A film of a large, peaceful student and staff rally on May 7 against Sydney Uni job cuts, being met by a brutal police and riot squad response. The police presence was organised by the architect of the cuts, vice chancellor Michael Spence.
Education
The NSW Teachers Federation (NSWTF) has called on its members to stop work for two hours on May 18. The union says it has made the decision because “the future of public education in NSW is at stake”.
The federation said: “The purpose of the [stop work] meetings will be to hear detailed reports on the very serious impact that Local Schools, Local Decisions and other state government policies will have on working conditions, student learning opportunities and the resourcing of our schools.”
Quebec college and university students are now in the 13th week of their militant province-wide strike. They have voted overwhelmingly to reject a government offer that met none of their key demands.
After a 22-hour bargaining session involving ministers of the Charest government, university and college heads, and leaders of the major trade-union federations, the student leaders agreed on May 6 to put the offer to a vote of their memberships without recommending acceptance.
If the offer was accepted:
A May 10 rally against TAFE cuts announced in the Victorian budget attracted more than 2000 protesters in front of Premier Ted Baillieu’s office.
“Lock up Baillieu, throw away the key, we won’t stop until TAFE is free” was just one of chants the crowd roared. Lecturers, teachers, students, support staff, community groups, the Australian Education Union (AEU) and National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) joined forces to fight against the $300 million cutbacks.
After protests against across-the-board staff cuts at the Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra, a new major "restructuring" has been proposed for the School of Music.
The university has two music programs. It announced one would be cut while the other would undergo significant changes, focused on "professional development" and the "portfolio career" rather than the fostering of musical abilities.
The University of Sydney Vice-Chancellor Michael Spence and the university Senate further displayed their “democratic” views on May 7 by sending riot police to break up protests by more than 500 students and staff.
Protesters disagreed with the flawed plan to carry out budget cuts and retrench staff.
Spence also sent an email to all staff damning the protesters as “outside agitators”, even though the protest was organised by the student-led Education Action Group (EAG) and the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU).
Activists in the biggest staff-student campaign to defend education seen in Australia for decades have won a partial victory against an attempt by the University of Sydney administration to cut hundreds of teaching and non-teaching jobs.
The immediate job cuts have been reduced to 23 under pressure from the campaign. But staff and students are keeping up the fight. The photos below are of a rally and march of 500 people held on May 7, during which the administration called in the police and riot squad.
As part of savage budget cuts, the Victorian Coalition government has slashed $300 million over four years of funding for the provider of public technical and further education, the state’s 18 TAFE institutes that teach about 400,000 students a year.
Funding per student in 80% of courses has been cut from about $8 per training hour to as low as $1.50 - to a range meant to reflect labour market priorities.
Trades apprenticeships, aged care and child care received some small increases.
For the past 12 weeks, students of Quebec’s colleges and universities have been on strike against Premier Jean Charest’s proposal to increase tuition fees by 75%. The indefinite strike involves more than 170,000 students and is now attracting high school students. Broad layers of the general public are sympathetic to the movement.
The Australian Education Union (AEU) released the statement below on May 3.
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The huge funding cuts announced by the Victorian government to its TAFE institutes will damage the TAFE sector in Victoria and the Victorian economy and community. They will also change the national Vocational and Education Training (VET) system forever.
Late in 2011, the Victorian government ripped millions out of TAFEs budgets. Private providers were left largely untouched.
A crowd estimated at 250,000 people or more wound its way through Montréal April 22 in Quebec’s largest ever Earth Day march. They raised many demands: an end to tar sands and shale gas development, opposition to the Quebec government’s Plan Nord mining expansion, support for radical measures to protect ecosystems, and other causes.
Students and staff at the University of Sydney ramped up the campaign against management's proposed staff cuts last week, after management ignored a deadline set by the rally and occupation on April 4 to withdraw the cuts by the end of the Easter break.
Four hundred students rallied on the university's front lawns on April 24. Students from more than eight classes walked out to join the rally. In one case, a lecturer emailed her students in advance to tell them to walk out of their class and join the protest.
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