Last Updated on 12/11/2021 by James Barron
In many teaching organisations the learners are only entitled to 15-minute tutorials, this is very often insufficient. Personally, when I have deemed it appropriate I have let the tutorial session run long, deliberately adding particular students to the end of the session that I suspect will require additional support. Unfortunately, this isn’t a practical solution as I often miss a section of my lunch and I am not paid for this time. A simple solution would be to increase the time allotted to each student, allowing for the fact that the majority of tutorial sessions will be faster; this will allow flexibility within the tutorial system. Another approach could be to book double tutorial sessions to particular students, especially those with an EHCP (Education, Health and Care Plan). An issue that many city centre campuses have is a lack of parking, this is usually restricted to senior members of staff and disabled staff and students, unfortunately car parks, including disabled bays, are frequently full resulting in disabled students being unable to park onsite and having to leave and park in public car parks nearby, resulting in the student being late for class. An approach that would reduce the problem would be to prevent the majority of staff from parking in the car park, leaving it free for only those that truly required it. Teaching organisations often suffer with broken lifts and it takes long periods of time for them to be repaired, this has a huge impact on disabled students. A simple solution is the ability to relocate classes to rooms on the ground floor; however, this may have a negative impact on a disabled student as the entire class would need to move. Another, far more expensive but effective, solution would be the introduction of a secondary lift; it is highly unlikely that both would fail simultaneously. The functional skills curriculum doesn’t contain any equality and diversity material, as a result it is not taught. The best solution would be to implement a nationwide policy that equality and diversity should be included in all lessons in the form of embedded content, alternatively update the functional skills curriculum, this would be far quicker.
Author Profile
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My first experience of teaching was in 2016, when I was asked to
deliver a talk to a group of 16-year-olds on what it was like to start
your own business. I immediately knew I wanted to become more
involved in teaching but I didn’t know where to start as I had not
previously considered a career in education. A few weeks later I
agreed to teach a class of Chinese students from the Shanghai
Technical Institute of Electronics and Information, who had travelled
to the UK to learn English and Software Engineering, after that I was
hooked. Within the next few years, I taught hundreds of students of
many different nationalities, aged from 16 to 60, and from
levels 2 to 6. I focused my time teaching with Bath University and
Bath College for several more years until I felt a change was in order.
For the last few years, I have taught remotely with several private
training organisations, provided dedicated one to one coaching
sessions, provided consultancy on teaching and assessment practices
and written about my experiences as a teacher. I plan to continue
with my current activities for the foreseeable future but I’m always
open to new teaching experiences.
