The British and Irish Group of Teachers Unions (BIGTU),which represents all the EI-affiliated unions in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland, has issued a statement in support of the United for Education coalition’s day of action on 21 June. BIGTU affiliates include: ASTI, IFUT, INTO, TUI in Ireland and ATL, EIS, NASUWT, NUT, SSTA, UCU, UTU in the UK.
BIGTU statement:
On behalf of the British and Irish Group of Teachers Unions, we send greetings and support to the United for Education Coalition on their day of action. We believe that our governments are committing a huge and historic mistake in launching further attacks on our education systems. We recognise that the disastrous cuts to further and higher education in Britain are part of an accelerating wider offensive against state education that threatens to reverse the democratic advances of the postwar period, which saw the extension of access to education to all the peoples of our communities as a right. We believe that this offensive will have the effect of widening inequality and betraying a generation of our young people, as well as further marginalising the millions who find themselves unemployed during this recession. We also reassert our belief that equal access to good quality education is a condition of economic prosperity and that this attack, which appears to be undertaken in the interests of a narrow business community, threatens to further weaken the economies of Britain and Ireland. We absolutely endorse the United for Education coalition’s call for education to be protected and for a return to sustainable, publicly controlled funding for education and we will work to extend the unity shown within the coalition in the cause of defending our education system as a whole.