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Year 2002 No. 206, November 18, 2002 ARCHIVE HOME SEARCH SUBSCRIBE

It is the Government which has Responsibility to Invest in Education

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It is the Government which has Responsibility to Invest in Education
Top-up Fees Would Hit Poorer Students, Cambridge Warns
Lecturers Strike in London

Keele Professor Criticises Bain Report

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It is the Government which has Responsibility to Invest in Education

Students will have to pay more towards the cost of their degrees to end the crisis in universities, the higher education minister, Margaret Hodge, said on Thursday at a conference in London. She said that students and their parents have a responsibility to contribute towards the cost of doing a degree.

Margaret Hodge cited a recent report by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) that she said showed that graduates in Britain got a return on investment in their degree equivalent to a savings rate of 17 per cent.

Quite apart from the fact that the report shows also that undergraduates in Britain contribute almost double the OECD average towards the costs of a university education, it is very telling that the minister chooses to emphasise higher education as a business deal. The logic is that higher education is undertaken to enrich the student. The minister does not even consider the funding of education as an investment in the future of society, nor that higher education should be recognised as a right that young people may avail themselves of.

Margaret Hodge was making her remarks as an Early Day Motion against top-up fees gathered more signatures in the wake of the Queen’s Speech. Meanwhile, former education minister Stephen Byers called for a new cap on tuition fees of £3,000 (currently £1,100) and the restoration of maintenance grants of £2,000 for poorer students.

Not only are the government’s plans set to create a two-tier system of education, where the "elite" universities demand that students pay substantially extra fees for self-betterment. They are also an act of irresponsibility of the government, which has the duty to invest in education if it were to be considered the representative of society. While ensuring that the right to education is guaranteed, the government can also ensure that the monopolies which benefit from the expertise of educated students should also foot the bill, rather than utilise colleges and universities as their private training grounds.

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Top-up Fees Would Hit Poorer Students, Cambridge Warns

Cambridge University on Thursday voiced fears that any introduction of "top-up" fees by the government could deter poorer students from entering higher education.

Its ruling council agreed a statement drafted by Sir Alec Broers, the vice-chancellor, and Paul Lewis, president of the student union, which said: "It is for the government to show that access would not be adversely affected if it decided that fee arrangements were to be changed." The university said that it has no plans to introduce top-up fees. The council believes that the present system of higher education funding is not sustainable.

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Lecturers Strike in London

Universities in London were hit by an almost total shutdown on Thursday as lecturers held a one-day strike over their demand for an across-the-board £4,000 allowance for staff in the capital.

The National Association of Teachers in Further and Higher Education (NATFHE), and the Association of University Teachers (AUT), were joined by Unison and amicus support staff. Their protest was over the 10-year freeze in the London weighting of £2,134 for staff at London University, and subsidies of between £603 and £2,355 in the "new universities", the former polytechnics. The University of London has offered no automatic increase while vice-chancellors at the new universities have offered a £90 rise. The unions said 120,000 students were affected by the strike.

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Keele Professor Criticises Bain Report

The following are the comments on the Bain Report by Roger Seifert, Professor in Human Resource Management, Keele University, as published by the Fire Brigades Union.

Overall the Bain report should be seen as essentially one ordered by government in response to the strike threat. In other words it could never be independent because it is unheard of in industrial relations modern history for such a review to be undertaken with the threat of a dispute when one party refuses to participate. Therefore Bain's position is disingenuous: it is not about the future of the Service in terms of modernisation but about stopping the strike; and as a result his report and its timing have tied the hands of the employers.

In particular the tone of the report uses the language of government reform programmes across the public services rather than being constructive and focusing on the special issues of the fire service. For example the term "modern" itself is used uncritically – do we all agree what it means? do we all agree there is only one way to modernise? do we all agree that there is one best practice? do we all agree with the level and method of funding etc? or does modernise under Blairism mean privatise or at least manage the service as if it were a private service with customers, rather than what it is – a service with users and potential users?

Paragraph 5 with "blaming" and para 13 with lists of "will" and "must" indicate a paper well beyond the competence of the author.

There is muddled thinking on overtime: firstly the refusal to work overtime is not a restrictive practice as Bain believes but a logical outcome of the original formula – any extra earnings added to overall earnings might reduce next year's basic pay rise. Second Bain wants more family friendly careers etc (para 18) but also wants overtime (para 24, bottom of page 11) which has been identified as a major anti-family activity. Also one calculated to reduce the recruitment of women in particular!

There are some odd comments on the government's public sector pay policy. Para 24 bottom of page 11 again talks of "compromising pay comparability" (totally unclear what this means) and later on para 33 we are told that more pay can only come with "efficiency savings". We know from elsewhere that government has paid more to other groups in the public sector without such links, and also it is unclear what an efficiency saving is unless he means a saving by employing people at lower costs.

On pay – much has been made of the going rate in the public sector being what it is and higher than in the private sector. Private sector earnings on average have risen faster than public sector earnings for the last ten years and more and are currently again higher. So the few months when this was not happening was a blip caused by fall out from millennium bonus payments being one off boost to private earnings (remember the figures are year on year percentage increase). More importantly these averages disguise a vast range of increases across sectors and occupations etc

The section on negotiating strands is naive and mischievous – a pathetic attempt along with the timetable etc to look as if Professor Bain is in charge.

The final sentences sums up the extent to which the Review is aping government opinion and is clearly part of the negotiating process rather than independent from it.

I am sure the several technical errors will be picked – such as suggesting that extra pay for a specialist skill such as driving should only be paid in London (therefore it is a weighting for area not a skill reward etc).

I refer you to "The Hunting of the Snark" by Lewis Carol. The search for the snark is lead by a Bellman who rings his bell when wanting to be heard. He keeps repeating himself as he says "what I tell you three times is true" – in other words just because Bain says he is independent does not make him so, and just because he says we all want modernisation does not make it so.

The Bain Report can be found at http://www.fbu.org.uk/news/n111102fullbain.htm

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