Five things the student unions didn’t protest against in the last 13 years…

Pettros

Luckily all of these miss the point totally.
Tuition fees have gone up because of the actions of the previous generation. They are completely entitled to protest at this. I dont see what you dont get? Your article comes across as so pompous. Try a little empathy before your next coalition fed rubbish. I dont know why people listen to you....you write for the News of the World!!

Dimoto

Hmmm, interesting.
Shame the assorted show-offs, would-be student "leaders", Trot/Labour/Anarchist stooges and dimwits out on our streets today, probably don't understand complicated stuff like graphs.

GDT

Hear, Hear.

lisa ansell

You misunderstand the protests today. THose students were not pro-labour. This was not a party political protest- Nick Clegg's broken pledge is almost irrelevant.

Labour contributed to todays protest, make no mistake. THese students were barely out of childhood, when Labour ignored 2 million people marching to prevent a war which hadn;t been declared yet.

They have grown up in a society where unions have been strangled, and their futures have been sold off to cross party consensus.

The Lib Dems broken promise is not the problem- the Lib Dems, for several years appeared to be a third choice. A party not caught in th Labour Conservative consensus.

You see this through a prism of party politics-they have never seen democracy that represents anyone but businesses. And they want it.

They have seen their education system marketised, and profitted from- they have seen the old generation borrow to pay for homes and holidays- and now have to bear the weight of that debt- and the thing that brought many of them to university was a welfare state that ensured that when our market economy failed- their parents weren't destitute.

You keep telling yourself it is party politics-and that there is a difference between Labour and the Conservatives.

The key here is not tuition fees- the question you need to ask, is what happens when entire swathes of the population, and an entire generation see their futures sold up the river- after being shown for their entire lifetimes that civil liberties mean nothing, peaceful protest means nothing- that noone represents them in parliament- and legal aid and the other mechanisms that protect us are sold off to pay for the failures of the people who 'have never had it so good'. Like most things in this magazine- this article misses the point completely.

You keep shouting about Labour- and Labour can keep shouting about how mean the tories are- and if you shout loudly enough, maybe people won't notice that there is little difference.

Oh wait...people have noticed.

Lisa Ansell

Oh, and it wasn't the student unions protesting. It was students.

tomdaylight

Pettros, I'd love to know why all these riots weren't happening in 1998 and 2004 when the Labour government brought in tuition fees and trebled them, respectively, breaking a manifesto commitment in both cases. Or indeed why the NUS didn't instruct its members to vote against Labour in 2005 when both the Conservatives and the Lib Dems were pledging to scrap tuition fees altogether!

Holly ......

It would appear that once the government had
dished out the money,others would 'skim' off
their bit,before the schools received the remaining dreggs.
How refreshing this will no longer be.
How refreshing that the people wishing to become teachers will have to 'up their game'
and how refreshing that people,AT LAST,are speaking the unspeakable,thinking the unthinkable and saying out loud,"rubbish teachers should be sacked"!
Tick....Tock....Tick...
Two decent government ministers two days running.
How refreshingly novel.
Tessa Jowell argued today that pupils from poorer backgrounds did not go to Cambridge,
because they thought it was full of toffs/
posh people.
What an infantile answer.
They would be very proud to have got into Cambridge and rightly so.They would have the knowledge/grades to get in and the self confidence of their ability.
They would be as EQUAL as any other student starting out their university life.
Tessa's reasoning is the most class ridden, pathetic thing I have heard from a Labour bod for a while,and there have been many.
She is either implying pupils from poorer backgrounds are inferior,or they should never aspire to enter any of our top education establishments,because they do not fit in or belong there.
Or...she could have just been trying to cover up Labour's thirteen years of failure in the education system and blamed it on the students.
Tessa Jowell should hang her head in shame!
Any of our fantastic journo's going to hold her to account for this attitude to people from poorer backgrounds?

Pot Head

Fraser, in 5 yrs time will I be able to pull my daughter out of the the very expensive private school that we send her to in Highgate, and put in the local Islington comp and get a decent standard of education ?

AngloWelshDragon

Absolutely right. Belt up Pettros you whinging ninny; you won't elicit much sympathy for your "ME ME ME" attitude on this site.

Dimoto

Excellent interview from Sir Richard Sykes on Randall tonight.
Why can't Gove be similarly clear and straight forward ?
All of that hand-wringing, apologetic stuff just encourages the student malcontents.

Paddy

The Police are providing water and toilets for these students.

Whatever next - beer and burgers all round.

Who's paying?

yank

There's a 6th thing here, Mr. Nelson, which you've left unspoken. That is that the top-down progressive educational project your graphs show has been long underway is likely of a piece with the top-down progressive educational project of today.

There's a reason why folks are suspicious of Dave and the other wets. This would be a part of that reason. Not saying I disagree with the need for educational reform... here or there... but the how is very important, and top-down progressive is generally not the proper how.

Until proven otherwise... there ain't a dime's worth of difference between this recent and the Blairish past, by my lights.

And yes I read your other post and agree with its premise, and Blairs. That's what scares me most.

The crew you have pushing this aren't fit to the task, I suspect. Dave's too fond of political popularity, like his soulmate Blair. And in a vacuum, the top-down progressives will get what they want. So then, why feed the beast? Unless you're one of the beasts?

Either let this one sit, and fry more important fish, or bring on the paras (Osborne, or that ID-S fellow) and slam it right, because you're declaring "war" and you full well know it.

And if you're not declaring war, then don't even bother. Just connect the dots for now.

Silent Hunter

Pettros;

What "you" don't seem to grasp is that all the above has occurred after 13 years of a Labour Government.

A Labour Government whose PM said . . . "I'll tell you what Labours first three priorities in Government will be - Education, Education and Education"

I wonder how bad things would have been if they had prioritised something else instead. lol

Your Bozos screwed it up - and now the coalition are having to fix it.

Maybe the Sun's blog might be more to your intellectual level.

Nicholas

Don't tell us - we already understand. Tell the mainstream media and the kids . . . er . . . no, not them, they wouldn't listen.

"Tuition fees have gone up because of the actions of the previous generation."

There is a politician of the future.

Paddy

Holly: I agree. Tessa Jowell always has a bit 'too much' to say for herself and no journo ever holds her to account.

Very telling that she had turned down a lunch with Peter Mandelson.

Tiberius

Just about everything that Labour did was bad for the country as a whole, and those graphs are a convincing piece of evidence of the failure in education policy.

The supporters of the status quo in education are amongst the top echelon of nutjobs that this country has a habit of producing.

Don

Luckily all of these miss the point totally.
Tuition fees have gone up because of the actions of the previous generation.

Actually the point is that ridiculous numbers of people are attending poor quality universities and getting poor quality degrees. Either reduce the number of people attending or increase the fees, you can't have both.

Olaf Rye

The students simply want other people to pay for their education--that is to say, to assume less debt for secondary education. No one is denying them the loans, it is just that more of the true cost of sending students to university will be assumed by the students. This is not to say that universities are not inherently wasteful and inefficient institutions, and many cuts could be made to their staff without raising fees. Still, the entire protest is based on a sense of entitlement: the 'state', or more properly, 'taxpayers' absorbing the cost of education. Having hundreds of thousands of students complaining that this is not fair to them should not result in a reversal of this decision: many more are in favour of this, and since when should the mob dominate ? The rights of those that pay should be respected somewhat. What sort of communist drivel is being taught nowadays ?

Cynic

"Tuition fees have gone up because of the actions of the previous generation" Hardly, Pettros; if you'd said 'because of the actions of the previous government' you'd be nearer the mark. They've gone up because a) we're broke thanks to Labour's profligacy and b) Labour's target of 50% attending university was never sustainable. Wasn't it Labour who introduced tuition fees in the first place?

Dr Iago

Excellent article.

mattghg

@ Lisa Ansell, I completely agree. This is about one generation stitching up the next. It appears that there's no issue for shamefaced breaking of manifesto promises quite like that of tuition fees, and in this respect Labour and the Lib Dems are in the same boat.

2trueblue

If over 13yrs you downgrade the standards in education, push more people into university, universities have to cover groundwork that should have been done for A levels, students leave before completing their degrees, change courses, etc, the bills go up and up, that is why it all costs more.

Maybe if students have a better appreciation of how much it costs, they would have less time to take to the streets and get on with what they are supposed to be doing... studying.

lids

I read somewhere that Clegg is now being described as Quisling. I couldn't think of a more apt name for the man who broke the hearts of students in England for promising not to raise tuition fees.

Since this policy announcement was made, I have come round to the view that politicians are deliberately planning to drive students away from university. All very well, but I suspect their plan will backfire when the very brightest decide it it is not worth the 70K plus debt. that will grow very quickly at high rates of interest.

Clegg/Quisling and his shabby coalition government deserve all this trouble. The coaliton are not being honest with this reform. Higher education needed reform, desperately, so that England's brightest can afford to be educated without incurring these hideous debts.

It was heart warming to see students take to the streets today. More power to their elbows, with a fair wind, they might just be able to get a deposit together to buy a house by the time they are 50 years old.

Sir Everard Digby

Of course let us not forget that degree course funding is now roughly the equivalent of A level course funding in the mid 70's. Successive governments have degraded education for political purposes for decades. The current move to increase tuition fees is not a step change; Labour's introduction and then massive increase in those fees was the latest major change. Why no protests when that happened?

As for the 'blame the previous generation' argument. Why so? Many of us did not jump on the borrow,borrow and borrow bandwagon,having been brought up in more sensible times. Nice to see the blame culture is so well embedded though. Avoids any reasoned analysis.

Taking it to its ultimate conclusion,could we not blame Harold for letting the Normans take over the country? Or Wellington for failing to let the French rule us?

Adam Higgitt

You should have entitled this "five dodgy statistics the student unions wisely ignored"

1. Schools closed in very large part because pupil rolls fell...
2. ...Hence the fact that pupil numbers in the outstanding schools rose only from 850 to 970, nowhere near as big an increase as that implied by (1) (nb. fiddling with the axis doesn't change this)
3. Class size reductions in secondary schools was never a policy objective (why should it be, when numbers are perfectly fine?). Has it occurred to the author of this piece that the extra money was being used for other purposes?
4. The gap grew? This isn't shown. Even if so, this could also be a measure of strong performance growth in the private sector - not that surprising at a time of strong economic growth.
5. Ok, this stat isn't dodgy. Strong investment in education. Good. And at least partly justified by the exam results (which, of course, aren't shown here).

Moral: inept manipulation of statistics as attempted here can be safely dismissed.

Nicholas

One young student on Newsnight didn't have a problem with this issue because she had examined the policy properly and was able to discern truth from propaganda. The other two students were inarticulate and their "arguments" ridiculous. The girl was thick as two short planks.

Students and schoolkids are being exploited by the Left but are apparently too stupid to realise it. Now I know what Labour means by "New Generation".

Chuck Unsworth

Why is it necessary to have so many graduates, particularly in such areas as Media and Sports? Are these people going to be valuable to the economy for the next twenty or thirty years?

cuffleyburgers

The point missed by Pettros and his ilk as well as the rampaging students and most of the posters on this blog is that there is no choice for the government but to reform university funding.

How can it be fair to tax future generations to pay for pointless university courses for people who are not academically gifted and are only going to university to avoid having to look for a job?

For far too long, throughout the baby boom and especially under labour, unborn generations have saddled with debt as the politically easy choice rather than hard decisions by individuals and politicians, in order to fund what has been shown up as an unsustainable lifestyle.

That is the simple fact of the events of the last 2-3 years.

The people who voted labour, the government themselves, have all been complicit in an intergenerational heist of unparalleled proportions.

In the case of Ireland, the Euro made it easier for the lenders to delay calling time, if we had joined the Euro as the great and good wanted us to we too would have a gross national external debt of 10 time GDP as Ireland does instead of the shocking 4 we actually have (compared woth Portugal's 2 and Germany's 1.4 or the USA less than 1).

That is the economic tragedy of our situation.

The political state is perhaps worse, but I haven't got all day, I'd better get on with some work...

PayDirt

Students! You must realise that you are in competition with the leading edge university system in the USA (great variety there of course, but includes the world’s best) where people pay more than here I suspect (would be interesting to see comparison of fees) AND the busloads of Chinese, Indian etc students some of whom are endowed with massive IQ and will to succeed, who start at their local university, probably helped financially by their family and who many eventually get to ace US uni’s as postgraduates. What exactly do you all want from your university educations? A job, a future, enough income to support family in a decent house… you are in a global competition and it’s not a particularly “fair” place to be right now if ever. Support a UK system to remain competitive in the world market and you WILL SUCCEED, but not by moaning about poxy fees or broken promises. Nobody in this world can promise anything, it’s up to you to study and move on and up.

Bob Dixon

Unless you our your relatives can fund your university education you are borrowing now and paying back ( if you can) over many years.
So you have a soft loan of 10's of thousands which will show on the credit agencies. This will make it difficult to impossible to raise a mortgage our any other kind of loan.

Today & tomorrow's students should be protesting about this.

Maggie

They didn't protest when Blair/ Brown introduced tuition fees and top-up fees. And they didn't protest when Blair/Brown flogged off the freeholds of schools to PFI contractors under contracts that cost many wasted £billions to service.

Sean Haffey

While I have some sympathy for students who voted LibDem on the basis of a "no increase" commitment, the claim that LibDems have broken promises is misleading.

tb

Funny that most of the senior student union officials are now in the Labour Party (including the current leader). Describing the students who take part in these protests as useful idiots is a bit harsh imho.

agwisalie

I'm not at all surprised this is happening after all Balire's Babes gave birth to Blaire's Babies.
These kids were only 5 when Labour got in and know no different other than that the world owes them a living.
Our kids (both late 20's)decided not to go to uni despite teaching staff pressurising them to do so, and have done very well for themselves. One is a Director of a software company, who have weathered the storm of recession as he put money away to do just that. He employs 2 staff one of whom is his brother and their average turnover is half a million a year and growing. They both own their own houses and have their own families now.
Many of their school friends however took up the uni bait, almost all of them dropped out and are now either on benefits or working in retail. The ones that did get degrees have fared no better. They all a have huge amount of debt to pay off.
Pushing more and more children into uni to get second rate degrees was a way to keep them off the unemployment register and now they, and the country, are paying for it.

finchy

Large schools can be good. If you aggressively stream it means (all else being equal) there will be enough good pupils to form an elite top set.

Check out the comprehensive state sixth form college Peter Symonds in Hampshire, which has a 2,700 pupils - 55 offers from Oxbridge.

I benefited from a similarly large school in Derby.

Lisa Ansell

Adwisali- you misunderstand agwisalie- it isn't young people who think the world owes them a living. It is your generation. They lose the free education we all had, to pay for your debts- for credit debt that is now being transferred from private balance sheets to public- then their futures are written off to pay for it.

I think you need to look at who is paying for who. The sense of entitlement is galling, and it isn't coming from the students who protested.

Fergus Pickering

As many of you have said, there are only two ways to go.

1. Put up the fees.

2. Close half the universities.

Tell me, Pettros and your mates, what other policy have you got? I know.

3. Fund the 50% of students who go to uni out of taxes from the other 50%.In other words tax the poorer to fund the richer. Is that what you have in mind?

It is true that if you do 1, then you will get quite a lot of 2 - with a bit of luck.

Woody

I suppose it's too much to ask for these lazy roving interviewers to actually ask some of these students whether or not they have actually read the policy - but that would spoil a good story wouldn't it. I wish some of the ministers being interviewed would actually challenge some of these interviewers, instead of sitting there wringing their hands and trying to sound conciliatary.

catesby

I suspect Fraser meant the teachers' unions, not students' unions.

It all makes sense if he did.

Ashley

I've read this assertion several times on right-wing noticeboards today.

"They didn't protest when Blair/ Brown introduced tuition fees and top-up fees."

No, sorry, you're wrong. I was at university back then and I'm quite sure I protested. Many of my friends went down to London, too.

Will Straw, son of Jack, the then Foreign Secretary, made quite a name for himself and no doubt an awkward atmosphere at the Straws' Christmas dinner that year.

Funnily enough, the BBC recorded one of the (numerous) protests too: http://bbc.in/hOpY87

There perhaps wasn't the same venom and anger. We were all wealthier, the young didn't require 20% deposits to buy a house, graduate jobs were plentiful and the fees were 'only' increasing from £1k - £3k. But I can assure you we protested.

As for PFI - you're quite right. Only Private Eye seems to point out regularly its gross inefficiencies.

Dimoto

Yes, it's painfully obvious that most of the demonstrators haven't got a foggy what the coalition is actually proposing.

The most revealing street interview for me, was the young lady who told the reporter, with a mixture of bewilderment and outrage : "we keep telling them, but they just won't listen, so we have to talk louder".
Evidently, a young women who has been raised to believe that when she wants something, people should just snap to attention and deliver, or else she'll just shriek louder, until they do as they are told.

Ogover

Excellent article. As for the argument that the protests were not party political I think you should listen to some of the chants such as "Tory scum, shame on you" etc. Frankly, as I discovered at uni, the NUS is a pro-Labour organisation where any dissent or suggestion of a more considered response is shrieked aside. The NUS did next to nothing in 1998 and 2004 because the leaders were eyeing positions in the Labour party later in their tawdry little political careers (a good indication of the standards the NUS works to can be seen in Phil Woolas) now Aaron Porter et al are thinking about the future and their Labour party careers.
The students do have a right to feel betrayed by the Liberal Democrats but in reality the Lib Dems acted in away most students do when it comes to politics because they never really expected to wield power and so could make any daft promise they wished while positioning themselves as some sort of “real” opposition.

Robert How

Students protested about tuition fees and Labour education cuts, so it's pretty pathetic of the Spectator, as an organ of the Torys and mouthpiece of the Barclay Brothers, to try to score party political points.

Your private-state school graph is also very selective in its data, implying that Britain is almost the worst in the world, which is far from the case. Just because an attainment gap is larger, one cannot infer from this that all state education is therefore bad.