When we started running pottery classes for the Adult Education Service, Adult Education was almost synonymous with Leisure Activities with many classes for painting, jewellery making, keep fit, languages etc in addition to the more academic subjects. In our own field of pottery we ran five classes a week, all heavily oversubscribed, with students drawn from many walks of life.

Among others there were those who enjoyed the creative experience, those in stressful jobs who found working with clay very therapeutic, those with special educational needs who found, in pottery, a means of expressing themselves and those who just needed to get out of the house and do something in a relaxed social atmosphere. There were very few who intended to earn their living through pottery or get the qualifications to enable them to do so.

In short it was FUN.

Then one awful day the Adult Education Service fell under the auspices of the dreaded OFSTED. For those of you who don”t already know, OFSTED is the official body for inspecting schools and having already successfully removed all enjoyment from teaching and learning in Nursery Schools, Primary Schools, Secondary Schools, Colleges and Universities with their insatiable appetite for a strict syllabus, detailed schemes of work and lesson plans, evidence of progress and rigorous evaluation of results, they now looked to Adult Education to extend their web further afield.\r\n\r\nOfsted has rapidly transformed Adult Education from the thriving, enjoyable voluntary acquisition of learning that it was, to a sterile, qualification-orientated grind. Unless a course leads to a recognized examination qualification it is actively discouraged or not offered at all.

In short it is NOT FUN and talented and creative students are staying away in droves.

And so are we!.

For those of you who are interested, as I am, in the West of Ireland, Dublin or Birmingham (the UK one not USA), Mary Rochford an Irish born writer who now lives in Birmingham has published a new book “Gilded Shadows” with stories located in all these places. You can get more details from Mary’’s website at www.maryrochford.co.uk

Hopefully the fireworks will be over after this weekend. Cally, our samoyed, is pretty well bomb-proof and they don ”t bother her at all but poor Sophie, our recently adopted ex-racing greyhound, reacts really badly to the bangs and flashes. She is coping somewhat by hiding in her little “cave” that we have constructed under the kitchen table.

We would be keen to know how other owners have helped their dogs overcome their fears.