UCU’s event in the Long Gallery at Stormont on 20 January, highlighted the continuing stark inequalities in educational attainment and opportunities depending where you live in Northern Ireland. UCU produced 18 constituency profiles, each containing forty statistics regarding further and higher education in Northern Ireland. The profiles – produced as a 24 page booklet – [...]

UCU Scotland will hold a lobby outside the Scottish Parliament on Wednesday (27 January) as part of UCU’s ‘Defend jobs, defend education’ campaign. The lobby will urge MSPs to oppose cuts particularly in the teacher education budget and will take place from 1pm. UCU members will highlight the problems a proposed funding cut for teacher [...]

UCU will launch its education manifesto on Tuesday 26 January at a lobby event in parliament to set out its key issues in all areas of post-16 education. The manifesto is part of the union’s campaign to get parliamentary candidates to clearly state their position on education to allow the public to make an informed [...]

Northern Ireland’s MLAs are being asked to give their backing to UCU’s Make Education Count campaign. At an event at Stormont, the UCU – supported by the Ulster Teachers Union (UTU) and the Irish National Teachers Organisation (INTO) – is presenting statistics that detail how Northern Ireland continues to lag behind the rest of the [...]

UCU has said the Conservative Party’s self-titled ‘brazenly elitist’ policy of recruiting graduates into teaching showed absolutely no understanding of the real demands of the teacher sector or the skills required to do the job. The Tories have said they will pay off the student loan of graduates with degrees from some, as yet unspecified, [...]

UCU today welcomed the announcement by the Conservatives that they would suspend controversial new changes to the way university research is funded. In an interview with the Times Higher the shadow minister for higher education, David Willetts, said he would delay proposals that would force 25% of future research to be assessed on ‘economic impacts’ [...]

UCU today accused the government of being in ‘complete denial’ over the impact of university funding cuts. Responding to claims in today’s Guardian newspaper by the business secretary, Lord Mandelson, that slashing £900 million from the higher education budget would be ‘very small in the context of overall university income’ the union warned over 14,000 [...]

On Tuesday 26 January UCU will be holding a lobby of parliament to let MPs know what is happening in further and higher education and to make sure the voices of UCU members are heard in the ‘corridors of power’ in the run up to the general election. As well as highlighting our industrial agenda, [...]