MP GEORGE Galloway has slammed cuts in colleges and schools in London’s deprived East End as “an education disaster” in a Parliamentary motion. His Commons motion comes as university lecturers staged a protest in the City today at 550 posts being axed

By Mike Brooke

MP GEORGE Galloway has slammed cuts in colleges and schools in London’s deprived East End as “an education disaster” in a Parliamentary motion.

His Commons motion comes as university lecturers staged a protest in the City today at 550 posts being axed.

Schools, colleges and adult learning are facing extraordinary cutbacks which he says are hitting Britain’s neediest community.

FACING AXE

Lecturers are facing the axe at the London Metropolitan University in Aldgate, Whitechapel and Holloway, while others are facing redundancy at Tower Hamlets community and sixthform college in Poplar and Stepney.

Still more cuts are hitting Bethnal Green adult education centre, one of the oldest in the country.

“Hundreds of redundancies are threatened at London Met with a reduction in 11,000 students places,” Galloway’s Early Day Motion points out.

“Tower Hamlets College is planning to make 40 fulltime lecturers redundant and cut classes including 1,500 places on courses in English for speakers of other languages, while Lifelong learning courses are threatened at the Bethnal Green centre.”

SCHOOL HIT

It doesn’t stop there. Galloway’s motion continues: “Teachers at St Paul’s Way Secondary school are also being threatened with redundancies, with a narrowing of the curriculum and loss of support for pupils in need.”

It adds: “These attacks represent a disaster for education in East London and are the last thing needed in the difficult economic conditions.”

The motion has been lodged at Westminster at the same time lecturers from London Met protested outside this-afternoon’s Governors’ board meeting at the university’s Moorgate campus.

CALL FOR TALKS

The university is facing financial crisis over alleged mismanagement’ of reporting student numbers completing degree courses and is having to repay �35 million in Whitehall funding. The lecturers staged a strike last month over the cuts.

More lecturers walked out last week at Tower Hamlets College over job cuts which could see thousands of students without places in September.

The Bethnal Green & Bow MP calls on “the responsible authorities to reconsider these cuts as a matter of urgency” and start negotiations with trade unions and student union representatives to stop these cuts.