Warwick University is a highly successful sort of place. It is, for example, ranked fifth in the country for the quality of its research, beaten only by the likes of Cambridge and Oxford. If A-level grades are the measure, Warwick is one of the six hardest universities to get into.
The education department gets its own share of plaudits, attracting large amounts of research money while its students enjoy high rates of subsequent employment.
But for all that, these are anxious times. The fact is that teacher education at Warwick, in common with training at many high profile universities, is expensive.
According to figures from the Committee of Vice Chancellors and Principals, Warwick disposes of Pounds 3,420 for every education student which is, by its own admission, “at the upper end” of the scale. The lowest spending per student is in the region of Pounds 800, according to Government figures Comparative costs are coming under scrutiny from the Teacher Training Agency where chief executive Anthea Millett talks guardedly of “tracking” the money, and her chairman Geoffrey Parker bluntly describes the disparity as “indefensible”.
Warwick feels vulnerable. Not only because the education department, with 1,821 students is unusually large, but because the university has raised the stakes still higher.
Three existing departments have been amalgamated into a single Institute of Education with ambitious plans to be regional centre of influence across the spread of initial training, professional development and higher research.
All this while other well known university departments mutter of pulling out of initial training altogether. It has already expanded its research work and is currently attempting to take on more postgraduate trainees. Three new professors will be joining shortly.
The question is whether this Rolls Royce model is deemed acceptable. Warwick insists that it produces teachers of proven quality; and that the education system needs the research-based expertise it can offer.
Aside from which, says Mel Lloyd-Smith, the Institute’s deputy director, comparisons are a sideshow when the overall pot of money for school-based training is inadequate. “It isn’t that that the older universities are more expensive; it’s that the new universities are very cheap. The rapid expansion they underwent was done on a cut-rate basis.
“We’re concerned lest a crude preoccupation with cost develops. Cost is a simplistic and inadequate measure of value.”
