UCU Left - Bradford College UCU - Fund Adult Education

The UCU Left is a national organisation of University and College Union activists. It is committed to ensuring that the new union has a democratic structure through which members can determine policy, and elected officers and professional officials can be held accountable. It seeks to defend educational equality, and to oppose the consequences of neo-liberal marketisation. It is opposed to all forms of racism, sexism, oppression and imperialism.

Support Bradford College UCU

By Howard Miles, Bradford College UCU & UCU NEC (Elect)

Angry adult education students outside Bolton Royd, the Manningham Lane campus of Bradford College

Bradford College’s website is overflowing with material about its first 175 years of providing education in the city, but perversely it seems to be celebrating by chopping at its own roots in the community. College management have just announced major job losses and course closures in response to cuts in LSC funding for adult education.

This comes on top of cuts in ESOL provision earlier this year. Mike Lowe, Director of the LSC in West Yorkshire, said that the LSC believed that ‘adults who can pay for courses should do so’. The LSC has withdrawn £1 million from Bradford’s College’s “learning for leisure” provision with the aim of channelling funding into basic skills and vocational courses for 16 – 18 year olds.

The college is the second largest in the country and has a proud tradition of providing a wide range of further education, higher education, and adult education courses at its main sites in Bradford and in dozens of community learning centres. Now it intends to cut 67 part-time posts and 14 full-time posts in “learning for leisure” areas, to shut down up to 124 courses, and withdraw courses from 22 community learning centres. As the local Bradford Telegraph and Argus said in an editorial, ‘Surely there is some muddled thinking here. If employers want colleges to provide courses purely for their benefit by supplying a workforce trained specifically for their needs, they should be willing to pay for it.'

Clearly for the government and the LSC, this is yet another indication that they are completely dominated by a neo-liberal agenda that makes business interests paramount and considers the needs of the community to be largely irrelevant. It is only the bottom line that counts. Yet we should not allow the college management off the hook by letting them pass the buck to the LSC. If necessary the College needs to cross-subsidise vulnerable courses in the wider interests of the community.

It is timely that Yorkshire and Humberside Region of UCU at its last meeting decided to organise a regional SAVE ESOL demonstration in Bradford, and activists are arranging planning meetings to build a demonstration under this slogan and more widely to Defend Adult Education. We’ll be gathering in the city centre on Saturday June 16th. This will also be a regional launch pad for the National Save ESOL conference on 29th June and the National Save ESOL and Adult Education Demonstration on 30th June in London.

We know that putting pressure on the LSC and government can deliver concessions, and we know that to maximise such pressure we must involve students and community organisations in building the demonstrations and conferences.

Press Reports

Telegraph & Argus (16/5) - 'College Slammed over Bad Management'

National UCU (15/5) - '... Bradford College to Slash Adult Learning'

Yorkshire Post (15/5) - 'College Warns Staff Face Job Cuts'

Telegraph & Argus (15/5) - 'A Bitter Blow to Learning (Editorial)'

Telegraph & Argus (15/5) - 'Jobs and Courses Slashed at College'