Incidental Humour in Technical Colleges

The Lighter Side of a Serious Profession

Mar 30, 2026

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A serialisation of the book by Brenig Davies and Stephen John

Before the whiteboards, the performance indicators, and the endless spreadsheets, there was the ‘staffroom kettle’—the heart of the Welsh Technical College. Incidental Humour in Technical Colleges is a warm, witty, and occasionally scandalous journey through the corridors of Further Education. From mining apprentices learning about ‘tadpoles’ to lecturers navigating glass-walled bathrooms in Europe and ‘Dementor-like’ inspections at home, Brenig Davies and Stephen John capture the resilience and humanity of a sector that has seen it all. Whether you’re a ‘Bricky’ who made it to Vice-Principal or a lecturer who once claimed a ‘chest infection’ during the Six Nations, this book is a celebration of the people who make FE the most vibrant, unpredictable, and essential part of the education system.”

Foreword

This book is a vibrant tapestry woven from the lived experiences of lecturers, staff, managers, and students in Welsh further education colleges. Through personal anecdotes and historical reflection, the authors illuminate a sector that is often overlooked yet central to the life of communities across Wales.

Spanning the origins of technical colleges in the industrial age to today’s landscape of mergers, digital transformation, and funding pressures, the narrative celebrates the resilience, adaptability, and humanity that have sustained further education through decades of change. Along the way, humour and affection shine through stories of staffroom banter, student escapades, leadership dilemmas, and the quiet heroism of those who keep colleges running each day.

Candid about governance and reform, yet steadfast in its belief in education’s enduring purpose, this book reminds us that further education is about more than qualifications. It is about confidence, belonging, and opportunity, the chance to begin again.

For anyone connected to further education, this work offers recognition, reflection, and a welcome reminder of the spirit that keeps the river of learning flowing.

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Preface

Further education occupies a distinctive and often understated place within the educational landscape. Closely connected to its communities and responsive to change, it has provided opportunity, direction, and second chances to generations of learners. Behind this work lies a shared culture of professionalism, commitment, and quiet good humour that helps sustain the sector through demanding times.

The stories in this book are drawn from more than forty years of experience in further education colleges across south Wales. They reflect real moments and recognisable situations, though all identities have been carefully protected. Readers who have worked in the sector may recognise familiar patterns of behaviour or shared experiences, and it is hoped these bring a sense of connection rather than nostalgia.

Told with affection and restraint, the tales capture the everyday life of colleges: conversations in staffrooms, exchanges in corridors and classrooms, and the small but meaningful victories that occur alongside routine challenges. The humour is gentle and rooted in shared understanding, offering insight into how working relationships are built and maintained over time.

Some stories may be familiar to readers of Chalk-face Chuckles, while others appear here for the first time. Together, they are set alongside a brief history of further education, tracing its development from the post-war period to the present day. Despite decades of reform and changing priorities, the core purpose of further education, to support learners and communities, has remained constant.

At its heart, further education is about people. Staff have continued to adapt to changing expectations, often with limited resources, while keeping exacting standards of care, professionalism, and resilience. Their contribution is reflected not only in qualifications achieved, but in confidence built, aspirations raised, and lives positively shaped.

This book is offered as a tribute to further education staff past and present. It invites recognition, reflection, and appreciation of a sector sustained by dedication, adaptability, and a shared sense of purpose.

Brenig Davies and Stephen John

Former senior managers at a south Wales further education college

Module I
Setting the Scene

How we got here, whether we meant to or not…

Episode 1
A Short History of Further Education in Wales

Further education in Wales has its roots in the mechanics’ institutions of the mid-nineteenth century, which were established to provide working people with access to technical knowledge and opportunities for self-improvement during the Industrial Revolution. These early institutions laid the foundations for organised vocational learning and gradually evolved into technical colleges. Following the Second World War, technical colleges expanded rapidly to meet the demands of reconstruction and industrial growth. During the 1950s and 1960s, their role widened, leading to their re-designation as further education (FE) colleges, serving apprentices, school-leavers, adults, and employers across Wales.

A key stage in the sector’s development was the professionalisation of teaching, notably through FE lecturer training courses at University College Cardiff from the early 1970s. These programmes helped raise teaching standards and reinforced FE as a distinct educational profession. These days improvements in quality are supported by Estyn inspections, and extensive professional development programmes.

Post-World War II: Restart to the Modern Day

Education emerged formally from the 1944 Education Act. Its initial purpose was practical and urgent: to train returning service members, miners, and apprentices for a country rebuilding itself. Lecturers were craftsmen rather than academics, and teaching was direct, practical, and often improvised. Workshops formed the heart of colleges, heavy with the smell of oil and metal, and filled with cautionary tales learned the hard way.

Colleges were established in major population centres across Wales. However, within a decade, the rapid closure of coal mines, particularly in south Wales, led to the overnight disappearance of mining apprenticeship departments. Colleges responded quickly and commendably, adapting their provision to meet the needs of emerging light engineering, electronics, and later high-technology industries.

By the 1960s, colleges were under pressure to expand their provision. There was demand for a second-chance place of learning for young adults looking to resit their A levels, or for others seeking to learn a foreign language. Vocational areas such as Hair and Beauty, Childcare, Catering and others placed significant demand on the building stock. This demand was largely met by the rapid construction method developed by the Consortium of Local Authorities in Wales (CLAW) to provide the ubiquitous steel frame buildings with infill panels and steel windowed teaching blocks familiar to many.

During the late 1970s and early 1980s, further education colleges were under pressure to respond to changing economic conditions and shifting patterns of participation. These pressures generated a wave of curriculum development activity that relied heavily on college staff’s collaboration with employers, industry training boards, voluntary and community organisations.

There was the collapse of the mining industry nationwide especially in south Wales. Whilst some other light industry served to replace this decline, particularly along the M4 corridor, the effect on the former valley mining communities was catastrophic. Colleges were quick to respond to this industrial collapse with departments emptying overnight:

· Mining gave way to electronics

· Construction shifted from heavy industrial maintenance to large-scale urban regeneration and private development

· Heavy industry gave way to computing

· Traditional apprenticeships began to appear in business and IT

A great shift occurred in 1992 when the Further and Higher Education Act removed colleges from local authority control. Principals became CEOs; governors acquired new responsibilities. Colleges learned to compete, manage budgets, and produce vision statements. Some adapted quickly. Some eventually. A few principals disappeared, often described as ‘early retirement’.

From the mid-1990s fast moving advances in technology became the order of the day and quickly reshaped FE colleges:

· Typewriters disappeared along with typing pools

· Computer suites multiplied

· Email replaced memos and fax machines

· Moodle and other interactive learning platforms replaced ring binders

· Interactive whiteboards appeared (and occasionally worked)

· Learner Management Systems (LMS) appeared

By the late twentieth century, there were more than thirty further education and technical colleges across Wales. By 2025, successive mergers had reduced this number to 13 prominent colleges, offering everything from basic skills and special needs education to specialist vocational education, GCSE and A-level academic courses, apprenticeships, and degree-level study.

Today, FE continues to reshape Wales through skills development, digital training, adult retraining, and employer partnerships. Funding pressures remained constant, along with FE’s resilience.

Training the Teachers

In the early 1950s, the growth in male apprentices’ part-time attendance created an urgent need for lecturers. Many skilled tradespeople, often former service members, were recruited. They had considerable craft expertise but little formal training in teaching.

It was not until the early 1970s that Wales developed a dedicated technical teacher-training provision. University College Cardiff established courses within its education faculty to train vocational and academic lecturers. By the mid-1970s, enough were enrolled to allow part-time bachelor’s and master’s degrees. Within a few years, the overall quality of vocational education improved significantly, an achievement supported by Welsh Office funding and widely recognised at the time.

Even so, up until the mid-1980s, individual colleges had a limited degree of autonomy, which led to significant variations in standards across the country.

But there are still ineffective teaching methods for specific subjects, often associated with a phenomenon called academic drift. This phenomenon is practised by lecturers who pompously enjoy the term ‘lecturer’. Such lecturers are born to be university lecturers. For them, further education is below their aspiring status.

In the world of further education, the title lecturer continues to appear in job adverts for bricklaying, hairdressing, and SEND - special needs, roles where the work is unmistakably hands-on. The image of someone lecturing about how to taper a haircut or set out a wall is hard to square with the reality of practical teaching, yet the terminology persists, as if the workshop secretly aspires to be a lecture theatre.

This is particularly ironic given that the profession once proudly used the word teacher. ATTI, NATFHE, and AUT all placed teaching at the centre of their identity. Somewhere along the way, though, lecturer came to be seen as the more ‘professional’ title, even when it bears little resemblance to what happens day to day in vocational classrooms, engineering workshops, beauty therapy salons.

HR departments occasionally try to restore some common sense by advertising for a Teacher of Carpentry and Joinery, but such attempts often meet resistance, not from management, but from teachers themselves. Many who champion inclusivity and equality in education are curiously reluctant to embrace a title that accurately describes what they do.

And so, the term lecturer remains. In workshops and studios across the country, skilled practitioners demonstrate techniques, guide hands, correct mistakes, and support learning, while officially designated as if they were addressing a hall of students from behind a lectern.

Apprenticeship Days

Post-war technical colleges bore little resemblance to modern educational institutions. They were built out of necessity rather than ambition, functional brick-and-concrete structures often located near factories, docks, and industrial estates. Corridors were long, floors were untreated, and classrooms were permanently dusted with chalk. Workshops smelled of steel, oil, and aspiration.

By the mid-1960s, around 16% of fifteen-year-olds, all boys, were apprentices. For many, technical college was a rite of passage. Apprentices learned not just a trade, but discipline, resilience, and camaraderie. The unspoken rules were simple: respect your elders, work hard, and do not complain.

A code of conduct was quickly established. Hierarchy was absolute. Apprentices were commonly addressed by surname only, ‘Williams’, ‘Evans’, ‘Harris’. Lecturers were ‘Sir’, without exception. This discipline reflected a society shaped by National Service, wartime austerity, and regimented industry. Apprenticeship was not merely training; it was preparation for responsibility in often dangerous environments where mistakes carried consequences.

A typical apprentice’s timetable in the 1950s or 60s was demanding. Most attended college part-time, splitting the week between the workplace and college. Days often began early, followed by lessons from morning until late afternoon, broken only by tea and a hurried sandwich.

Evening classes resumed shortly after and could run until eight or later if the lecturer believed strongly in ‘finishing the job properly’. Twelve-hour days were common. Teaching relied heavily on chalk-and-talk: diagrams, equations, and dense explanations filled blackboards, while apprentices copied everything into notebooks. There were no handouts, no photocopiers, just chalk, patience, and endurance.

Staying awake was often as challenging as understanding the material, particularly during the final evening session when rooms grew warm, and voices seemed to slow.

Looking back, the humour captures something essential. Apprenticeships were about craft, but also about character. Long days, strict routines, public mistakes, and small rebellions all played their part. They forged resilience, lifelong friendships, and a deep respect for skill and artistry.