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Post date: 20-Dec-2017 21:20:17
Stella Gilbert came round today. She's anxious about the amount of debt that she'll come out with at the end of her degree. None of her family have ever gone to university before, so it's a big deal for her. I suppose you may not remember Stella. She lives with her grandmother just opposite to where Peter and Angie lived. she and Lcy made friends years ago, when Jonah was investigating Angie's murder. It turned out that Stella's half brother, Leroy was a key witness who finally enabled Jonah to solve the case. They're none of them well-off and the idea of going into thousands of pounds of debt is really scary for them.
Stella wants to become a police officer when she graduates, so she's applied for some of the, relatively new, policing degrees. But now she's wodnering if she would do beter to apply to join the police without getting a degree first. The trouble is, with government policy being to make policing an all-graduate profession, that's not as simple as it seems. Thames Valley, for example, requires applicants to have a Certificate of Knowledge of Policing, which costs about £1,000 to do. Of course that's a lot less than for a degree and, if she's accepted into the force, she'd start earning right away; but it's still a bit off-putting. In any case, as far as we can see, she'd still have to do that course in order to be eleigible to apply, even after a degree!
Peter and Jonah don't really know how to advise her. It was all so much simpler in their day! And it'll be a crying shame if the police services misses out on having a bright young officer from an ethnic minority background joining them. Sometimes, I think the world has gone mad.