Bodcast - The Real Journal of Further Education

Welcome to Bodcast - the real truth about F.E.

Do you work in F.E.? Are you fed up with autocratic and incompetent management, reckless restructuring and all the other demoralising everyday crap you have to put up with in FE?

If the answer to these questions is yes...then this is your platform to vent your frustrations with like minded people.

On the whole, lecturing staff are the backbone of colleges, but are treated with disrespect by management.

Yet, despite all the bullying and mismanagement that continues on a daily basis, we are led to believe that everything in F.E. is hunky dory. College managment are masters at creating spin. The worst offenders in this is SFEU's journal Broadcast.

If you are in F.E. I'm sure you're familiar with SFEU's Journal, Broadcast. Apart from the in-your-face design of this spurious glossy mag with it's over the top use of irrelevant images and unreadable fonts, unsuspecting readers of this quarterly edict must think that working in the F.E. sector is a haven of educational wonder and bliss. It isn't!

In the most recent edition Broadcast covers a range of 'interesting' articles including 'FE and the Age of Supercomplexity' (what the hell is that about???), 'Good Practice in Scotland's Colleges' (what good practice?) and 'What's Learning for Anyway' (don't they know??).

In a previous edition Kathleen Taylor, Vice Principal, at James Watt College (we all know about the problems she's caused there) produced this incredulous article about 'Implementing a Learning and Teaching Strategy at James Watt College' In this article (where did they get that font style?) Kathleen heralds a tribute that the management at James Watt are implementing a Learning and Teaching Strategy. I mean to say, what do the management think the lecturing staff have been doing all these years?

The truth is FE can be a crap place to work. People like Kathleen Taylor with their autocratic jackboot style of management make what could be a great sector to work in, one which consistently fails to impress. F.E. is infested by constant restructuring, merging overlarge teams with incapable managers, overbearing and incompetent management, bullies and fools.

Yet, despite all this management think they are at the cutting edge of education. Masters at spin, they believe they can do no wrong.

This Blog is for all college lecturers who face the daily recklessness of college mismanagement. This is your chance to get your own back - anonymously, without the fear of a paranoid and insecure manager.