Candice Satchwell teaches
English on the BA (Hons) English
Language, Literature and
Writing at Blackpool and
The Fylde College where she
specialises in stylistics, literacy
studies and children’s
literature. She is also an
honorary research fellow
in the Literacy Research
Centre at Lancaster
University. Her most recent
publication, co-authored
with R. Ivanic, is: ‘The
textuality of learning contexts
in UK colleges’, Pedagogy,
Culture & Society, Vol. 15,
No. 3. (2007)
The following is an ‘imaginary’ account of visiting an higher education English team in a Further Education college. My visits to numerous such institutions have had remarkably similar characteristics, and I hope it might be of interest to those for whom this is not the norm, while for others it will be all too familiar. Issues touched on here include the apparent inequality in access to resources for students at universities and those at colleges, and I am pursuing the complex reasons for this. I am also continuing to gather information on the experience of mature students, with a view to providing guidance for tutors in the areas they are most likely to require support. I would be very happy to receive your thoughts on these or any other issues relating to English degrees in FE colleges.
I arrive at the college reception where I am to be met by a colleague. In the reception area are a number of students of varying ages; one asks me whether she is in the right place for a childcare course, while another is asking for information about a work placement in the college related to her HND. On the wall are a range of notices and advertisements for courses and qualifications, dominated by stands displaying plans for a ‘new build’, which incorporates sections for HE as well as FE. The plans are to be carried out over the next five years. There is already evidence of the first steps in that a car park is being cleared ready to house a new building – creating parking problems all round.
My colleague escorts me to the English section’s staffroom, which is shared with tutors teaching several other subjects, in both HE and FE. Although there are many desks in the staffroom, there is only one person in there: all the others are teaching. I am taken to a classroom where a Year 2 group are studying ‘Discourse Analysis‘ for a module on the BA (Hons) in English and History. The course is validated by a university 25 miles away, but has been devised by a small cohort of the English and History teams at the college. The 12 students present are sitting in a horseshoe shape with the teacher at the front. There is no lecturing and no PowerPoint, the teaching and learning taking the form of paired and small group work, examining photocopied examples of transcripts of spoken discourse.
The students are aged between 25 and 65. When I ask them, later, about their reasons for choosing this course, it turns out they are almost all local, with jobs and/or families. One or two have come from further afield, attracted by the design of the course, or by the less stringent UCAS points requirements. They are overwhelmingly positive about the course, their lecturers and their experience. However, they are less enthusiastic about the resources, the library and access to journals. ‘It doesn’t seem fair that we have to know exactly what we want before we can get hold of a book – and then we have to order it. Students at the university can browse the shelves, pick books up – but we only have online resources.’ They are also dispirited by the noise from the building work and the lack of parking space.
At the end of the two-hour session, the lecturer has to dash off to teach A Levels at the other college campus, two miles away. The students fetch themselves coffee, which they bring back to the room and await their history lecturer who will teach them for the next hour and a half. The course is organised to fit into two days a week, so that the students can still work part-time, and don’t need childcare every day.
Later, I talk to a new member of staff who has come from an established university where he was studying for a doctorate, and where he taught some undergraduate seminars. He tells me, ‘I think all university teachers should work in FE first – it is so beneficial – it lays the foundations. I’d be a much better teacher if I went back to teaching at university now.’ He teaches all levels – A Levels, GCSE, Key Skills and the degree, with 25–30 contact teaching hours per week. He is also taking a PGCE, with a class every Friday, and is still completing his PhD. Despite this he ‘really likes the job'.
A more experienced teacher also loves her job, but she is demoralised by the lack of time for research and for developing new resources, being expected to run A Level courses as well as BA modules. She would love to be able to provide research seminars, poetry readings and meetings at lunchtime for the students – but the additional work required makes this a dream, rather than a reality, at present. As we leave the classroom to visit the learning resource centre, a student is waiting outside. She asks my companion: ‘Have you got a minute …?’ As the student begins to cry, I reassure the lecturer that I will find my own way. When you know students intimately over a number of years, it is impossible to abandon them in a time of crisis.
Colleges nationwide are in the throes of new developments, most being required to supply more HE courses, particularly Foundation Degrees, and fulfil agendas for expanding vocational and skills provision for 14–19 year olds. For some English degrees, however, having been established several years ago, the staff are disappointed in the falling levels of recruitment. It is difficult to generalise about the reasons for this, but exhausting the local supply of literary talent is likely to be one, with tuition fees another. While the recession might seem to represent a boon to FE colleges in requiring the retraining of newly-redundant people to take on new jobs, it is also reducing the likelihood of people being able to afford the ‘luxury’ of pursuing a degree in English. After all, many mature students on English courses declare that it is ‘something for me for a change’; although, in fact, they often go on to become teachers or to work in jobs they had never previously dreamt of. For these students, their ‘academic’ degree – relatively rare in FE colleges – turns out to be anything but ‘non-vocational’. As one graduate of the English and History course tells me, ‘It’s enriched my whole life. And now I’ve got a job here because of it! I’d never have believed it if you told me five years ago.’
