Foreign Perspectives

They won’t be restarting until 2016 but at least there is now light at the end of the tunnel.

At present they’re planning three:

1. MSc Contemporary Psychological Studies;
2. MSc in Forensic Psychological Studies; and
3. MSc in Criminological Studies.

Which isn’t a bad start and and complements some of their psychology undergraduate degrees though the social psychology and counselling undergraduate degrees don’t currently have a corresponding masters.

No details on pricing as yet but presumably they will be around the £4800 mark of the science masters.

A major downside is that they are not currently planning on having the degrees accedited. Although for BPS recognition as GBC, you only need to have done one accredited degree, for a range of psychology professions you would need to have an accredited masters as well so it would be best to check the requirements of the profession that you ultimately intend to use the degree for before signing up.

The other downside, for the OU, is that in their absence a range of other institutions have produced distance learning courses to address the gap in provision. So, for example, you can do the accredited MSc in Health Psychology from the University of Ulster for around £4000 (ie probably cheaper than the OU).

Last Monday was our first visit to Campbell with James as a pupil.

Slightly confusingly, since it’s a boys school, there were girls as part of the welcome party, basically on loan from Strathearn, the sister school. The headmaster kicked off the evening with his standard welcome speech (much the same as on the open night) highlighting the heights to which the boys should be striving. Then it was on to more prosaic things like the interaction they’d like between the parents, pupils and school before the boys were taken away with their tutor for an initial meeting and to see where they will need to go on their first day in August.

The tutor meeting was just a short get to know you meeting with their personal tutor who’ll be the person who’ll look after them for the next seven years. After their tea and bikkies, the parents were led down to meet the tutor and collect their sons. There’s not really that much that they have to say at this point and in reality it’ll be the first proper meeting with them in early October where we’ll really start to build our relationship with James’ tutor.

We just had a glance at the prices for the school uniform and, surprisingly, they’re somewhat lower than most of the local shops although that’s without counting the customary early summer discounting.

As far as official homework goes, we’ve several booklets to read through and need to enrol on parentmail as well over the summer. Unofficial homework includes increasing the amount of reading that James does and we’re hoping to work through the remainder of the maths workbook that we bought last year to make it an easier start for him.

Stenaline have been running £10 daytrips to Glasgow on Wednesdays for the last couple of months which would have been rather handy except that it didn’t run over any holiday periods so I guess the numbers would have been relatively low.

However, they’ve taken the plunge and extended it right through to the end of November. Still only on Wednesdays mind you but at least we’ll get a chance to go sometime over the summer without needing to take the kids out of school for it.

It’s a bit of a long day as daytrips generally are. The boat leaves Belfast at 07.30 and gets back at 21.45 which is a fairly long day as you need to get to the dock before 7am. However, the actual time in Glasgow is only from 12.00 to 16.45. That makes it a bit of a whirlwind trip if you want to see some of the sites so you’d need to be quite selective and have your time planned out before you go.

For our first quick look, we’re having a skim through the Greater Glasgow guide put out by the tourist office. The Lonely Planet chapter from their Scotland guide probably has more information but for four hours, you don’t need a whole lot of information.

Actually, it’s Open Farm Weekend here and it’s on a different day. That’s kind of confusing as it means that when you look up the open farm day website, you find that Northern Ireland doesn’t have any farms open which I’m sure must drop the numbers attending somewhat.

Seeing as it was a lovely sunny day, we set off for Gordonall Farm near Greyabbey. which was open to schools on the 13th of June and to everybody on the 14th. It’s quite a mixed farm with some livestock (sheep and cows), some biomass plantations, cereals and even a guy demonstrating some country crafts. You don’t really appreciate the size of the farm ’til you go on their tractor ride which seems to go on forever and certainly much further than any we’ve paid for.

Sunday was another lovely day so it was off to Armagh Apple Farm which was quite a different experience. The farm itself seemed somewhat smaller though it’s hard to judge the scale of a farm as you don’t know where one ends and another begins. In their shed they’d a whole range of apple based products. This time of year, the apples themselves are tiny and there are apple festivals on later in the year around the time of the apple harvest.

Worth going to for sure but I’m not so sure we’d have enjoyed the days if the weather had been poor as most things are obviously outside.

John managed to have freshly prepared custard spilled over his hands last Monday and has ended up having to go to the doctors every day to get the dressing changed which is a bit of a nuisance.

Whilst plonking on cream and bandages seemed a sensible way to go initially, this far down the line it’s not so clear-cut as to whether or not it’s a good idea to continue. For instance, although he knows to be careful with that hand, little boys play and over the weekend he caught a ball with it which left it bleeding, unknowingly, under the bandages. Had it not been bandages up, we’d have known that it was bleeding right away instead of hours later.

Anyway, all being well, it’ll be healed up enough to leave the dressings off later this week.