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Tuesday 22 September 2015

All change

Another 'sign of the times'. Last year the O.U. used Archbishop Blanch School as the venue for Saturday tutorials. ABS built themselves a new school in a different location. Word went round that the O.U. had parted ways with ABS and in future tutorials would be at Hope Uni. Fine, and in theory no problem until tutorials were announced for 2015-2016. No Merseyside tutorials anywhere! Checking the tutorial finder, everything has been scaled back. The venues on offer used to be - Preston, Chester, Manchester and Liverpool. Now it's Leeds, Manchester, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Nottingham, Oxford and Southampton.

Owing to 'austerity' cutbacks, several Regional Centres are closing, and this has obviously had a knock-on effect.

Students complain about the lack of face-to-face tutorials. With the cutbacks, fewer students are going to travel even further to the tutorials.

If I were to go to the tutorials, it would mean train to Manchester Oxford Road station and a 15 minute walk down Oxford St. I know, I did it some 12 months ago. I'm even less likely to repeat the journey this year. 

2 comments:

Joy said...

I don't blame you. It is making things very difficult for OU students.
J x

joanygee said...

Thank you, Joy. Jx