Students End Stage Sit-In Over Fees

A group of students protesting against Scotland's leading arts academy's decision to charge fees of £9,000 to students from England, Wales and Northern Ireland ended their sit-in this afternoon.









A spokeswoman for the group said it was "neither practical nor effective" to stay in the foyer of the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland overnight.

Around 30 students started occupying the building at around 11.30 this morning.

They said the protest was part of a rolling programme of "wildcat" occupations over Scottish universities' plans to charge fees to students from the rest of the UK (RUK).

The RCS, which recently changed its name from the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, is to charge students from elsewhere in the UK £36,000 for four-year degree courses and £27,000 for three-year courses from 2012/13.

The Glasgow-based institution has said the charge reflects the exceptionally high cost of programme delivery in conservatoires, which substantially exceeds the £9,000 fee.

The sit-in at the conservatoire ended shortly after 3pm.

A spokeswoman for the protesters said: "By facilitating fee increases for RUK students the RCS is setting a dangerous precedent in Scotland.

"Despite promises from the SNP Government that Scottish students will not pay fees, we believe that the huge disparity in fees between Scottish and RUK students will become intolerable and will inevitably result in fees for all students.

"Whatever tokenistic measures are introduced, a financial market in education will always result in discrimination against those unable to afford fees, whatever the level.

"Education is a right, and must be free, as it was for generations.

"The Conservatoire's Student Union has abandoned its responsibilities by backing the decision by management."

Robert Gordon University (RGU) in Aberdeen and the Scottish Agricultural College (SAC) also made announcements on fees for RUK students today.

RGU adopted a "tiered approach", with three bands of undergraduate fees.

Business, management and social science courses will cost £5,000 a year, fees for art and design, architecture and built environment, computing, engineering, health and science courses will be set at £6,750 a year, while the master of pharmacy course will be the most expensive at £8,500 a year.

The Scottish Agricultural College (SAC) said fees for RUK students would be £27,000 for a four-year degree, with fees set at £6,750 a year.

The announcements came after St Andrews and Edinburgh universities set fees at the maximum level of £9,000 per year for students from the rest of the UK, meaning that a four-year honours degree at the universities will cost £36,000.

Aberdeen and Heriot-Watt universities also announced £9,000 yearly fees, although both have capped the cost of a degree at £27,000.

Glasgow School of Art also capped fees at £27,000 for a four-year course.

Currently, no full-time undergraduates domiciled in Scotland pay tuition fees at Scottish universities.

The conservatoire said the fee its board of governors has agreed is exactly the same as that charged by comparable conservatoires in England which offer four-year undergraduate degree courses in music and three-year undergraduate degree courses in drama and dance.

The conservatoire, whose alumni include James McAvoy, Robert Carlyle, Billy Boyd and Tom Conti, already operates an extensive scholarship programme.

It said that from 2012/13 it will introduce additional scholarships, which will be means-tested, for new undergraduate students from the rest of the UK to partly offset the introduction of increased tuition fees for that group of students.

Scholarships of £3,000 a year will be available for students from a household whose income is less than £25,000 per annum.

The RCS was not immediately available for comment.

Pensions Row Could Bring First Teachers' Strike Since The 80s

Teachers in Scotland's schools could be set to strike for the first time since the 1980s in protest against changes to their pensions.
The country's largest teaching union, the EIS, is expected to begin balloting members in the coming weeks over strike action in response to reforms to public sector pensions.







Scottish Government spokesman: "We believe the UK government must reconsider".

Union leaders claim the changes will see teachers forced to contribute more to their pensions and work longer before they retire.

Changes to the way pensions are calculated will also see teachers receiving less, according to the EIS.

Calls for a strike ballot have come from the union's influential strategy sub-committee.

Should a ballot be approved by the union's executive, teachers at all local authority nursery, primary, secondary and special schools would be asked to vote on possible strike action, which is expected to take the form of an initial one-day walkout.

If it went ahead it would be the first time since 1986 that a national teachers' strike has taken place in Scotland.

Ronnie Smith, general secretary of the EIS, said: "At the recent EIS annual general meeting, Scottish teachers sent a clear message that their patience with attacks on their standard of living is exhausted.

"At a time of imposed pay freezes on public sector pay, coupled with soaring prices for food, fuel, clothing and transport, teachers are not prepared to accept further erosion in their living standards. For hard-pressed teachers, the prospect of paying more of their salary into a pension scheme with the promise of working longer and getting far less at the end just might be the straw that breaks the camel's back."

Eileen Prior, executive director of the Scottish Parent Teacher Council (SPTC), told teachers not to expect any sympathy.

She said: "Parents are going to be very concerned about the prospect of strike action. I suspect the response is going to be one where there's not a huge amount of sympathy for teachers.

"There's a feeling that everyone is being squeezed. The reaction I'm getting from parents is they feel that teachers are getting a pretty good deal."

The EIS said the recommendation for a strike ballot from its strategy sub-committee was a "warning" to ministers not to ignore its members.

While pension reform is a matter reserved for the UK government, any changes north of the Border would require the support of the Scottish Government.

However, finance secretary John Swinney has voiced criticism of Westminster's approach to public sector pension reform.

Labour's shadow education secretary Ken Macintosh said: "The SNP government has a very serious obligation to parents and pupils to ensure we do not return to the type industrial action which Scotland's schools saw in the 1980s.

"It is absolutely critical that changes are negotiated properly, and it would be completely wrong for ministers to try and trade pension rights for salary cuts."

A Scottish Government spokesman said: "Public sector pensions must be affordable and sustainable but we do not believe the UK government's proposals represent the correct course of action.

"We believe that the UK government must reconsider its proposals before seeking to impose significant changes on public service staff at this time.

"The Scottish Government has embarked upon a series of meetings with other public sector employers and unions as to how we address this significant issue."

According to the EIS, indications from England and Wales show pension contributions may rise by 0.6 per cent of pay for those earning less than £26,000 and up to 2 per cent for those earning between £40,000 and £75,000.

Protest And The Faculty Of Outrage

The phone-hacking reaction is no temper tantrum. But the moral deployment of anger takes effort and honesty.













The first day of August announces the end of a month of emotions. July brought disgust and grim vindication, disbelief and horror; but the top note was surely anger. One kind manifested itself in the actions of a gunman murderously scapegoating Islam, feminism and the left. A very different kind led to the Westminster tableaus in which a powerful media empire for once found itself accountable. After months of being dismissed, ordinary people's anger finally returned to British political discourse as a response to be taken seriously.

This momentary transformation of anger from a dirty word into the very currency of political exchange must not recede from collective memory. Let not "public anger" dwindle into inane psychobabble alongside "happiness indices" and "wellbeing surveys". Watching the powerful unmasked was cathartic and encouraging for a citizenry long disenfranchised by the impunity of unbridled wealth and privilege. Recalling this must strengthen our collective hand as resistance to the coalition government's savaging of the public good gathers momentum this autumn.

A clear distinction exists between the widespread moral indignation that forced politicians out of their customary genuflection to media barons and the manufactured righteousness ventilated by the Norwegian terrorist. Real indignation is born not of hatred but of empathy and solidarity with others. It seeks to move beyond the particulars of one's self and community to something more universally human. Our shared anger at Murdoch drew on a humane sense that the sufferings of other people matter and the further exploitation of the already vulnerable is not to be tolerated.

The vicious hatreds of Breivik and his fellow ideologues in Britain and beyond are best defeated by expanding the scope of our own indignation. Hatred is lazy; the moral deployment of anger takes work. It requires the honesty shown by an astonishing recent polemic entitled "I'm starting to the think the left might actually be right", in which the conservative commentator Charles Moore acknowledges: "The rich run a global system that allows them to accumulate capital and pay the lowest possible price for labour. The freedom that results applies only to them. The many simply have to work harder, in conditions that grow ever more insecure, to enrich the few."

It really is that simple. Hacking was one symptom of a more widespread infliction of misery for profit. So in preparation for an autumn of indignation, it is time to cultivate an intelligent anger that refuses the sacrifice of all that matters to gross profiteering. Denounce the shameless erosion of care for disabled, sick and elderly people. Contest working longer for falling real wages and worse pensions – and being told to volunteer unpaid labour for the travesty of "big society".

As fickle pundits warn against "too much outrage" or, like Niall Ferguson, dismiss popular protests as "global temper tantrums", we can turn instead to Stéphane Hessel's recent French bestseller Indignez-vous! (Get Angry), where the 93-year-old former resistance fighter reminds us that indignation motivated him and that "the faculty of outrage" humanises us. Like Los Indignados of Spain, we must become The Indignant, refusing to be dismissed as irresponsible profligates and disorderly rioters because of our rightful outrage at the destruction of education, jobs, benefits and public services. As we finally overcome the indignation deficit, we will repudiate both hateful nihilism and stoical passivity.