UCU Life Changers Text

InOiring
Rudents
Jane Challenger
Gillitt
Professor
William Beinart
Jim Bradley
Dr Hazel Cox
Jane Hadcock and
Katherine Chisnell
Dr Rehan ul-Haq
Tessa Hall
Carolyn Harries
Arthur Keefe
Dr Kevin McCarron
Dr David Middleton
Leo Murphy
Paul Sander
Dr Tony Stead
Chris Beaumont
Jim Bradley
University of Stirling
For Jim Bradley, education means not standing on top of
a telephone line in the pouring rain for the last twenty
years. Or worse, not standing in the dole queue wishing
he still was.
’Jim has to be the most
passionate, enthusiastic,
motivating educational
person I have ever met.’
’I was subject to the
vagaries of privatisation,’
says Jim. ’I thought the
writing might be on the
wall, and so I had to get
out. I had nowhere else to
go as a telephone engineer.’
More than two decades
on, and Jim is Access Programme Director at Stirling
University, working on widening participation and
outreach programmes with schools and the local
community. His prospects transformed after he left his
manual work to study at the LSE in 1984.
’I felt that because I had a degree, I could start to pick
and choose and build a career.
Before it was a job, this was now a
career. You can take it in different
directions, you can stick with
particular pieces of work you enjoy.’
Jim went into teaching, first with
the TUC and then later Falkirk College,
before joining Stirling primarily
to work on their access courses. ’I
thought that if I could do this and
it’s made such a difference to my
life, then I wanted to enable other
people to do the same thing.’ His
approach is to raise access students’
self confidence before building their
academic skills.
Stirling mature student Yvonne
Gilfillan is certainly a fan. She had held a highly paid job
before her fortunes took a downturn, and she was
thinking of returning to education. She spoke to Jim.
’When you have a negative experience, it really does
affect your self confidence. But when Jim explained
what his background was, and the sense of satisfaction
he received at university, that was enough for me. He
has to be the most passionate, enthusiastic, motivating
educational person I have ever met.’
Jim has a missionary zeal to
persuade non-traditional students
to enter university. ’I know what it’s
given me,’ he says, ‘and I just want
to give them the same opportunity
that I had. If I’ve already
experienced it myself, if I can’t let
you see how exciting learning can
be, then as far as I’m concerned,
who else is going to do it?’
Inspired by Jim, Yvonne is now mentoring students at
colleges who want to enter university. She says Jim
goes out of his way to encourage all students. ’I know
students who have really struggled, and Jim has made a
difference to them just by taking time out to speak to
them and put things into
perspective.’
She recalls how he went
out of his way to develop
personal learning support
for a student with photographic
memory. ’That
kind of thing really is
above and beyond what
many lecturers and tutors
would do.’
’We’ve got a tutor who I
taught in a community
centre about nine years
ago,’ says Jim. ’She had no
qualifications, went to
college, got her degree,
and now she’s a tutor. It’s just really rewarding to see
people doing that.’
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