Student protests: Thousands of angry students take to the streets

• A protester in Edinburgh makes her feelings clear

Eleven members of the public were injured, two police officers were hurt and a police van was vandalised, as protesters clashed with police.

The ugliest scenes were in London, where crowds of surging demonstrators attempted to break through police lines as officers tried to control them in Whitehall, leading to dozens of arrests.

In Scotland, students occupied a university building in Glasgow, and in Edinburgh, a group of activists targeted the Scottish Liberal Democrat HQ.

The protests were less chaotic than at the much larger student march in London two weeks ago, which ended in an attack on Conservative Party headquarters at Millbank and has resulted in 68 arrests so far.

The students have been protesting against plans to increase tuition fees in England to up to 9,000 per year and to withdraw public funding for university teaching budgets for many subjects.

Although tuition fees have been scrapped north of the Border, Scottish students protested with their English colleagues, arguing that increasing fees in England and Wales would saddle Scottish students studying outside Scotland with debt.

Last month, the coalition government announced that funding for university teaching in England and Wales was to be cut by 3 billion a year. It was proposed in the Browne Review that the current tuition fee cap of just over 3,000 should be raised to 6,000, with universities given permission to charge as much as 9,000 in exceptional circumstances. With university budgets being squeezed across the UK, Scottish students were demanding that principals refuse to implement cuts or job losses.

Education secretary Michael Russell has ruled out the reintroduction of tuition fees in Scotland and is currently overseeing a debate on higher education funding in Scotland.

In Glasgow yesterday, hundreds of students and secondary school pupils staged a two-hour march through the city centre before gathering in George Square.

Some students occupied a building in the main campus of Strathclyde University. Half a dozen people also blockaded a local authority office. Strathclyde Police said last night that there had been no arrests.

Among those taking part were students from Strathclyde, Caledonian and Glasgow universities, and Glasgow School of Art. Pupils from Whitehill Secondary in Dennistoun in Glasgow's east end and Lenzie Academy in East Dunbartonshire also took part.

Jennifer Cadiz, depute president of the NUS in Scotland, told The Scotsman: "The turnout is very encouraging. The NUS very much supports this rally, and considering we have had so many people turning out across the country, this sends out a message. It is also very important that so many secondary school students have turned out."

Those on the march reserved their most disparaging chants for Liberal Democrat leader and Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, who made a pre-election promise not to raise tuition fees. After doing a deal with the Conservatives, he claimed reneging on his pledge was a price of going into a coalition government.

Anger over his about-turn on tuition fees was evident yesterday in Edinburgh, where hundreds marched to the party's Scottish HQ at Haymarket.

Later, about 100 students occupied a lecture hall in Edinburgh University's Appleton Tower in George Square.

First-year student Emma Saunders said: "I'm hoping this will show the Edinburgh students' determination to stand in solidarity with the English students and also our support for our university, which has been really great in rejecting the Browne Report, and that there is a student base in rejecting the report as well."

It was Westminster that saw the worst of the clashes, which centred around a stranded police van that was ransacked near Downing Street.

It was rocked by dozens of protesters and at one point came close to tipping over. A handful got on to the roof and started ripping off the siren and tannoy. A wing mirror and riot shield were torn off and a stink bomb was let off in the front seat.

One student, Zoe Williams, attempted to calm the situation by standing between the rioters and the van.

Miss Williams said the violence distracted from the real point of the protest. She said demonstration was about university fees and claimed the education issue was being hijacked by "I hate the police" troublemakers.

"I was trying to get across to them that the cause we are here for today is not about ‘I hate the police' and ‘I want to burn the police and I want to destroy everything they represent'," she said.

Police hemmed in hundreds of protesters for around four hours a short distance from the Houses of Parliament as tensions ran high.

Thousands joined protest marches in Manchester, Liverpool and Brighton, and students occupied buildings in Oxford, Birmingham, Cambridge, Bristol, Plymouth and the capital. Pupils walked out of school in Winchester, Cambridge, Leeds and London.

The protests were dubbed Day X, with parents, teachers and trade unionists invited to join students at rallies organised by the Education Activist Network and campaign group Youth Fight For Jobs.

Meanwhile, Mr Clegg attempted to defend his position during a visit to a south London school to mark the launch of the coalition government's education white paper.

The Deputy Prime Minister said: "What you will see is a system that will make access to university much, much fairer than it is at the moment.

"It is simply outrageous that more young people go from two private schools, Westminster and Eton, to Oxford and Cambridge, than thousands of youngsters who leave school every year.

"We want to change that. We want to make universities open and accessible to everyone."

A spokesman for Prime Minister David Cameron said: "People obviously have a right to engage in lawful and peaceful protest, but there is no place for violence or intimidation."

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