Jeremy Corbyn could be the hero the free education movement needs By the time I arrived at university in 2013, England already had the highest tuition fees in Europe. This week, government […]

By the time I arrived at university in 2013, England already had the highest tuition fees in Europe. This week, government statistics revealed that there was a the gap between private and state school entrants to university has widened significantly since the rise. The proportion of state pupils entering higher education by age 19 fell from 67 per cent in 2011-12, to 62 per cent in 2013-14.

In 2010, the Coalition government embarked on an experiment with the higher education system which is still running today. Last month, the Higher Education Bill passed its second reading. Teaching quality will now be assessed by market-based metrics, focused on the needs of employers. High-scoring universities will be given the power to raise their fees even beyond the £9000 cap. Private, for-profit providers will be actively encouraged to set up shop. The experiment is turning higher education in the marketplace.

Failing everyone

This experiment is failing students and workers in the education system, as well as universities’ wider social mission. The funding model used by the government overwhelmingly prioritises prestigious institutions at the expense of ones which have a high intake from widening participation backgrounds. Add that to the abolition of Education Maintenance Allowance (EMA) and other grants in further education, and to scrapping of grants for the poorest students which came into effect this week, and the picture becomes clear. This is a vision for an inaccessible, money-driven system centred around competition, consumer choice and “value for money” – not an engine of social mobility.

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It doesn’t have to be this way. For a number of years, a movement has been building on campuses all over the country, not just to oppose cuts and the rise in fees, but to raise the idea of a free education system – one that is accessible to everyone. To stop the marketisation of universities, we need to change the way that society views education: as a social good rather than a profit-generating tool for big business. In the past few years, that vision has become the official policy of the National Union of Students.

From dream to reality?

Until now, the campaign for free education had two key limitations. The first was that we were pushing these ideas alone, with the political mainstream either stayed silent, actively opposing us, or, as with Ed Milliband’s £6,000 fee pledge, offering policies which were a pale shadow of what we needed.

The second limitation was in the whole structure of the system: the fact that the divisions between higher and further education, between younger and older learners, between vocational and academic courses, were part of the problem. Making universities free for middle class 18-21 year olds could not address the inequalities at the heart of Britain’s education system.

But at a stroke, Jeremy Corbyn’s pledge this week to establish a National Education Service has swept away these limitations. Free education is no longer a pipe-dream. Suddenly, with an opposition leadership that supports it, it feels like it could become a reality.

Breaking down access barriers

More importantly, Corbyn’s policy takes a big-picture view of breaking down barriers of access to education for those who have been shut out. An integrated National Education Service will facilitate entry to education at every stage of life, it will remove the burden of debt on students, and it will introduce universal public childcare which will be a lifeline for so many mature and part-time students who struggle in the current system. These are proposals which reflect the core campaigning demands of students, but which speak to a much wider aspiration to create a society where everyone has access to the education they need.

Through the National Education Service, Jeremy Corbyn is putting forward unprecedented, transformative policy. Finally, students and education workers are seeing our vision for higher education supported, shared and acted upon by representatives in Parliament. The many thousands of students and young people who have joined Labour to support Corbyn should be under no illusions: we face a massive fight against the government and the university managements that have driven the process of marketisation. But this groundbreaking policy should be cause for hope.