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New Labour to De-Nationalise Education
It has been revealed in The Guardian that from next year (2008/9) the running of Education will be placed in the hands of locally-appointed councillors, experts and teachers doing away with over 150 years of state control.
Explaining the volte-face Ed Balls MP, Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families, explained that “the time is [...]
Observations on Observations
WE would like to offer our sympathies to all those hard-working teachers who have recently had to endure an observation grilling.
As a result WE have put together a list of reasons why observations, at least in their current form, make little sense:
1. They lack objectivity because objectivity is unattainable. The mere selection of criteria with [...]
Back-Street Inspections
Recent lighter-touch inspection regimes have been welcomed by some but we believe such a welcome would have been less warm if the true impact had been known. For it appears that Ofsted inspections have been replaced with institution-led inspections.
Whereas in the past we may have expected observations to be in-house and free of [...]
IfL, or else!?
Seems even the unions are in on the IfL scam. They are advising members to join asap when they know that staff in Adult Ed are being press-ganged into joining or threatened with the sack if they don’t.
Aren’t they supposed to have the interests of their members to look after?
plus ça change
A quick trawl of the web offers these timely reminders:
Further education lecturer, Barnet
Diana Whelham
Salary: £26,780
* Leo Benedictus
* Society Guardian,
* Thursday March 20 2003
* Article history
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This article was first published on guardian.co.uk on Thursday March 20 2003. It [...]
Cash for School Admissions – Help Wanted!
We’ve received the following email from the BBC.
Anyone interested please contact them using the e-mail address below:
“Hi,
Sorry to bother you.
I work for the BBC’s Today programme and we were wondering if you’d be able to help us.
There was a story in the news yesterday (11 March 2008) that some schools were breaking the rules [...]
Blog Problems
Thanks to those readers who’ve let us know of some website design problems. Hope to have them sorted out soon.
If anyone has any suggestions, especially with IE7, please e-mail us at: MailGuard(‘admin’,'educationstate.org’)
Institute for Learning (or Leaving?!) Pt. 2
Apparently, the IfL fiasco is going from bad to worse. Firstly, FE teaching staff are being served with ultimatums – ’sign-up or lose your job’. Once signed up, however, full-time lecturers with decades of experience but without the necessary hoops, or those with overseas qualifications, are being told in droves that they are no longer [...]
Chris Thomson, are you from a different universe?
In ‘A chance to help shape our own future. Let’s grasp it’ Chris Thomson, governor of an FE college in Brighton, writes that the FE sector is no longer second-best but central to Government plans and we should be congratulating them. ARE YOU FOR REAL? Have you spoken to ANY teaching staff recently?
Another example of [...]