Corbyn criticises marketisation of universities

UK universities have been “invaded” by methods more at home in the private sector, putting young people’s learning under threat, Jeremy Corbyn has said.

Speaking to school teachers at the National Education Union conference in Liverpool on 16 April, the Labour leader said that “for years, the idea that education has value in and of itself has been in retreat”, replaced by the “more limited notion that the only point of education is to meet the needs of the economy, or business”.

“That thinking has increasingly been reflected in the way education is delivered in the proliferation of testing and competition and in the culture of educational institutions,” he said. “And since 2010 this retreat has been hastened by the devastating effects of austerity on our education system, which has seen schools stripped back to the bone and university students loaded with debt.”