We are pleased to announce the launch of UCU Left’s forum – Another Education is Possible. This forum will be used to generate discussion and develop initiatives in the fight to defend post-16 education and to provide practical steps for building an alternative vision of education.
The forum contains online articles from The UCU Left magazine – Another Education is Possible. These articles are open to comments and ideas.
The forum was launched following the UCU Left Conference – ‘Defending Post 16 Education in an era of Austerity’ – on Saturday 22nd September. 110 delegates attended the conference, which looked at different aspects of what is happening to post 16 Education. Jeremy Corbyn MP reported on the latest developments at London Metropolitan University and placed this struggle in a wider context within the fight against austerity. A Greek lecturer from Athens University described what was happening with the movement in Greece. A forum on ‘Does it matter who owns our Colleges and Universities?’ heard Andrew McGettigan, Jane Hardy and Ken Spours explaining the challenges that higher and further education face and put forward alternatives to the pro market and privatisation agenda of the Tory led coalition.
John McDonnell MP called upon UCU members to continue to develop progressive alternatives to austerity for the working class movement as a whole. In the ‘Privatisation, pay and pensions; building a new alliance’ session, speakers from the NUT, PCS and the UCU NECs put forward strategies on how the movement can learn from last year’s battle over pensions and how it could go forward by building the October 20th demonstration and campaigning within that for further strike action over pay, pensions and jobs.
The conference held 8 workshops ranging from ‘Defending Multiculturalism in Education’, ‘Casualisation; stopping the abuse’ to ‘Democratising teaching and learning’ and ‘Plebiscite and debate; how do we make UCU democratic?’. The discussion at these workshops resulted in a number of initiatives including UCU left hosting a conference on multiculturalism and a conference on the impending crises facing the HE sector.
Click on the links to the workshops to read the notes from the discussions and add your own comments and ideas. This allows the workshops to be taken to a wider audience for further discussion and will also be used to develop the initiatives that came out of the conference.
John McDonnell and Ken Spours, who spoke at the conference, have written messages of support for the ideas in this forum and for UCULeft.
UCU Left welcomes all contributions and encourages debate on all aspects of the defence of post 16 education and building an alternative vision for education.
The role of the UCU Left in the effort to shut down the UK lecturers strike: http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/03/17/lecs-m17.html
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Hallo, I assume the best thing is to only put a number one vote for Jo McNeill and not put a no. 2 vote? I have been looking for UCU Left advice. I certainly don’t like the idea of the other candidate called Jo (it’s a shame there are 2 candidates called Jo) of what looks like unelected ‘task groups’ at the centre of campaigning! So it’s just the one vote for Jo McNeill, right?