced a “proposal” to close all crèches run by CEL and set their own limit on the “consultation” period of three weeks. But it is obvious that management have long had this plan in the pipeline and are now repeating the mantra of enforced cuts due to forces outside...

London lecturers fight job cuts

Lecturers at 11 London colleges and four universities struck against job cuts on 5 May; well-attended picket lines across the city fed into a thousand-strong rally in central London. Now, more and more colleges will be sucked into the dispute: another 13 have announced redundancies. The problem is that different colleges are at very different stages of struggle: none of those 13 have yet moved to a ballot, while at others momentum is already difficult to maintain. On 18 May only four colleges — College of North East London, Tower Hamlets, Lambeth and Hackney — will strike. At some other...

Support the college strikes

Teaching staff at nearly a dozen Further Education colleges in London, as well as University College London and Westminster University, will take strike action on 5 May in the first coordinated wave of strike action in response to the government’s education cuts. Because cuts are being delivered locally, the UCU is prevented from taking national action on the issue (which would fall foul of the anti-union laws). However, the May strikes show that coordinating workplace-by-workplace action so workers strike on the same day, and with the maximum impact, is clearly possible. Socialists and other...

Fight the cuts in Further Education

Further Education (FE) colleges in England are facing a cut to adult education budgets of over £191 million for the year 2010-2011. That’s an average 16% budget cut per college, but in some institutions the figure is as high as 25%. The employers have set the number of jobs under threat nationally at 7,000. The FE sector, like the HE sector, is moving toward a business-focused, market-driven funding model that serves the needs of local employers at the expense of less vocational courses and adult learning. Against these cuts, UCU lecturers’ union members in 11 colleges in London will be...

College cuts: "we should focus on what unites us"

My college is facing £2.5 million worth of cuts, which would critically damage our capacity to provide decent education for our community. Now the UCU (University and College Union) branch has voted unanimously to ballot for strike action in the event of compulsory redundancies. I’m Branch Secretary of the UCU at our college where the local MP is David Lammy, Minister for Higher Education. He embodies the complete failure of the Labour Party to represent ordinary people, in education and across public services, and so as part of our campaign I’m standing against him in the General Election on...

Tower Hamlets strikers win

Strikers at Tower Hamlets College returned to work on Friday 25 September, after winning major concessions from the college. According to Tower Hamlets UCU branch secretary Richard McEwan, "There were no compulsory redundancies. We saved the mentorship scheme that has helped over 700 young people to grow in confidence and study at university. We saved over 300 Esol places, helping people to learn English and join the community. We stopped all the compulsory redundancies in admin, support and youth work. We stopped cuts to A level hours. We doubled the VR offer and we saved learning mentors who...

Tower Hamlets College: Still solid in week 5

As teachers at Tower Hamlets College enter their fifth week of indefinite strike against cuts, their action remains strong. A mass meeting on Wednesday 16 September (day 16) saw the biggest turnout of the dispute: 166 members vote to continue the strike action, with 14 abstentions and no members voting against. Management have been forced to concede some key concessions, but the offer was flatly rejected. Negotiations with the principal continue and ACAS are getting involved. A fighting spirit remains amongst those on strike, with picket lines lively and well-attended and a whole host of...

Tower Hamlets College: Teachers are not city bankers!

These cuts fall in line with a tide of xenophobic government reforms around ESOL provision; part of the big fuzzy picture of “integration” that they like to contradict. Here’s a struggle to be had out in the midst of tightening immigration controls, rising popularity of the extreme racist-right and let’s not forgot the big “excuse”, this bastard recession. But the compulsory redundancies at Tower Hamlets College were not directly implemented by local government, but they were carried out by the college principal in the interest of budget and “performance”. At the very end of term all teachers...

English courses for migrants cut 50%. Tower Hamlets College teachers fight back with indefinite strike

Management at Tower Hamlets College, in East London, have insisted that they must show a profit at all costs by the end of the financial year. So thirteen workers (equivalent to 6.75 full-time teaching posts) have been threatened with redundancy. These posts add up to a saving of just £300,000 for the college, which has £6,000,000 in reserves. Many staff have been pushed into taking voluntary redundancy — equivalent to 20 full-time teaching posts. The worst hit courses will be those most used by local people and school leavers: Hair and Beauty, IT, and most of all, ESOL (English for Speakers...

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