Hi All,
I teach in a (public funded) college in the plumbing dept. a couple of years ago two of the tutors here left the dept and started up their own (private) college.
They are doing very well for themselves and have succeeded in poaching most of our apprentices.
FE has been viciously cut in the last couple of years and I have no doubt they are doing a better job than us in teaching and assessing plumbing apprenticeships 🙁
I had a look on their site during the week and noticed that they had put up a selection of comments from a company who previously used us. They used the name and location of the college, I have asked a few people and I got no real answer as to whether this is allowed or not. here is the text:

As promised, I’ve had a ring round our apprentices to see how they feel things are going on, everybody that I have spoken to are really happy, some of the comments have been:

“everything is explained in much more detail than at Blackbird Leys”

“there are only 6 in my class – its really, really good, the teacher explains everything properly”

“there are 13 in my class, most of them Warburton, it’s so much better than Oxford College”

“it’s a great place to learn, there’s no messing about in class, we can actually learn here!”

“I love it, the tutors are really helpful and explain everything in detail so that I can understand it better”

Thanks for making them all feel so welcome!

can anyone tell me what the law/regulations are?
thanks
Jim

No regs as such, might be libellous, probs worth a threatening letter to get it removed.

If this was a movie that would make them the bad guys

Ha!
yeah I have to treat my job like a movie sometimes… honestly you couldn’t make a lot of it up!
One of them apparently filled his van with boilers from our (now defunct) gas assessment center before he left ! (before my time)
No wonder we are in such a mess
🙁
cheers for your thoughts
Jim

there are no laws but its very unprofessional and casts doubt on there abilities and trustworthiness. I’d not use them but if your place is as bad as you say I’d spend time working on that rather than worrying about what the competitors are doing. I mean this to be helpful and positive.

yep MT I do take your point and try to remain as sanguine as I can despite the dirty tactics we are dealing with from both within and from outside the college.
TBH we are working our balls off in the dept… Im the workshop manager and Ive had the materials budget cut by 70% this academic year.
Part of the issue is that loosing our apprenticeships means our credibility in the industry is in tatters.
Im looking to get out of FE after this year is done. Weve had staffing cut from 8 full time staff to 3 in the last year. basically our situation is unsustainable…

No offence the but what they say may be true given what you are saying

I agree its not good form – they should big themselves up not slag you off but i suspect they can do it as long as they have signed forms from folks saying the things they claim

they would be daft to not have signed consent forms though and it may just be false. If it then i have no idea what the law states.

Isn’t this, broadly, fruit’s area of expertise?