1st November 2011 9:00
By Blue Tutors
Despite being away for two days of last week, it actually felt very productive. Training the assessor in Cambridge went well, and I enjoyed the assessments I did on Wednesday, but I also managed to complete the majority of work for our new student reporting system, so that should be up on the website soon, and we’ll send an email out about it to our tutors shortly. The student reports won’t be compulsory, but we became aware that lots of tutors do this anyway, and we thought it would be a nice touch for tutors to be able to write them, and keep track of them through our website.
I noticed last week that UCAS announced a drop in uni applications, and that everyone is reacting to the news by criticising the increase in tuition fees. I’ve said before that I’m not totally against the increase (although I think the government’s justification for them is wrong), but surely the drop just reflects the increase in applications that there was last year? People will be taking gap years this year, when they didn’t last year. Also, there hasn’t been a significant drop in people applying to Oxbridge, which shows that the most gifted students aren’t discouraged by the new tuition fees. Personally, my concern is for students beginning courses at unis with lower entry requirements and lower teaching standards; if they can’t attract many applications in future years, due to charging £9,000 a year, then is it possible that they will have to close before some undergraduates complete three years? Hopefully not, but I think it’s a real possibility.