Nothing particularly interesting

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Rather randomly the other week, I happened to attend a research seminar on the effects of stress and 'burnout' in the workplace.  It was very interesting, and rather shocking to discover just what a problem it is.  However, I am grateful for the experience in another way: If I hadn't been, I might not have noticed how close I was to making myself rather unwell. I am sure most, if not all of us know what it is like to feel stressed and over-worked (working on the assumption that this blog is least likely to ever be read by a Tory MP or Michael Wilshaw).  Certainly I have felt this before, and in a sense it is generally quite easy to deal with.  Getting over-worked means you get tired and grumpy, and this becomes so manifest that you quickly realise that it is time to get some sleep - or at the very least sit quietly in a corner somewhere until the steam stops travelling horizontally from your ears and your eyes un-cross. More sinister though, is the kind of stress...

Today I am on my way to a meeting with the Higher Education Academy about their Paul Hamlyn Foundation -funded ‘ Change Programme ’. This programme is a response to the ‘What Works?’ report, that highlighted the centrality of student engagement and belonging to student retention and achievement. The premise of the project, as far as I can make out, is to support and coordinate institutional research which could lead to interventions addressing the issues highlighted by the report.  These issues highlight the importance of increasing student 'belonging' to student success and retention.  They further highlight the need to identify effective strategies for increasing student engagement.  You can read a summary of the report findings here . My institution is the only Further Education College involved in the project, despite the sector being a major provider of Higher Education in the UK. As Eve Rapley (2012) has shown : HE in FE is a burgeoning sub-secto...

This is one of those mornings.  I suppose every morning has to be a morning of some kind of another - but this is one of the ones which tends to exist in a kind of no-mans-land.  It is a morning like the calm in the centre of a hurricane.  It is a morning which is that moment of weightless peace which exists just before you land either in the fire or in the frying pan. For several nights I have been working on project plans, reading draft dissertations and preparing lectures until the wee small hours - and this all just a week or so before marking even begins.  It is not healthy, and the older I become the harder it gets.

It seems that when it comes to facts and figures, as far as the government is concerned anything goes. From the beginning of this coalition’s reign, there has been a propaganda campaign which has somehow managed to convince the nation firstly that the national debt is the most significant problem the nation faces, and secondly that the cause of this problem is almost exclusively the public sector and welfare.

There is a point in each semester - always the same point - where I seem to be suddenly hit by a sense of hopelessness.  Ok, that is maybe exaggerating a little - but there are things which tend to happen in the final third of a module which are depressingly predictable, and which seem to happen to many of the lecturers I have talked to.

I work in a College which is primarily dedicated to Further Education, but which in the last few years has begun to offer Higher Education degree courses to students, which we develop ourselves and are 'validated' by a University. One of my jobs here (besides teaching literature and language) is to draft policies and regulations for the management of Higher Education within the Further Education College. This is a rather challenging role, partly because the whole issue of regulating HE is inherently complex and partly because it means a series of negotiations and compromises with a College regulatory infrastructure more dedicated to meeting the requirements of Ofsted than the QAA.