HE and all that

2003-07-26T09:38:00.000-07:00

I feel wound down, this means that the lecturing season must definitely be over. How do I know I'm wound down, well its easy, I am not talking to myself, a habit born of stress, its worries my kids, but their mum my wife has come to realise its a harmless pass-time. As the stress increases with the academic year do I talk to myself more? No, I talk less! that’s because more people are in the conversation, bugger, am I nuts, no not yet, but the day may well be coming. I comfort myself with certain knowledge that I am far from the worst case, there are those who by the end of the year cannot differentiate dreams from reality, bury themselves in obscure beliefs with accompanying artefacts that you either trip over or bump your head on in the staff room from Feng Shui to gargoyles, horse shoes (dozens of those), lecturers who refuse to speak unless they switch on a personal recorder (because by the evening they will have forgotten everything) and of course those weird and bizarre rashes and ailments that seem to erupt among some of the more seriously walking wounded among us. I have lost count of how many staff get promoted only to go down with depression, must be a tenuous connection there somewhere.

2003-07-23T15:33:00.000-07:00

The end of summer term actually represents if anything an insecure time for lectures and teachers, because unlike all the others it does actually give you time to recover, though be it short given the continuing erosion of the recess by old PMT and her SMT . Insecure because you have time to speculate and think, yes its risky really. I have been thinking about the final outcome of all this dumming down and compromising, I mean how can we measure the final result of it, if any? I came across a statistic recently; in the last 100 years 54% of all patents came from Britain, 25% from thre US and 5% from Japan, this is surely in some way a measure of the success of an education system, I wonder what the next 100 years will bring?

2003-07-16T12:33:00.000-07:00

Plagiarism, actually I couldn’t spell that so had to copy it from a web page, ouch!!!! So universities like Essex are finding 25% increase this year. Special software is available that can check student scripts for similarities or scan the net for a likely sources, why is this happening? What’s going on? Who’s to blame? Among the popular emerging views is that its related to the high increase of foreign students on courses who quit frankly see education as more of a detective game, or that with top up fees students have to work so hard that they have little time for study. But I thought students always worked in their spare time, behind bars, in shops, flipping burgers, the proceeds of which as I recall were spent on booze and birds, I have no problem with that. And anyway what about that valiant band of graduates who gained their degrees from the OU, students in full time employment, usually with families and mortgages who bare the full cost of courses. For me it’s the result of the inevitable here, if we are going to reduce the standards in order to gain more entrants to universities so that the government figures look good, then isn’t it obvious that many students will not be able to cope with the demand, or am I just a cynical old git who belongs to some time prior to the Jurassic-cretaceous boundary, some how I am beginning to hope so.

2003-07-13T11:03:00.000-07:00

New plans for old

Hello lecturers everywhere and please accept my apologies for such a protracted absence, but please do not tell my parents after all I am over 18 even though I may not act it, and according to the press will likely have been able to vote for a two whole years by now if new proposals get through!!!!! Have you read that one yet? Well part of my long period of quite has been due to lesson plans and schemes of work, but surely we all have those? Yes of course, but not in the format that the college would like. Format, surely teaching is an individual thing, like the lesson plan itself, well yes but old PMT of the SMT does not, ever has or will ever teach and neither have her dogs of war, so of course there has to be a format. The problem has been that the format is now in its third incarnation in a year and when I say that, I do not mean its been an evolutionary process, each one has been like a creature from a completely different galaxy, I was going to say universe but thought that would be over the top.

2003-07-12T09:19:00.000-07:00

Well it should be the end of term now but we seem to have been initiated at very short notice; no notice into an extra week of work in the form of staff workshops, that we run, so what do we learn? never mind it will come me I am sure, chin up everyone almost at the wire to.

2003-02-21T07:41:00.000-08:00

Hi There, been away for some time ,but stay tuned for more hot news from the inside track on FE HE and all that.

2002-11-13T16:12:00.000-08:00

More goodies from the inside. So the government want the masses to attend university, fine very commendable, but who is going to pay for it, well we can withdraw student funding and students can: old news, come on. Well for a start all full time; 15 hours per week that is. Courses are free now to school leavers, so they can complete their course and go on to university, where they can go for student loans etc. But now there are so many doing this that the long term repayment prospects of those loans is looking very dim, given that the chances of employment in growth industries, like new technologies i.e. computing is dropping like a lead balloon; surely not, well check www.jobstats.com. How is the government going to get the tax payers money back? I know stop so many students going to university, but we want as many students as possible to go to university, well actually that’s another department. So the solution, reduce the content of courses offered by colleges that would normally get students to university i.e. take out level 3 maths, for a technology course worth its salt, that’s a prerequisite, should work a treat given the failure of schools to deliver a realistic maths education, which is why we are surrounded by key skills. So students will have to take further courses before they can get to university. Net result very few go on to take that extra maths, so do not make it to uni. So students with any actual potential become councillors for the rest who probably end up flipping hamburgers. Now do stay tuned, I shall be having words about this with a higher authority and will deliver their response word for word.

2002-11-09T05:35:00.000-08:00

Here’s a classic, what with the pending Ofsted visit and no doubt the realisation on the part of old PMT of the SMT that having done virtually nothing for staff in the past year apart from reducing over time rates across the board, limiting the amount of leave you can take during the normal summer recess and making it virtually impossible to remove disruptive students, all of which of course will not boad well with the inspectors goes as well as the colleges investors in people kite mark. Well the thing is we have all been deluged with offers of stress counselling workshops, wonder why? Well wonder why is in fact not the first point of question actually, as all of the workshops take place during lecture periods, how can we attend; no mention of cover or being able to cancel lectures you understand. Anyway I not going to get stressed about this one.

2002-11-05T11:50:00.000-08:00

Well its been an illuminating time back at college since the staff training that robbed us of our half term last week. Illuminating because there seems to be a new air of awareness abroad, not I must add a refreshing air but more one of, what is that strange smell type of air. It seems according to one of the many sessions of staff enlightenment; at least one in ten of the population are dyslexic and what’s more this is only the tip of the iceberg, it could be as high as 30%!!! Hold on, no its only the Special Needs department trying to wangle a larger staff room surely, but no it seems at one presentation that was the message and given I must add by a presenter who came out as it were as a dyslexic and in full view of everyone present. Apparently they had only just learnt to spell Hypochondriac; OK but now you come to mention it I not sure I could either without a spell checker and surely if you are dyslexic it not about spelling its about reading, so how do you know it you cant spell it? Sorry I am just being silly now. But a serious point here, I asked one of our Dyslexic support staff, whom I know well enough to approach with such a question as; What do you think? Well I was surprised to hear that the first comment had nothing to do with Dyslexia, but that in their opinion most Dyslexics were nothing short of lazy, using their innate problems as an excuse for just not bothering. Hold on though, are these just naturally lazy people who just have not bothered to learn to read anyway. A comment for which I was not roasted alive and fed to the wolves, in fact my colleague actually became thoughtful, we changed the subject. I mean come on, if 30% of us really were Dyslexic surely literacy would never have managed to established in the first place and then were would the education system be, or where is it you might equally ask.

2002-11-03T07:41:00.000-08:00

The muse for today, Sunday, arrives as the result of a conversation I had with a friend who works at another college during a long though far from over indulgent session at the pub. He was sounding of about how undervalued, overworked and abused he felt at work; by the college that is not the students. I agreed this is a common phenomena, considering lecturers, like teachers, nurses, doctors are all used to having their professionalism exploited by Senior Management Teams everywhere, and seem to have some hard wired inherited oblivion with regard to the hours and commitment of their staff. But it wasn’t always that way was it? No! So when did it become this way? We discussed the long, many, tortuous, often bizarre tenuous history of events that may have contributed to the current dilemma. Was it when the new principle took over? No, not really, The current government? Nothing obvious, The EEC? Bottom of the barrel that one. Eventually we got there, the mission statement, that’s when we began to count increasingly for less and the perception of what we are supposed to be about counted increasingly for more!!! Funny old world isn’t it.

2002-11-01T15:11:00.000-08:00

Hi to anyone who’s reading right now, well today another nail arrives in the coffin of optimism. It appears that when Ofsted inspect they award from grade 1 good to grade what happened, But get this grade 1 is very rare! You mean that good colleges are rare no we mean grade 1 is rare, it’s not the same thing!!!! Is grade 1 set to high then? No its just unlikely that anybody will get a grade 1, so is it set to high then? No its just unlikely that anybody will get a grade 1; OK lets stop now, there’s a term for this type of discussion but I just cant spell it, not dyslexic you understand just cant spell it. Does also this remind you of the inverse like no body fails an A level?
More to come stay with it.

2002-10-31T12:58:00.000-08:00

Hello again, well the holiday training is over, but then so is my carefully crafted, honed and practised sense of optimism, why Well it may have something to do with the fact that our inspection (Ofsted) is 3 months off, I mean hardly going tom be a shock is it, O no look Ofsted have turned up what are we going to do, or is it that given such a protracted warning they think we may forget they are coming. Surely if you wish to make a realistic inspection you turn up on the day, like those food hygiene lot. Then we are told and by the inspectors no less that inspection time is not the time to complain, say that again, inspection time is not the time to complain. So when do we complain, no answer. You know us lecturers may not be the sharpest chisels in the toolbox but we are not the bluntest either. There does seem to be an emerging consensus that Ofsted are merely there to under-right the governments education policy proving everything is just fine, yer right mate.

2002-10-29T15:01:00.000-08:00

Well that’s the first day in staff training over and what would have been the first day of my half term had all things been equal. How did it go? Well it seems I have got it all wrong with college education, because the courses we have been funded for and running all this time, the products of which have gone on to populate industry and university cannot now possibly continue with this success without the timely intervention of both key skills and basic skills! But our students only qualify for a course once they can prove they have the right credentials; GCSE grades, more of this later as well. No, no we are told what your students really want is literacy, numeracy and IT at level what ever, that’s what the future employer will look for. Right. And why is it that as soon as you are seated in front of some bod , who proceeds to tell you how experienced they are in teaching, they immediately go on to prove how absolutely hopeless they really are at the game - talking without a break for what seems like hours, in mono-tones, repeating themselves, no visuals, no feedback, no interaction. At least that’s how it was for the first fifteen minutes, I do not actually recall the rest as I like so many others present fell fast asleep. Still another day tomorrow, do stay tuned.

2002-10-25T11:49:00.000-07:00

Well its seems I end the half term on a high note, had a visit from a student who completed in July this year and tells me that he has managed to get a place his first choice of Uni, that makes me feel good to. He also tells me that other members of the group, some who were not intending going on to Uni have in fact taken the decision to do so and are making out fine and would like to pass back their thanks for a good course, I feel even better; from a rough estimate that makes around two thirds of my completing year making it to a Uni course, enough to make you stop moaning and feel smug satisfaction.

2002-10-24T14:36:00.000-07:00

The return to College this morning following the end of day bombshell yesterday has it seems proved one thing at least and that is that lecturers can be just a vindictive as the rest of the population, we mostly seem to have handed out assignments for the students to be completed and handed in upon return to college aftef half term in a weeks time, bet your'e surprised to hear that eh!

2002-10-23T11:52:00.000-07:00

Ready for muse two of the day? Here we all are waiting for, no, no needing a half term break and what do the old SMT announce at 5 just as we leave, all staff are required during the half term break on Wednesday and Thursday for staff training, why? Because early in the New Year we are to be inspected by Ofsted. More to follow stay tuned. Right now I am off to the watering hole, if I can find one within a radius of 1 mile that isn’t full of dejected, exasperated and bewildered lecturers and that includes those who run courses in counselling; yes I did say miles earlier, that’s another thing I shall be musing about soon.

2002-10-23T08:08:00.000-07:00

No no no, this just cannot be happening, the new college discipline procedures hot from old PMT of the SMT. Clearly paranoiac about contravening some obscure clause in the Equal Opportunities bill or Human Rights legislation and I wouldn’t be surprised to find the RSPCA’s regulations on cruelty to dumb animals as well, because now even if you prove a student is socially and mentally, you cannot get rid of them, Instead they bounce around the new appeals procedures until the end of the course and then, Oh well give them a pass and let them go, but they don’t, instead, armed with their pass they return for another course to terrify us again. Gone are the days when having identified a troublesome individual you simply saunter over to their desk pick up their mobile phone to which they are umbilically connected and proceed to walk out of the door with it, they just like an email attachment follow you, where upon you present them with a form that they must sign, because if they take it quickly to the UBO, then they will find they have been specially selected for a highly salaried career that involves no maths, writing or reading but does include a company BMW, penthouse and tickets to every M & M concert for the next five years. Of course what they have really signed is a withdrawal form, but do students ever read anything, no thank god and it worked every time, passed tense alas

2002-10-22T12:16:00.000-07:00

Had a good day today, my web design group after an initial introduction sat and worked through several examples of tables and then went on to customise fonts, colors and backgrounds for an exercise. Have worked hard at differentiation with this lot but find they tend to differentiate themselves, with the brighter more able students thirsting for more and roaring ahead, until they feel the need for a net fix that is, while the less able despite overtures of encouragement and lashings of attention seem happy to achieve so much and trail off into conversation with me or someone. Actually got a thank you for a good class at the end and not from a high flyer either, I often feel many get on despite me, still another day tomorrow

2002-10-22T05:04:00.000-07:00

Well its that time of the academic year again and the first half term is almost over. All those enthusiastic, motivated, ambitious students that you interviewed (with their parents) are beginning to show there true ambitions and your college Internet link is beginning to show all the usual signs of fatigue as a result; I move we withdraw the students and replace them with the parents.