Should Electrical Tutors at FE colleges in the UK be mandated to complete a minimum of 1 week per year working in industry?

That was an absolutely superb post by MapJ. After almost 35 years as a part-time tutor, it expertly summed up my views on that disconnect between the classroom and the coal face.

With respect to the original question, there was a scheme for FE colleges in NI called “Lecturers into industry”. It was funded by the department of education. On the face of it, it seemed an excellent idea. Lecturers could seek a paid or unpaid position in local industry and apply for leave. Full salary continued to be paid, irrespective of income from whatever position was taken up.

As a part-timer, I often covered for those who took advantage of the opportunity. Many full-time lecturers saw it as an escape rather than an opportunity to broaden their horizons and strengthen their front of class delivery.

When I was a young man out on cold sites in the middle of winter, I thought it would be fantastic to be a lecturer in a warm, clean, classroom in an FE college, not to mention the long holidays and the opportunity to wear a shirt and tie.

When the opportunity arose to enter that world, I did so with alacrity. All was good for several years and I put my heart and soul into every class I took, sometimes at the expense of my own business (I still do, by the way).

I cant pinpoint a definite time, but I started to notice that the full-time guys had lost all their mojo. They seemed demoralised and unwilling to do anything that was in any way construed to be beyond their contract.

Perhaps it was pay, it could certainly have been the ponderous weight of multi-layers of ineffectual managerial oversight, or it could have been the cut-backs that left practical classes with half a length of steel conduit per candidate per year. Or it could have been the iniquitous system of output related funding where lecturers were expected, by whatever means, to force totally unsuitable candidates through assessments so that claims for funding could be made. Then again, it could have been the lack of robust disciplinary procedures where management utterly failed to provide support for the lecturers dealing with difficult lads. Of course, it could also have been that disconnect that Mike alluded to. Lads who had left school to take up a trade as an installation electrician because of an anathema for all things academic only to find themselves trying to get to grips with the induced emf of a 4-pole lap wound DC generator.

Likely it was a combination of things. In any event, several excellent lecturers took advantage of the scheme. One even secured funding to leave and concentrate on his own business. He, like many others, never came back!

Ask any Electrical Installation Department in any FE college here and they will tell you about the difficulties of recruiting and retaining good lecturers. When you have a 4^th year apprentice getting 1500 Euros a week for erecting miles of galvanized tray in a data centre in Dublin, it wont be the pay that will attract a good tradesman to pack up for the world described above. Similarly, it might be a gamble to release existing lecturers into industry.....they might never come back!

lyledunn said:

Ask any Electrical Installation Department in any FE college here and they will tell you about the difficulties of recruiting and retaining good lecturers

Agreed

lyledunn said:

Similarly, it might be a gamble to release existing lecturers into industry.....they might never come back!

Valid point but if the industry does nothing the natural attrition will occur anyway.  FE colleges need to pay higher salary to the Electrical tutors and give them a better package than what is currently offered in the UK as a whole which must include the backend managerial support.

lyledunn said:

cut-backs that left practical classes with half a length of steel conduit per candidate per year

We had more than that, but only by virtue of the fact that it was the last Friday of the course, and for most (including the part-time tutors) POETS applied. Two of us stayed along with the full-time tutor.

I greatly admire those practitioners who can put in the bends in the right places and have no wastage. It is an art! :-)

As a side note.

I wonder how many Electrical tutors there are in FE colleges in the UK?  Of those how many are fully qualified as an Electrician according to the EAS so that they are qualified to teach the courses?  I suspect it is highly possible that some tutors may need to sit there AM2 and/or produce a NVQ portfolio.

Sergio Fernandez said:

Valid point but if the industry does nothing the natural attrition will occur anyway. 

True, but what do we mean by "the industry"? Practically (in the UK at least) the industry is a huge collection of individual companies each of whom are trying to survive year by year. I've certainly in the past been in discussions with groups of companies where they all agree that "something should be done" about FE, but none of them individually has the funds or time to do anything. And if any group - whether an industry collective or government - proposed to require companies to support FE in terms of either money or time or both I'm sure there would be an outcry on these forums ("I'm barely turning a profit as it is, I can't afford to pay that!"). Not that I'm saying that would be the wrong approach - personally as someone vaguely left of centre I'd like to see more government support for FE along with the consequent tax increases somewhere, but as the ballot boxes have shown very many wouldn't for reasons I quite understand. There's no easy answer, but the question needs to start from the point of view that practically there is no collective of "the industry" when it comes to these issues.

Sergio Fernandez said:

FE colleges need to pay higher salary to the Electrical tutors and give them a better package than what is currently offered in the UK as a whole which must include the backend managerial support.

As others have said here and as my response above - in principle may be true, but begs the question of where that money is coming from. (Incidentally, I don't know if it's still true, but I seem to remember from 15-20 years ago when I was more involved in these worlds that FE was rather better paid than HE! Not to say that FE was paid well, but HE was paid appallingly.) 

Sergio Fernandez said:

Valid point but if the industry does nothing the natural attrition will occur anyway. 

True, but what do we mean by "the industry"? Practically (in the UK at least) the industry is a huge collection of individual companies each of whom are trying to survive year by year. I've certainly in the past been in discussions with groups of companies where they all agree that "something should be done" about FE, but none of them individually has the funds or time to do anything. And if any group - whether an industry collective or government - proposed to require companies to support FE in terms of either money or time or both I'm sure there would be an outcry on these forums ("I'm barely turning a profit as it is, I can't afford to pay that!"). Not that I'm saying that would be the wrong approach - personally as someone vaguely left of centre I'd like to see more government support for FE along with the consequent tax increases somewhere, but as the ballot boxes have shown very many wouldn't for reasons I quite understand. There's no easy answer, but the question needs to start from the point of view that practically there is no collective of "the industry" when it comes to these issues.

Sergio Fernandez said:

FE colleges need to pay higher salary to the Electrical tutors and give them a better package than what is currently offered in the UK as a whole which must include the backend managerial support.

As others have said here and as my response above - in principle may be true, but begs the question of where that money is coming from. (Incidentally, I don't know if it's still true, but I seem to remember from 15-20 years ago when I was more involved in these worlds that FE was rather better paid than HE! Not to say that FE was paid well, but HE was paid appallingly.)