Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1
- 19)
MONDAY 7 FEBRUARY 2005
DANIELLE MILES,
IAN HUTTON,
AMY HUNTINGTON
AND STEPHEN
ROWLEY
Q1 Chairman: Thank you for coming
to help us at the start of this inquiry into universities. Some
of us are too long in the tooth to remember what it is like to
study at a university, so we are very grateful to you for finding
the time to come away from your precious studies. I am sure you
are missing important lectures or something, and you are going
to be contributing hopefully to higher education in this country.
Please do not treat this as viva; we are not awarding any
degrees, we are trying to get to your feelings and any information
that you have to reflect some of the issues, as you see them,
so that we can maybe do something about them because we are not
happy with everything that is going on. So, I do not know how
you are going to answer all this, but I will keep you down to
a few sentences so that we get through it all. Firstly, can you
tell me what was your reason for studying science? Amy?
Ms Huntington: Interest really;
interest at school.
Q2 Chairman: Ian?
Mr Hutton: Just the same, interest
at school; I have always been interested in biology.
Q3 Chairman: Danielle?
Ms Miles: Very much the same.
Every career aspirations I had I wanted to do something sort of
science based.
Q4 Chairman: It was not the least
of all the bad things you could have done, then? You could have
done the arts or something. Stephen?
Mr Rowley: It is more something
I have fallen towards during my school career. With civil engineering
it is nice to have a definite goal at the end.
Q5 Chairman: So you enjoyed the subject
at school, that is basically what you are saying. Were you interested
in the career end of it, the great sums of money that would come
your way? Was that part of your decision making?
Mr Hutton: Not really.
Q6 Chairman: Because you knew you
were going to be poor and would never have to pay your loans back!
Ms Miles: Mine was more to do
with the fact of just finding it interesting and being able to
answer questions and find out facts and new things all the time,
and just being updated with things rather than the money side
of it.
Q7 Chairman: Let me get right into
it. What is your assessment, when you look back at science teaching
in the school you were at? Was there an inspirational teacher?
What about the practicals that went on? Tell me something about
your experience from your generation, please. Amy, could you say
something about that? What did school did you go to?
Ms Huntington: For my secondary
school years I was actually home educated. I did my A Levels at
a college. My physic teacher at college was fantastic, she was
just brilliant, and obviously she was a woman, which helped at
the time.
Q8 Chairman: Which makes her brilliant
than a man!
Ms Huntington: Yes! Wow! a woman
physics teacher. She was an inspiration.
Q9 Chairman: In what way was she
inspirational to you?
Ms Huntington: She was just so
enthusiastic about the subject and her teaching. You could not
help but enjoy lessons.
Q10 Chairman: Ian?
Mr Hutton: I found more or less
the same, but I found that when I was going through GCSEs and
A Level, at each level as the subject progressed more areas of
the subject opened up and you were taught more information, and
as that kept going I kept on wanting to find out more at each
stage, I guess. So it kind of progressed up, and also I had very
enthusiastic teachers, both at GCSE and at A Level.
Q11 Chairman: Danielle?
Ms Miles: After GCSE it was fine;
I got to A Levels and had a bit of a nightmare. My AS Levels,
I was taught my chemistry by a biologist, and obviously she had
some knowledge of it but I did not feel that she was that enthusiastic
about it.
Q12 Chairman: Which school were you
at, Danielle?
Ms Miles: The John Collet School,
in Buckinghamshire. I got to my A2s and my chemistry teacher—I
actually had a chemistry teacher—left six months towards
the end of the course, so I then had to teach myself. Everyone
else that was on the course gave up and I tried to stick it out
and got information from other people that I knew, and things
like that, and had to basically teach myself.
Q13 Chairman: You were pretty determined
to go ahead with it?
Ms Miles: Yes. Stupidly! And now
I am in this situation.
Q14 Chairman: Stephen?
Mr Rowley: Throughout school most
of my teachers were good, up to GCSEs, which were really good.
I think A Levels, it was more that was not really following it
very well and I lost interest in it a bit.
Q15 Chairman: What about the courses
you did at school? Did they influence what university science
course you went for? From your situation, Amy, I know it is slightly
different, but from what you learnt, did that make you decide
and make you look through before you filled in the UCAS forms
and so on?
Ms Huntington: It made me decide
that I wanted to go into physics rather than any other science.
Q16 Chairman: So you were pretty
clear what you wanted to do?
Ms Huntington: Yes.
Q17 Chairman: How did you choose
the university?
Ms Huntington: I am not actually
sure, to be fair.
Q18 Chairman: How many interviews
did you go for?
Ms Huntington: Two.
Q19 Chairman: And you got an offer
at both?
Ms Huntington: Yes, and I decided
on Newcastle.
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