It’s been difficult being a determined blogger this last month or so.  Every time inspiration strikes, yet another government announcement, or news of an impending cut, or some further reorganisation sends me back to the drawing board.  Despairing of being able to coherently address some of these issues, at least until the politicians have departed for their bread and water style holiday at a rainy English resort, I’m therefore forced to fall back on basic principles.

Now, I will be the first to acknowledge that my views were formed in those far off days when my alma mater, the London School of Economics, was regarded as a radical establishment.  However, I’m not sure that they really are that controversial.

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Disciplinary issues, truancy, special needs (to integrate or to separate) – some of the everyday problems which beset teachers in our schools, and that’s before you get to the administration, let alone actually start to teach!

Teachers are not necessarily equipped to be social workers, psychiatrists, or, heaven forbid, policemen, yet even the most damaged (in the widest sense of the word) children can be helped with the right care and attention – see www.kidsco.org.uk, the charity founded by Camila Batmanghelidjh in 1996.  Of course, such care and attention costs money, but in today’s climate, with disruptive pupils in particular, it is exclusion that sometimes seems as though it is becoming the weapon of first, not last, resort. 

Such – neglect? - however can be an expensive solution – expensive in human terms, because it can lead to semi-literate adults with significant unemployment issues, perhaps even drug abuse and criminality, but expensive too in cash terms, because of the opportunity cost to the economy as well as the additional costs to the public purse in terms of the justice and health systems. 

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A couple of weeks ago I published a blog on “Cuts – the outlook for university staff levels”.  It seems to have attracted quite a lot of comment, so I thought I would follow up by talking to some of the media, national and specialist, which carry recruitment advertising for the sector.

Interestingly, given the general mood of pessimism around, I once again ended up feeling more positive than I had anticipated.  There was a consensus that, at least in the short term, there was something of an upturn – or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the bottom had been reached, and year on year figures had started to improve, if only by a little.  In spite of what has clearly been a terrible twelve months for the media, one at least claimed to be on budget so far this year.

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With talk of cuts drowning out all other kinds of discourse, I thought it would be interesting to canvass opinions in the universities as to the outlook for employment over the next year or two.  Now, I certainly wouldn’t pretend that what I did was to conduct a scientific survey amongst Advancement professionals at the more than 20 institutions I spoke to, but nonetheless the results were interesting.

Firstly, the bad news. At least a couple of institutions are facing compulsory redundancies, and half were anticipating voluntary redundancies/natural wastage etc, the majority of which were expected to primarily impact administrative staff.  Most universities had at least a freeze on recruitment, and many had put in place very strict rules governing the filling of posts which become vacant.

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