More Women's College Shenanigans (2)

The next posting is the second in a trilogy of, erm ... three postings about the horrors of working at a women's college in the HCT system. You have been warned!

Report Number 2
Well, what could I possibly say after spending four years teaching the spoilt, moaning and unmotivated princesses of my particular HCT outpost? 

Well, apart from the rude and deceitful students that I’ve already mentioned, there is the so-called management. Quite simply, the managers that I have encountered here are the worst I have experienced in my 30 years of teaching. Firstly, in the years that I have spent here I have never seen them support the teaching staff – not once! – even when it’s crystal clear that the students are the problem. In my view there is a deep vein of ethnic jealousy here, as the locals resent being told how to behave on their own turf, even when they are clearly wrong and know it. Saving face is always more important than getting to the bottom of a problem.

Secondly, there is hardly ever any communication about anything even vaguely important, and when there is, it’s always left to the last possible moment, leaving us all with no time to make proper plans. In most cases we get to hear about matters either second hand or … not at all! Sometimes we have to rely on the students to fill us in on what’s happening, as they will have been informed by email, but not us. On one occasion we only found out a vital piece of news about the college from a newspaper; only the day before it was due to happen did our supreme managers deem to tell us!

This lack of concern – or just total incompetence – extends to many areas of college life. We get called into meetings with just a few minutes of notice. When we ask for some guidance or training on important matters, perhaps to do with exams or syllabus changes, it just doesn’t happen. No attempts are ever made to give thanks or appraisal for a job well done – but then again, how would the useless Emirati managers even know? Almost without exception, the only time that our great masters decide to get a move on is when it concerns bad news - issuing reprimands, warnings and dismissals. So no news is usually considered to be good news by the humble servants.

However, by far the most frustrating and worrying feature of working here, at this particular branch of the HCT empire, is the corruption. Whilst I have not actually seen it myself, there have been cases of certain teachers ‘helping’ students in exams. What I can claim to be true is that marks have been altered to boost exam grades, students have been permitted to re-take exams many more times than college policy permits, and teachers have been pressurised to pass failing students. If you object to all this, you will be escorted out of the college and denied any gratuity or owed monies.

To conclude, my experience at HCT has shown it to be an entirely unprofessional organisation. My college, in particular, should be closed down and its Emirati managers re-employed as shop-assistants or bus-drivers. As for its ‘graduates’, they are fit for nothing – nothing at all! In short, it's by far the worst educational institution that I have ever worked at. The saddest thing is that the whole system is in denial; the local managers, the ones who are steering this limping, chugging monster off the tracks, have not the slightest idea how to do their jobs, and equally they have no clue how much they are despised by us teachers for their inability to do those jobs. 

And that, despite being all very sad, is absolutely true.