CS executive statement on the teacher’s strike called for tomorrow, Thursday 24th April. The strike is being called by the National Union of Teachers (NUT) and the University and College Union (UCU) in protest at low pay.

Communist Students calls on all students to support the striking teachers, lecturers and civil servants. Further Education lecturers are on strike because they face some of the worst pay in education earning 15% less that teachers. The situation has been made worse by the below inflation pay offer of 2.45% which in reality is a pay cut as inflation stands at 3.8%(1) last month and only looks set to rise as food and energy prices look to continue rising. The University and College Union (UCU) along with other FE unions, submitted a joint pay claim for a 6% increase or £1500, whichever is the greater, for 2008-9 (2). These demands should be met immediately or education workers with support of the students should take more industrial action. Only by keeping up the pressure and the threat of industrial actions will the government be dragged into accepting the demands.

Low pay and a poor pay offer has been the last straw of many education workers who are faced with increasing privatisation, bigger workloads, redundancies and precarious futures through the massive introduction of temporary contracts. This is having a massive effect on the quality of teaching as courses which are no longer profitable are being axed.

The marketisation of the education system is one which students and education workers both have to fight. The struggle for a free education is a struggle for the withdrawal of the market out of education and for a better standard of teaching. This fight has to also be qualitatively more, it has to be about democracy. That is who controls and runs the education system. Should it be the rule of capital and the British state? Or as we believe it should be the students and the workers who control the education system. Education should not be about training up to earn the most money as possible, it should be about individual development in which ever way people wish, a university education should be open to all, never should money be a barrier. We call for a free education for all, a living grant of £ 300 a week and the immediate cancellation of all student debt.

1. http://www.jpmorgan.com/cm/BlobServer/Global_Economics_-_United_Kingdom.pdf?blobcol=urldata&blobtable=MungoBlobs&blobkey=id&blobwhere=1158483360399&blobheader=application%2Fpdf
2. http://www.ucu.org.uk/index.cfm?articleid=3215