GFTU BGCM 2019 Minutes

founded at which our keynote speaker was Frances O’Grady. Doug was there

as well and we had a fantastic discussion about the place of adult education

both at Ruskin and beyond and I think it is worthwhile saying that first and

foremost. I was also struck by Doug’s comments about the debate around

education and the debate about adult education. I think one of the key things

here is that Ruskin is in a solid place, despite the vagaries of the slings and

arrows of outrageous fortune and lack of funding, so for us it is about the vice

like grip of the lack of funding going forward, but more about that in a moment.

Very quickly, again you can see that I have got some visual images there.

What is Ruskin? We have got this weight of history, we have got a clear

historical identity, both in the labour movement generally and also within the

trade union movement and we have luminaries like Ben Tillett amongst our

founding influences and founders of our great institution and I do not think we

can lose sight of that. All Labour leaders have spoken at Ruskin, Jeremy

Corbyn most recently a couple of years ago on the future of education and I

think Ruskin still has that seminal position and unique position within further

education colleges.

We are a national leader in trade union education. I am going to talk about that

in a moment. We believe that is the case and it is interesting in terms of

informing this debate the things that we have done over the last couple of

years. There is quite a significant distance travelled for the college in that

regard. We punch way above our weight in terms of advancing equality in

terms of our student base and in terms of getting individuals to go that extra

step and progress their education. We have a beautiful campus and we are

trying to develop and bring back the arts and the culture into our education as a

means of praxis really, as a means of social change in education and we

believe that we are outstanding. Ofsted may differ, they probably rank us as

good, but we believe we are outstanding in terms of the difference that we

make. Nicky will talk about that in terms of the student experience in a short

moment.

38