Still crazy here. No difference there then.
Anyways, I am finally managing to get some leeway on Google. I am not doing as well as I am in Yahoo but a lot more clicks are finally coming the way of the popular search engine. Search for electrical qualifications and you will now find me on the first page. I am also featuring for a lot more search terms now which is nice, I can finally start seeing what keywords are returning results from my logs.
As a nice aside, I have again received a couple of complimentary emails regarding the site. A personal thanks goes out to you for taking the time to write, as long as a couple of you found the site interesting and useful, it makes all the effort worthwhile.
www.electricalqualifications.co.uk
Thursday 27 September 2007
Thursday 20 September 2007
Still here?
Things are busy with a capital F here. We seem to be coping and be on top of the teaching, now it's the NVQ we need to lick. Personally, I have never known anything as convoluted and difficult to follow as the electrical NVQ, whoever wrote it obviously done so behind a desk without any real thought. Combine that with unreasonable pressure from the funding people for targets and you get a rather stressed assessor trying to bridge an impossible gap for the sake of a student.
What are the issues you ask? Well for a start, we take 16 year old kids straight from school and expect them to decipher the complexities of an NVQ Level 3. Thats right, level 3, no level 2, straight in at the deep end. It's the equivalent of completing a GCSE on Friday and being asked to pass an A Level on Monday. The industry is (and perhaps rightly so) refusing to recognise a level 2. This is all fine but the government then refuses to accept the complexities we face and simply drop us in with other NVQs, basically saying an NVQ in let's say for arguments sake catering is the same as an NVQ in electrical.
Now it is not going to take a genius to realise that a catering assessor can visit his trainee at the restaurant and witness safety taking place. What will he witness and record? I don't know, heat, fire, boiling liquids, hygiene, PPE et al perhaps? Now take the electrical assessor (or indeed any construction based NVQ). He visits the site and...hang on, what site? Yesterday the student was in Weston Super Mare, tomorrow he's in Bristol. The day after he is in Poole. What is the student doing? Can we observe health and safety? Well, in Bristol he is using a tower scaffold to put up a light fitting, in Weston he turns up on site and the agent isn't there to let them on and when he turns up they have to go to the wholesaler to get the materials, he gets to Poole and it is a simple Periodic test on a house so very limited and probably not worth recording. And the point is? The student can be anywhere, doing anything at any time. The assessor with his limited time slots cannot say I'll come on Monday and observe you doing a testing and inspection unit when the likelihood of the trainee doing that in the real world is virtually zero. Yet despite this, the funding people say it must happen or we will not pay you.
Bureaucratic and generic nonsense. Lets celebrate diversity and publicly state that all people are different publicly and then completely ignore it with regards to the workforce.
Is it any wonder we cannot recruit?
What are the issues you ask? Well for a start, we take 16 year old kids straight from school and expect them to decipher the complexities of an NVQ Level 3. Thats right, level 3, no level 2, straight in at the deep end. It's the equivalent of completing a GCSE on Friday and being asked to pass an A Level on Monday. The industry is (and perhaps rightly so) refusing to recognise a level 2. This is all fine but the government then refuses to accept the complexities we face and simply drop us in with other NVQs, basically saying an NVQ in let's say for arguments sake catering is the same as an NVQ in electrical.
Now it is not going to take a genius to realise that a catering assessor can visit his trainee at the restaurant and witness safety taking place. What will he witness and record? I don't know, heat, fire, boiling liquids, hygiene, PPE et al perhaps? Now take the electrical assessor (or indeed any construction based NVQ). He visits the site and...hang on, what site? Yesterday the student was in Weston Super Mare, tomorrow he's in Bristol. The day after he is in Poole. What is the student doing? Can we observe health and safety? Well, in Bristol he is using a tower scaffold to put up a light fitting, in Weston he turns up on site and the agent isn't there to let them on and when he turns up they have to go to the wholesaler to get the materials, he gets to Poole and it is a simple Periodic test on a house so very limited and probably not worth recording. And the point is? The student can be anywhere, doing anything at any time. The assessor with his limited time slots cannot say I'll come on Monday and observe you doing a testing and inspection unit when the likelihood of the trainee doing that in the real world is virtually zero. Yet despite this, the funding people say it must happen or we will not pay you.
Bureaucratic and generic nonsense. Lets celebrate diversity and publicly state that all people are different publicly and then completely ignore it with regards to the workforce.
Is it any wonder we cannot recruit?
Sunday 16 September 2007
Well, it all starts in real earnest today. All the part time groups are back, a new group starts, a new member of staff starts, an existing member is still off on long term sickness and preparation for all courses are still well behind schedule.
Having said all that, everything is in place for the next 3 weeks so as much as anything, it is a case of keeping that lead going until at least half term when we can take a breather, gather ourselves and get the next 3 weeks or more in place.
The joys of teaching...
Having said all that, everything is in place for the next 3 weeks so as much as anything, it is a case of keeping that lead going until at least half term when we can take a breather, gather ourselves and get the next 3 weeks or more in place.
The joys of teaching...
Monday 10 September 2007
So again I am sitting here bemoaning Google. Now I am not the most experienced web designer, indeed, having not been paid for it am I actually a web designer? Another question for another time perhaps. No, what I am talking about it Yahoo Vs Google. I have done a couple of websites in my time, for friends and colleagues, and I have always had good success with Google. Conversely, I have never really been able to get my site listed with Yahoo, at least not to any decent sort of level. Imagine my surprise then when my site all of a sudden does really well in Yahoo, indeed, virtually all my traffic seems to come from Yahoo. Very strange indeed...
Oh well.
www.electricalqualifications.co.uk
Oh well.
www.electricalqualifications.co.uk
Saturday 8 September 2007
The teaching treadmill
It's all started again. There is a certain reputation surrounding lecturers that we don't do much work and have loads and loads of time off. Well let me let you into our world a little. It is actually true. In some cases. Some people literally get away with as much as 8 weeks off during the Summer break, me, I got 3 weeks off and worked the first from home. Why you ask? Well, teaching is no different to any other job when you analyse it. There are those who can be bothered and those who merely extract the Michael. Unfortunately, those who can be bothered pick up the work of everyone else.
It comes down to morality, which I believe is a large issue surrounding todays society. I am not particularly old, mid 30s in fact, but have this ridiculous notion that teaching is important and does affect and influence the future. I do treat it more than just a job, it's not something that is 9 to 5, for 9 months of the year I probably work 50-60 hours a week and get paid for 37 of those. When Summer arrives I probably do 30 hours a week so it balances out. When you do the Math though, you realise that those doing the job 37 hours a week for 9 months and 0 hours a week for the rest should not really be teaching. Shame, it's hard getting good teachers.
www.electricalqualifications.co.uk
It comes down to morality, which I believe is a large issue surrounding todays society. I am not particularly old, mid 30s in fact, but have this ridiculous notion that teaching is important and does affect and influence the future. I do treat it more than just a job, it's not something that is 9 to 5, for 9 months of the year I probably work 50-60 hours a week and get paid for 37 of those. When Summer arrives I probably do 30 hours a week so it balances out. When you do the Math though, you realise that those doing the job 37 hours a week for 9 months and 0 hours a week for the rest should not really be teaching. Shame, it's hard getting good teachers.
www.electricalqualifications.co.uk
Sunday 2 September 2007
Trying out different things in the field of electrical installation I came across another idea for a site. I shan't promote it on here as it's not finished yet, besides that, no one read this anyway :/
Anyways, my site is doing ok, even my Adsense account is looking like it's going to make me my first hundred dollars over the next two months. Don't know if it's good or bad, got no yardstick, but it should see me break even over 12 months to cover all my costs. Not that I mind costs though, just nice to see it have some return, even if it is evens!
http://www.electricalqualifications.co.uk
Anyways, my site is doing ok, even my Adsense account is looking like it's going to make me my first hundred dollars over the next two months. Don't know if it's good or bad, got no yardstick, but it should see me break even over 12 months to cover all my costs. Not that I mind costs though, just nice to see it have some return, even if it is evens!
http://www.electricalqualifications.co.uk
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