Equine Students

I can’t believe how fast this month has gone. Last week the new students started. I tend to start the courses a week before enrolments as there is always some that change their minds, some that decide to alter the course or the day they are doing and some that don’t turn up at all.  Pam Jones and Sarah Henney came out from Yale college today to do the enrolments. If students are re-enrolling onto the same course this is a fairly simple procedure but for new students it is quite a long drawn out process. All new students have to take a maths and literature test, these used to be done on paper but this year we were supplied with seven laptops for the purpose. Your result goes to the college and if they deem you to need help you will get a letter, known as the thick letter,  if you don’t get a thick letter you can assume you are at least averagely bright but if you do get a thick letter you are supposed to be able to receive help. Personally I think its a pointless exercise our students are too far away from the college to receive any help and they don’t have to accept help if they don’t want too, also I don’t see the point of part time students who are doing A levels in school and have an arm full of GCSE’S having to sit a basic Maths and Literature test. Still I suppose at least they save some trees now that its done on laptops. After this test comes the induction and the death of a forest. Health and safety form, enrolment form, assessment form and whole induction pack to be filled in, most of which is in duplicate and most of which will never be looked at again by the student in my experience. The whole process took from 2.30pm to 7pm to get all the students enrolled. Yale College has also introduced a course fee this year of £20 per course plus a £25 refundable on completion enrolment fee, we are getting off light really as they are charging £150 for all their non equine courses but I expect it will go up each year.  We are starting this year with 18 students doing 31 equine courses between them and another 12 starting after Christmas. Anyone reading this who took a horse Owners course last year – I have your test papers back from Yale. I’m quite impressed with the results the highest percentage mark from all three courses went to Sue Owen.

Posted on Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009 at 12:24 am You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.