Surrey County UNISON branch

Cuts to adult education are continuing to reveal alarming trends, course closures and fee increases for students and redundancies, restructuring and uncertainty for staff.  UNISON continues to work with other trade unions and key stakeholders in a campaign to raise awareness of the impact of the cuts with central government.  Working with these groups and the AoC our aim is to influence the next comprehensive spending review which will set the budget for learning and skills from 2008/9. Work will begin on that CSR in autumn 2006 and it will be announced in the summer of 2007.

Many of our members have already engaged in local campaigns involving staff, students and local communities through public meetings, rallies, meetings, lobbying of MPs, etc.  We want to encourage our members to link into these campaigns. We have updated and revised the campaign pack which can be downloaded from the Campaign Page

Click here to find out about the recent fringe meeting Fringe Meeting

Resources include:

• parliamentary briefings about the cuts;
• details of the Early Day Motion laid down by Kelvin Hopkins MP
• A toolkit to equip college contacts  to run/organise local campaigns including advice on working with local community groups, model letters to MPs, help on contacting local media, background information, etc;
• Media digest.
  

Find current resources on the web at http://www.unison.org.uk/education/further/campaigns.asp

We need up-to-date accurate information about the cuts. This is really important. We are carrying out a new survey which is now available online at: http://www.unison.org.uk/file/A3625b.doc

Please ensure that you keep us informed of any local initiatives you are involved in so that we can share good practice.

If you would like to contact Education Workforce section please email education@unison.co.uk