GFTU BGCM 2019 Minutes

way we are contributing to that agenda here and many people have come

through our young members training.

Education has been so important for us over this last couple of years in

particular that we have agreed to hold a fringe meeting at the TUC on the

subject of the future of trade union education, so I hope we can make that one

buzz as well. But, as I said earlier, the key thing that we have got to do to

increase the volume and improve the quality of all the education that we do is

to make it more sustainable so that it is not relying just on the 100% central

subsidy, so we are actively looking at a strategy with some consultants for

changing things in the future and drawing more funding in. So with that, Chair,

I hope we can have a varied and diverse debate on education. (Applause)

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you, Doug. We have got a number of guest speakers from

our partners who deliver the education courses in partnership and on our

behalf and we have got a couple of EC members, as Doug said, who are going

to talk about the work that we have done in particular areas. In no particular

order I am going to, first of all, introduce Paul Di Felice, Principal of Ruskin

College, and Nicola O’Shea, Business Development Manager at Ruskin

College. So please step forward. (Applause)

PAUL DI FELICE: I am Paul Di Felice. I am the Principal of Ruskin College and I

have been in that position now for nearly three years and this is Nicky. Nicky

joined us in September and has done a sterling job as our Business

Development Manager in terms of getting the word out there about Ruskin

College. Do have a look at our new website, because it is fully engaging and

exciting and tells you a lot about the college. There is a great bit on the history

of Ruskin. As a historian, I am particularly proud of that. Do have a look at it

and give us some feedback on what you think in terms of its appropriateness

and so on and so forth. We are going to use slides, because, I guess, we are

educationalists, so you do have to bear with us on that.

The first thing I want to say is that we have got 120 years on the first slide, so

we have been around a long time and this year is obviously a key milestone on

that and we had a fantastic celebration of the actual date when the college was

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