Showing posts with label Kilburn Centre. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Kilburn Centre. Show all posts

Sunday 20 June 2010

Save OUR College - Kilburn unites against closure

The community and the generations unite to save Kilburn Centre

A bustling Kilburn High Road, thick with Saturday traffic and shoppers, witnessed early resistance to the cuts when lecturers, students and their children, trades unionists, Brent Trades Council and local supporters marched to demonstrate against the closure of Kilburn Centre. The College of North West London is closing the £5.5m centre only three years after it opened in order to save money.  At the same time it has an unused building in Wembley Park worth £4m that it is refusing to sell off because it is waiting for the property market to recover.


Sarah Cox of Brent Trades Council, addressing the open air meeting in Kilburn Square rightly said that the CNWL should be educators, not property speculators. She emphasised the importance of the Centre as a local resource and the necessity for a building within easy walking distance for parents with young children.She remarked that the political parties had been vocal at the public meeting in support of the Centre during the General Election campaign but only the Green Party were present today.
Alf Filer of the UCU and Harrow College delivered a message of support and spoke about how the impact of cuts and recession had hit his own family. Hank Roberts of the NUT spoke about education cuts in general and called for direct action citing the occupation of Wembley Playing Fields in opposition to the building of the Wembley Academy. 
 
Not speaking, but evident from the posters - and very welcome, was the support of the Kilburn Times for the battle to save the Centre.


Standing in for Pete Murry, ex-CNWL  lecturer and Secretary of the Green Party Trade Union Group, who had a meeting elsewhere, I pledged the support of Brent Green Party for the campaign.  I said that Further Education was particularly important to me because as an '11+ failure' who had left school at 16, attending FE evening classes in my 20s had enabled me to get the qualifications to enter teacher training.
Further Education is a lifeline, a second chance, and has the capacity to change lives. That is why we must defend it. At the same time at the other end of the age spectrum Children's Centres, which are geared to improving life chances in the early years, are facing an uncertain future. Funding is only guaranteed for one year and with 20 Centres on stream, Brent may be faced with mothballing new buildings.

These buildings in our borough have been paid for by our taxes. They are OUR buildings and as such rather than letting them be mothballed and useless, we should take them over for community use. I could have added that with the policy on so-called 'free schools' we should be wary that they might be the target for private companies or charities to set up their own schools, funded by us, but outside any democratic accountability.

If we are to fight climate change and create a low carbon economy, we need to invest in education and training. It will be a scandal if the people of Brent, with its high unemployment rate, should miss out on such opportunities.

Sign the Campaign Petition HERE   Contact the campaign to offer help at cnwlkilburn@googlemail.com

Thursday 25 March 2010

SUPPORT THE KILBURN CENTRE STUDENTS

Click to enlarge
Learning Skills Council (LSC)/RIBA Runner Up for Innovation By Design 2008
Closed 2010 due to reduction in LSC funding?  A scandal...

A message from Students at the College of North West London (CNWL) protesting against the decision to close the Kilburn Centre on Priory Park Road.

Why are we unhappy?

Managers came into our classes on Monday 15th March and Tuesday 16th March to tell us of their decision to close the Kilburn Centre on 1st August, 2010.  We are very unhappy because the Principal, Vicki Fagg, didn't ask us for our opinions before they decided to close the Kilburn Centre.

We want to go to college to learn. Most students want to improve their education by going to the next level. How are we going to do that, if they shut down our local college?

Many of us are parents with young children and we can't travel to the other centres at Willesden or Wembley because our children go to local schools. Other students young and old also don't want to travel far away to study.

We feel cheated because we have nowhere else to go and our education will be affected.

What's good about the Kilburn Centre?

We like this college because it has courses for young people and older students. The courses offered by the college help us to get qualifications, like English, maths and IT, which companies want when we apply for jobs.

The college is also part of our local community and easy to get to. The staff are very pleasant and helpful and the teachers make things easy to understand.

Why should the Kilburn Centre stay open?

The students can not express in words how important it is for this college to stay open. It is unjust and such a waste of money to close the college because it opened only a few years ago.

It is an important land mark in our community because there are not enough places where people can go to learn new skills. We have a right to an education which suits our needs.

Most students at Kilburn are doing ESOL courses because English is not their first language. Many of them had a difficult past. They rely on their local college and don't have the confidence or the money to travel to the other sites at Willesden or Wembley. If the Kilburn Centre closes, we have no way to improve our education and get the skills to get a job.

The management are holding our future in their hands.

What is the petition for?

The students want to show how strongly we feel about the closure. We are united in the way we feel as students who enjoy coming to this college and want to make a difference. All we ask for is a chance to better our lives and maybe pass some knowledge onto our children.

We really need your support to keep our college at Kilburn open.

Please sign the petition and help us keep the Kilburn Centre open.

THE STUDENTS MAKE AN EXCELLENT CASE AND I HAVE BEEN PLEASED TO SIGN THEIR PETITION. WE NEED TO KEEP LOCAL, ACCESSIBLE EDUCATION VALUED BY THE COMMUNITY.  Martin Francis, Geen Party Candidate for Brent North

SIGN THE PETITION HERE