The Government should be grateful to lecturers for calling off their strike over pay, the union's Bradford-based president claimed today.

Tina Downes, pictured, from Shipley, has been elected by the 68,000 members of NATFHE to be this year's president.

She took over the top job at a time when college lecturers were at loggerheads with their bosses over pay.

But they have now voted to accept a four per cent pay rise, on the promise of efforts in the future to close the pay gap between college lecturers and school teachers.

Teachers currently earn at least ten per cent more.

The vote has averted the threat of strikes on college campuses but Mrs Downes says employers and the Government should be grateful to members who are trusting them to stick to promises.

"A gesture has been made, and we're willing to call off our action and give them a chance," she said.

"It's magnanimous of our members because we have fallen so far behind. I hope they recognise this. Our members are tired of the Government and employers taking it in turns to blame the other."

College employers have pledged to close the substantial gap between teachers' and lecturers' pay, by September 2004, as part of the pay deal.

Mrs Downes, 54, who teaches adult education at Bradford College, has been secretary of her NATFHE branch for 15 years and has been active at regional and national level.

She has five grown-up sons and is married to another Bradford lecturer and NATFHE activist, Paul Russell.

She is delighted to be representing NATFHE nationally even though it has meant having to temporarily cut back her teaching - which she loves - to one day a week.

"One of the things I'd like to achieve this year is to raise the profile of adult education, and the specific area of Prison Education, where our members are working in awful conditions," she said.