The Conservative manifesto has now been published. This is what they have to say on post-16 education: Improve skills and strengthen higher education Developing economies are able to provide highly-skilled work at a fraction of the cost of British labour. The only way we can compete is by dramatically improving the skills of Britain’s workforce, yet thousands of young people leave [...]

Labour’s election manifesto has now been launched. The key points on post-16 education are: Spending increased on frontline Sure Start and free childcare, schools and 16-19 learning. Every young person guaranteed education or training until 18, with 75 per cent going on to higher education, or completing an advanced apprenticeship or technician level training, by [...]

UCU today welcomed announcements in the budget of extra student places in universities and colleges. However, it said high quality education could not be delivered with fewer staff and bigger class sizes. The union welcomed news of 20,000 additional university places, largely in STEM subjects, but questioned who would be teaching the extra students. The [...]

At our recent Westminster event young people from across the UK met with MPs from the main parties to ask about their views on education, training and youth unemployment. You can watch our short videos of the event below. John Hayes MP, Conservative shadow education and skills minister Stephen Williams MP, Lib Dem shadow minister university [...]

Unqualified youngsters four times more likely to be unemployed than students with an A-level UCU today said the current jungle of further education funding streams was a nightmare to negotiate and needed urgent simplification. The union said access to qualifications was vital as figures showed that youngsters with no qualifications were over four times more [...]

Youngsters from West Yorkshire, Sheffield, Birmingham and Bristol who are not in education, employment or training (known as NEETs) will be quizzing politicians on 24 February about their policies for education. The youngsters will travel to Westminster to take part in a question and answer session with Labour, Liberal Democrat and Conservative politicians. The event has [...]