Change in university fees might prove to be a wake up call

Recently, there has been much bewailing the fate of university education upon the announcement of the fees to be charged by various institutions. Comments in the Press have quoted observations such as “I might as well just look for a job” or “I shall go for an apprenticeship”.

What is wrong with that, especially for the tasks in life which are of a practical nature and for years were taught on the job, the benefit of earning being a contribution to the cost of the training?

As with so many of my generation, our post-school years were interrupted by National Service, where discipline taught at school and home was reinforced.

Thereafter, we got down to working at the jobs which were needed to pay for our living expenses which were required by parents as a contribution to the costs of the household. Incidentally, we saved up to get married.

Many of us also got down to work in the evenings, and we paid for doing so, either at home or at night school, to add to the mental or physical skills we learned and practised during the day.

All those things which we wondered about at school now seemed to fit, and learning complemented our labours.

In later years, when lecturing students, I found that those who were working had a far quicker and better grasp of the subject. They could see the reason for theory.

As employers in later years, we paid for our apprentices to go to technical college to add to the practical work they learned on the job.

In far too many cases from the mid 1970s onwards, we found that the standard of school leaving education was slipping behind the starting levels required at those colleges.

The recent “university for all” Blairite theory, preambled with progressively demeaned school qualifications, has done education no good at all, leaving us with a standard about two years behind some of our Continental neighbours, where our A-levels are their GCSE standard.

No one should be deprived of the right to a good education nor the opportunity for academic university training necessary in appropriate subjects. Perhaps this change in funding may act as a wake up call to re-invigorate other talents.

This could ensure that we have the home-grown skills needed for our industries, instead of constantly having to look elsewhere to get adequately skilled staff.

There might also be a chance that budding politicians would learn something about the practicalities of real life.

From: Phil Hanson, Beechmount Close, Baildon, Shipley.

WHEN are the featherbedded teachers going to wake up and join the rest of us in the real world? Final salary pensions have been a dying breed for several years in the private sector while salaries for teachers and heads of schools have soared.

Teachers have access to several perks including early retirement, fat pensions and masses of holidays and short working hours. It is time that they woke up and faced the harsh reality that those who pay their salaries have had to face for years. Job security is also a given, in a sector where underperforming staff seem to have little prospect of the boot.