Education may be a devolved issue, but it is critical that we show our solidarity with students right across the country in the campaign to tackle hidden course costs and get more money into students’ pockets.

When the spectre of fees first arose in England we sent thousands of students to London in support. In the months following the National Demo, we secured a better deal for students in Scotland.

But we have not been immune from the impacts of change - with Scottish universities shamefully setting the highest fees in the UK for RUK students, postgraduates students facing our access worst nightmare, hidden course costs plunging students in Scotland into overdraft and cuts to colleges threatening to add to the ranks of the unemployed.

It is one of the basic principles of our movement, that when we stand together, we stand stronger. I am therefore calling for you to join in the week of action that Liam has called across the UK.

I fully understand that this is a difficult part of the year in which for you to mobilise your students, and that levels of anger amongst some students is currently lower in Scotland, due to the scale of your campaigning wins. That is why we are suggesting a range of possible actions and targets which you can take part in, rather than calling centrally for a full-scale walk-out across Scotland.

If your students or students' association decides to walk-out, then we will of course support you in that decision. However, there are also other ways of showing our solidarity with students elsewhere in the UK which will chime with your students' current feelings.

Issues that will have resonance  in Scotland:

• RUK Fees - Have a stunt or rally at your university about RUK fees, calling on MPs to reverse the UK fees policy and university principals to cut fee-levels and raise bursaries

• Postgraduate study funding - One of the key campaign points is about postgraduate study funding - this is an ideal opportunity to highlight this issue. Hold a rally or carry out a stunt calling on MSPs and the Scottish Government to make postgraduate access fairer and ask your principal to do the same. You could start a petition to your local MSPs as well.

• Target Lib Dem MPs - Put together a media stunt outside your local Lib Dem MPs office - 'We still remember'/'Students are watching'/'Stand-up for students' etc etc. Find out which way they voted on tuition fees in December 2010. Set up a meeting with them to discuss what they can do to support students.

• Campaign on course costs - NUS UK have issued a briefing on hidden course costs. Use the week of action to have stalls and get information from your students about the costs they pay. Submit the information and a petition to your principal asking them to take action on the issue.

There are lots more ideas, and planning tips in the Come Clean briefing. Let your creativity run wild!

We will also, further down the road, be taking part in the NUSUK Lobby of Parliament on the 18th of April. This will involved identifying target MP's seats and then sending a student from each of those constituencies to London to lobby their MP over these issues. For this part of NUSUK's campaign we will be almost completely following and supporting their plans. There will be further information and a briefing on this aspect to follow.

We'll be issuing more information shortly about where the Our Future Our Fight campaign on college funding goes next - and there will be plenty of opportunity to use this coming week of action to take that forward too.

There will be a lot of email traffic from NUSUK and Liam on this over the next few weeks and I'll try and follow up as many of these as possible with a Scotland-specific email, but feel free to get in touch if at any point it feels like you are getting crossed-wires or confused messages!

Together we can make sure that education in Scotland remains a right, not a commodity,

Robin

*As a reminder of what you've achieved:

• Tuition fees off the table for the rest of this Parliament
• EMA protected in Scotland
• The introduction of a £7,000 minimum income guarantee starting with the most hard-up students,
• Governance reviews that further secure the places of students in university and college decision-making processes
• NUS Scotland's biggest-ever campaign - achieving the protection of FE bursaries and radically reducing the level of cuts that colleges will receive.