In an announcement in The Times this morning, explained in more detail (though not much!) by Shadow Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson, the Labour leadership confirmed its aim to ditch tuition fees and offered its first suggestion for an alternative system – cutting monthly graduate repayments. 

Labour Students Vice-Chair Fabiha Askari reiterated the group’s demand for Labour to instead commit to tuition fee abolition. Earlier this year, the National Labour Students Committee overwhelmingly passed a motion for free education.

Momentum is campaigning for free education, from the National Policy Forum to Conference.

Askari had written with Young Labour Chair Nabeela Mowlana a few weeks ago demanding the Party back free education.

The UCU also criticised Keir Starmer for backtracking on his 2020 pledge to abolish tuition fees.

Earlier this week Vice Chancellors called the UK universities funding system ‘”broken” with Labour offering nothing to replace it.

Fabiha Askari, Vice-Chair of the National Labour Students Committee said: “Tuition fees were introduced to ‘level the playing field’, but as the last two manifestos acknowledged, the experiment has failed. When Labour committed itself to abolishing tuition fees in 2017, hundreds of thousands of students flocked to the Labour Party. As more young people find themselves disillusioned with Westminster politics, Labour should make commitments that seek to build a broad coalition of voters to kick out the Tories and their failed policies.”

A Momentum spokesperson added: “Once again we are seeing a worrying poverty of ambition from the Labour leadership. The proposed cuts to repayments will still leave young people facing mountains of debts, even as they already struggle with sky-high rents. In higher education as with energy and water, we will not tackle the Tories’ failed economy by tweaking around the edges. Instead, as recognised by the UCU and Labour’s own student wing, what is needed is wholesale replacement of the failed market model in higher education, the abolition of tuition fees and the restoration of maintenance grants.”

Starmer promised to abolish tuition fees in his leadership campaign pledges. In a survey last year, 91% of students said they were worried about the cost of living crisis, with over three-quarters concerned it would affect how well they did in their degree.

Before 1998, the Education Act 1962 made provision for all UK-resident students studying their first degree to not have any tuition fees they are obliged to pay. In effect, for all students studying only one degree, education was made completely free. Similarly, the Education Act 1962 made provision for all UK-students to be entitled to a maintenance grant, not a loan, that would cover their cost-of-living through the duration of their studies.

Labour Students proposes:

1. A universal maintenance grants system that pays students the living-wage, as calculated according to the student’s region (i.e. London-based students with a higher cost-of-living should be remunerated accordingly), with reference to the system implemented by Welsh Labour.
2. No tuition fees for a UK student’s first degree, and minimal tuition fees for secondary degrees.

This system is not radical: it is the system that Labour’s sister parties administer in Germany and across Scandinavia. Free at the point of use higher education should not be controversial in a developed first-world country.

The full text of the Labour Students resolution is below:

Labour Students supports free education, an end to tuition fees and the reintroduction of maintenance grants for all students.

Education should be free for all, from cradle to grave. It was this principle that led our Party to introduce free secondary school education for all children and establish the Open University. It was also this principle that led the last Labour manifesto to promise to ‘end the failed free-market experiment in higher education, abolish tuition fees and bring back maintenance grants’.

This position must be retained. Education ought to be a civic right. Not only does society benefit from the skills it allows people to develop, but it also ultimately allows for the satisfaction of our curiosities, the ability to express ourselves creatively, and the fulfilment of our potential.

Whilst the introduction of tuition fees was designed to level the playing field, the experiment has failed. The current generation are the first in 100 years to be worse off than our parents, with the poorest graduates leaving university with an average £57,000 of debt.

It is no surprise that over half of under 40s voted Labour in 2019, in large part because of our embrace of the principle of free, accessible higher education. As a party seeking to build a winning electoral majority, it is crucial that we do not take this support for granted.

Now more than ever we need to fight for free education. The next Labour government will have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to make this a reality.

National Labour Students Committee believes:

1. In a system of demarketised higher education, that is refocused on learning and development not private profit;
2. In the abolition of tuition fees for all UK students;
3. In the re-introduction of maintenance grants for all students;
4. That we should bring the UK higher education system closer in design to those in countries like Germany, France, Sweden, Denmark and Norway – we must recover some of Britain’s international reputation, this starts by having a functional education system that doesn’t rinse students for money.

National Labour Students Committee therefore resolves to:

1. Publicly and proudly support free higher education, the abolition of tuition fees and the reintroduction of maintenance grants for all students, as laid out in more detail in ‘Appendix A’ of this motion;
2. Commit to a Labour Students higher education policy of supporting free higher education, until and unless Labour Students Conference takes a position to the contrary;
3. Write to the Shadow Secretary of State for Education, urging them to publicly support this position;
4. Lobby the Labour Leadership and Shadow Education team to publicly commit to this in policy-making and manifesto decisions;
5. Call on the NEC to include free education in the manifesto-making Clause V meeting.

Image: https://www.flickr.com/photos/andymoss461/5166016217. www.nus.org.uk/ Creator: Andrew Moss. Licence: Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0)