Librarians V Farmers

Librarians	Farmers
Get to hang out with children	Get to hang out with animals
Unlimited books	Unlimited eggs
Peace and quiet (supposedly)	Lively animal sounds and smells
Clean	Filthy
Warm	May have to deal with extreme weather conditions
Minimal work-related stress	Numerous animal-related occupational hazards
Spend hours at a time stickering, stamping, covering books and spinelabelling	Spend hours at a time mucking out filthy stables
Situated in the haven of any school	Situated in the haven of a sprawling urban nightmare

Conclusion: all other jobs are dreadful.

(P.S. Learnt how to make a table on HTML! Disproportionately proud of this.)

Swings and roundabouts in education

I'm shocked at what is happening to Adult Education. The existence of tuition fees in universities is bad enough, without partial privatisation of further education colleges, a necessity for adult social mobility. Currently colleges only receive the full cost of tuition for people aged 16-19, or those on benefits, most of which are forced to take classes against their will by job centres hence are unlikely to profit from them. Everyone else has to fork out extortionate fees, often without even the option of paying a concessionary rate. Consequently the classes are so undersubscribed they are often cut, partially cancelled or made more expensive. I have already paid £375 for my A level Biology class, only to be told that due to an (unsurprising) shortage of students taking the class they would have to cut two thirds of the lessons, meaning there would not be enough time to cover the syllabus, and instead a "drop in tutorial" would run every three weeks. This is not only a scandalous rip-off but also a complete let-down, especially as people were only told about these arrangements after they had spent several hours enrolling. The fact that they even run courses that are "Full Cost Recovery" with no discount regardless of income strikes me as deeply unfair and also inherently agist: if you haven't got all the qualifications you need by the time you're 19, then tough luck, there are no more educational opportunities available to you.

On the bright side, year 9 SATs have been scrapped with immediate effect, taking some of the brutal exam pressure off 14 year olds. Whilst the teachers at my school were cheering about this the perhaps more perceptive year 9s were skeptical: "it's all the same really, we've been threatened with end-of-year assessments instead" said one, "and they'll probably make us do more church services 'just for fun' ". Obviously the "creative opportunities" we were promised was another staff room euphemism.

Working in a school is quite disorientating sometimes.

(It's exactly like everything you've ever seen on Teachers as well, by the way.)