FE News
Category: Education Philosophy
Free market & hope
The announcement of a new private university in the UK doesn’t come as much surprise.
Any government, especially a coalition, will shirk responsibility for its decisions when it can lest it be saddled with something that it can’t shift come coalition-meltdown and fresh elections.
The tired mantra of the free market is a trusty friend at such [...]
Constructive Dismissal in Education: a guide
It has come to our attention that the outdated and counterproductive managerialism found in schools shows no sign of crawling back under the rock that it came from.
This dogmatic and wholly unedifying way to treat fellow human beings is at the heart of the peculiarly sickening manner in which ‘efficiencies’ are made in education. Doing [...]
HE Comedy Review Returns
Pretend to listen and they shall not kick up a fuss:
http://hereview.independent.gov.uk/hereview/
What a joke!
Lord Browne-nose, how about explaining why students whose parents have paid taxes all their lives now face fronting up more cash so their kid can go to university? And how about explaining why kids with high grades should pay fees and loans [...]
Nothing new about ‘Higher Ambitions’
Mr. Mandelson has today been on the radio and in Parliament preparing the ground for YET ANOTHER review of HE entitled Higher Ambitions that fails to offer anything we didn’t know.
First reactions to this have revolved around increased tuition fees and redirecting funds to on-line, mature and part-time students.
We’ve taken the statement made by [...]
A* for Oxbridge
Oxford to defer use of A* grade for admissions? Why bother? Still doesn’t deal with the more fundamental issue of whether grades can be awarded fairly. Changing the grades won’t alter the fact that the whole grading system of A levels and so on is ripe for reform.
As argued before on EducationState, the awarding [...]
Exam(s) Costs
We can only but admire the logic of a system designed to record progress and raise standards that in fact is costing £700 million and rising. Brilliant for those who provide the examinations e.g. Cambridge University, Edexcel, Trinity and so on.
Why is it costing so much? External agencies holding educational establishments to ransom? A National [...]
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 [...]
We Want You As A New Recruit!
The mass hysteria surrounding the alleged epidemic of British youth destroying the very fabric of society has reached fever pitch. Not wanting to miss out on any political point-scoring, the Tories would love to see soldiers retrained as teachers. Apparently, they don’t think feral youth have it hard enough so they want to really rub [...]