Thirty years ago I left my job as an FE lecturer to pursue a career in journalism and public relations.
I’ve never regretted the move, but sometimes I get a twinge of nostalgia when I drive past the North London college where I worked for over a decade. The old Edwardian red brick building called “Happy Valley” where I taught communications and general studies has been pulled down and replaced with a modern purpose-built block. The college has merged not just once, but twice.
And the new £50 million campus boasts high-tech resources that I could never have imagined.
How times have changed. Back in the 1980s, computers - early Apple Macs or BBC Micros now seen as relics - were a luxury.
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Background: Timeline: A history of education
A computer EACH?
Policy expert Mick Fletcher, who was working for a local authority at the time, recalls discussions over whether they should buy just one computer to share between seven colleges in the borough, or “splash out” and buy them one each.
Photocopying was strictly rationed and you had to arrive early to avoid long queues. Producing handouts was done on a Banda - a spirt duplicator invented in the 1920s that resembled a cross between a mini mangle and a pasta-making machine. You wrote or typed (using a manual typewriter if you could find one that didn’t have keys missing) onto special waxed paper, attached it to the machine’s drum and then ran off copies manually. Easy peasy - except you invariably ended up stinking of solvent with hands stained by purple ink.
Then there was the epidiascope - an unwieldy contraption designed to project text and images onto a wall. Imagine a mammogram with documents squashed between metal plates instead of breasts, and you get the picture.
Overhead projectors and pigeon holes
The less cumbersome overhead projector was easier to use. But as there were not enough for each classroom they had to be booked in advance, or nabbed from another room and lugged up flights of stairs. There was no email, so to communicate with staff you had to use a shared staffroom telephone, place notes in their pigeon holes, or (horror of horror) talk to them face to face.
Then, around the mid-point of the decade, things started to change. There was great excitement when the college bought its very first reel-to-reel video recorder, soon to be followed by something quite revolutionary: a video cassette recorder.
This meant that staff who were fretting about how to fill a whole hour of general studies with recalcitrant block release plumbers could keep them engaged with a recording of Desmond Morris’s The Naked Ape - providing of course the television was working properly (which it often wasn’t) and the technician had remembered to record the programme (which he sometimes hadn’t).
Producing lesson materials from scratch
In the late 1980s, the FE sector discovered something called marketing. I wrote an article for Tes about how the Hertfordshire colleges were taking the bold step of appointing marketing officers to all their colleges. Mine followed suite. So instead of the marketing committee deliberating whether to buy branded T-shirts, we had the beginnings of a strategy.
The college also started exploring cost-recovery courses for local businesses - a novel idea at the time. I was asked to set up a short course unit, not without controversy as my colleagues raised concerns about the “two-tier system” with business clients getting the best teaching rooms.
Today, most colleges provide computers for all staff, along with interactive whiteboards, shared online resources and learning platforms such as Moodle. Back in the 1980s, like many others I coughed up my own money for books and resources and spent hours producing materials from scratch. Some staff even bought their own recording equipment and cameras as the college couldn’t afford them.
Pros and cons
Looking back, despite the frustrations about resources, we had a lot of autonomy. This was before Ofsted and its predecessor, the Adult Learning Inspectorate, so there was little supervision. I never had to justify showing Dirty Harry to electrical installation engineers on a Friday afternoon because in those days the teacher’s judgement was rarely questioned, unless students went AWOL or rioted.
But this freedom had its downside. Former college inspector Tony Davis, director of the Centre for Creative Quality Improvement, admits there was some terrible teaching prior to the 1990s. “Some teachers smoked in the classroom or held lessons in the pub,” he recalls. “There was no accountability and no risk assessment.”
A blitz on quality was needed. This had its pros and cons. One friend who taught in a west country college until 2007 says the reason she - and other colleagues - left was because of the tick box culture which she felt was a blunt instrument that stifled creativity.
‘The FE sector is amazing’
But other changes have been welcomed, notably in the area of sexual harassment. As a newbie, I recall being propositioned by my line manager who (perhaps jokingly) suggested that if I went around the back of the building for “you know what” I might get promoted. I didn’t (oblige him) and I did (get promoted). Several years later, after I had left, a member of staff made an official complaint about sexual harassment. Today, that would never be tolerated.
Looking back, although I never regretted my career move I still think that FE sector is amazing and deserves far more attention - and money - from politicians. Personally, I am proud of the achievements of many of my former students.
One is the deputy personal finance editor on a national daily newspaper, one is a celebrated documentary film maker, another is a high-flying academic and a forth a successful writer of chick lit novels. That made it all worth it.
Seven signs you worked in a college in the 1980s
- You become nostalgic thinking about the Silver Book (the “bible” that enshrined the national terms and conditions of service).
- You remember the Save General Studies campaign.
- You reminisce about your time at Coombe Lodge (the FE staff college in Somerset) learning to be touchy feely.
- You remember curriculum initiatives such as TVEI, CPVE, TOPS, YOPS and - of course - the ill-fated Diploma
- You are gobsmacked when civil servants working on the new T levels display collective amnesia about any curriculum developments prior to 2000.
- You are somewhat lax about health and safety.
- You still call learners “students”.
Anne Nicholls is a journalist and a communications and PR consultant
