UCU: Education Policy: Valuing post-16 education

Motion

Motion text: Congress believes that valuing education and educators must be at the heart of the union’s industrial and political strategy.
Building on Congress 2025 motion 1, Congress calls on NEC to deepen its evidence-based policy work on:
1. charting the educational consequences of redundancies, casualisation, mergers, and privatisation in and of post-16 education.
2. developing a sustainable funding model to widen participation and ensure proper, stable resourcing across post-16 education.
3. monitoring the role of Ed Tech in colleges and universities.
4. challenging the detrimental effects of the hostile environment and UK TNE.
5. defending academic freedom, collegial governance and professional autonomy in response to political and managerial interference.
6. countering far right influence in our classrooms and institutions.
7. embedding climate justice in curricula and institutional practices.
8. building global education solidarity and exchange.
In response to these challenges, Congress calls on NEC to continue to organise an annual education policy conference, webinars and CPD on education-related issues. Congress resolves to link UCU’s ‘wages not weapons’ campaign with our educational demands.