Students rally over tuition fees

The Assembly has no power to abolish tuition fees

Up to 1,000 students from across Wales are heading to a rally in London to demand tuition fees be abolished and grants restored.

They are claiming that student hardship has reached its highest ever level, forcing many to drop out of higher education altogether.

Unions say hardship levels are high

Students from Wales will join a 15,000-strong rally in what is being described as the biggest demonstration of its kind for the last decade.

The demonstration is targeted at Westminster because the National Assembly has no power to follow Scotland's lead and abolish the unpopular tuition fees.

But there is still frustration in Wales that an immediate independent inquiry into student hardship promised five weeks ago is yet to get under way.

Student Union leaders claim that levels of hardship among undergraduates has never been higher.

And unless the system changes, they insist that many students will leave education altogether.

One of the students attending, Lara Moravich already combines two jobs with her marine biology lectures at Aberystwyth, in order to make ends meet.

She says she will have to drop out next year to save up enough cash to complete her course.