A rather Grimm story

When I was a temp at the bank (see below) it was during a university holiday. For those of you who were not around in the 1970s, guess what? Not only did many students in that decade enjoy the luxury of a full government grant, we had no fees to pay either. I was paid to study. This now reads like a fairy tale.

And, this, like a Grimm story. This week I’ve been exploring the possibility of teaching English as a second language in the further education sector. I’ve discovered that colleges don’t hire teachers, pompously referred to as visiting lecturers (VLs), they are hired through an agency. But neither the college nor the agency is the employer. The VL is self-employed, usually at an hourly rate (with all the sick/holiday pay and protection that implies). In addition, these agencies do not act as employment agencies usually do: they do not seek to find you work. They wait to receive requests from educational institutions needing to hire teaching staff. The agency then seeks to fill the vacancy from its pool of people. Think of it like this: you, the potential employee, are in an aquarium and every so often you are fished out. On dry land, you are in work, of a sort. The sort that creates no allegiance to the college (where you must bust your ass to inspire and educate) and where you have no employer, and it goes without saying, you can be ‘let go’ at any time to sink or to swim.