Thursday, November 17, 2005
FE college teachers walk out posted by bat020
Some 26,000 teachers in 200 further education (FE) colleges across England went on strike yesterday over pay and much much more. Here's a guest post from Mark K-Punk on the background to this dispute:The Natfhe college lecturers' union took one-day strike action yesterday. The specific cause of the strike was pay, and particularly the 10% gap between school teachers' pay and that of lecturers. But this is really only symptomatic of an underlying issue – the systematic but surreptitious denigration of the entire FE sector by the Blair government.
Students in FE are much more likely to be working class than are those in sixth forms. Perhaps that provides some insight into why the amount the government spends on an average student in a sixth form college is significantly higher than that which it devotes to a student in FE. This is especially galling given the government's stated intention to improve the provision of vocational education, one of FE's key areas of responsibility.
Traditionally, FE colleges have offered students opportunities denied to them in schools and sixth form colleges, not only by giving students the chance to re-take examinations but, perhaps more importantly, by offering a different ethos to that provided by the school system. Students have in the past been encouraged to take responsibility for their learning and have
benefited from a less regimented environment than is place in schools.
That ethos has been under attack since the Tory government removed FE colleges from local authority control in the early 1990s. The inevitable result was the downgrading of lecturers' pay and conditions, as colleges made individual agreements about pay and hours with their own staff and collectivity across the profession was destroyed.
FE has declined even further under Blair. Blair's annexation of education as part of a government propaganda, his enthusiasm for privatisation and outsourcing and his obsession with statistics and targets have undermined all areas of education in Britain – but his 'reforms' have had a disproportionate impact on FE. Wave after wave of bureaucratic meddling has increased lecturers' workload and decreased professional autonomy, while funding deficits have meant that pay has dwindled.
Education secretary Ruth Kelly addressed the Association of Colleges (a conference of college bosses) yesterday. She told them she was committed to closing the funding gap between FE and schools. But few FE lecturers will find such promises
convincing.
It is clear that the government's real investment is in the quasi-privatised city academies. With the government planning to allow schools to cede from local authority control, it is more likely that teachers will be reduced to the level at which FE lecturers now languish than that FE lecturers will be awarded the in any case far from princely sums which school teachers currently receive.
Lecturers are demoralised. The mood is pessimistic. Most expect the teaching of A levels to be removed from the sector within three to five years. Few think that the FE sector will be here at all in a decade. In its place we can expect privatised and re-branded educational providers under the control of wealthy individuals and corporations and contributing to the widening gap between rich and poor.
More on this strike here, here and here.