After the government in England announced large budget cuts for this coming year, teaching unions and associations have suggested strikes are possible. A great many people are angry with the government’s approach and have proposed strike action in retaliation.

The move was announced as a result of an unexpected amount of young people sticking with education rather than leaving to get a job. Rather than commend the schools for encouraging more young people to head on to college, the government have instead said that they will have to make up a £200m shortfall. This will likely put the future of as many as 50,000 young adults in jeopardy, lead to a decrease for school bursaries, and will mean that many will have to look for paid work instead. Given that the current economic climate is high unstable, this worries many in the education sector.

The National Union of Teachers have spoken out and called the cuts “an absolute disgrace”. They say that it is completely irresponsible to do such as thing and will just lead to another ‘lost generation’ much the same as the school leavers in the 1980s. “This would not happen in independent or indeed boarding schools and should not happen in the state system” they said. The cut came about as a miscalculated estimate on the percentage of young people who would choice to continue on to colleges, sixth forms or paid training schemes. Institutions have thus been given less money than they had expected to receive (estimated around 4%) and so will probably have to make up the deficit by cutting courses and even teaching jobs. This issue was raised in the annual NUT conference in Cardiff where many lobbied for strikes to take place at the effected educational institutions

A clear acknowledgement of the problem has been made by Ed Balls, the Schools Secretary, who has said schools face a dilemma about whether or not they can fund college students this year. He has blamed increase in application levels on the fact that there are few jobs available at the moment due to recession. He has made the point that due to the recession, their are not as many job opportunities out their for school leavers and so many are deciding to stay on