FE chiefs blame government for strike

College chiefs today blamed the government for putting further education colleges across England into the financial crisis that has led to today's strike action.

Students at around 280 FE colleges are facing disruption as up to 32,000 lecturers hold a two-day strike over pay. Lecturers rejected a 1.5% pay increase and voted overwhelmingly to strike. They want parity in pay with schoolteachers, who earn, on average, 12% more.

Ivor Jones, from the employers' body, the Association of Colleges, said: "The root problem causing this strike is the financial crisis facing further education colleges across the country. We are trying to meet pay demands from core funding which the government has set at 90% of 1995/96 levels. Even the special initiative funds which the government put in place last year to improve the pay of some teaching staff have been reduced in at least half of colleges."

Mr Jones said only a minority of college teaching staff are Natfhe members, and that colleges would do everything they could to minimise the impact of the strike on students.

Paul Mackney, general secretary of lecturers' union Natfhe, said lecturers are fed-up and angry. "Thousands will be striking today because they have had enough. Lecturers' pay is on average 12% less than schoolteachers' pay and all they've had are promises that things are going to get better. They haven't," he said.

Mr Mackney explained that colleges were losing staff because of low pay and called on the government to release some of the Department for Education and Skills' £1.4bn unspent budget. He warned of continued unrest unless lecturers were guaranteed a rise to bring their pay in line with that of school teachers by 2004.

Shadow education secretary Damian Green said today's action showed the government's strategy for lifelong learning was "clearly failing"

"Today's strike reflects the falling morale of teachers and staff in further and higher education. They have been driven to the brink by excessive government interference and micro-management, which is destroying their sense of professionalism," he said.