Battle of Blackpool to capture the soul of the NUS

THE Winter Gardens in Blackpool is no stranger to controversy. The venue has hosted some of the most important political conferences since 1945 and its halls and bar echo with the sound of past backroom deals and compromises. But few events are likely to have been as heated and, for Britain's students at least, more crucial than today's education funding debate at the National Union of Students' annual conference.

At issue will be the union's policy for the funding of students in post-16 education. As it stands, NUS policy calls for the restoration of grants to 1979 levels and student entitlement to state benefits. According to the union's own estimates, this would require a 5p rise in income tax just to pay for the students currently in higher and further education.

In Blackpool today the modernising, Labour-dominated leadership will call for a move towards a system based on some form of contribution from students. This will be either towards fees, thereby raising more funds for cash-strapped institutions, or towards living costs allowing the money currently spent on maintenance to be redistributed to institutions.

This will not be the first time the modernisers have tried to change policy. At a special conference in Derby last year the leadership suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of delegates dominated by hard-left factions. They rejected a system known as Maintenance Income Contingent Loans (Micl) under which students' living costs are met by students themselves through income tax or national insurance contributions after graduation, and by employers through corporation tax.

In Derby NUS President Jim Murphy, a former student at Strathclyde University and now Labour's Prospective Parliamentary candidate in Eastwood, told delegates the union could not go to the negotiating table with a policy that would cost the equivalent of 20 primary schools every day. The big question in Blackpool will be: can delegates be persuaded to bite the bullet this time around?

Douglas Trainer, president of NUS Scotland and odds-on favourite to succeed Jim Murphy, says he is ``confident but not complacent'' that the conference will agree the change. ``Currently the NUS is drifting without a policy that the vast majority of students truly believe in,'' he says. ``They realise that the old touchstone of 1979 grant levels has become a millstone round our necks.''

Unlike Derby, delegates will not vote for a specific system, instead the aim is to set three ``broad principles'' which any system should meet. These are: the assurance that education remains free at the point of access; is properly resourced; and is based on some form of student contribution linked to income.

Trainer denies that this is a cop-out. ``It's not for NUS to decide for or against a specific policy. It's up to us to say what that system should do.'' However, he admits: ``There is absolutely no consensus within the student movement about one particular system.''

But today's debate over student grants will be far more than a dry consideration of funding options. It represents a battle for the soul of NUS which the modernisers believe the union cannot afford to lose.

``This is undoubtedly the most important conference in the union's 74-year history,'' says Trainer. ``What we decide will determine what role we have in shaping the future of higher education in this country. The further we get from 1979 grant levels the further we get from the negotiating table.''

There can be little doubt that the current system is in crisis. Grants for university students have been cut by 10% in each of the last three years forcing hardship to record levels. According to the NUS, a student living outside London faces a shortfall of almost #1300 this year even with the full student grant and the maximum student loan. It is little wonder that around 25% of students have considered dropping out of university. For further education students who are not entitled to a grant or loan, the situation is even worse.

At the same time universities, their margins cut to the bone in the Government's constant search for ever greater efficiency gains, are threatening to impose a ``deficiency levy'' of #300 on new students from next year. The Committee of Vice Chancellors and Principals estimates that funding has fallen in real terms by 25% per student since 1989 and staff/student ratios have risen from 1-11 to 1-16.

It is this crisis which prompted the Government to set up a national inquiry into the future organisation of higher education chaired by Sir John Dearing, the Department for Education and Employment's favourite troubleshooter. Sir Ron has already got it out of the mess over national testing in schools in England and Wales and is due to announce radical proposals for post-16 secondary school education, again south of the Border, this week.

The committee, which will announce its membership and begin its work in two weeks' time, provides the perfect opportunity for the NUS to reclaim the funding agenda, according to Trainer. ``At a time when the main political parties are reviewing the funding of higher education the NUS must be seen to be taking the lead in that debate,'' he says.

But the supporters of the current policy do not intend to give up the battle without a fight. They believe that if they could defeat the leadership in Derby, they can do it again in Blackpool today. ``Education should be a right for everyone, not a privilege for a wealthy elite. The NUS should not embrace any pay-to-learn scheme,'' says Clive Lewis, the union's vice president for education and the Campaign for Free Education (CFE) candidate against Trainer.

The CFE has managed to gather support beyond the traditional hard left NUS factions and is challenging Labour for all the main positions on the national executive with the support of some major players in the student movement. The traditionalists argue that the leadership is merely paving the way for the Labour Party publicly to announce its support for a graduate tax. Trainer, they say, is far too willing to dance to Tony Blair's tune to further his own career in the Labour Party.

Trainer certainly does not hide his political sympathies. He is openly New Labour and his election rhetoric is similar to Blair's. His manifesto is littered with phrases like ``we should be ready to embrace innovative ideas and new methods of campaigning'' or ``the National Union of Students cannot afford to stand still; our movement must listen to both students and student officers and make the changes which will ensure its future''.

Trainer denies that the motivation to accept student contributions is political. But his New Labour tendencies have earned him many detractors in the student movement, even in his own party. According to one critic, ``Jim Murphy was a careerist but at least he did things; Douglas Trainer is just there to run the union on behalf of Labour''.

As Trainer's slogan puts it, these are changing times for the NUS. In Blackpool today delegates will almost certainly abandon the grants policy and accept that students will have to make a contribution. The challenge for Trainer and the other modernisers then will be to ensure that the change does get the NUS to the negotiating table and deliver a system that balances the needs of students, institutions and the Treasury.