Reporter 4/3/98: Report of the Council on the regulations for Homerton College

Report of the Council on the regulations for Homerton College

The COUNCIL beg leave to report to the University as follows:

1. Homerton College is an Approved Society of the University, specializing primarily in Education. It currently caters for matriculated students in four classes: (a) undergraduates taking the four-year course which leads to the B.Ed. Degree (such students are members of Homerton College for all four years of the course, but they are not matriculated as members of the University until the beginning of their second year), (b) undergraduates reading for the Education Studies Tripos, as candidates for the B.A. Degree, (c) postgraduates taking the one-year course for the P.G.C.E., and (d) postgraduates studying part-time for the M.Ed. Degree. Under regulations made by the University (Statutes and Ordinances, p. 875) the College is allowed to present for matriculation only students who fall into those classes; the regulations also impose a limit on the total number of matriculated students in residence in each class.

Postgraduate Certificate in Education

2. Over the past two years Homerton, at the request of the University Department of Education, has developed the infrastructure needed for the management of the P.G.C.E. course, and the course is now administered at Homerton on behalf of the University. The College's funding in respect of P.G.C.E. students comes from the Teacher Training Agency (TTA), and in recent years it has been under pressure from the TTA to expand. The limit for P.G.C.E. students set by the present regulations is 350; for 1998-99 the College's target figure for such students is 450, and the College now seeks permission from the University to increase its numbers accordingly. The proposed increase results from a number of factors, including a transfer of existing student numbers from the University to Homerton and a contract from the TTA to develop new courses in Mathematics and Science. The College authorities have given an assurance that they can provide accommodation and teaching for the increased number of students; additional teaching accommodation has been provided in a new building which opened in September 1996, and from September 1998 the College will be able to offer 284 new student rooms.

3. The Council have considered the College's request, and have agreed to recommend its approval by the University. In order to allow for the proposed expansion while leaving a margin to spare, the Council propose that the permitted maximum for matriculated P.G.C.E. students should be increased to 500.

Master of Studies course in Primary and Community Care

4. In addition to its provision of training for teachers within the University, the College has recently undertaken the professional training of students intending to enter the nursing profession; these students are not members of the University. In the early 1990s the National Health Service Executive agreed that the education of nurses and midwives should take place within Higher Education. Since 1995 Homerton has held a contract from the Oxford and Anglia Region of the NHS to teach nursing and midwifery in Cambridgeshire. This is done through the Homerton School of Health Studies Limited, a wholly-owned company of the College, which incorporates the former Cambridgeshire College of Health Studies. The College is accredited by the Open University Validation Service to train health studies students to degree level, and a small number of Homerton students take Open University degrees in both nursing and midwifery.

5. Staff of the Homerton School of Health Studies will also contribute to the recently instituted M.St. course in Primary and Community Care (Statutes and Ordinances, p. 498); this is a part-time postgraduate course for doctors and nurses working in the community. Students intending to follow this course will be required to seek admission to a College and will be matriculated as members of the University; Homerton has requested permission to admit a small number of students registered for the course. The course organizers believe that, because of its involvement in nursing and midwifery training, and because of its proximity to Addenbrooke's Hospital, where some of the teaching for the M.St. course will take place, Homerton would be a natural choice for some M.St. students. Since M.St. students will not require living accommodation, they can be admitted without detriment to the College's resident undergraduate and postgraduate students. The Council, after consulting the General Board, have agreed to support this request, and propose that the College should be allowed to admit M.St. students, up to a maximum of twenty-five. In order to allow flexibility for possible future developments, it is proposed that this permission should not be restricted by regulation to the course in Primary and Community Care, but that it should extend to the M.St. course in any subject approved for this purpose by the Council.

Recommendations

6. The Council recommend:

That the regulations for Homerton College (Statutes and Ordinances, p. 875) be amended as follows:

Regulation 2.

By inserting after sub-paragraph (d) the following additional sub-paragraph:

(e)	to present for matriculation a student approved for admission under the regulations for the M.St. Degree, to enter such a student as a candidate for the M.St. examination in any subject approved by the Council for this purpose, and to present him or her as a candidate for the degree;

By amending proviso (iii) so as to read:

(iii)

a number of candidates for the Postgraduate Certificate in Education greater than 500, and

By adding at the end of the regulation the following additional proviso:

(v)	a number of candidates for the M.St. Degree greater than 25.

2 March 1998

ALEC N. BROERS, Vice-Chancellor	D. E. L. JOHNSTON	SANDRA RABAN
T. S. ADKINS	JOHN A. LEAKE	M. SCHOFIELD
SARAH BONNETT	ANNE LONSDALE	DAVID M. THOMPSON
TERENCE ENGLISH	C. T. MORLEY	DANIEL B. WAGGONER
A. L. R. FINDLAY	ONORA O'NEILL	JOAN M. WHITEHEAD
DAVID HARRISON	PENNY PEREIRA

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