Further Education

looksee

First, I have put in a request for a FE and FETAC sub forum, so if anyone wants to support it, please pop across and add your comments.

There was a recent, and possibly unfortunate, post about FETAC in this forum (the first time poster did not come back and the whole scenario seemed a little unlikely to be honest).

Tom Dunne commented 'this isn't really the forum for such a request. It is for teaching at second and third level.'

Now this is in no way a gripe at Tom Dunne - and he did qualify his statement, but I would be interested in hearing a bit of discussion about Further Education, do people know anything about it, do they care .

It is a little complicated in that FEs are officially second level (VEC) but run as colleges. Sometimes its difficult to know where they belong as they have to apply secondary school rules to people of all ages, and at the same time offer them education in an adult environment.

In the college that I know off there are approx 70 teaching staff with qualifications including PhDs, a large number of Masters and people working for PhDs, others with a minimum of a pass Degree, (mostly people who have come out of industry and have other qualifications to offer) but again in many cases working for Masters. All new and recent staff have an education qualification, and many staff who have been there longer are working towards one.

The level is FETAC 5 and 6 which is hovering somewhere between Secondary and Third Level. Some students go directly into work in areas such as child care and other Care situations, hairdressing, beauty therapy. Other students are helped through the transition from school to college and go on to do third level courses. There is contact with Universities in the UK who come and look for students from some of the courses.

And I have to say that most of us enjoy the atmosphere and the teaching, which is very rewarding, there is a good atmosphere and little in the way of discipline issues. From a teaching point of view I can recommend it!

Bally8

I also work in an FE organisation that lives in a kind of limbo land. Youthreach comes under FE and is ran by VECs yet our students are teenagers but we are not a second level school. We are under the Adult Education branch of our VEC but dont really fall in comfortably there either:)

We dropped the LCA and the JC this year and are now only delivering FETAC level 3 and 4 modules. With no books, inservice training or access to samples of completed portfolios etc it can be very difficult to even know you are delivering the right stuff. As well as that any Union members have been instructed not to co-operate with the new assessment procedures. So all in all not a very straightforward place to be:)

Great job though- I love it.

Tom Dunne

While I start digging myself out of this hole I am in , could I ask one question: do you envisage this as a sub-forum of Teaching and Lecturing, or as a standalone forum in the Edu category?

Does it make much difference?

If it makes no real difference, and if we have a body of people involved in FETAC here, it probably makes sense to make it a sub-forum of T & L. The only downside I could see to that is that it may not get as much traffic as a sub-forum as it would if it were a regular forum under Edu.

Either way, I am not going to pass any comments or judgement on it, you guys decide and tell me where it should go.

looksee

I don't really mind where it is. I wonder if it might be possible to go with the PLC idea, which has also been suggested, as a subforum of Education. This would mop up all the questions that don't fit into the other slots. Then maybe for the benefit of Further Ed teachers have a Further Ed subforum of the teaching and lecturing.

However the more I think about it, the more I am inclined to ask, in what way are FE teachers not teachers, that they cannot just fit into the T&L forum? How do you differentiate between the two?

So my suggestion would be, have a PLC/FETAC subforum of education, and allow FETAC teachers' discussion in the Teaching and Lecturing forum.

rainbowtrout

looksee wrote: »

I don't really mind where it is. I wonder if it might be possible to go with the PLC idea, which has also been suggested, as a subforum of Education. This would mop up all the questions that don't fit into the other slots. Then maybe for the benefit of Further Ed teachers have a Further Ed subforum of the teaching and lecturing.

However the more I think about it, the more I am inclined to ask, in what way are FE teachers not teachers, that they cannot just fit into the T&L forum? How do you differentiate between the two?

So my suggestion would be, have a PLC/FETAC subforum of education, and allow FETAC teachers' discussion in the Teaching and Lecturing forum.

I'd be inclined to agree with this. Both students and teachers would find their way to a separate forum rather than a subform of T&L. There were a huge number of queries on PLC last summer after the Leaving Cert results came out.

Tom Dunne

Ok, I've created a poll to decide this. Discuss away.

Who said Boards.ie wasn't a democracy?