Demo at CRC over termination of A-level courses

As some of you may have heard already, Cambridge Regional College have recently announced that they're scrapping all their A-level courses (full & part-time) as of the end of this academic year.

THIS IS BAD.

Elaboration:

There are young students at CRC who are currently half-way through their A-level course. There are mature students who for whatever reason are needing to take A-levels despite being over the age of 17. There are many people who are now left with no viable options and nowhere to turn to complete their education. CRC is the only college in the area offering affordable A-level courses to mature students. There is a possibility that Hills Rd and Long Rd might be able to offer places to students who have been so gloriously fucked over by CRC but they cannot possibly cope with the sheer number of students in this position. Also, changing colleges halfway through an A-level course will be impossible for many as different colleges use different exam boards.

THERE WILL BE A MASS DEMONSTRATION OUTSIDE CRC (KINGS HEDGES CAMPUS) ON TUESDAY 9TH MAY. If you are able to come, PLEASE DO. People are being denied their right to an education and they need your support.

Thank you.

Schoolgirl error: forgot to mention kickoff time. 10am. Be there or be a... well, a responsible person with a job, probably...

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Why ? what happened

What are they going to teach if not A-Levels?

Badly written article courtesy of the CEN. (Sarky comments in bold are mine)

A COLLEGE in Cambridge is to abandon teaching A-levels - with the loss of 11 jobs.

Cambridge Regional College yesterday (Friday, 28 April) told staff, students and parents it will stop offering full-time A-level programmes - including AS courses.

The college, with campuses in King's Hedges Road and Newmarket Road, said the move was mainly due to the Government urging further education colleges to focus on skills training and employability and leave academic courses to sixth form colleges like Hills Road and Long Road in Cambridge.

Despite the fact that Gordon Brown's most recent budget speech promised to increase funding so that students up to the age of 25 would be able to take A-levels for free, and, as I mentioned earlier, Hills & Long Rd are not an option for most of the students this new decision affects. Hills Rd have not offered any places to former CRC students. Long Rd are rumoured to have approximately 35 places.

Rick Dearing, college principal, said CRC expected to lose nine full-time teaching posts and two technician jobs from its staff of almost 700.

But he said the college was keen to avoid any compulsory redundancies and a two-week consultation with staff had begun.

However, staff were not consulted until AFTER the decision to scrap A-level courses was made.

Presently, the college offers around 16 A-level courses taken by 160 full-time students. But the college has more than 2,700 students in total, most of whom take vocational courses.

Mr Dearing said A-levels were a very small part of the college's current provision. And CRC has struck a deal with Long Road Sixth Form College so its students who want to continue their A-levels next year can study there.

I will be investigating this further. As far as I know, Long Rd have said they can offer places to 35 students. There are 160 full-time a-level students at CRC. I don't know how many part-time students.

Instead of A-levels, the college will focus on practical courses to combat Cambridgeshire's skills shortage.

The college already has students who go on to degree courses after completing their vocational programmes. And it will be introducing two new one-year university foundation programmes for 17 and 18-year-olds who want to go to university without doing A-levels.

A college spokeswoman said: "A recent Ofsted review suggested the college should seriously consider its rationale for offering A-levels when there was an increasing demand for vocational and occupational programmes in Cambridgeshire, and there was already very good provision for A-level students in both sixth form colleges and schools.

Apart from A-level students over the age of 18. For whom there is no provision at all except for a few independent colleges charging TWELVE THOUSAND POUNDS PER YEAR.

"There is increasing national and regional pressure for more young people to succeed in gaining vocational and occupational qualifications rather than failing on GCSE and A-level programmes."

And she said the number of students taking A-levels at the college was declining while more decided to take up more skills-based courses.

She said: "The college would like to assure both students and parents that students completing their A-levels will not be affected by the changes."

Apart from the students who have completed the first year of their A-level course and have nowhere to go for the second year. Rick Dearing and various CRC spokespeople have been blathering nonsense about how this doesn't matter because an AS-level is an independent qualification. This is simply not true. No university will accept a student with AS-level qualifications and not full A-levels. Students who are just finishing their AS-level year at CRC are likely to have nowhere to complete their courses, as even if my some miracle other independent sixth forms can offer them places, they work with different exam boards. Students WILL "be affected by the changes." They will be affected by not being allowed to complete the qualifications they have been working towards for the past year.

This smells a wee bit. I am, as you put it, a responsible person with a job so no demo for me.

Good luck....

The campus is about a 2 minute walk from my house, and I did my A Levels there. But alas I'm in the same situation as mr pat, and shall be at work.

"There is increasing national and regional pressure for more young people to succeed in gaining vocational and occupational qualifications rather than failing on GCSE and A-level programmes."

This is kind of a worrying attitude, though. "Don't bother trying to do a difficult qualification that you may fail in, do an easy one that you carry on with until you pass"

Just read this article on today's CEN website:

"Backlash grows over scrapping of A-levels" http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/news/city/2006/05/04/be67493e-12db-4ca...

I'll be in Nottingham on Tuesday, but sending supportive thought-waves your way.

This really does suck maggot dick. And it doesn't surprise me that Hills Rd aren't letting CRC students in. Nasty, nasty place aaarghghhhhh. (I went to HellsRd).

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good luck

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not sure , im all for bats and battering but thats a bit naughty

Is your sister going to protest outside ebay headquarters

???

Sorry was cross overing 2 threads , jedimia was saying in other thread how her sister was upset wiff ebay . And then here saying about worthy protest outside CRC .
http://www.wereallneighbours.co.uk/idlechat/message.php?id=8479&start=...

"There is increasing national and regional pressure for more young people to succeed in gaining vocational and occupational qualifications rather than failing on GCSE and A-level programmes."

This is kind of a worrying attitude, though. "Don't bother trying to do a difficult qualification that you may fail in, do an easy one that you carry on with until you pass"

I thought the problem was that GCSE/A-Levels were also a lot more difficult 15 years ago than they are now ;-) This with the increase in Uni numbers results in a glut of (in particular) Arts qualified University Graduates and a shortage of skilled hands-on workers.

I think the change in emphasis is pragmatic in that there is a shortage of skilled vocational workers - this is someone who has had no hot water in the house for two weeks thanks to a shortage of plumbers!

But the people who are half way through their courses getting screwed over is not on.

Talking of plumbers , the goverement runs a course to make you a plumber in 12 weeks

sends you out allowed to work for yourself with absoulutly no experince ....

another great move .

This is the government, remember, who wanted to increase graduate population levels to 50%, and increase provision for further education from those aged 19-25. If there were alternative FE colleges for these students to go to then, fair enough, but this is one resource for a fuck-off huge catchment area.

Yeah, market forces dictate that A-Levels are going to be usurped by vocational qualifications for the reasons Rishistar eloquently suggested, but to cut out the only regional open-enrolment FE college, limit choice and opportunity, especially in a region whose economy relies more upon tertiary-qualified people than manufacturers etc is a tsunami of toss.

There maybe a factor of online courses coming into play as well - all the people I know studying A-Levels or GCSE's in their spare time are doing so via distance learning courses. One guy who finished his last year is now training to become a doctor.

I'm not criticising online or correspondance courses at all - they're a wonderful idea and provide a great opportunity - but they're not enough. They're only an option for certain subjects. If, like a friend of mine, you were planning to to take Physics and Music Tech A-level at CRC... these subjects are available through the National Extension College, but students have to organise their own access to labs/studios. Science A-levels are awarded partly on the completion of coursework which can only be done through practical experiments in a lab. How many 17-year-olds (or 20-year-olds, or Proper Adults returning to education) are going to have the time, money or connections to find this resource? I don't know of anyone/any organisation renting out lab time to correspondance students... Plus, distance learning tends to involve much less support and help from tutors, and thus isn't the best option for less confident people, or someone approaching an unfamiliar subject or a subject they haven't studied for some time.

This sucks. For those not able to make a demo, is there a petition or anything Hannah?

"these subjects are available through the National Extension College"

who are, incidentally, a bunch of amateur wankers who treat their staff like shit

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Fair enough - I hadn't ever thought of CRC up until today as aything other than a bog standard 6th Form College. Good luck with the demo then.

Jude - there are paper petitions going around CRC, apparently. I only go there one day a week (only half a day really) so I haven't encountered them yet.

What we really need is an online petition, but I have no idea how to set one up. If anyone does, could they please let me know. Meanwhile, if anyone fancies kicking up a fuss and/or politely registering their disgust at the way CRC are treating the people whose futures may depend on them, please do contact the college at either of these addresses:

CRC Science Park Campus
Kings Hedges Rd
Cambridge CB4 2QT

CRC City Centre Campus
Newmarket Rd
Cambridge CB5 8EG

The telephone number for both campuses is 01223 418 200.

Hannah - try:

http://www.petitiononline.com/petition.html

(disclaimer: this was just the first one that came up on google, so I have no personal experience of whether it's any good or not).

Best of luck and post the link if one is set up.

That looks great, thank you. We're trying to contact whoever wrote the original paper petition now, so we can use the same statement in the online one. Will definately post it here (and there, and everywhere) when it's up.

i like the word pissmidget and shall be using it more in conversation .

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