STC Standards slipping ?

[Beef1992]

I know its still a good college but do any other students there thinking that its getting abit of a farce ?

Alot of the issues are to do with management rather than lecturers , and the dreaded MLS people who do the timetables.

Such examples.

A marine engineering lecturer being forced to teach us Ship stabillity due to the overbooking of courses and short staffing , as the only ship stability lecturer was used for the Chief engineers and Overseas students. This lecturer hadnt done ship stability since he did his chiefs back in 1973. Top chap though and he did his best and we all passed Just !!. We also had this lecturer for marine control systems something he hadn't done either since said time , however again he did his best.

No problem with maths as all the lecturers are top , however i sense most are getting rather pissed of with the management .

Marine engineering head of department last year resigned due to the poor management however the new head of FD , is a top guy who is switched on for his part he is great sorting all the mess out with a hectic work load.

Mechanics lecturers are resigning therefore the only one left has so much work on it takes him 3 months to mark and assignment , as he has no free periods . This same lecturer now has to teach Thermo as the Old lecturer is taking early retirement fore the above reasons , this mechanics teacher is also considering moving colleges.

Electrical work shops lecturers not giving a S**T about the mechanical guys , and overbooking of courses hence lots of missed vital workshop classes.

There are many more such incidents to do with the management such as Rooms being double booked , information about class changes not being passed down hence missed lessons , Rooms being allocated with out enough chairs and desks for the whole class.

Then there's the problem with the college spending all the Marine engineering income , on a new hair and beauty work shops , new kitchens , and new canteen and new workshops for non marine engineering subjects.

therefore the marine department which brings in all the money to the college , left to skimp for a lick of paint in the class rooms and new equipment in the work shops.

In my opinion the Marine college should be split from the main college with its own building ,( was supposed to happen in sept 2011 ) but they never did and its own budget so they can get the staff and equipment.

a similar setup is demonstrated at Blackpool and the fylde colleges nautical campus (fleetwood ).

Any opinions from other STC students ?

[ETwhat?]

I'm not hugely sure that the word standards fits what your critisising here, standards from a schools perspective tends to mean how many people quallify and how well they do above a pass mark. Also if you know a lecturer is not that well skilled on a subject hes teaching perhaps its time to hit the libarary and tutorials to get around the limits of just class time.

Apart from that your post has some wild speculation, how do you know that the money from the marine engineering courses is funding the college re development? yes it seems un fair for other areas to be drastically up graded while workshops and things are over crowded and over booked but its also a part of life, a few years ago anyone wanting a cadetship could get one, the demand was pretty high and the up take was pretty low, now due to advertisements from companies and from the financial climate the cadetship seems like a pretty good deal, the result is college's are busier and also behind, (its the sad truth that it will probably take 5 years from the college operating over capacity to actually get money and plans together to change things) apart from anything move stuff around casues chaos and costs money, if they have a limited amount it is better to focus on fixing what they currently have before making big changes then at least theres time to make sure the big money is spent right.

I think the staffing is something that needs to be addressed but its not easy to find someone with the skills and experience that the college wants to make them good teachers, and its much easier for someone to take early retirement jsut to escape having to deal with more stress and problems. along with then planing a better use of spaces and work shops but it will be a long process and certianly i know i will be finished long before it becomes a perfect college,

So in sumary i dont really think that standards a slipping but i do think that the conditions are getting close to breaking, and that it will take some very good management to make sure that the solution is the correct one.

[Mick Alton]

I'm at STC now and I feel that some of what you said is true. Firstly the workshops are desperate need of new gear, things such as the lathes being in a bad condition and there is not enough of them for the class. In addition to this there is a chronic lack of hand tools (files, hacksaws, rules and micrometers ect).
I have heard rumours that the marine college will be getting a seperate building that is now G block. I totally agree with Beef1992 in regards to the problems being with management and not the lecturers.

[Beef1992]

In regards to the funding , alot of the marine engineering lecturers have told us out right that the funding for the face lift was mainly self funded. and as seen as though the marine department is one of the only departments in which outside income is brought in other than through government grants , the only viable means either through credit or through tuition fees through students.

Changes in a year should be seen , i have been at that college almost two years and have notice none at all , and these problems were being addressed from the year previous to my enrollment. I also know of other cadets who graduated in 2010, 2009 , 2008 who have stated that the college to put it simply is "going down the sh*t " in recent years.

I dont know if this is because of the new build that was promised by labour but not delivered by the next government .

the main reason for lack of workshops is they have got rid of half of them and converted them to class rooms , added more welding and construction workshops for the old Heburn students.

And were not moving to G block any more that was meant to be last september but as a said never happened , hence why all the classrooms are in disrepair .

[GuinnessMan]

I dont know if this is because of the new build that was promised by labour but not delivered by the next government .

I think it's best if we left politics out of this one...

[ETwhat?]

Changes with in a year? really given that the college can really only do work over the very short summer and that anything you want to do this summer wold have to be written into the budget last year its just not that fast.

If you look online they are looking for new lecturers but with closing dates for the end of the year, so they are allowing for the possibility that some one that they know now that they want/need might not be in place before easter next year. I've only to go back for six more months and really i dont expect major changes, even the simple things like sorting out rooms so they have decent desks and chairs and then working out which size room fits which class.

[stronglead]

What I will add to this is the timetables are pretty poor at times aswell as the 3 HNC classes have different amounts of Marine Plant workshop sessions and welding sessions, I think it went something like Group C had 8 sessions Group A had 6 sessions and Group B had 5 and that's for the marine plant workshop. Then we had 2 different sets of lecturers for electrical and a lesson was re taught as they hadn't been told we had done that already. One of the key issues I think is lack of internal communication and whoever is doing the time table isn't totally clued up to what classes need and I know there has been a fair few grumbles about that recently.

[Ducki52]

Well if so many people are disgruntled with the quality of the teaching, can't you all lodge a collective complaint? And when that does nothing, complain to your companies, y'know, the ones who are bank rolling the whole thing, and then the companies will complain properly on your behalf and things should start to change.

[ETwhat?]

we had 2 different sets of lecturers for electrical and a lesson was re taught as they hadn't been told we had done that already. One of the key issues I think is lack of internal communication .

And none of your class felt like stopping him and saying, oh by the way Mr J, M, B, H or whoever covered this last week do we really need to do it again?

As for different classes getting different amounts of time that is a bit werid but as long as you get through everything then it really doesnt matter, Ducki your maybe being a little optimistic and idealist with that but it is true, if there is a real problem then you have the right (and duty) to make sure the correct people know about it.

[Beef1992]

We did complain alot last year to the college and to our company , but got the same blank faces . However last year half of it was about the halls which did get renovated but that was the only response we recieved from the college .

[stronglead]

We did tell them but they didn't take any notice of it really

[Ducki52]

Hmm, perhaps Nautilus would be able to do something? Or even the MNTB? I don't know, I'm a semi-outsider looking in and hoping all the safeguards that are available to us actually work.

[stronglead]

I am not complaining about the teaching as such (mind I am only phase so quite straight forward) was just a bit weird how things where timetabled, what did annoy the class was when there was a lesson change and we either didn't get a e-mail or we would get a e-mail claiming we had missed a lesson, even though we didn't know about it and we got the blame for missing it

[GuinnessMan]

Guys, Nautilus is there to help with professional problems such as pay and conditions, they are not there for you to winge at simply because you're not happy with something at the college or because you've been sacked for being a tosser and ripping your TRB up!

The college have a complaints form and a complaints procedure, log your complaint, copy your sponsors in (not training agency, but actual sponsor) and maybe fire off a justifiable complaint to OFSTED. If the sponsors all start asking the Training Agencies questions, then they'll start hassling the college. I've seen my previous college collectively **** themselves when Maersk and SSTG started moaning...

[Ducki52]

That was what I originally thought GM: Tell the people who provide the budget and watch how fast things change. I'm not entirely sure what Nautilus are for, they don't seem to have a particularly good rep on here.