As talks on new contracts begin this week, staff-student contact is the one problem which is not going to go away - however vehemently the Colleges’ Employers’ Forum may wish it.

Indeed, the first time I ever heard CEF chief executive Roger Ward speak, two years ago in Bristol, one of his themes was that lecturers in further education spent too many hours in staff-student contact. I remember thinking that he had a certain amount of cultural change to make as he moved from negotiating for higher education.

Many of our students needed contact with a member of staff because they were not yet mature enough to direct the proportion of their studies that might be wished for in some ideal world.

Imagine my surprise, therefore, when the CEF model contract and guidelines wished to make no reference to contact hours in the apparent belief that they were a matter of no importance. But, as I write, most FE lecturers are still on contracts, whether local education authority (Silver Book) or CEF-related, or have guidelines which make specific reference to contact hours. I can only assume that there has been some confusion in the original employers’ strategy and that the concept of contact time is not obligingly going to vanish simply because some principals say so.

Now that I have retired, I can stand back a couple of spaces and see a number of things quite clearly. First, it is all too obvious that colleges have been set up to provide a public service and not to pretend that they have businesses - even though that service must be provided in as business-like a fashion as possible.

The service required of us is to give opportunities for students to learn, achieve and progress; if we don’t provide it we are quite clearly misusing public money.

At the very heart of our plans and activities, therefore, we must provide a relevant curriculum in its broadest sense with staff able to offer the programmes for students to learn.

The emphasis must be on the needs of students, their employers and society, rather than pandering to the requirements of management - or even of the Further Education Funding Council. This may mean that the learning should be student-centred, but it should not degenerate into being student-directed or even misdirected.

A college cannot stand back from this. Rather it must use its teaching and support staff to negotiate, guide and, on occasions, direct students’ learning.

The word “negotiation” implies a dialogue between two people with each one bringing his or her own proper contribution - it doesn’t mean that lecturers in this case should lie down and allow themselves to be walked over.

What we rely on for the success of our operations as colleges are a large series of transactions which the lecturer needs to control but not dictate. If staff are to continue to perform this complex task well, management must take their morale and general level of health into account.

Before anyone suggests that I have gone soft, they should look at some of the evidence beginning to emerge which highlights the dangers which undue stress poses to satisfactory productivity amongst white collar professionals.

The recent case of the social work manager who won compensation for the effects of stress at work, on the one hand, and the depressing example given by the problems of the health service on the other, must concern any sensible senior manager in colleges.

For lecturing staff, the key factor - as Roger Ward recognised in Bristol two years ago - is the amount of student contact. Both staff and management would seem to have a vested interest in ensuring that the overall amount of such contact is set at an appropriate level. What is meant by “appropriate” in this context is open to debate: the answer will almost certainly possess an element of compromise.

The most unhelpful course is to face staff with an open-ended account of contact hours as it could appear as a blank cheque for management. No one may intend to over-work lecturers but the effect of having no apparent limit destroys staff morale.

This is not to say, however, that these limits should operate in exactly the same way as they have for the past 20 years, or that they should provide the same answer for all staff.

If the sector is to crack this problem, all sides must recognise that limits to contact time are essential. Staff and management must be flexible as any solution will only be achieved through agreement and not through imposition. This implies that unions must negotiate properly on staff contracts.

I am grateful that my college staff and union branches were prepared to do so, and I privately measure the success of our local college contract from the fact that neither the CEF or the lecturers’ union, NATFHE, seemed to wish to claim it nationally as their own.

Management will show their flexibility by recognising an inter-relationship between contact hours, group sizes, the development of new ways of teaching and learning and the keeping of a proper balance between use of staff time and the provision of resources for such functions as learning support centres.

Unions must accept that the world has moved on since the mid-Seventies and, most of all, be prepared to come to terms with the fact that an hour of student contact makes different demands in different circumstances.

The best practical answer on offer would seem to be the concept of caseloading - which looks at the whole teaching workload, not just hours - and I am glad that the Yeovil College contract contains a commitment to introduce it based hopefully on some national agreement.

Such a system will ensure that contact time is once again central to the lecturers’ contract - but as an enabling element rather than a restrictive one.

Working out the mathematical possibilities will not be too hard: the really difficult task will be to arrive at an acceptable division between time in the workshop, tutorial sessions and key lectures with large groups of general educational students.

Noel Kershaw has recently retired as principal of Yeovil College