An early spring of discontent in further education will be triggered this week when college lecturers are balloted for strike action that could drag on to the general election.
About 80% of colleges have still not fully implemented a two-year pay deal that was supposed to start in September 2003, according to Paul Mackney, general secretary of the lecturers' union Natfhe. The colleges dispute that figure.
Mackney said the government's failure to close the 10% pay gap between schoolteachers and college lecturers was putting at risk any hope of smoothly introducing the Tomlinson report's proposals for closer collaboration between the two groups.
An official evaluation of the government's "increased flexibility" programme (IFP), which encourages 14- to 16-year-olds who are getting bored with school to experience more practical and vocational education in colleges, out this week, shows it has considerable benefit for the young people.
The pay disparity, which in 2001 the then further education minister, Margaret Hodge, said Labour would remedy, is putting a strain on working relations when teachers and lecturers are working with the same groups of youngsters, Mackney said.
He cited the case of a 59-year-old college lecturer who has found himself working on a "link" project with a local school where his 29-year-old daughter teaches. According to Mackney, both are teaching the same group of students, but she is getting more money.
The Association of Colleges (AoC) disputes Natfhe's figures and says almost nine out of 10 colleges in England "have or intend to implement" a 3% pay award from August 2004.
Sue Dutton, the AoC's deputy chief executive, said: "We remain very concerned about the funding environment in which government has placed colleges, and will continue to lobby government for a fairer share of resources. It is therefore extremely disappointing that Natfhe intend to coordinate a national day of action in February."
Natfhe's head of colleges, Barry Lovejoy, does not dispute that most colleges honoured the first stage of the two-year agreement, a 3% pay increase in September 2003.
Under stage 2, last September, colleges were supposed to implement a new "single spine" pay structure for all college staff, which would raise pay levels by a minimum of 1.4%, he said. Then they were to award lecturers a 3% increase. The new spine would introduce a national eight-point pay structure for lecturers, each progression point worth a 6% increase.
A lecturer on the minimum £18,558-£19,116 pay band after last year's 3% increase should now, if the spine were implemented, be on £20,283, Lovejoy said. "Most colleges have just paid the 3% increase without putting the spine in place."
"This month's strike is just the first round. Other colleges are likely to join in further action over the next few months. It may be a rough, tough battle - but lecturers' patience has run out."
The first ballot of lecturers in more than 75 colleges around the country will take place on Friday. This is expected to trigger an escalating programme of strike action that, Natfhe says, would see nearly a third of colleges closed down on February 24. Two further days of strike action are likely in March. These could be joined by other Natfhe branches if talks they are holding with their colleges fail.
Mackney said: "We are still in this complete shambles, with different pay rates in different colleges and few objective reasons for the difference."
The survey of the first cohort of youngsters on the IFP shows it has been "largely successful" to date, said a spokesman for the Department for Education and Skills (DfES). 82% of them planned to carry on with further education or training after school. Fifty-six per cent of the students said their IFP course had helped them to decide what they would like to do in the future and two-fifths said they intended to take a qualification post-16 in the same subject area as their IFP course.
The research shows students developed their social skills, including those involved in working with adults. They felt the programme gave them valuable contact with employers. Their confidence in their employability skills had also improved. The programme has also given many of them a more positive attitude towards their school work in year 11 than they had in year 10.
