SIXTEEN, maybe NINETEEN!

Work related rant coming up, which may or may not make sense depending on how mad I make myself.

The Alternative Education schemes on which I teach have a usual maximum of 12 students.  With the funding they receive, they can still run with just 7 or 8, but it’s a bit tight financially if they do. Considering that every one of the students on the scheme is not coping with mainstream school and many have been excluded with disruptive behaviours, 12 can seem an enormous class size!

I went to a staff meeting today at the scheme in my local town.  I have learned that they have taken on SIXTEEN students with another three requests being considered.  Because the three students being considered are in care, they’re a priority group and can’t easily be refused a place.

This is absolutely stupid.  How on earth am I supposed to teach maths to SIXTEEN excluded (or nearly excluded) young people who are at levels ranging from Entry Level 2 to Level One?  I’ll have one youth worker in the room to deal with any behaviour issues, but a youth worker who is totally untrained in classroom assistance.

The only reason for taking on SIXTEEN students, and not stopping at 12, is greed.  Each student comes with nearly £4500 funding from his or her school and that money means that the co-ordinator of the scheme can give herself almost full time hours… hours she needs because she’s greedy and acquisitive and has got herself into debt through stupid and unnecessary purchases.

(I wrote about this woman a few years ago; she had got sucked into a pyramid scheme (for ladies only, which doesn’t do a lot for our sex’s reputation) that she said wasn’t a pyramid scheme because the triangle illustration was the other way up.)

Anyway, another tutor and myself share the day.  The local college supplies the other tutor, whereas I’m self-employed, but we work well together.  We worked well together.  Past tense.  Today I learned that the college have withdrawn the other tutor, but had neglected to tell anyone on the scheme.  This isn’t the co-ordinator’s fault, but as a short-term solution she’s going to take the students for their English lesson.  Unfortunately, this is the same woman who is not only financially illiterate, but is also illiterate full stop.  Letters she sends to the local schools ask them to “ensure there pupils folder’s are sent to the centre.”

I shall go in and take the class.  I’m paid quite well to do so.  But I’m not looking forward to it like I was last year and I’m starting to think about moving on.  Not sure that I want to, but I’m thinking about it.

SIXTEEN, maybe up to NINETEEN students, all of whom have a damn good reason for being on the scheme.   In cynical mode I would say SIXTEEN, maybe up to NINETEEN students, got rid of to us by their schools.  It will be a bloody nightmare.