Despite working full time and living a less-than-extravagant lifestyle, Claire*, a lecturer at Lewisham College, was finding it difficult to make ends meet even before the cost of living crisis hit. As a single parent living in London, she now says she’s really struggling.

‘It’s very tough,’ she tells Tribune. ‘Our rent went up 10% this year and my energy bills went up by £120. I haven’t paid my childcare costs for the last few months and I’m already in my overdraft—and it’s the first week of the month.’

She isn’t alone. Around the country, further Education (FE) lecturers have reported taking on second jobs, taking out loans to cover costs, and relying on food banks to get by as our growing series of crises spiral further out of control. A survey conducted by UCU earlier this year found eight in ten college staff were facing financial insecurity, with over half employed on an insecure contract.

That’s why, when the Association of Colleges recommended a pay rise of 2.5% earlier this year—the equivalent of a 10% pay cut in real terms—workers knew they had to fight back. Staff at 23 colleges in England, unionised with the University and College Union (UCU), have just come to the end of ten days of strike action demanding a vastly improved offer—and change in the sector as a whole.

It isn’t just the cost of living crisis causing problems. Austerity has chipped away at the UK’s FE institutions and their ‘Cinderella sector.’ Pay freezes and shoddy offers have caused staff pay to fall 35% behind inflation in the last 12 years, according to UCU. As a result, the sector is now facing record vacancies and staffing shortages, only compounding ‘unmanageable’ workloads.

‘We’ve got high turnover at the college and we can’t recruit specialists,’ Emma, an educator and UCU branch manager at Newcastle College, tells Tribune. ‘If we had staff with high morale and good wages, if we could recruit and weren’t having massive staff turnover, that in turn is going to boost the student experience.’ She adds that consistency is vital for a good learning experience. ‘Students might be getting three or four different teachers in a year, or a non-specialist,’ she says. ‘It’s just not a good student experience, especially when some of these adult students are paying good money to be here.’

Claire agrees: FE has faced around 25,000 job cuts in the last 12 years, meaning administration responsibilities have fallen on lecturers, leaving them with less time to focus on the students. ‘We’ve got loads of incredibly experienced people who are still on what seem like entry level salaries, who have so much creativity and passion they could bring if there was just a bit more space in our weeks,’ she says. ‘There’s a huge interest from lots of our staff members about decolonising the curriculum, for example, but actually finding the time to sit down and share the resources and make that into a really thorough project [is impossible] at the moment. That’s the kind of thing that means students lose out.’

The mounting pressure from the top to tick all the admin boxes in an attempt to cut costs, Claire adds, means workers have less time to go the extra mile for students, like tailoring lessons and creating extra personalised resources for those with additional needs. ‘It’s kind of devastating to work that hard and come home, so exhausted, and still not be able to pay the bills,’ she says.

For Claire, this squeeze is the natural result of the marketisation of the sector, which saw FE taken out of the hands of the local authority under the Major administration. Now colleges are run like quasi-businesses, driven by the same cost-cutting instincts. It’s little wonder, then, that FE lecturers are now making approximately £9,000 less per year than teachers in state schools.

With college CEOs and board members making upwards of £200,000, Emma is certain the money to pay staff is there. The question, for her, is whether it’s being spent properly. ‘The money is being spent on assets and buildings rather than staff,’ she says. ‘But if you think about it, [lecturers are] probably their most important asset—the college doesn’t run without us, as we’ve proven over the last few days.’

All this is made worse by the fact that further education institutions serve some of the most marginalised in society, not only helping young people take their next steps, but giving people of all ages new chances when it comes to education and employability. Claire says that it’s ‘no surprise,’ then, that this is the education sector with the least amount of government funding. Matthew, from Carlisle College, agrees. ‘The government doesn’t necessarily care too much about further education, because it’s not the kind of institution most of them have gone to, and most of them don’t send their children to FE colleges,’ he tells Tribune. ‘So it’s just kind of ignored and left behind, unfortunately.’

Further education staff may have been left behind, but they’re no longer letting themselves be ignored. When I spoke to Claire last week, she had just got back from a ‘very lively’ picket line, which was visited by UCU general secretary Jo Grady, union members from Goldsmiths University, and RMT members all showing solidarity. It was a ‘real boost,’ Claire says, given that Lewisham College’s CEO wrote to every member of staff to say that there was no more money than the 2.5% offer, strike or no strike. ‘She’s coming down very tough, and it was a great way to say, no, we’re not deterred.’

UCU says some branches have reported a 10% increase in membership since the dispute began. At Newcastle College, Emma says membership has increased by around 25% with ‘very few’ staff crossing the picket line. Matthew says around 20 new members have joined the Carlisle branch, despite people finding it difficult to strike due to worries about money and the students. ‘People are so concerned about what’s happening to their wages and their bills and they’re willing to stand up to fight for better pay and better funding for FE.’

For workers like Claire, winning the strike is a question of necessity as much as determination. On the question of continuing to fight, her response sums up the feelings of many of those who have taken industrial action this year in her sector and beyond: ‘I can’t afford not to.’