Education destroyed
Socialist Press1979 1979-09-19Read it in the scan (PDF), scan page 7 →
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The Tories fought the pledging to raise educational standards.
But the contempt they have for anyone conned by such election promises was demonstrated recently by Angela Rumbold, Tory leader of the Kingston-upon-Thames education authority, who declared that:
"The public knew and understood the kind of things this government was going to stand for."
Quailing before the Tories' attacks, Sheffield Labourite Peter Horton bleated that even a 2½% cut in education spending would throw up 20,000 teaching jobs in the next yearpromising a future of unemployment and frustration for the 20,000 newly qualified teachers.
In fact the Tories are demanding a 3% cut this year, and 5% in 1980-81. Taking inflation and pay increases into account these figures mean 4½% this year and 7% next.
In many areas teaching jobs are already frozen, and in Avon hundreds of teachers will in October receive notice of dismissal on December 31, as the authority seeks means 331 full time jobs.:
• School meals, milk and transport are high on the list for cuts that councils would like to make when the Tories steamroller through new legislation to that effect, saving an expected £200 million per year.
Colleges and universities too are being hit: Polytechnics will need to cut student numbers by 5,000 by 1980-81; universities face a 6% cut back in the number of students; and 450 social science postgraduates have had their grants for further studies withdrawn by the SSRC in a 25% cut.
Adult education classes and discretionary grants are also under the hammer.
Overseas students face a huge increase in their feeswhich, in turn, will affect the viability of some whole courses and departments.
In every area teachers face unemployment and worsened working conditions. The youth they teach will suffer from impoverished facilities and themselves confront a bleak future of prolonged unemployment or being preas-ganged into low paid jobs.
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age Wednesday September 1979 •Leon Trotsky was born in the Ukraine 100 years ago, in