Richmond-upon-Thames College: the student factory

Richmond upon-Thames College main entrance

From a distance, Richmond upon-Thames College looks and occasionally smells, like a bread factory. It is a machine for learning in. Our students leave baked, not half baked. Watch us on a fire drill. There's the staff and then there are 6,500 students, including part-timers.

Take this example; we have seven different restaurants on campus, including Merits Training Restaurant, run by the catering students, the Appletree Cafe, run by our students with special needs, and there's our staff restaurant.

Crowded into colleges like these there are still some of the idealists and disaffected casualties of the Thatcher years. They take cover between the time-servers and jobsworths like marijuana plants growing under tobacco leaves. Perhaps colleges like ours shelter a people's intelligentsia in waiting. If Jerusalem ever did come, these irritatingly self- deprecatory colleagues of mine might be among the leaders of a cultural renaissance.

Here we have students who study everything, from the International Baccalaureate (Richmond has the best results in a state school in the country) to BTECS in sport and A'levels in international development. There are some students from East and North London. There are many from South London, but the majority are from West London. All classes, all backgrounds. To work or study here is to understand better the variegated social complexion of London.

When you walk to the Richmond College main entrance beware. At ten to nine the students sweep you into the college. At four thirty they sweep you back out again to Twickenham station. Education in Richmond, it seems, is tidal.

In break time and between classes students laugh, embrace each other, sit on the corridor floors and run about and joke. They wear what they want.There are no uniforms, the students are free to come and go as they please and the only discipline that really matters here seems to be self-discipline. From the wide window in front of me I see the courtyard with the big cherry tree in the middle and I see some of the students. They are a little raucous and undisciplined at the moment, but it's spring, so who cares?

And the college has an intellectual life. The Secular society, the Islamic society, the Christian society, the Philosophy society and the Law society all enjoy debating each other. There are plays, concerts, festivals and dancing competitions, between exams.

______________________________________

RUTC sends more people to university every year than any other educational institution in the UK
__________________________

What I like most about the college is its emphasis on providing access to education for everybody. I agree with this philosophy. Everyone is here because everyone deserves a chance and RUTC, they say, sends more people to university every year than any other educational institution in the UK.

But now, in Richmond, the new manager has decided to make us more "efficient". The prelude to the projected cost cutting plan has come after a calculated exercise in self-flagellation whereby our own management downgraded the college in a "self-inspection" procedure. The efficiency plan, now fully hatched, seems to amount to, in essence, downsizing the college and getting rid of all the out-of-borough students, many of whom, coincidentally, come from places like Brixton, Clapham and Peckham.

This strategy will bring down the shutter on opportunities for many London students and the way it is being launched has upset teachers and students alike. So much of what is good about the college is our human capital and our good social relations. It is human capital and good social relations that help cause successful learning to occur, not efficiency exercises.
__________________________________

The prelude to the projected cost cutting plan has come after a calculated exercise in self-flagellation whereby our own management downgraded the college in a "self-inspection" procedure.
_________________________________

But have the management thought this strategy through? The way these cuts have been announced has generated a toxic uncertainty among teachers, students and administrative staff. To get the administrative staff on-side, he hopes, the head of the college has announced that there are too many teachers in proportion to income and costs. The implication is that admin jobs are safe - or safer.

The new broom seems to ignore the O'level economics point that while the number of teachers will increase quite rigidly according to the number of students, the number of administrative staff needed to handle another hundred students, (for example), needn't increase at all.

Moreover, as the college is far bigger than any school in the area, it seems head-thumpingly obvious that teachers will constitute a greater proportion of costs or income. In fact we should, logically, be more efficient that other schools in the borough because of returns to scale. Have the management worked out the average cost per student? I would be interested in knowing that figure.

I've seen and experienced successful schools in London and watched how they operate; my children have attended them - The London Oratory and the Holy Cross Girls' School. But a focus on efficiency savings and accountancy is not what made these schools successful. In my opinion, an overweaning focus on figures by management can be poisonous and idiotic. Is it ad hominim to note, as many have, that an influential member of the board of governors of the college was a City asset stripper? Well just what are the real assets of a College?

I'll tell you what makes educational managers successful. And come to think of it I think I am qualified to comment. I also have a postgraduate in management from Henley and years of experience managing a variety of educational establishments with student bodies of between 500 and 2500, in the private sector and the public sector.

1. Creating a positive vision of the future and pride in the institution.
2. Being a constant and reassuring presence.
3. Showing due respect for teaching professionals, the core service providers.
4. Encouraging mutual respect, teamwork and avoiding conflict.
5. Getting all the stake holders on board before acting.
6. Managing the college closely and carefully.
7. Listening to everyone with great attention.
8. Exercising highly refined and developed diplomatic skills
9. Being a trusting Theory Y manager.
10. Delegating widely, and monitoring closely.

___________________________

....a focus on efficiency savings and accountancy is not what made these good schools successful. Such a focus is poison.
___________________________

Successful leadership and management is never a macho affair, it is always a family affair, even if you are leading soldiers into battle - this is particularly true in a place like a college which is charged with helping young people survive and achieve their idealistic aspirations, their dreams and their ambitions.

I can tell you that there are few real cynics amongst the student body and that most of the teachers are ploughing their life energy into the future, which is hardly cynical. I think the new head of the college is demonstrating that he doesn't quite understand the institutional culture of Richmond College and that is fatal.

I wonder how many of our teachers are dormant radicals and whether the student population will be a pushover. Today in Glades, one of the cafeterias, the media students were filming a documentary on what people thought of the projected cuts. The teachers are going to be balloted on strike action and, thanks to the swift actions of the University and College Union, the national media have taken up the story and the staff are ready with a response to management threats.