A wave of allegations and legal claims have begun against the Metropolitan police amidst concerns that their heavy-handed treatment of peaceful student protesters was unlawful. Legal experts claim that the use of police violence and the tactic of immediate ‘kettling’ as students demonstrated against higher tuition fees and unversity funding cuts represented a serious breach of their human rights.
A startling report this week revealed that a mere 0.8% of Oxbridge students come from disadvantaged backgrounds, making them 55 times less likely to get in to Oxford or Cambridge University than private school pupils. We ask whether the government’s plans for a huge increase in tuition fees, along with their contraversial decision to axe the Aim Higher university access scheme, will result in an Oxbridge education truly being accessible only to the most rich and priveleged students.
Fresh on the heels of its controversial policy to raise university tuition fees in England to £9000, the government has now announced cuts of £400 million to university teaching budgets. These cuts will take effect long before the rise in tuition fees comes into force, leaving universities desperately struggling to make ends meet and striking a further blow to students and higher education.
A study released by the lecturers’ union has shown the devastating predicted impact of the government funding cuts and rise in tuition fees on some of the top UK Universities. The worst hit will be those offering innovative and cutting-edge arts and culturally creative courses and, most worrying of all, those offering the greatest number of places to students from disadvataged backgrounds. A third of UK Universities have been labelled “at risk”.
As the House of Commons narrowly voted to support the coalition government’s plans to raise university tuition fees in England to £9000, a huge rebellion by members of the Liberal Democrat party signalled deep rifts and disarray. They may have won the vote, but at what political cost to the party’s future, and at what personal price for Nick Clegg?
In spite of tens of thousands of students organising peaceful protests, sit-ins and demonstrations across the country, the government still refuses to budge on tuition fees. Worst of all, in a cowardly act of self-preservation, the government has chosen to heavily imply that the student protesters are yobbish, ignorant thugs who do not deserve a response, rather than acknowledging or addressing their legitimate concerns.
Throughout the coverage of the planned rise in tuition fees and the public reaction to it, the Liberal Democrats have been universally condemned and vilified for their part in forming the government’s education policy. However nobody has stopped to actually consider the facts of the Liberal Democrats’ current political situation, or to acknowledge the steps they have taken to make the government proposals much fairer and more lenient for poorer students and those from disadvantaged backgrounds.
Students protesting against the rise in tuition fees have clashed with riot police in a conflict that ended in the demolition of the glass front of the Conservative party headquarters in London. We ask what direction the protests will take next and examine the contradictory reactions to the violence. Though many have condemned the use of violent protest, others have praised the actions of those students prepared to go to any lengths to defend their right to education.
