The International Socialist Resistance conference held in Brussels on December 15, 2001, decided to launch an international campaign for free education. It was proposed that an international day of action would be held in March. After discussions amongst ISR affiliates it was decided that ISR would organise this worldwide action day on March 15, 3 months after the conference. This day also coincides with the European Council meeting in Barcelona which will discuss education in the EU.

'The University of Nike' was crudely spray painted over the entrance to a university in Montpelier, France, a sign next to it pointed to the 'Bill Gates' building. This action was organised by the students in their campaign to mobilise for the demonstrations in Brussels. The 14th of January students of the Queen’s Coalition Against Deregulation in Kingston, Canada, occupied the principal’s office to oppose deregulation of education. A worldwide movement against the privatisation of education is starting to develop.

The European Round Table, the biggest business lobby-group, complained back in 1989 that the European governments spent "too much" on students who do not pass exams or who follow "useless" classes. The bosses moaned that young people study "too long" before they can work for them, they are "too critical" and have to be "re-educated" when they arrive in the workplace.

The ERT is a group of 45 industrial leaders of European multinationals, who have assets worth 550 Billion Euros, the equivalent of two times the GNP of France. Education deserves "special" attention from this lobby group. The so-called democratisation and expansion of education in the 1960s was necessary for the capitalists to fulfil the need for more skilled workers. The development of new more advanced production methods made it necessary to open universities for working class young people. But today, with their profits under pressure and chronic unemployment in many countries, bosses think that "too many" students want to follow higher education. They think the money spent on higher education is wasted if it produces an unemployed highly skilled workforce. The 1990’s saw already an enormous attack on students’ rights, social services at universities, and implementation of tuition fees. Over the last few years there has been a common tendency all over the world to prepare education for privatisation and commercialisation and give courses a pro-business slant. The Bologna agreement signed by 29 European ministers of education is designed to prepare European universities for "competition" with the US and Canada.

In Europe the bosses see part of this competition with the US as "opening" the education system to the market, with less state intervention and more big business control. In the US the state funding of higher education has fallen from 50% in 1987 to 34% in 1999.

The introduction of the Bologna agreement will provoke enormous anger amongst students, school students and parents. In the Netherlands the government announced that universities would be able to increase tuition fees for Masters degree by up to 7.000 Euro.

In Russia the education system has been one of the main victims of the crisis caused by over ten years of capitalist restoration. A wave of strikes by schoolteachers is sweeping Russia because of the wages paid – usually less than 94 Euros a month. At the same time higher education has been commercialised – students now have to pay fees, sometimes up to $1000 a year for each course. Most students therefore have one or two part-time, and sometimes even full time, jobs just to finance their studies. Many so called universities have also been set up by private business, taken money from students and then issued diplomas that have proved to be worthless. The situation has become so bad that the neo liberally minded Ministry of Education has had to announce a clamp down on private colleges.

Students all over the world will be confronted with further attacks on the education sector. Higher fees, student loans, limitations on student numbers, privatisation of services, will be the concrete measures that every student will be confronted with. The struggle against these attacks will have to defend the right of everyone to democratic and free education.

On November 15, last year, 200.000 students marched through Madrid, together with their teachers and their parents against the ‘Ley Organica de Universidades’. The LOU is a proposed law whose aim is to privatise the Spanish education system, to increase the involvement of business in universities, to force contracting-out of services.

All over the world from South-Africa to Russia, from Brazil to India, students are confronted with the neo-liberal attacks on education, the issue of privatisation, commercialisation and cuts in spending is a global phenomena and one which is leading to growing anger amongst young people around the world. Up and down Italy tens of thousands of students and school students demonstrated in defence of public education in the last months of 2001.

The fight against neo-liberal attacks needs to be waged on an international level. The developing anti-globalisation movement can arm the students with a program, international character and instruments to fight the battle.

International Socialist Resistance is proposing to all affiliated organisations to organise an international day of action on March 15 to demand free education for all. The 15th and 16th of March will see European prime ministers and government leaders meeting in Barcelona for a European Council meeting. We want to use this meeting date, and the massive demonstrations of Spanish workers and students that will take place at the same time, as a focal point around which to organise worldwide actions in Europe, Brazil, US, South Africa, Nigeria, Sri Lanka, India, Australia ...

• Translate this announcement into your own language and circulate it amongst your ISR/IR members
• Get as much support for this campaign and day of action as possible. Approach local student unions, education trade unions (and other trade unions), anti-capitalist organisations, environmental groups and community organisations as well as left parties and organisations to get them to participate and sponsor the campaign and day of action.
• ISR affiliates should decide on the basis of the situation in their country what kind of action they organise. This could be occupations of administrative offices, strikes and walkouts at education institutions, public meetings, stalls in the city centres and at universities, lobbies at offices of education ministers, street theatre, and petition collecting.
• In preparation for this produce good lively leaflets and organise stalls outside education institutions. Remember to take ISR/IR membership cards to get young people to join.
• Quickly call a press conference to announce the day of action and keep the media regularly informed of what you are going to do. Make sure that ISR/IR members are given the responsibility of writing regular reports of your plans and send them in to the above e-mail address and we will publish a regular newsletter. Do the same on the day of action and make sure ISR/IR members take good photos so that you can use them in your own news-bulletins and websites as well as submitting them to the international ISR website
• Keep us informed and we’ll circulate the reports of what everyone is doing to you by e-mail and on our website.

The coordinating committee will circulate a statement on education putting forward ISR’s ideas on education for you to discuss and use to spread the ideas of ISR to new young people all over the world!

* We demand free education for all!

* Access to free education is a basic right. ISR/IR fights all attempts by capitalist governments to create an educational system that drives working class youth out of colleges and universities, and increasingly is only open to the sons and daughters of the rich elite.

* No to the Bologna agreement, no to privatisation and commercialisation.

* For mass mobilisations by the anti-capitalist movement and working people to stop neo-liberalism, privatisation and the destruction of education.

Bart Vandersteene, International Resistance, Belgium

On behalf of the Coordinating Committee of International Socialist Resistance