Sometimes, teaching at my college feels a bit like being a GP. I don’t mean that students and colleagues approach me for health advice, though there is a lot of psycho-social stress vocalised. Rather, the GP analogy relates to the range of course areas that a teacher is expected to have knowledge of even though one may only have a limited specialism.

The FE college I work in offers courses that fall under a HE heading: bachelor degrees in a range of subjects. A fully-fledged HE institution will have research facilities and an army of doctoral students, post-doc researchers, doctors and professors, all with their own particular areas of expertise.

Whereas my team consists, well, of me.

OK, I have a line manager, too - and one or two colleagues take on some courses I cannot fit into my part-time schedule. But in terms of being qualified to teach the subject area that I am responsible for, my role is a fairly isolated one. And this causes a few headaches.

News: Office for Students ‘getting it wrong’ about HE in FE

More by Rufus Reich: ‘Too often, staff suffer from bad leadership decisions’

Background: ‘Teaching HE in FE, I worked 40 hours on 18 hours’ pay’

A solo sport

In a “proper university”, creating a syllabus and deciding on materials and types of assessment would be a group process. It would be informed by a range of expert perspectives and ensure that a consensus was reached concerning what to include or exclude, and the relationship and balance between course components. There would also be a review process so that the course could be updated and altered as and when required. In short, creating a course would be a team process.

But, unfortunately, where I work, it is a solo sport. The teacher goes away and finds some relevant books and then collates some ideas and forms topic headings and then returns to those books and builds the course from their contents. Since no teacher can be a university expert across all fields of his or her discipline, I often find myself creating courses for topic areas that I have little experience of studying. It is stressful. 

Unfortunately, the college does not understand that creating a HE course is different from an FE one where materials are usually more readily available. Nor do they see that it requires more than a generalist; it needs subject area specialists if courses are to be comparable to those offered by HE institutions.

From generalist to specialist

Just recently, the college raised its yearly fees for bachelor courses by £500 per year but I see no new investment in staff or resources. One area where it could be used would be to allow teachers more time to update and revise their materials and possibly attend conferences to update their knowledge in key areas. In other words, to help the generalist become more of a specialist.

The sad truth is that the materials I have created (largely on my own time as my contract does not recognise course writing as a separate task) will go unrevised for the foreseeable future due to time and budget constraints. It is a bit like taking health advice from a middle-aged doctor who has not picked up a journal since leaving medical school.

Of course, doctors do keep up with their field and have to. But HE teachers in the FE sector do not get this professional respect or acknowledgement. Sadly, it probably won’t be until one of my more diligent students points out (to the embarrassment of my future self) that X is no longer held to be true, that the realisation will hit that my lesson slides are well beyond their sell-by date...though hopefully not mouldy. 

I do have an area of specialism myself so the slides for those classes will remain current as I stay abreast of my own field. But it is worrying that this same level of expertise will not be maintained throughout my teaching. It reflects badly on me and my employer - more on the latter if you ask me.

But, ultimately, I am the one standing in front of others professing knowledge, not my desk-bound line manager. So this week I have signed up to some extra classes, which I am funding myself and am hoping that my employer will help make some contribution towards. If they do, it would be recognition of the benefits my studies would have for others - both students and colleagues - especially where other lecturers’ course content overlaps with mine.

But the fact I have had to take the initiative with my staff training because none is forthcoming from my college is problematic. Actually, an educational institution that does not recognise the value of education for its own employees is more than problematic but deeply troubling. It reflects a business culture rather than an academic one. 

Despite this, I and many colleagues will continue to do our best for our students. Why? Because we are professionals even if we are not recognised as such. But this will too often be as “GPs” even though our students often need more from us - and are paying high tuition fees worthy of consultants. 

Rufus Reich is a pseudonym. The writer is a FE lecturer in England