Responding to today’s autumn budget and its impact on post-16
education, UCU General Secretary Jo Grady said:
‘Investment in lifelong learning and in our English colleges is
desperately needed, as is funding to help pupils catch-up after
Covid and improve numeracy. But the elephant in the room remains
the lack of trained college staff to make the government’s plan
work. The pay of those working in further education has been cut
by 35% in real-terms since 2010 and 24,000 teaching staff have
left the sector in the last ten years. Reversing these trends
must now be a priority if the government’s levelling up agenda is
to mean anything in post-16 education.
‘Whilst the Chancellor kicks the issue of tuition fees into the
long grass, the fees model continues to fail students, saddling
them with debt and accelerating the marketisation of our higher
education system. Universities should primarily be sites of
learning, but the toxic reliance on tuition fee income means they
now resemble complex businesses, with an unhealthy focus on
revenue capture, a culture which was brutally exposed during the
pandemic when the need to secure fee and rental income was
prioritised over the health and wellbeing of students.
‘Rather than waste any more time tinkering around the edges of a
broken funding model or dictating to students what constitutes a
valuable degree, the government would be much wiser to explore
investing in a publicly funded higher education system.’
