National Assembly for Education

Last Sunday - 30th January - saw the first National Assembly for Education in the union building of the LSE. It was well attended by members of occupations from around the country, student activists, and university workers. This kind of meeting represents a positive step forward for the student movement; it was clear that the assembly was not mandated to pass proposals for action but was a forum for sharing best practice and ideas to sustain the movement in the months ahead. The TUC demonstration on the 26th March was an important focus but it was recognised that there is an urgent need to build for this event and to think about what we will do after it. There will be another National Student Assembly after the 26th March.

These were the proposals voted on:
  

Occupations

• Occupations are one of a range of actions that activists can use.
• Occupations should hit leaders of institutions and budgets.  They should include direct action.
• We need to broaden out and get more student support for occupations.
• It is important to get trade union support for occupations.
• We should try to use the press to our advantage.
• We should also protest at high profile university events.

Demonstrations/Actions

• A key priority is the TUC demonstration on the 26^th March, for which we should organise an education section for students and education workers, and mobilising to ‘shut down London’.
• We should support calling the week of the TUC demonstration as a European week of action.
• We support a march on Eton on 17^th February to coincide with the Old Etonian’s Association Open Day.
• We need to take part in another action before the 26^th March.  The 24^th February should be called as a day of action around the country and in London we should protest at UUK event for vice-chancellors.  Before this we should organise at campuses around the country to try to get VCs to boycott the event.
• We support civil disobedience as a part of protest.
• We call for a Global Day of Action in February or March.
• We need to work with LGBT groups and challenge any homophobia on demonstrations.
• We should get disabled people to take a lead in organising protests and try to make demonstrations more accessible for disabled people.
• We should organise a protest at the Liberal Democrat spring conference in Sheffield.
• We condemn the cap on education visas and the exploitation of international students.

Working with Trade Unions

• We need to work, with Student Unions and General Meetings where possible, to get support for Education Union’s strike ballot, in particular the upcoming UCU ballot, and call for a student strike on the day of any union’s strike.
• We need to build cooperation between students and staff, holding joint meetings to build a united struggle, to which we invite other local workers.
• Possible ways of building support for a strike ballot involve making leaflets for every lecturer, providing information for students, starting to collect immediately for a strike fund, starting a petition from students to declare support for striking Education Workers.
• We should support university anti-cuts groups, which should send representatives to union meetings, as well as forums where students and workers can discuss.

Other

• We support the setting up of people’s assemblies.

 see the Education Assembly blog for further details; http://educationassembly.wordpress.com/