This is the story Further Education and the classroom and before all teachers of secondary school roll their eyes and shuffle off complaining that FE lecturers don’t know anything about real teaching, let’s explode a few myths. Nowadays, FE is not the genteel environment of basket weaving and friendly retired people indulging in philosophy and conversational French, in fact I’m sure it never was, but I’ve been in it since Curriculum 2000 and, just for the record, I have a PGCE. I teach only AS and A Level to 16 – 19 year olds, my classes 20+ strong, I have less pay, less holiday and longer hours. We are inspected by Ofsted, we must supply lesson plans, peer observation as well as do parents’ evenings, open evenings and some of my colleagues teach GCSE to this age group. Anyone joining FE now must do a PGDE, an equivalent of the PGCE – and a lot of this is all to the good. Even so, FE has changed, and the tempting thought that it provides a quiet backwater in adult education is no longer true, now it is more like “dolt” education rather than “adult”. Hence this blog – stories and thoughts on how you motivate, encourage and yes “manage”a disparate group of teenagers, who are no longer traditional A Level students, but who differ as much in ability as they do in character. Watch this space in the next few weeks.
