History of the OU

Speech in Glasgow 8 September 1963 by the Leader of HM Opposition, Harold Wilson.

Today I want to outline new proposals on which we are working, a dynamic programme providing facilities for home study to university and higher technical standards, on the basis of a University of the Air and of nationally organized correspondence college courses.

These will be intended to cater for a wide variety of potential students. There are technicians and technologists who perhaps left school at sixteen or seventeen and who, after two or three years in industry, feel that they could qualify as graduate scientists or technologists. There are many others, perhaps in clerical occupations, who would like to acquire new skills and new qualifications. There are many in all levels of industry who would desire to become qualified in their own or other fields, including those who had no facilities for taking GEC at 0 or A level, or other required qualifications; or housewives who might like to secure qualifications in English Literature, Geography or History.

Television programmes featuring versions of these plays were made for A307 in the BBC’s Studio A at Alexandra Palace in 1977.

1. Sophocles, Oedipus the King

2. Shakespeare, Macbeth

3. The York Crucifixion and The Brome Abraham and Isaac

4. Carlo Goldoni, The Venetian Twins

5. William Congreve, The Way of the World

6. Alfred Jarry, Ubu Roi

7. Georg Büchner, Woyzeck

8. Henrik Ibsen, Peer Gynt

9. Henrik Ibsen, The Wild Duck

10. Anton Chekhov, Three Sisters

11. August Stindberg, The Ghost Sonata

12. Luigi Pirandello, Six Characters in Search of an Author

13. Bertolt Brecht, The Exception and the Rule

14. Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot

15. Jean Genet, The Balcony

16. Athol Fugard, Sizwe Bansi is Dead

Although it was involved in the production process the BBC refused to screen Jean Genet’s play, Le Balcon (The Balcony) which was set in a brothel. The 1971 Agreement between the OU and the BBC gave the latter the right to ‘refuse to transmit any programme or part of a programme which in the opinion of the Corporation contains anything defamatory or likely to bring the Corporation into disrepute’ (Agreement 16 December 1971, Broadcasting File 2, OU Archives, Clause 4, p. 3. Copy in Broadcasting File 2, OU Archives). Despite the right to broadcast, or not, resting with the BBC, the Corporation was rebuked by the OU’s Chancellor at the Alexandra Palace degree ceremony (See Open House, 24 May 1977, Open House, 5 July 1977).  For more about the drama made for A307 see Brian Stone and Pat Scorer, Sophocles to Fugard, BBC, London 1977. Brian Stone (1919-95) was the Course Team Chair of A307 and one of the first people to be appointed to the OU. A former actor and director he was made a Reader in English Literature in 1969. Pat Scorer was an OU collague who married Stone in 1985.

Are you female? Do you have memories of watching OU programmes? If so then Warwick and the OU would like to hear from you. Please send us your recollections, and pass then onto Warwick as well. Rachel Moseley of the University of Warwick is working on a project on the history of television for women in Britain. Others involved are Dr Helen Wheatley (University of Warwick), Dr Helen Wood (De Montfort University, Leicester); Postdoctoral Research Fellow: Dr. Mary Irwin (University of Warwick; Doctoral Researcher: Ms. Hazel Collie (De Montfort University). The project brings together archival and audience research methods in order to map this untold history and explore women viewers’ memories of the television that has been addressed to them. On the project see here.

That a drama can reflect and illuminate the period in which it is produced and the pedagogy of the OU can be seen through an examination of the 1977 BBC/OU production of Oedipus the King for A307.

The seventies were a time when nostalgia became marketed with large sales of Small is Beautiful (1973) and The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady (1977). In The heritage industry: Britain in a climate of decline (Methuen, London, 1987) Hewison claimed that half of Britain’s museums had been founded since 1971. It was also a period when, to some, it appeared as if the state and society were under threat. In 1976 the government was forced to request a$3.9 billion loan (the largest ever made by that institution) from the IMF. The titles of some of the books published in the period reflect a sense of disruption: Is Britain Dying?, Britain against itself (two American studies), Britain’s Economic Problem, The Breakup of Britain, Policing the Crisis, The End of Britain. There was another perceived threat as well. Men’s status appeared to be undermined by equal opportunities legislation (notably the Equal Pay Act 1970) and more women were attending universities. Perhaps this is why the theme of the inevitability of male entrapment was a source of humour within popular situation comedies of the period including The Likely Lads and Rising Damp. In another tale of men fated to struggle, Steptoe and Son (a sixties TV series revived between 1970 and 1974) although Albert had a far larger role that Laius and there was no Jocasta in Oil Drum Lane and Harold Steptoe did not actually kill his father Albert, he did threaten him in many episodes. On the stages of the UK there was a rise in radical theatre. Both Gay Sweatshop  and Monstrous Regiment were formed in 1975. Perhaps more directly related to the original tale, challenging interpretations of classic plays were being promoted, such as Dennis Potter’s critique of suburban life Schmoedipus which was broadcast as a ‘Play for Today’ in 1974 and repeated by the BBC in 1975. (more…)

In mid-August The Open University was again ranked among the top three UK universities for student satisfaction in the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) National Student Survey of 265, 000 final-year students studying at 154 universities and 99 further education colleges. The response rate of 65% – the highest rate in the seven years that the NSS has been running. A third of students (32%) were unhappy with the level of assessment and feedback they received, while a quarter (25%) criticised the organisation and management of their course and 10% of UK students were disatisfied with the quality of their qualifications. (more…)

In August 2011 Paul Ramsden, a key associate at the education consultancy PhillipsKPA, visiting professor at the Institute of Education, University of London, and adjunct professor at Macquarie University, argued in the THES that

the idea of the contact hour as a measure of teaching and learning is archaic … it is a national disgrace in 2011 that the most common form of contact hour is still the lecture. It is not surprising that today’s students believe that the main thing that would improve the quality of their experience is more interactive experiences.

(more…)

In addition to the formal use of OU materials by other institutions there has long been informal use. The joint OU and DES ‘Review of the Open University’, 1991, p52 noted the sale of packs to groups, the purchase by all but one of the UKs universities and polytechnics of off-air recording licences which permitted them to record OU broadcasts, the sales of 1,500 course units to 70 higher education institutions and a further 2,000 units to bookshops near campuses. Surveys indicated that academic staff at many institutions used OU materials. It was concluded that

It is generally recognised that the University’s materials have been widely disseminated within the educational world and that they have had a widespread effect on teaching in conventional universities.

As Rex Watson, a Tutor since 1973, recorded on the website in a piece entitled ‘Tutoring mathematics, some reflections’:

The standard of OU written and other material is rightly in my view regarded highly, as a general rule. I have myself learnt quite a bit of new mathematics, and have often pinched ideas to use in my other work!

If you have been inspired to make use of OU materials for activities beyond teaching and learning at the OU, do let us know.  Perhaps you can tell us of examples of modules (courses) which drew on OU ideas? You can comment on this blog or post on the website.

The new environment in which the OU must operate was indicated by an acquisition in July when the Capella Education Company, which describes itself as ‘aggressive’ and ‘disruptive’, acquired Resource Development International. RDI has called itself  the world’s largest independent provider of UK university qualifications by distance learning. Capella wants to validate degrees and RDI currently offers distance-learning degrees validated by institutions including the universities of Wales, Sunderland and Birmingham, and Anglia Ruskin and Sheffield Hallam universities. As December 31, 2010, it offered over 1,250 online courses and 43 academic programs with 136 specializations to over 39,000 learners.

The development was widely reported, with comments by, among others, the Wall Street Journal, the company itself and the THES.

A report on the OU’s women students in The Times in 1984 included an interview with Jan Hobbs, who left school at 16, received her OU degree while aged in her mid-40s and by this point was studying for her Honours. The reporter notes that while Jan said that she was happy, the garden is ‘a confusion of weeds and piles of unmatched socks sit jumbled in a chair’.

A summer school counsellor recalled how he talking with a woman who said ‘Well you know what? My husband rang me up and he was up to his neck in it with the kids and I can’t believe I laughed’. She then said ‘And I don’t miss my Mr Sheen a bit’. I am grateful to the Society for Research into Higher Education for the funding which enabled this interview with Tony Whittaker by Ronald Macintyre, 4^th January 2012, to occur.

Perhaps you too have snubbed Mr Sheen? If you have ever left socks to sort themselves, exerted will power over wool power, in order to get on with your studies, tell us about it.