Pembroke, Balliol and St John’s students voted to condemn current government reform to Higher Education policy at their General Meetings last Sunday. All motions criticise the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF), currently in its second year. Pembroke also crticised the Higher Education and Research Bill, currently progressing through the House of Lords.

According to a recent press release, the TEF involves the assessment of the quality of university teaching through “core metrics such as student satisfaction, non-continuation rates and employment data. It will also look at additional evidence submitted by providers”. Based on this assessment it will rank universities and award them with a rating of Gold, Silver or Bronze. From its third year, TEF rankings will affect student fees, with fees rising for universities ranked highly by the framework.

The government argues that the TEF assessments will aid student choice. According to Les Ebdon, director of the Office for Fair Access commented, “For disadvantaged students fair access is not just about getting in to higher education, it is about getting on too. TEF will ensure that higher education providers have to carefully consider about how to provide excellent teaching for all their students, whatever their background.”

Yet the Balliol motion denounced the University’s decision to participate in the framework “on the basis that it is a poor measure of teaching quality, and that differentiated tuition fees are detrimental to access”. It also condemned “the decision to raise tuition fees for on-course students”.

Pembroke students elected to donate £100 towards coaches for an upcoming demonstration on November 19, organised by the NUS and the University and College Union. Students will protest against both the TEF and the pending Higher Education and Research Bill. They will attack the government decision to allow universities “to increase their fees based on dubious assessments of teaching excellence”. The motion also criticises the Higher Education and Research Bill’s proposal of an “Office for Students”, which it argues would not include student representation.

According to the government summary, the Office for Students will supplant existing regulators “replacing the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) and the Office for Fair Access”. It will also have “an explicit legal duty to promote choice and consider the student, employer and taxpayer interest in all its regulatory and funding decisions. The OfS will be a non-departmental public body which will operate at arms length from Ministers”.

Iris Kaye-Smith, the Pembroke student who proposed the motion, said, “This bill, if passed, would give the government an unprecedented and undemocratic degree of control over academic institutions in the UK, and effectively close off higher education for thousands of students from backgrounds that are already underrepresented at universities, especially at Oxford.

“These proposals are not reforms, but dogmatic attempts to marketise education by forcing universities to put profits before students and competition before intellectual freedom. I think it’s our duty as current students to fight for the right of future generations to enjoy the same opportunities as we have.”

While it was not a unanimous decision, Kaye-Smith states that there was “broad” support for the motion. She also states that at the start of term, three-quarters of Pembroke students opposed fee rises, which is a key element of the government’s TEF framework.

The St John’s motion stated, “The proposed metrics for the TEF do not measure teaching experience and are therefore not fit for purpose”. It resolved to oppose the University’s adoption of the TEF and further increases to tuition fees.

On the information page about the planned demonstration against Higher Education reform, on UCU Left’s website, they mark “three key asks” . These are “to invest in our FE colleges and sixth forms and stop college mergers”. as well as “to write off student debt and stop private education companies profiting from student fees” and “to scrap the HE Bill, halt the rise in tuition fees and bring back maintenance grants”.

UCU Left added, “Free, good quality education is a right for all, regardless of ability to pay and more than at any time before we have to fight for that.

“FE colleges have been cut to the core, with huge job losses and course closures, and a desperate need for investment that simply isn’t being provided. In HE, tuition fees are rising and the government is forcing universities to run like businesses. Students are facing higher debt than ever before with maintenance grants and NHS bursaries scrapped, student loan terms changed and tuition fees set to reach £12,000 by 2026.”

NUS President Malia Bouattia commented, “The government is running at pace with a deeply risky ideologically-led market experiment in further and higher education, and students and lecturers, who will suffer most as a result, are clear that this can’t be allowed to happen.”

Motions are to be proposed in other JCRs, in conjunction with OUSU.

Wadham College, OUSU and OULC have condemned Amber Rudd’s rejection of a public inquiry into the events at Orgreave in 1984.

The Wadham Student Union motion, passed on Sunday, was proposed by Pete Morgan. It resolved to “write to the Home Secretary – simply and concisely – condemning her decision to reject any form of public inquiry into the actions of police at the Orgreave coking plant on the June 18 1984 during the miners’ strike of 1984-5 and calling for her to reconsider.”

It continued, “Regardless of what the Home Secretary says, a judicial investigation into the military style policing used on that day is now long overdue and only a full public enquiry can adequately investigate this.”

The Orgreave clashes took place between pickets and police at a miner’s strike near Sheffield in which campaigners say thev officers drafted in to police the picketing used excessive violence. There have also been allegations of fabrication by the authorities during subsequent investigation.

Home Secretary Amber Rudd has claimed she is willing to appoint a lawyer next month to assess material relating to the violent clashes outside the Orgreave coking plant, but according to the times she does not want to push ahead with “something that could drag on for years”.

OUSU have also passed a motion in their fortnightly OUSU council meeting on Wednesday to, “write a letter to the Home Secretary condemning her decision to reject a public inquiry into the actions of the police at the Orgreave coking plant.”

Similarly, Oxford University Labour Club have passed a motion on condemning Amber Rudd’s refusal to launch an enquiry.

This news comes after the conclusion of the two-year Hillsborough inquests which ruled in favour of the victims’ families. This has caused calls for an offi cial investigation at Orgreave to gain momentum.

There were dozens of arrests and injuries at the trial but when 95 miners were prosecuted, their trials collapsed due to concerns over police evidence. Thousands of miners massed outside the Orgreave plant, met by around 6,000 police pulled from across the country.

Lucas Bertholdi-Saad, president of Wadham Student Union told Cherwell, “I think Wadham students recognise the historic solidarity that exists between the students’ and trade union movements; it is very obvious in the police responseswherever we try and organise or demonstrate.

“I am proud we passed this motion and I think it is timely with the home secretary’s rejection of an inquiry despite the 2015 IPCC report revealing evidence of major injustice.”

However, Altair Brandon-Salmon, a Wadham undergraduate told Cherwell, “Setting aside the merits of having a judicidal inquiry into Orgreave, the passage of this motion exemplifi es the worst traits of the Wadham SU, indulging in the kind of left-wing virtue signalling and self-aggrandisement which has made it notorious across the unviersity, when its chief priority should be undergraduates’ welfare.”

The government’s new ‘benefit cap’, introduced on Monday, is set to affect hundreds of Oxford families this winter. The move to bring household welfare payments down from £26,000 to £20,000 a year, outside of London, has been described by the government as “a clear incentive to move into a job.” It is estimated that the new policy will cumulatively cut benefit payments in Oxford by £1.1 million, and have an impact on up to 1,000 working age families.

The cap applies to welfare supplements such as Bereavement Allowance, Child Benefit, Income Support, Maternity Allowance, Jobseeker’s Allowance and Housing Benefit. Other benefi ts such as War Pensions, Disability Living Allowance, and Carer’s Allowance have been ruled out of the £20,000 calculation.

Opponents of the move have criticised the Department for Work and Pensions’ decision to include Housing Benefit in the cap. Despite the higher limit of £23,000 in London, Councillor Susan Brown said that the high cost of living in Oxford is “a fact not recognised at all by the government in their calculations.”

Danny Dorling, Halford Mackinder Professor of Geography at Oxford, told Cherwell, “If central government wanted to improve peoples’ lives, then rather than introduce benefi t caps it would introduce rent regulation. This would save government a huge amount of money by reducing the housing benefit bill. It would also save all private renters a great deal of money in future, including many students in Oxford. A few landlords would not be as rich as they currently are.”

“In much of Europe and many states of the USA rent regulations help keep rents low and government subsidies to private landlords are then much reduced. There is also less of a housing crisis where rent regulation exists. But some of the rich do lose out. The welfare bill is mainly as high as it is today because private rents are so high and there is now so little social housing—especially in Oxford.”

Damian Green, Work and Pensions Secretary, said, “We are ensuring the values of this government continue to chime with those of ordinary working people and delivering on our commitment to make sure work pays more than welfare.

“I think people recognise there’s something wrong about families able to get more on benefits than the average family can earn by going out to work.”

A Downing Street spokesmen made clear that the cap will not rise either with inflation or otherwise before 2020.

Rehana Azam, national secretary for the GMB union, said: “Food prices are going up—and the evidence shows that single parents were already skipping meals to provide for their children, even before this latest attack.”

Debbie Abrahams, Shadow Secretary for Work and Pensions, said, “Despite Theresa May’s warm words on the steps of No 10, when she said she wanted to help families who are ‘just managing’, she is allowing the reduction of the so-called ‘benefit cap’ to go ahead.

“She talks the talk, but when it comes to it, this is the same old Tory ideologically driven agenda that hits the poorest in our society to pay for their failed austerity plan.”

The Oxford University Labour Club opposes the new benefi t cap, and told Cherwell, “These changes will save money whilst meaning that those who require the most support are no longer able to receive it—it makes vulnerable people worse off without making anybody better off .” The cap will also affect single people without children, reducing their annual payments to £13,400 a year outside of London.

Oxford’s Welfare Support Team can now be contacted at 01865 252755.

The Oxford University Conservative Association and Oxford East Conservatives were contacted for comment.