Youth & Students

By Socialist Party members in education https://spined.co.uk NEU Executive announces emergency decision to call on members to exercise ‘Section 44’ Our schools and colleges are not safe. Full classrooms provide an environment where the new variant will quickly spread. No member of staff and no pupil should have to work in such dangerous conditions.That’s why, to protect their safety, and ...

Belatedly the Welsh government has announced the closures of secondary schools in Wales next week, but not of primary schools – yet. This was a last minute reaction to the rising cases in Welsh schools and the fact that large numbers of pupils and teachers were indicating that they would in effect boycott the schools any way so they could ...

By John Williams (Bar worker Unite, Cardiff in a personal capacity) Hospitality has been one of the worst effected industries during the Covid pandemic. There were over 30,000 job losses at the beginning of the crisis. Many weren’t eligible for furlough. Hours were cut drastically and people were sent home early as demand plummeted. Then we had Boris Johnson and ...

By Michelle Francis, Bangor Socialist Students The Vice Chancellor of Bangor University has decided that his currently unused property is more important than the livelihoods of the people who work for him, but also more important than the lives of the students who pay him. 120 of these jobs are support staff and 80 are academic staff. Now is not ...

By Cammilla Mngaza Siyanda Mngaza is currently serving a four-and-a-half-year prison sentence for defending herself against a racially motivated hate crime. Siyanda worked for the South Wales Fire Service in human resources – recruiting fire fighters. She had never been in trouble before. In May 2019, at a campsite in Brecon she was attacked, without provocation, by a family group ...

By Elin Wilding, Cardiff West Socialist Party Students in lockdown Cardiff protested on Sunday 4 October to demand the refunding of student fees for this year, and the abolition of tuition fees entirely. Around 70 students attended in spite of the Welsh weather. The mood was angry and has been for the last week. The demonstration was called by a ...

Expensive online courses in ghost towns Going to university right now feels like walking into a trap made of fire, surrounded by circling sharks, as alarms blare off in every direction. Watching the news and seeing the blame go to students for the rise in cases just goes to show how afraid the capitalist class is of young people today. ...

Two million people in lockdown, virtually the whole of South Wales from Llanelli to Newport and two thirds of the Welsh population – the second wave has arrived. The Welsh government has announced strict restrictions on people’s movements, but only as far as their personal lives are concerned. If they are involved in making money for other people then the ...

By Gareth Bromhall Gareth Bromall (GB) spoke with a 12 year old pupil of Penyreol Comprehensive in Swansea about their experience of what going back to school was like last week. Penyreol Comprehensive has its own risk assessment that stipulates how social distancing will be maintained with a one way system in the school and bubbles for each year etc. ...

By a Caerphilly National Education Union (NEU) rep When we returned to work in Caerphilly, despite the headteacher’s best efforts, lack of routine testing was causing huge anxiety among staff. Students weren’t in yet – but we knew that, within a few days of reopening, there would be 33 different students in front of us every hour. We were advised ...