Will NATFHE face up to Side-effects of Tebbit's YTS ?

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FE colleges are being drawn into the unemployment industry -Here, in two articles, COLIN WAUGH, Tottenham. NATHE and AL SYRETT, Kingston Poly Students Union, look at what the Tories groupa G SHE DOES (groupa G SHE DOES D Articles by Tony Benn, Karen Talbot, NUS Executive on 'The year ahead'; Tony Dale, CENTRAL HALL, WESTMINSTER, SW1 TUESDAY 27 SEPTEMBER 7.30 p.m. paper of Socialist Students in NOLS. Available Him. Copies 10p each. Take a bulk order to sell!

especially fast, though mostly through purchases of stock and loans rather than direct manufacturing investment. Within Western Europe, the UK has attracted much more Japanese investment than any other country.

Japan exports much less of its production than most West European countries - about 15%, as against 25% or more (over 50% for Belgium and the Netherlands).

Yet the FT concludes that "the expansion of its (Japan's)

economy has depended on export growth during the past few years"

more than for any other country.

Between 1970 and 1979, Japan's share of world exports of machinery rose from 8.7% to 13.3%, while the US's share fell from 19.9% to 15.7% and West Germany's also fell slightly from 17.7% to 17.5%. Since 1979 Japan's exports have risen further.

The FT survey also gives some interesting figures on the position of women in Japan - figures which suggest that a considerable gap has opened up between traditional attitudes and changing economic reality. That gap could be the basis for a mass women's liberation movement in Japan before too long.

In an opinion poll, 71% of Japanese women agreed that "husbands should go to work and women should stay at home"

Only 26% of British women and 13.5% of Scandinavian women agreed.

Only 6.4% of Japan's scientists, 2.4% of engineers, and 0.5%.

OT senior civil servants, are women. Women are even more : confined to a few low-paid jobs than in the West.

Yet by now over 50% of Japanese women are in waged work. And by. 1981, 33% of young Japanese women were completing higher education.

ERIC HEFFER MP JO RICHARDSON MP TONY BENN BOB WAREING MP MANDY MOORE CHAIR: CHRIS MULLIN keeping YTS youth busy for 13 weeks.

TRADITIONALLY, most FE students have either been apprentices on day release or full time students on GCE or professional courses. Although some teaching is done by hourly paid part timers or as overtime, most is done by staff on permanent contracts working 38 weeks between September and July.

All the YTS schemes are supposed to have a general education element in them. Most will be in FE colleges. But some will not enter FEs at all. They will be taught instead by staff of the firm where they are placed, or by a private agency.

In December 1981, when Tebbit announced the introduction of YTS, NATHE officials hailed this as a step towards quality education and training for all 16 year olds, expanding FEs by the equivalent of at least 80,000 full time students. Members were urged to prepare themselves by embracing the MSC's paration, and 'Vocational pre- ideology of flexible skills paration This line was pushed • even harder from June 1982, after Tebbit conceded an increase in the YTS allowance from £15 to £25 and shelved his plan (temporarily) for denying benent to retusers. Only over the last few months, as private agencies look set to grab more and more of the work, has a slightly more critical position been adopted.

This isn't simply the leaders selling out the members. Whilst many lecturers would, for elitist reasons, prefer to keep unemployed young people out of colleges, still more want YIS in because the collapse of apprenticeship (and hence of day release) threatens them with redundancy.

Others, • including some with a record of political or trades union activism, see it as a way out of the institutional, educational and personal stagnation FE has suffered for years.

Again, this isn't merely careerism. In some areas of very high unemployment and local authority neglect (for example Liverpool) the MSC is, for the moment, genuinely cutting across the bureaucracy and elitism of two local authorities (Manchester and Croydon) have provoked major disputes by tryn this thin.

Is saiary negotiations the employers side tabled the introduction of an 'instructor' grade below Lecturer 1. Because of MSC requirements a growing number of FE staff are already employed on short term contracts and inferior conditions, and this will pressurise others into accepting larger classes and other forms of extra work required for MSC. schemes.

These include the massive quantities of time necessary for assessing students by means of profiles and for finding perience pervising work exano placements.

The NATPHE leadership has effectively conceded the extension of the college year from 38 to 48 weeks. With existing holiday entitlements unchanged there will be peculiar hours being worked this year.

Secondly, as YTS moves to full implementation, the extent to which the whole scheme rests on cheap labour - on substituting work experience trainees' for regular employees -will be highlighted. There will be resistance by workers some areas of industry and local government where they are to be 'placed' It will become more difficult for NATFHE to remain neutral towards these actions.

South East London Tech college NATFHE branch have decided to boycott YTS work if the college takes in trainees from, non-unionised • workplaces.

Thirdly, as young people increasingly see through the MSC'g propaganda, tension will build up amongst groups of them at college. This will be all the greater if - as seem's likely - compulsion in the form of cutting the benefits of refusers is gradually reintroduced. has revealed the Tory government's intentions to cut public sector higher education - the polytechnics and higher education colleges.

The NAB was set up as an interim body to "advise the Secretary of State on provision and funding of advanced courses". What it did last year was close three courses and recommend the closure of a further 68. This year it has recommended a 10% cut in public sector financing across the board.

Central , government has imposed çuts on both the public sector and 'private' sector (the universities). But the quangos which administer them have managed the cuts differently. The. universities chose to cut student numbers, the polys kept up the numbers but cutback on everything else. In the polys, the student:tutor ratio has increased.

10, NOLS NC and lots more.

With this year's round of cuts the NAB intends to make sure that cuts will force colleges to turn away from "non-scientific and technical" subjects and concentrate instead on the employers' market.

2,000 mainly teaching jobs will go, along with 5,000 student places:

Since the NAB report came out two weeks ago many colleges have complained that it inevitably means widepread course closures. Where the NAB has recommended mergers with technical or FE colleges it also means the possible closure of whole colleges.

Two weeks ago NUS called a conference for public sector higher education students to discuss our response to NAB.

Unfortunately NUS has decided that the way to fight NAB is by leaving it up to the areas. There isn't going to be a nationally coordinated campaign. paign.

1SIUCENTS THATCHER! THATCHER!

EVERY THIN

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Organiser no. 147 September Page mandines

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