A group of students at Bradley Stoke Community School have been staging a campaign to “raise awareness” of the rise in university tuition fees.
Year 10 students Georgina Jones, Jess Hicks, Abbie Head and Jess Morgan have been running a ‘Fight the Fees’ campaign as part of their Citizenship studies.
The girls explained to The Journal:
“In our Citizenship lessons we have been asked to create a campaign about an issue that matters to us. We have chosen to concentrate on the rise in student tuition fees, as we feel they will affect many people in the years to come.”
Over the past few weeks, the students have designed a campaign logo (see above), created a publicity brochure and formed a Facebook group, which has attracted around a hundred members.
Local MP Jack Lopresti (Conservative) visited the school last Friday (11th March) and spent time talking with year 10 students on a variety of subjects including that of university tuition fees.
In a letter to The Journal written after his visit, Mr Lopresti says he is “passionate about social mobility” and believes “we should do all we can to ensure that those from the humblest of backgrounds can fulfil their potential” but adds that “we just cannot afford to keep funding students to the same level that we were previously”.
On average, a graduate can expect to earn £100,000 more than someone without a degree over the course of their working lives, according to the MP.
Figures calculated for the BBC by leading accountants show that a student borrowing £39,000 for a three-year course could pay back up to £83,000 in total (over 30 years).
Related links:
- Tuition Fees – The Facts (Conservative Party)
- National Campaign Against Fees & Cuts
Lol: Fight the F££’s [sic]
I presume the publicity brochure is a draft? Spelling mistakes and incorrect use of / missing apostrophes (or should I say apostrophe’s) all over the place.
Think English lessons might be more appropriate than Citizenship lessons. Shouldn’t we be focussing on teaching young people their responsibilities rather than how to campaign for their (perceived) ‘rights’.
Got to say the students are on to a looser here. There is only so much money working people are willing to put towards university education.
In my parents generation 3% of people went to university, obviously the money we pay in taxes could give them full grants and no fee’s at all.
When I went it was more like 10-20% with every mickey mouse college becoming a *university*. The grant was mostly gone, but there were no fees.
Now the aim is something like 33-50% of the population attending.
You do the math – where exactly is the money going to come from to pay for that?
Personally I’m all for subsidising the best – the top few % of our students should go to uni for free, and those going to good universities doing useful degree’s should pay a lot less. The rest should either cough up the cash, or go get a job and do something more useful instead.
What annoys me, is that I’ve been a tax-payer for the last 30+ years, paying for other folks’ kids to be educated, and when it’s finally time for mine to get the benefits, I have to pay again for it. Or they do.
/sigh
So a question to these girls, which public service would you like to see cut to mitigate the rise in tuition fees?
Student protests don’t cut much mustard with us, the tax payers who fund your lifestyle. Take a look at a typical evening in Clifton, there’s not much in the way of evidence of students reining in their spending.
Your website whilst good-natured is very subjective, some objectivity would help get your point across.
I agree with DaveP, the quality of the grammar and punctuation could be improved too.
I am so tired about TAX PAYER, not with my money, and what about me….
A country cannot be selfish. Ans a country MUST help an protect elderly, PROVIDE the best health system to any citizen,and GIVE the best education to the children. Children are the future and YES we have to increase the number of young students because there is too many young people that finish school at 16 or 17 without a good education. After that they are working for TESCO. Is that the future of the country? Working for TESCO or Marks and Spencer? It is already full of useless kids managers in charge of large department…they dont have life experience and proper education..they only know to follow RULES. So YES education should be free. And regarding the tax payers complaining….We have the biggest cut policy…and no reduction of our TAX.
It appears that the publicity brochure we linked to in this article was only a draft. The students have now provided the final version, which is available through the same link.
Think they need a few lessons on MS Paint after seeing that logo at the top. I’ve got that font on my computer though.
We understand all of your comments and have taken them into consideration, however, the leaflet you first viewed was a draft. We sent in the first copy as a mistake and realised what we had done when you commented, as the editor said we have sent in a new one,which we hope you prefer.I would like to give my opinion like you have had the opportunity to express yours.Why are you being so critical towards our campaign it is only for our coursework in school, nothing serious. You should be paying attention to the campaign itself not the logo/leaflet mistakes. Thank-you for all of your interests and comments.We would just like to say a big thank-you and show our appreciation to the editor for placing our article onto this website.
Jack Lopresti’s website reports that the MP was also questioned by students about child soldiers, fair trade, and school uniform.
Read more: Jack Lopresti MP Visits Bradley Stoke Community School