It's not very often that something rattles my cage so much that I can barely concentrate on what I'm writing (besides, I'm usually too busy on ebay...) but there's something about schools' league tables that really chaffs my ass. And when you get that wound up, you just have to release the torrent of venom at someone. In my case that was Amanda Baillieu, editor of BD. It took me an hour of getting cross, another of writing and rewriting, and then a good half hour (and sseveral chocolate biscuits) to calm down again. Nice.
"Like many members of staff and graduates of the architectural schools around the country, I read the article informing us of Cambridge Architecture School's prowess ("Cambridge ranks top for architect students" 5th May 2006) with a cynical slant. However, it was refreshing to hear the system denounced by those it congratulates, and that the staff at LMU were steadfast enough to refuse to participate.
Whilst I accept that Cambridge may well have an outstanding course to offer students, the scoring system applied to all university courses is not appropriate when assessing architectural education. For instance, many schools with a high ranking research score are unable to offer the time and design expertise in studio - where architectural education is put into practice - due to the staff's workload. Other criteria used by both the Times and The Guardian includes the A-level scores of entrants, which bears little or no relation to their architectural capability once in the school, and actively discriminates against those chosen by their ability to design rather than perform well in exams aged 18.
It is a shame that the Guardian's article may form a negative influence in the choice of schools made by those soon to complete their A-levels, and I would certainly encourage them to take the time to visit the different institutions and gauge whether their means of working are appropriate to the way in which they would want to be taught.
Whilst Portsmouth school didn't feature in the top 20 (which given its relation to other league tables would certainly prove Disraeli's theory regarding statistics) we aim to turn out students with a broad spectrum of abilities and who are capable of applying themselves in the workplace. Surely the truest test of a school's educational capabilities would be to question the employers. Afterall, these are the people better placed to assess the quality of students that an institution is capable of producing."
The next time wastage was incurred the next friday when I suddenly got scared about maybe seing it published, and then the disappointment that they'd managed to edit out all the salient points. Humph. I feel another letter coming on...
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Here here - might go take a photo of the petition on the year board in Cardiff that reads "I believe that the IT facuilities in the school have been detrimental to my degree..." - they can't edit that out. Still thats one of the top schools for you - clearly 15 PC's aren't enough for the entire school and "students are expected to own a laptop" simply doesn't cut it when you need to use one of the 15 to actually plot on the two very slow and rubbish quality plotters at 3am.
GRRRRRRRR!
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