You will have seen the thread about where has all the work gone so I thought I would post something in the same vein. The college where I teach part time is about to loose there last full time lecturer. That would leave me as the longest serving and only person on the books. The only other lecturer will be a part time agency man. Despite numerous attempts over the years they have struggled to find anyone who has the knowledge, ability and enthusiasm to teach the 2330. Before anyone asks the money is around £30K per year plus the usual teachers paid holidays.

I would have thought in these difficult times the college would be overwhelmed with good old sparks who could pass on their skills to the next generation.

-------------------------
John Peckham

http://www.astutetechnicalservices.co.uk/

For £30K a year I think you've answered the question John.

Regards

OMS

-------------------------
Failure is always an option

30k part time?

-------------------------
----------------------------------------
Lack of planning on your part doesn't make it an emergency on mine....

Every man has to know his limitations- Dirty Harry

No full time.

That's London rates, wait till you get out into the sticks !
Lecturing rates for 2330/2357 range from £21K to £27K, even cheaper if the college managers can get them green with the promise of a teaching qualification.

Its hardly worth the stress.

Legh

-------------------------
Why do we need Vernier Calipers when we have container ships?

http://www.leghrichardson.co.uk

"Science has overcome time and space. Well, Harvey has overcome not only time and space - but any objections."

Well John my teachers pension is based on 12 years and 70 days service. Around 8 years of that were full time in two blocks: 6 years starting in 1975 and teaching craft apprentices; 2 years starting in 1985 and teaching power and industrial electrical engineering and analogue electronics at OND, HNC and HND.

The two times I left teaching were because the money was useless and so was the investment.

The first time I left followed a conversation in the pub with a neighbour who worked for P & O on cross channel ferries. I had already been in the merchant navy so I said 'how much are they paying you these days'. When I got up off the floor I realized that I could get around twice my salary and even more leave .

I only went back because P & O sold out (briefly) to Townsend Thoresen and I took the money and ran. I lasted 2 years and then I went to the NICEIC, again with much better rewards - and by then totally disillusioned with the education sector.

I have earned much better money doing part-time work (including 10 weeks in Bermuda).

So £30K in the great metropolis isn't going to do it - especially if you have to deliver C & G courses.

Regards

Geoff Blackwell

Hi John

From a personal perspective:

I think I'd really like to do part time teaching work, but not teaching youngsters - adults only and then in the evenings only. I'd certainly not do a permanent teaching job.

Problems:

1) I have a familly and want to spend time with them
2) I am very, very busy sometimes and getting to college to teach would be bad for my business
3) I doubt they would let me teach anybody anything as I have no teaching qualifications
4) With no teaching qualifications, I'm reasonably sure that the pay would be abismal.

Maybe all sparks with the qualifications and experience are in the same sort of boat?

I have thought of hanging up the tools and getting into teaching many times John but there is just too much red tape.

interesting thread.

I have been considering teaching for a while and especially since a recent interest from a college. Just basic year one 2330 (or whatever it is called today?).

I know the pay is not very good but I am giving it some serious thought. I said I'd go in a see a couple of lessons soon.

Oddly, unlike Tatty, I would select to take on the youngsters/bored teenagers 'you go out and get yourself a trade my boy'. They get £20 a week for being there, their Mum gets £60 a week while they are there and so on. You can just imagine the lack of genuine motive. ~ And yet I can remember the 'I get it' moments in my life like they were yesterday, and one of those was driving home from a college evening, year one.

I will look into it but I am a freelancer (that means free spirit in real money doesn't it?), I cannot see myself tied to an institution.

Zs

-------------------------
'The desk is a dangerous place from which to view the world.'
John Le Carre

Well best of luck with that and don't get too disappointed if you make no progress.

I once took a class like that at Swindon College (Part Time Day work for me). They were all there because it was a condition of their benefits. I saw it as a challenge and I tried all sorts to get some spark of interest from them. There was no exam pressure just some basic training. They did not behave badly, they just simply were not interested. We had long discussions about it but too no avail - they just wanted to be signed in and out and sit there in the interim. Soul destroying believe me.

Regards

Geoff Blackwell

I've got to teach 200 year ten students at a local comp next week (not sparking thankfully but life support).

I've had loads of "trainer training" and done loads of sessions delivering to adults without a problem, however I'm doubting my skills to control that lot even with 7 colleagues and some teaching staff present.

I take it cattle prods are still outlawed in teaching establishments ??


Stu

Education Go for it, girls, says Mandelson 1998

But don't show any favouritism

-------------------------
Why don't you rock down to Electric Avenue (Birmingham B6 7BU) And then we'll take you higher.

B67BU@ElectricalTraining.co.uk



Edited: 09 March 2012 at 01:41 AM by B67BU

I guess it's because most places will start you on £20-25k if you are lucky. They'll all throw in the teacher training qualification and the assessor qualification too I would think so you won't have to pay for them. They do however take a decent amount of time to complete meaning for the first two years you have to do the qualification while learning to teach and all the bureacracy that comes with that. Couple that to ever dwindling holidays (about 30 days per year compared to, apparently according to some of the old boys, about 80 days per year 20 years ago) and a pension that was ok but will be just as poor as an average private pension in the next couple of years but still require you to work until 68. Since the recession, apprentices have gone hugely down in numbers while full time courses have soared meaning a timetable is usually 80% students who are somewhere between wanting an apprenticeship and not actually sure what they want to do at all. With the new 2357 qualification, adults cannot retrain as they used to, or at least it is prohibitively expensive to do so so they are very few and far between. Teaching adults was what I started part time a few years ago and was by far and away the most enjoyable and stretching experience you could have teaching. With that gone or at least seriously reduced you often just end up with classes that have little incentive to be there other than to not be on the streets.

There is just no incentive to come into teaching any more. Crap pay, ever reducing holidays, a pension that has a very short shelf life, increasing bureacracy, reduced funding and workloads that increase year on year. Only the seriously dedicated need apply.

-------------------------
http://www.electricalqualifications.co.uk
http://www.electricalexams.co.uk
http://www.electricalrevision.co.uk

LoL - there's more of a difference than you yet know, Zs -

regards

OMS

-------------------------
Failure is always an option

I'm one of the teachers who have gone. I took early retirement age 62, year and a half ago. Working in the Midlands, I was earning £32K heading up an engineering group of 15 staff and in the end it just was not worth the candle even though I thoroughly enjoyed teaching and the job!

FE colleges are in charge of their own pay scales and over the past 20 years or so, have managed to erode the remuneration for their staff. Typical salary for my instructors was £22K to £24K, A lecturer earned £28K or so. Part time / temporary staff were screwed at £19 per hour in front of the class. Every hour in front of a class requires at least an hour outside, for prep, marking, admin, and more, so the actual rate ends up as £8 or £9/hour or less!

One big reason why I gave up on the job was my increasing problems in getting money from the college for staff positions and then people to fill them. I had classes to teach and inadequate funding allocated to them from my bean counters. I was constantly scrabbling around trying to find staff.

Another reason was that the C&G2357 course was due to replace C&G2330 last year (Has it yet?) and remembering the effort needed to get the 2330 going eight years or so ago, it made little sense to go through all that again only to then take my retirement.

Then there are all those silly and frustrating things that are found in all aspects of work and life and from which we all suffer, but which I found to be even worse in education. The constant, or so it seemed, drip from the media and politicians making profit from slagging off education. "Education is crap! Vote me in and I will fix it." ! That sort of thing gets me down more than can be explained. FE is in a mess and I don't see anything being done to sort it out.

Sorting it out is no problem - just get some clued up private sector people in and give them a few real objectives to meet - believe me it could be revolutionised overnight.

It won't happen though, unless there is the political will to do something about it, a willingness to at least match equivalent private sector salaries and a desire to dump some of the more politically correct drivel we see abounding in education.

Regards

OMS

-------------------------
Failure is always an option

John, just my thoughts but..where has all the money gone? has to be a valid question. With the changes to 2330/2357 and reductions year after year in SFA funding. The money is just not there. Add reduced numbers due to the lack of construction investment and the unwillingness or unableness (sic) of employers to take on and train new apprentices and I'm surprised you need teachers at all.
God bless the IET and the regs changes, can we have some more please it helps to fill the courses.

Good grief, I managed to get hounded out of one college for saying more or less the above. But it served me right, I suppose, I should have got elected to Parliament first before letting rip.

Legh

edited for grammar

-------------------------
Why do we need Vernier Calipers when we have container ships?

http://www.leghrichardson.co.uk

"Science has overcome time and space. Well, Harvey has overcome not only time and space - but any objections."

Indeed - and people wonder where all the technical teachers have gone

OMS

-------------------------
Failure is always an option

A very interesting topic and one that is close to my heart

All that has been said is correct, trying to get the right personnel at the rates that have been quoted is almost impossible, even with the FE holidays

However as someone has rightly replied there is the "private sector" out there that can make that difference

This post is meant to be informative only of a project that we have just launched called Apprenticeship +Plus+ (we are not trying to sell this to anyone here as we get government funding for these places so please don't delete this post !)

Basically we reviewed the current funding for apprentices and thought that by making this a commercial operation and coming at it as we would any other project we could probably deliver a bit more for the funding than most apprentices and employers currently get.

Not being bound by "term" dates helps enormously in this as we give our teaching staff the same holiday entitlement as though they were contracting, thereby reducing overheads.

We have designed a course program whereby the students attend a 5 day block release every 6 weeks or so (depending on which year they are in) and they stay as RESIDENTS in the new training centre that we have developed over the last 21/2 years.

As many of you know from your days of being an apprentice this mirrors what would often happen with larger companies and the then "electricity boards" training many years ago.

What we are attempting to do is to get the apprentices to "take ownership" of the work that they undertake and feel that having them in as residents allows them to work better together and gives us the opportunity to develop their other skills by offering them additional activities whilst on the residential course. These other skills are built up by "project" based activities during the evenings that are designed to be fun and linked into engineering disciplines.

Key objectives for us are that the apprentice can become a useful asset to the company as quickly as possible, we believe that in the first block candidates should be taught the things that will be of most use to them when with the employer, for example they should be able to identify and select most types of handtools and cable types and hold an apprentice ECS card.

These things are not difficult to do and form the foundations of a good employee and employer relationship

I could go on but I wont, all I would say is that we can fund all of the above through the government, using the existing budgets at no extra cost to the employer or apprentice.

As the previous post says "just get some clued up private sector people in and give them a few real objectives to meet - believe me it could be revolutionised overnight."

I think that we have done this

if anyone wants any more info please PM me

cheers

-------------------------
Griff Thomas MIET
GTEC Training

www.gtectraining.co.uk


www.ecovillaorlando.com