United for education: campaign against FE funding cuts

ATL is one of seven unions joining forces to oppose funding cuts in the FE sector.

ATL, GMB, the Education Institute of Scotland (EIS), NUS, UCU, Unite and Unison are calling on government to end a wave of cutbacks:

• over £1 billion cut from higher education budgets over the next three years

• thousands of jobs already gone, and thousands more at risk

• for the first time in decades, a shrinking education and rising barriers to access

• current and future generations at risk of being locked out of the education system.

A website with news about the campaign has been created at http://unitedforeducation.org.uk. Campaign materials, including a 'day of action' poster and leaflet, and national and local petitions can be downloaded from the website's resources page. There is also petition you can sign.

David Willetts, minister of state for universities and science, has written to ATL general secretary Mary Bousted about the campaign.

ATL has made its own A3 poster, ATL fighting the cuts. Additional posters will be available soon.

A campaigning toolkit for reps, and letters to warn principals and ATL members about the cuts, can be downloaded from the column on the right of this page.

Ask your MP to sign up

The United for education joint union coalition is also backing an Early Day Motion put forward by MPs calling on the government to recognise the importance of adult, further and higher education as an engine of economic recovery and social mobility.

MPs signed up so far include: Jon Trickett, Lilian Greenwood, John Leech, Greg Mulholland, Jon Cruddas, Lisa Nandy, Alex Cunningham, John Cryer, Luciana Berger, David Anderson, Mark Durkan, Caroline Lucas, Katy Clark, Chris Evans, Yvonne Fovargue, Ian Mearns, Jim Sheridan, Jonny Reynolds, Paul Farrelly, Stephen Hepburn, Grahame Morris and Wayne David.

To see the full wording of the early day motion and see if your MP has signed up, see http://edmi.parliament.uk/EDMi/EDMDetails.aspx?EDMID=41140&SESSION=905.

If your MP hasn't signed and you would like to contact them to ask them to sign up, see www.writetothem.com.

Jobs under threat

Figures compiled by ATL from colleges around the country on the 15 May showed that a total of

1080 redundancies

are likely to take place in the FE sector alone - and this figure is only going to get worse.

Why campaign?

As colleges face financial pressures to reduce costs, we need to remind ourselves that just as colleges have varied their terms and conditions of staff, so their financial circumstances vary.

One in eight FE colleges will receive more than 10% funding increase for 2010/11. And a current analysis of efficiencies in the sector by Tribal shows that the efficiency savings the government is looking for (£200 million) can come from weeding out poorly managed resources.

Of course, these are no easy times and there are no easy solutions, but it shows that there are ways to absorb the cuts in some colleges – and with £57 million going into the sector since 1997 there should be some room for absorption. FE has been well funded, has had new professional regulations for staff, and is the cornerstone of economic recovery – so it's important to keep it on track by avoiding unneccessary cutbacks.

What is ATL doing?

ATL locally will be looking to examine each college's funding allocations closely and how they directly impact on teaching and learning. We would also like to see that each college is prioritising teaching and learning, and is looking for a stable and sustainable future.

ATL will bring a sense of realism to the negotiating table and would like to see open, clear and relevant financial figures before cuts are discussed.