By Natalie Zirngast
SYDNEY — On February 8-9, the NSW branch of the National Union of Students held an education teach-in for activists in the campaign against cuts to education. The conference, held at the University of Technology in Sydney, attracted more than 70 students from around Australia and covered a wide range of topics.
One of the main themes discussed was how ongoing changes to the education system are leading Australia further down the path of "user pays" education based not on equity and access but on wealth and social status.
While it is dressed up in the rhetoric of "merit" and "choice", the restructuring of education which was begun under the Labor government and pursued even more vigorously by the Liberals will in fact result in further privatised and business sector driven universities.
This has had an impact on students and the wider population, with many accepting the official economic rationalist ideology. The conference discussed the need for activists to counter this.
Speakers addressed a wide range of topics including higher education policy since World War II, the international experience of cuts to the public sector, alliance-building between students and staff unions, and the current West review into tertiary education.
Dev Mukherjee from the Centre for Equity in Education explained that the current system of secondary education worked to perpetuate inequalities between higher and lower income groups, in particular affecting retention rates and the types of further study undertaken. Speakers also discussed how the transfer of government funds to private schools exacerbates this trend.
Donna Baines, a research officer with the Sydney University Students' Representative Council (SRC), spoke about how changes to Austudy and Abstudy this year were affecting students and how things will be even worse under the proposed Common Youth Allowance.
Bob Morgan from the Jumbunna centre at UTS spoke about the difficulties faced by Aboriginal people in Australia's education system and how racism discourages or blocks opportunities for Aborigines.
Marcus Greville, education officer at Sydney University SRC and a member of Resistance, spoke about the struggles of students in France, Indonesia and Korea. He discussed similarities with the situation of Australian students and the campaign successes that students in both industrialised and non-industrialised countries have had by using a mass action strategy and linking up with other sectors.
The teach-in covered many of the theoretical issues involved in education and the student movement, but unfortunately omitted to cover more concrete questions about how to build the campaign against education cuts.
One proposal that did arise from the conference was that student activists organise a "tent city" on each campus in the lead up to the May federal budget.