Kilburn - Blame Privatisation

Peter Murry, Green Party candidate for Kilburn ward, looks ahead to Friday's Save Kilburn College meeting at the Kingsgate Community Centre, Kingsgate Road, NW6 (7pm).

As a Green Party candidate for Kilburn ward in the council elections and a former lecturer at the College of North West London’s old Kilburn site and retired member of the college’s UCU branch, I am obviously concerned about the closure of the new Kilburn building and its impact on students and staff. This will drastically reduce educational provision for adults in the Kilburn area, many of who are BME communities and women.

However, although I support the campaign against closure the present funding current management arrangements limit the power of any local council or MP to reverse the decision.

The root of the problem lies in earlier government policies of the quasi-privatisation of Further Education that took place in the 1990's. This took the control of Colleges out of the control of local government, which whatever its faults, had some democratic accountability. Now colleges with large budgets are controlled by governing bodies which are in effect self perpetuating quangos that often just rubber-stamp management decisions