Most students will have by now made their UCAS applications (Oxbridge and medicine much earlier) and many will have taken the fees into account when making their choices. So, if say a student capable of getting grades good enough for Bristol decided not to apply because of the likely £9K, could they now ask for the process to be reopened if Bristol reduced its fees under the latest deal offered by BIS.

Just a passing thought on the market. Who actually determines the worth of a degree? The HEIs may set the level but surely it’s employers who decide from which HEIs they prefer to take their applicants? And how much have the employers been involved in the process? What basis do they decide that X provide good degrees and Y doesn’t?

It’s particularly annoying right now, because we’re in the midst of a Rugby World Cup and, frankly, I’ve a Sky+ box full of live games and highlights that I haven’t yet caught up with, and I’m finding them a teeny bit more appealing than yet another essay on murder. Better yet, ITV have somehow persuaded the incomparable Francois Pienaar to join the team, which makes it unmissable in my book. This Ireland supporter is finding the Southern hemisphere trio of Pienaar, Fitzy and Michael Lynagh considerably classier than the Northern hemisphere analysts…with the honourable exception of the wonderful Girvan Dempsey of course. However, the mix of North and South does have its joys. I’m still marvelling at the nerve of Gareth Thomas who raved on and on about how ‘Wales were the better team and should have beaten South Africa’ the other week, apparently oblivious to the fact that Pienaar, sitting next to him, was rapidly developing the look of a caged tiger that had missed out on a few lunches and was eager for a bite of Welsh rarebit…

There’s next year to consider…. Somewhere, way back at the start of 2011, someone asked me about Public law (aka Con/Ad). ‘Not one of my subjects’ I said. ‘I don’t teach this one’. Never have. I hated it as a student…in fact I was so shocked when I passed with a decent mark that I was convinced it must be an administrative error. They told me it wasn’t but, frankly, I’ve always wondered.

However, they do say that distance lends enchantment and, when asked about the subject by one of my current students I started to remember the fun bits. I didn’t mind judicial review, I quite enjoyed PACE. It wasn’t that bad, was it? Somehow (and, looking back, I’m not quite sure how…) this led to my blithely volunteering it as a possible subject for next year. So there it is, on the advertising materials. Too late to back out now!

I fear my holiday reading is going to be a little different from usual this year……

I don’t think it would be for me. The stage fright would kill me (I always volunteered very quickly for ‘costumes’ when it was school play time). However, it does occur to me that this style of delivery has some advantages, not least the ability to avoid the ghastly realisation that you just aren’t getting the point across. These are what I refer to as my ‘Father Ted’ moments. I’m thinking of the episode with the holiday in the caravan where Ted attempts to explain to Father Dougal the difference between toy cows and distant cows in the field outside (if you’re not familiar with it, just check out You Tube!)

I do know that I’m not alone in this feeling, lots of colleagues have admitted to the same sinking feeling when, try as you may, you just can’t seem to explain something in terms that the students understand. Nonetheless, I do find it disconcerting. I can’t help but think that I ought to be managing to make it easier than it seems, so I’m always on the look out for new ideas. Quiz games work well, Google earth is fun for Land law and chocolate is usually quite a good motivating factor. I can’t say that I’ve tried plastic cows yet, but the more I think of it the more I can see the potential – there’s the cow in Couchman v Hill or indeed the horse in Felthouse v Bindley if we’re doing Contract law and there are plenty of estoppel cases about farms… Who knows? Perhaps Ted was pioneering exciting new visual and kinaesthetic learning styles?

In my current institution, this tension has been building since September, with a stream of really annoying emails with subject lines like “Observations (sorry J!)” from someone who chooses to use an email name that includes not one but two middle initials. I know I’m just an irascible old bat, but I find this sort of thing a deeply worrying personality trait, unless you happen to be part of a Welsh rugby team where everyone in the team is called Jones or Williams.

Anyway, back to the observation, and the first challenge is to get the paperwork right.  Fill in the record book and get my lesson plan done. As I am teaching HE, it appears that I don’t need a dreaded Scheme of Work and a mere line plan will do…which feels terribly sloppy, a bit like turning up to class in your PJs, so I decide I’d better have one for backup. Anyway, on to the lesson plan. My first encounter with this thorny little beast was on an early teacher-training course, where we were set to admire a one hour lesson plan explaining how to sharpen a pencil. Great…but can someone please tell me how this relates to explaining the rules relating to the defence of provocation?

At this point I really shouldn’t be moaning. At least I find myself being observed under the HE criteria, which means there isn’t the same relentless obsession with ‘activity learning’ as there is with FE, so at least I’ll get away with not spending the session making a lentil collage of Lord Denning…

Anyway, my real gripe is that I have a sneaking doubt as to whether these institutions really care about the quality of delivery offered to students. With observations, the pressure is on to perform to grade 1 or grade 2 standards (grade 3 is supposed to be ‘satisfactory’ but it is made exceptionally clear that this is anything but). The irony is that, whilst these rigorous standards are enforced at observation time, I have it on good authority from my students that they were quite surprised by my way of doing things when I started, because they were used to having someone read directly from the book!

It’s well known that savvy teachers often have a special ‘inspection lesson’ they keep up their sleeves for observation time. I understand that it works a treat, as long as you can do something to divert attention from the startled look on the students’ faces when they wonder what’s happened to their usual lecturer. A far better way of honestly assessing standards in such places, in my opinion, would be to lower the unrealistic expectations of endless perfect paperwork and wonderful activity based lessons and conduct no-warning inspections that see it as it really is…week in, week out.

This is a very interesting subject to consider in the light of gender equality, since the change comes about because of Parliament’s view that the previous law made it too easy for a man to kill his partner as a result of sexual jealousy and then claim the defence of provocation, whilst a battered woman could find herself unable to rely on the defence after months or years of abuse because of the technical requirement for a sudden and temporary loss of control. Teaching a small, all-female group of students, you would expect this change to lead to lively discussion… and so it did, but not in the way I had expected.

Rather than considering the previous inequitable position of battered wives etc., instead my ladies debated with vigour the question of whether the sound of a man snoring should be a ‘qualifying trigger’ under the new law, since it was undoubtedly ‘of an extremely grave character’, giving rise to the required ‘justifiable sense of being seriously wronged’. Audio evidence was produced, to hilarious effect, and I rather fear we fell from grace in the promotion of gender equality as the conversation turned to what might politely be termed ‘self help remedies’, many of which would probably breach Article 3 ECHR (prevention of torture and inhuman or degrading treatment).