Located in a spanking new building, opened by Her Majesty The Queen, in 2003, it
is credited with being the biggest capital build for post-16 Further Education
in the UK, placing the College at the forefront of teaching and learning for
the 21st Century.That may well be the claim, but does it meet those ideals ? In some cases it
may, but certainly not in all.
As has been alleged about other colleges in the UK, revenue generating now
appears to be more important than education, an Stevenage appears not to be an
exception.
The building may be bright, airy and spacious, as claimed, but claims to being
built to the best environmental and space efficiency standards is pushing it a
bit when the air conditioning doesn't work, health and safety legislation is
being breached, and students can't even read what's on their computer monitors
because of direct and indirectly reflected sunlight. A comfortable and well
designed place in which to learn ? I think not.
The key aspect to learning is the provision of tutors and materials which
actually lead to the development of students. Unfortunately, it appears that
Stevenage is, in places, scrapping the bottom of the barrel when it comes to
tutors and their skills. Nowhere is this more apparant than in the Learning
Shop, where students are taken on government paid for courses to get
themselves educated in the modern world of computer literacy.
While I am 100% behind teaching computer literacy and related skills to those
who have no experience of computers, and applaud the government's decision to
fund this education for all those who want to take up the chance of keeping up
with the technology of the later generations, North Hertfordshire College
appears to have realised what a nice little earner this can be, and has
embraced teaching the courses, but without providing the resources or tutors
with the capability to deliver the skills to be learned.
The whole Learning Shop seems to be run on a shovel the students in, leave
them to it, get the money off the government, and cash up the profit basis.
Organisation is atrocious, and treatment by staff can be abysmal. Mistakes are
made in booking courses, assessments and examinations, and candidates for
assessment and examination are kept hanging around, waiting to get the
information and documentation needed to start, while precious time allocated to
their assessment or exam is dribbling away. Tutors have little clue as to what's
going on, and appear to have little interest in the concerns of the students;
some seem to have even forgotten that it is the height of rudeness to walk off
in the middle of conversation, or to embark on another with someone else before
completing the one in progress. Students are looked down upon, patronised, and
sometimes treated with contempt. At
times it really doesn't seem that they care at all; providing you've signed-in,
and the government fee can be claimed, the College will be happy.
Students are dumped at computer screens with a course book to work their way
through, and that's pretty much it; if you need help, then put your hand up,
and if you're lucky, one of the tutors may eventually get round to coming to
sort you out. It may help if they weren't mostly engaged in conversation or
other activities and
were actually in a position where they could see people who were asking for
help, but that seems hardly to matter to them.
It would also help if someone undertook a Visual Display Terminal assessment of
the equipment students are forced to use, and were a little more co-operative in
dealing with, and resolving, legitimate complaints about that equipment. Having
to frequently move from one computer screen to another as the sun moves around
the building is frustrating enough, and finding that chairs won't adjust or
keyboad support legs are broken off after a ten minute 'login' delay compounds
that frustration. Having to wait fifteen minutes to get a computer screen
cleaned at the start of a timed examination is not acceptable.
One would expect an examination at the Learning Shop to be much like an
examination taken anywhere else; everything set up and checked to be working,
the examination paper ready to be handed out, and you're simply led to your
reserved seat at the appointed time, and off
you go, with wishes of, "Good luck", thrown in to put you at ease. It's not
though. It's just another day for Stevenage tutors and staff, and you're no
more important than any other revenue earning unit. Why should they care that
you have to wait in a queue, wait for them to find the examination paper, then
have to wait ages while the computer system logs you in ? That you lose nearly a
quarter of your examination time just trying to undertake it is something you
should have seen coming from day one, when you joined the course.
Those who turn up for an introduction to find out what the Learning Shop courses
are about, are made to sign-up to a course, before they are even told what the
course is, what it offers, and before they've even had a chance to decide if
such a course is suitable for them or not. Those who go through the
introduction, which gives no insight into what the courses really involve, are
strongly coerced into handing their already completed application forms in.
There is no assessment of potential student's abilities and aptitude, no
guidance given as to which courses may be best for a particular student or for
furthering their careers, and, no matter how well qualified already, students
are pressured into starting at the lowest level of education on offer.
It is difficult to enter on a higher level course, and, in the absence of
a published syllabus up-front and with no indications of the expected level of
ability required given, it's impossible to know which level is best to
undertake.
It's hard to comprehend why the Learning Shop would want to force all
its students onto the lowest levels of learning when they may be better
suited to a higher level, but as soon as one realises that a student starting at
the bottom and steadily progressing to the top generates a lot more income for
the College than someone just taking
a few hours of education at the highest level, then the financial arguments for
such a premise become clear - Kerr-Ching !
This is factory education on a grand scale, and while it may be acceptable to
those who have never experienced how a proper educational system works, or don't
care what quality of education a student gets, it is far from satisfactory.
Even the course books and materials which are meant to teach the skills needed
to pass the assessments and examinations leave a lot to be desired. They are
incomplete, inaccurate, and sometimes quite plainly wrong. It is hardly
inspiring when a tutor, asked how something required in a course book should
be achieved, replies that they don't know how it's done, or explains that the
course material isn't accurate nor correct. That completing a section of a
course book has a student ticking an entry in a log book, indicating that they
have now learned, and have actually experienced, something which hasn't even
been touched on shows that the course books do not teach what is required.
So how do we assess the standing of North Hertfordshire College's Stevenage
campus ? Without experiencing all of its aspects, it is impossible to judge
how it performs and delivers as a whole, but insights into the operations in
one part give a foreboding feeling about the other.
The view from within the Learning Shop is atrocious, and if this is what the
rest of the College is like, then it is a pretty depressing thought. I'm sure
that students who know no better, or have low expectations, can pass through
without perceiving there to be any problems at all, but, just because
they don't see a problem, it doesn't mean problems doesn't exist, or that they
are small ones.
The College prides itself on being open and responsive to its students needs,
but that doesn't mean that it will respond to, even acknowledge, official
complaints made to it about the learning environment, its breaches of Health
and Safety legislation, or complaints against staff for their unsatisfactory,
treatment of students. Even a working complaints' procedure collapses when
the receptionist can't find a complaint form to complete in the first place.
The Stevenage Learning Shop may not be representative of the whole Stevenage
campus, nor other colleges within the North Hertfordshire College group, but
assessed upon the state of play at the Learning Shop, and the inability to
handle complaints in the way it claims does, the end of term report for
Stevenage campus does not make for pleasant reading; "Couldn't give a f--k.
Must try harder".
