Does anyone know if all the A level syllabuses require controlled classroom time for the composition element?

Does anywhere offer an evening or weekend class to cover the course?

Has anyone succesfully managed it as a private candidate?

I know that Blackheath Conservatoire (a private extra-curricular music school in SE London) offer GCSE and A-level music, but I don't know much more than that. Their course brochure is light on details and encourages "enquiries".

I know they're in the wrong part of the country for you, but they are generally very helpful, and committed to music education, so you could possibly ask them how they manage to fulfil all the obligations. Their website is undergoing a revamp, but if you click through from conservatoire.org.uk you should be able to find contact details.

You can do it at Birmingham Junior Conservatoire either on Saturdays or as an evening class. I don't think you need to be a member of BJC to do it. I expect RNCM do something similar. (That looks closer to you)

RNCM don't do music A level at all.

Are they all too clever to need it?

Sorry to be slightly off topic - but it does seem to be harder nowadays to access Alevels as a part time student. I did A level English at night school a couple of years after graduating, and really enjoyed it. At the time there was a long list of subjects that could be studied at this level - and judging by the number of people there at enrolment, they were very popular. A couple of years ago I had a review of local classes to see if there was another subject I could do. Sadly there now appear to be no A-level courses available to part time learners at all, all the evening classes seem to be "leisure" topics that don't lead to a qualification or basic numeracy/ literacy. I wonder if this is linked to the modular format and course work element of A levels now which mean they don't really lend themselves to this kind of study? Or is it just that they are not popular enough to run? I'm not sure if this is true in other parts of the country. I find it very sad that this level of study seems to have been removed as an option for adults - in my region at least..

You can at least do English A level by distance learning with Sheffield College

Obviously!

There isn't the time anymore because of the supervised elements of the course (at least that's what I was told). It's my understanding that they used to do it before the regulations changed.

My friend's daughter is doing it at Birmingham and they had three days during the Easter holiday to do the supervised part, as that couldn't be fitted into the Saturday afternoons.

I think some schools run collaborative courses, so if your school isn't offering it you can sometimes do it at another local school. That certainly happens round here.

It's a wider problem to do with funding for "liberal arts" courses - which includes leisure evening classes. Exam-based courses have been hit less, so you are likely to find core A Level subjects available, but will struggle with more arts type subjects such as music, photography, art history etc.

Leisure subjects are even worse. The range of subjects has dropped dramatically in recent years. Part of this is due to the ludicrous requirement to 'measure' things - so you have to have assignments etc or there is no funding, in which case course fees become very high. This hasn't started recently - this has been snowballing over the last 20 years.

Couple of examples. I signed up for a music technology course a few years ago at Ellesmere Port (nearest place that ran it as an evening class - about 35 miles away). There were five of us - all adults in full-time jobs. To run the class they needed 8 of us, or 1 16-19 year-old. If the latter had happened the class would have run even if the 16-19 year-old was the only student

I would like to do a BTEC in photography. I can find only one college that offers it as a part-time evening subject - Southport, 65 miles away.

Why do I want to do such courses? I want some alternative strings in my bow so that I can turn my hand to other things if necessary.

Of course I would like to finish my degree with the OU - that's now dead - I don't want to be taking thousands of pounds of debt into retirement.

What happened to the Victorian idea that access to learning was a benefit to the whole of society and to be encouraged?

Back to topic....

I don't see why other Conservatoires can't do that as well.

It is slightly infuriating that there are no opportunities to take GCSEs and A levels outside of the college environment anymore. I suppose until NVQ's have gone out of fashion it's likely to remain that way.



I'm sure you are not the only person to ponder this

I tried to write something here the other day but got emotive and doubtful.

The problem is obvious. There is only a certain amount of cash to spend on post-school-age education, and for some reason dogma in the last few years has been to blow it all on trying to get as many people up to "degree level" as possible. The results are a bloom of mickey-mouse degrees in useless subjects, and that all other adult education has suffered dreadfully. I don't know, but sometimes wonder whether the universities, having more clout than adult education centres, perhaps have colluded in this daft dogma.

Lifelong education makes people more motivated, more fulfilled and more fulfilling members of society. It should be available. It makes more sense to have 10-20% of people going on to degrees from school, but 100% of people able to study a wide range of subjects, at a wide range of levels, thoughout their lives. This is a lot more sensible than 50% with (often dubious) degrees, and no one able to study anything much ever again.

Sorry to be grumpy. But it matters.

The elevation of institutions to 'university' status when it simply is not deserved is part of the collusion.

I do take issue with the 'mickey-mouse degree' line, though. It's not the subjects that are the main problem, but the standard of education, and a degree in a traditional subject from a sub-standard university is just as much a waste of a student's time. Using the 'mickey-mouse' line gives the impression to teenagers that by studying English rather than Media Studies at East Metropolitan City Jimmy Saville University, they'll sail into a graduate job.

In the defence of (some) Media Studies courses.: while I'm not going to defend the cases where degrees are offered in what is clearly a vocational area of study, new subjects do come into being. A few decades ago the field of 'computer science' didn't even exist, but it's certainly no mickey-mouse degree now. Another illustrative point I read about was that Manchester University caused a controversy in the early 20th century by introducing a degree which was dismissed by many as lacking suitable academic rigour. It was called 'English Literature'.

This is a definite reflection of wider societal attitudes. There is no idea that when you go to study a course there will be some element of hard, academic graft involved. It's very fashionable to do your essay the night before, to aim for a scrape pass, to blow your student loan in one night. It's a competition to put in the least effort and spend the most money on drink and foreign travel. With this kind of attitude to higher education it's no wonder that the money is all gone.

This is seen outside education too. Whenever there is a focus on a young person with an atypical story - leaving care, coming out of prison, disabled, young carer, ill - they seem to be telling us that because they are in their twenties they "should be" out drinking and having a laugh. I don't see that you "should be" drinking and having no cares in the world, indeed they appear to feel hard done by if they have to earn money and then spend it on essentials. I don't see anything wrong with the idea that you should be working for a living in your twenties. Yes, it's a different time of life, a certain hedonism and inexperience, but my youthful energy was invested in working. Working perhaps in situations I couldn't tolerate as an adult, but working all the same. Hard graft to put money in the bank for my future.

I fully expected that I needed a job, that I was going to live in some grungy conditions. People appear to think they will roll out of 3 years of parent-funded socialising and into a dream job (only dream jobs will do) where they work about 25 hours a week, are paid a fortune and will live alone in a penthouse apartment where there are no bills to pay. I swept floors and cleaned toilets and lived in a tent for 2 years. I had some amazing experiences and travelled all over and I didn't by any means waste my youth, but I didn't expect it delivered on a plate.

I wanted to do some more qualifications but not university courses this time as I have a degree already and I find year 1 too easy and year 2 courses slightly more work than I want to do. But there is basic literacy and then there is university, nothing in between.

I'm unaware of this general trend - could you link to some articles?

I think this is a huge generalisation, the sort of cheap shot the media plays time and time again and many people end up believing.

I'm sure some students and the wider community think like that, but many (most?) do not. The young people I know at university are generally working hard and have no illusions about the effort needed or the realities they will face after university. And while a lot of drinking might go on, isn't that true for wider society, including so-called professionals. There are also students who drink moderately, or don't drink at all, and who are trying to learn to manage money properly.

I know a few work-shy people, but most people work and accept they have to work. Again, the young people I know, both those at university and teenagers pre-university, seem well aware that the world doesn't owe them a living and they are jolly well going to have to work to provide for themselves. They don't seem that different to myself and those I knew at university nearly 30 years ago, except that in many ways they have it harder than we did.

Especially when you consider that many people simply aren't ready at age 16/17 to choose what they want to do with the rest of their life. I think it's so important to give everyone the chance to study later on in life, whether it's just because they enjoy it or because they want to change careers.

It's more of a television thing than a print media thing so I can't link to anything, sadly. If I could remember what the shows were there may be some still available for digital download, but most are one-off documentaries which are not kept by the likes of iPlayer because they are current affairs based. It's very influential for people to keep hearing this said to them, that the point of being young is to be wasted and not care about anything. Obviously it's not a reflection of how everyone is, but what worries me is that it's a reflection of the continuing media message. If more and more people are told that this is how to be young they will feel that this is the correct way to be young. There's a certain slice of the population which is chosen by production companies because they make the "best TV" but that TV is then watched by people who are influenced by it.

Everything is a generalisation (there we go again, because obviously not everything is a generalisation by definition!) but the worrying trend is when the minority are over-represented in media and the majority under-represented and people get a skewed view of life - Dan Gardner's "Risk" speaks about this in great detail, and the way in which people who do not wish to be influenced by things still are.




I can only speak for my own university experiences, but they were real experiences because I was there, they were not media moderated. Now some people may well be lying about doing no work in order to fit in and they actually worked really hard, but there were many, many people in that computer room on the morning of deadline day trying to cobble something together. Perhaps that sort of experience is less common at the likes of Oxford than it is in other universities, but it annoyed me how much of it I had to put up with, especially on group work projects where other members of the group showed up week after week having done nothing, proclaimed it would all be fine somehow and did I see such and such a band last night. *sigh*

This is true...but then many of them will fall short of a 2:1, and wonder why they struggle in the job market...

This outlook has served me well over the years, so it is not a new phenomenon. I don't aim for a scrape pass though, even if I do leave my essays until the last minute