I listened in astonishment this morning to a discussion on radio in which it was suggested seriously that colleges of further education could offer a cheap way to obtain a degree. Have they lost their marbles completely? I have had a considerable amount of experience with English colleges of FE, as a client and as an occasional lecturer. I have yet to find one that impressed me with its standards, or to find many lecturers who knew or cared much about their subject. If the educational establishment thinks that already sceptical employers will take degrees from FE colleges seriously, they are on the wrong planet.
Boadicea's Chariot 
At the risk of repeating myself – and I’m sure you’re as frustrated as I am – what do these people not understand about the need for a variety of paths to further education and training – particularly trades training and apprenticeships for people who are either not equipped for more acedemic routes, or simply want to do something different?
I can’t agree with you more. One problem is academic snobbery. I remember doing some work with a faculty team in a polytechnic, and the contempt some of them had for their students was unbelievable. To a man, they felt belittled by not being in a university.
Indeed, Tom, and I cannot for the life of me understand why. One of my mates at Dover Grammar chucked it at 14 and went to work as a plumber’s ‘gopher’. Retired early and spends his days on the golf course while I’m still stagging on 🙂
Total bloody joke, most of them are totally illiterate, I speak of the ‘lecturers’.
The ‘students’ are unspeakable! Grunting morons mostly.
Should have seen the bunch at Haverford West. It appeared to be more like those old ‘Victorian Institutions’ that warehoused the insane.
Labour’s role in offering the poor, the dream of lifting their children from poverty by providing them with access to “universities” and degrees – lowering the academic barriers to entry in the process, for otherwise most of them wouldn’t pass the first hurdle – has turned into the cruel mirage it always was. This will simply compound that piece of political social engineering.
What is deemed so disgraceful about an HND in Mechanical Engineering or Electical Engineering for instance, if you plan to work in a garage or become an electrician? I would have considered it of far more use than any university degree for the same role.
The UKGOV should take look at how Germany has maintained and promoted its technological/ industrial leadership – by protecting its system of apprenticeships and technical education. It’s still ‘in’ to be a qualified, skilled worker! No nonsense about half the school leavers going to universities.
Tom, it is view consistent with, and appropriate to the Age of Mediocrity we are now entering, God help us.
We had reasonable polytechnics, and let them become second rate universities, so increasing the supply of academic seats. Labour then tried to fill them, pushing up the demand with second rate minds.
I can’t let this post go by without making a comment – the trouble is that everyone else has said exactly what I think. 🙂
I can only echo Boadicea. What Labour has done to the entire British education system is a tragedy. It has spoiled the lives of many students by encouraging them to incur a vast debt for a Mickey Mouse degree. As Tom says, some first-class polys (is that the correct plural form?) have now become third-rate so-called universities. Watching the performance last night on University Challege of the University of the Fine Arts of London proved that point.
Close them down and while we are at it shut down the courses run by local councils to ‘enrich’ the life of those who have already been educated. If you want to learn spanish or take up painting then do it with your own resources. Spend the money saved on giving the young a thorough grounding that will sort the wheat from the chaff, and I speak as chaff who failed the 11 plus. We have to accept the fact that some kids are just brighter than others and instead of wasting zillions on attempting to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear we should be championing the bright ones. One thing I would do is to bring back the trade schools and encourage firms to take on apprentices so that those who do not have an academic bent but are technically minded and good with ther hands can have gainful employment. It’s time to stop experimenting, lets return to what we know can work.
These posts reminded of what my mother told me about her education in the 1920s. She started school at three (shock! horror!) and was taught to read so early that she cannot remember ever not being able to read. The school was streamed (shock! horror!) and those in the ‘top’ streams were taught poetry, Shakespeare, grammar, maths, and she ended up, by the time she was ‘asked’ to leave on her fourteenth birthday, with a far better education (without a bit of paper)than most of those who leave now with the piece of paper which says they have ‘followed’ a course.
Those in the ‘non-academic’ streams were taught literacy and numeracy and given an education that enabled them to survive when they left school, but the concentration was on practical skills. No one in the ‘academic’ streams were allowed to consider themselves to be ‘superior’… and no one in the ‘practical’ streams were dismissed as being ‘inferior’. Both were taught to be proud of their achievements. If anything, it would seem that those with the practical skills were rated more highly than those who were more academic.
The UK (and to a large extent here) have done our society (and our young) no service by promoting the notion that practical skills are inferior to academic achievements. Yes, we need the theoreticians, but we also need those capable of turning the theories into practical artefacts – but even more we need people who can simply keep the everyday things of life running.
My wife and I are both in our seventies, and from modest backgrounds, but like Boa’s mother, neither of us can remember not being able to read. I am able to compare our education with that of my grandchildren, who are good, well behaved kids, but they know damn all. We watched a programme last night on BBC 3 about two unrelated British youths, a girl of sixteen and a boy of eighteen. They were utterly indisciplined, and the programme showed them spending a week with a highly disciplined family in Costa Rica. Waste of space does not begin to describe either spoilt, arrogant pîece of human detritus. They were clearly accustomed to speaking offensively to parents, teachers etc., without challenge. If that is a common result of British education, then may God help the country.
I echo that!
Tom. I think there are a fair few of us on this site who cannot remember not being able to read – we were taught!
I have had endless arguments with teachers who want to wait until children are ‘ready to read’. My argument is that children are ‘ready’ to talk ready to ‘walk’ and ‘ready’ to do all sorts of ‘natural’ things. Reading is not a ‘natural’ human activity and needs to be taught – and it is quite cruel to with-hold from youngsters the means to find answers for themselves, and to explore fiction.
I cannot remember not being able to read, either. Like, it seems, the rest of the wrinklies here, I started school at three, also. Of my first year of school, apart from misty images of the classroom, I have particular memories of two things. One is the shop in the corner of the classroom where we learned to count money – old shillings and pence, mind – and the garden where we learned to grow vegetables. (This was 1951, for those of us ancient enough to remember.)
‘Advanced,’ educational techniques came late to service schools, so my children were fortunate enough to have a ‘traditional’ -ish education also, though I taught all of them to read before they started school at five, good old Janet and John 🙂 My Grandchildren attend a private school in Cyprus – the local scools are, of course, Greek language, and also corrupt, moat of the teachers give private lessons outside school hours so the standard of teaching during school hours is, erm, below standard. They also learn to read in their first ‘school’ year. (They both started kindergarten at two, then ‘pre-reception,’ and ‘reception,’ before ‘Year one.)
It seems to me that it is not rocket science. As has been pointed out above, we know what works, why, in the name of all the saints,* do we not do it?
*Yes, I know, but you know what I mean 🙂
It has always amused me that the minute we dumped £,s,d, on the grounds that it was easier for children to work in base 10, we had to start teaching them to use different number bases.
Both my girls and my two eldest Grandchildren could read by the time they started school, this did not just happen, it was because dedicated, loving parents were involved and as we all know there are many ‘families’ who sit on their buts and say, ‘not my job, that’s why we have teachers’. And the father who recently blamed his local social services for ‘failing’ his son who got bladdered and kicked another guy to death. Not my fault, I’m only a parent, what do I know he said. Not enough by the sound of it but enough to continue breeding and copping state benefits.
I don’t mean to make a party political point, but I always said that Thatcher should have tackled the teaching unions rather than the miners.