The quality of my working life and the quality of educational provision in my college have deteriorated over the last 5 years or so, because of funding cuts, overcrowding and increasing pressure to get results (NB this isn't bringing my specific college into disrepute, this is just a general trend in every school and college outside of the private sector).
At the same time, however, more money than ever is being pumped into marketing - colour brochures that get sent out to 2000 students four times a year, 'community events' for the photo opportunities and a brand new corporate image (we've even got branded water bottles).
The most grating experience (a very horrific personal juxtaposition) I had this year was around September time when I was rushing about trying to juggle more work than anyone could ever handle, when I came across the 'marketing department' (who I'm sure earn as much money as I do) leisurely pottering about pondering over how to organize the displays for the corridor, looking particularly unstressed.
And because of such displays (which invariably consist of beaming students keen about their futures) I am confronted with an image of my workplace that I neither recognize or in any way identify with. In other words, the way in which my college has become an alien environment to me.
A further reason I don’t recognise or identify with the image of my college as portrayed in all of the various promotional literature is because none of it is real…. The college video has interviews with mainly A level science students, while the BTEC business students are strangely absent, of course anything ‘active’ such as sports, art, and music feature heavily, as does the clean and green front of the college, rather than prefabricated main-drag. Also strangely absent is the overcrowded refectory, the manky sandwich thirds left in the corridors after lunch time, and the crowning glory of my college - the real unique selling point: the smoking area for 16-19 year olds: quite possibly the only educational establishment in the country which has one.
Of course I know the whole point of marketing is to lie to the public, and that ‘people have to make a living’, but it’s just the lack of integrity in the way my college is marketed that is also causing within me an unbearable sense of ‘anomie’: most the promotional material isn’t actually focused on results, it’s on the engineered social aspects of college life - the shows, the community events, the sports teams: the marketing department put the periphery of college life at the centre and glorify it, while those like me working at the center (or rather working in the front line) suffer a worsening quality of educational life as we whether cumulative rounds of funding cuts.
(*college name blanked out, I haven't quite quit yet!)
If you like this sort of thing, then you might like to read the other 7 parts of this series..... the Hub Post contains follow on links!
(Hub Post - 11 Reasons I’m Quitting teaching)[@revisesociology/why-i-m-quitting-teaching-this-year-11-criticisms-of-the-education-system-in-england]