FE News
We thought our readers may be interested in this clever new website:
“Greetings,
I appreciate your dedication to higher ed and enjoy your blogs. I too love higher ed and have launched a new website www.campusleftovers.com. The website is free for everyone to use and is comparable to a “craigslist” for higher ed. Some unviersities have begun [...]
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We’ve received this email. It may be of interest to you.
“During this green revolution, we are all becoming increasingly concerned about the environment and aware of the urgent need for change. The education system, of all fields, has particular responsibility to educate the new generation on the importance of green living and better ensure a [...]
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David Cameron, Tory leader, is today quoted as calling for the creation of a ‘teaching elite’.
EducationState would like to remind Dave that to teachers and many people teaching is ALREADY an elite profession just as much as being a lawyer and doctor.
It is the strategy of both main UK parties to peddle the notion [...]
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The NUT has been asking its members to voice their opposition to proposed teaching licences to send in postcards.
To be renewed every five years, licences are intended to improve teaching and weed out the bad apples. Teachers and unions are up in arms about this as they see it as yet more paperwork and form-filling. [...]
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We have mocked the ineffectiveness of the NUS in years gone by but they are flexing their muscles again and we applaud them.
In today’s Guardian it is reported that, “Students will name and shame MPs who refuse to oppose rise in tuition fee”. Now modern-day students are not known for their radicalism and long gone [...]
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Members’ biographies
Lord John Browne
John Browne was born in 1948. He joined BP in 1966 as a university apprentice. He holds a degree in Physics from Cambridge University and a MS Business from Stanford University, California. He is President of the Royal Academy of Engineering, and a Fellow of the Royal Society and The American Academy [...]
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“The Universities Secretary Lord Mandelson today announced the appointment of Lord Browne of Madingley as chair of the Independent Review of Higher Education Funding and Student Finance.”
A farce already. The appointments do not include anyone whose income will be harmed come the inevitable hike in fees. In fact, the review panel is so unbalanced and [...]
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According to the Independent, ‘Black and minority ethnic teachers face an “endemic culture of institutional racism” in schools, research found today’. This story is covered elsewhere but the press being the press they’ve not reported the main finding only the most provocative.
Let’s take a look at this ‘research’. The report, ‘Leadership Aspirations and Careers [...]
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EducationState have little time for education inspectors.
And why would we? They create unnecessary amounts of stress and bureaucracy. They waste time, money and other resources. And they are used an instrument of fear and control by Government.
It has dawned on us, moreover, that they bear many similarities to some rather unpleasant characters who extort money [...]
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“Blue Chip companies refuse interviews on GCSE results” writes Victoria Bell in the Daily Telegraph.
Apparently, top firms like KPMG, Deloitte and PWC won’t interview anyone without top grades from GCSE onwards. It seems that if for whatever reason you underachieve you have no chance of being a beancounter or consultant.
Seems more than a little harsh [...]
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“Tabloids duped by celebrity hoaxes” is a story that has dominated the UK press today.
“Chris Atkins and his team put in hoax calls to some newsrooms, including that one girl band singer was a physics wizard, only to see the details printed — unchecked — in the press the next day.” we are told.
“And we [...]
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EducationState reads that new examinations have been designed that are, apparently, now even harder than A Levels.
In this current climate, we have to decide if our system that is very conveniently based on examinations is actually helping to shape individuals who can make sound, responsible judgements. A student who achieves the highest grade is NOT [...]
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Most of our readers will no doubt remember Saddam Hussein’s press officer during the 2nd Gulf War, Comical Ali aka Baghdad Bob.
He became known for his outrageous and simply ridiculous attempts to pretend to the world’s press corp that Saddam’s Iraq was far from imploding but actually resisting the Allied Forces (even while Baghdad itself [...]
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Shelter, the homeless charity, should know about housing costs.
They have released some very alarming statistics showing how much it would cost to buy a property in the UK. The strike action taking place on 24th April has been attacked, predictably, for letting students down. But when teachers’ pay is so low – they need [...]
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We at EducationState have read with horror that the National Union of Students is to now accept tuition fees and fight for them to be capped rather than continue to oppose them outright as they have since 1997.
We now call on the NUS to explain why they bother to exist AT ALL. Apart from being [...]
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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 [...]
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Congratulations from EducationState to the civil serpents and politicians who came up with the idea of splitting the DfES up into two parts: Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills (DIUS) and the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (DBERR).
Genius. So impressive. You think, you spend your younger years slaving away for exams that prove [...]
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The Business Link website urges companies to incentivise their staff through perks.
It states:
“Perks are generally a good method of tempting new employees and retaining workers as they are not related to productivity. Perks can encourage staff attachment to the business.
The options
There are a wide range of perks, including:
* occupational pensions
[...]
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At EducationState we think staff members should be properly rewarded for years of service. Far too many staff in recent times have left with nothing more than a whimper, despite 20-30 years service under the belt. All too often these members of staff are gotten rid of just to lower the wage bill and to [...]
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An article posted today on the BBC News website – ‘Schools ‘got better’ under Blair’ – clearly shows how they pander to the Establishment.
Where the article should focus on Professor Alan Smither’s call for an independent school review body to establish objectively whether students are progressing, instead it chooses a headline favourable to the Government. [...]
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Heard the one about expecting a first-class public service but not wanting to pay for it? It’s not funny and this philosophy affects all of us.
In a country where the government pays backhanders to a Saudi businessman so they buy our toys that kill, no money can be found to meet the reasonable pay demands [...]
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Discussions here have led us to conclude that the school/college year needs to change.
We believe terms should be scrapped or shortened. Semesters should stretch through the summer holidays, while teachers and students should be able to choose when they study. Summer course save on heating bills and result in a reduced carbon footprint. Being able [...]
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If you ever wondered who is/was responsible for Education Policy in the UK then look no further than this man…
Education Reform Lessons from England
An Interview with Sir Michael Barber
Publication Date:
January 13, 2006
England’s education system has undergone rapid and ambitious reform in the past decade. In 1997, a newly-elected Labour [...]
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EducationState welcomes the £15 million hand-out awarded to FE Colleges in London.
This will allow SMT’s to sweeten the pill that is redundancy and postpone the inevitable for another year. Such money, of course, does not come without strings and it was interesting to note the 1/3 of the cash was stumped up by the London [...]
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Apparently, we shouldn’t be deriding the fact that McDonalds and other blue-chip companies are starting qualifications of their own.
Mike Baker, the BBC News Education spokesman, calls it “snobbery” to criticise these companies for trying to raise the esteem associated with non-academic, skills-based awards. Snobbery seemed a little inappropriate, however, so we’ve come up with some [...]
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There is much talk today of what are known as “Generic Teaching Strategies.” These strategies are said to be applicable to all classrooms, lessons and contexts.
At EducationState we, predictably, reject this belief on the grounds that any teaching must be adapted to the localised conditions of that moment in time and space.
Unlike what can be [...]
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Should knowledge be graded to fit the learner? From pre-school reading books to advanced English textbooks, there exists an enormous selection of material that is designed to avoid scaring students while at the same time allow them to progress. Are such materials helpful, however? Or has this need simply been created by marketing teams to [...]
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The recent OECD report on Higher Degree Earning Power highlights a number of things.
There is clearly a link between having an education and boosting your earning potential and this is something that Flash Gordon and his mob would have us believe unequivocally. However if you look a little deeper into the subject you will notice [...]
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We at EducationState have started the new academic year with all the enthusiasm of the last but still face one wrongly-held belief after another.
Take Literacy. Why can’t the powers that be understand that in today’s economy higher-level paper-based skills are not as crucial in the world of work as keyboard-based ones? Clearly, a well-structured essay [...]
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Interesting BBC article about extra-curricular activities and doing more in education than meeting exam targets:
“Richard Middleton is annoyed at the idea that there is something wrong with being a “pushy parent”.
So is it really true that any parent who values their child’s education and actively contributes to it is, by default, pushy and therefore A [...]
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Peter Hyman hit the nail on the head today when mentioning how much painstaking research has been conducted into best practice in teaching. What he fails to mention is that, despite the wealth of material, there is no such thing as ‘good teaching’ only passing, cyclical fashions. The search for the perfect lesson is the [...]
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If you want an insight into how important accent and pronunciation are to learning, check out the latest research on teaching literacy to children.
Seems that we learn words based not on BBC English phonics but according to how we process words. No longer can we allow external assessment as this allows for socio-cultural inequality and [...]
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“Science adviser warns of fee rise”, writes someone at the Beeb.
We don’t think so. At EducationState we see this very differently. The Government to appease HE are appointing ‘advisors’ to make such statements so that HE staff can maintain their present living standards while pretending that to retain ‘our’ competitiveness in science we need to [...]
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Ahem, not really. This post will set out an assessment of the methodology of the Times Good University Guide 2010. The aim is to show how judgements of quality based on these tables are untenable. More seriously, it highlights the muddle that the current all-encompassing scientific paradigm so beloved of Government has landed us [...]
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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 [...]
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Grading?
Grading takes many forms: A to Z, percentages or in Higher Education 1st, 2:1, 2:2 and so on. They are used as proxies for student’s ability (quality) and enable the making of judgements or decisions. Such grades are generated in interviews, examinations, appraisals, observation and other ways.
Fairness?
The meaning of fairness is far from [...]
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With all the celebrations for the 800th anniversary of the founding of Cambridge University, we thought we’d temper the festivities with a little bit of a reality check.
Cambridge may have some famous alumni but entry still remains the privilege of the rich and connected. Moreover, despite its history this is the place where senior bankers, [...]
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According to the Guardian, MP’s have been asking why students drop out of university. Don’t need a full-blown, lengthy research paper to answer that one.
Lack of the green stuff i.e. debt was on the list.
Now you don’t have to be Dr. Watson to work that one out.
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We feel that there is need for a balanced, gender-bias free debate on the reasons for and solutions to the problem of declining support for education among males.
Based on the latest university application figures from UCAS, a BBC Education web article today states quite matter-of-factly that: “Overall not only have far more women applied (to [...]
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Education academic Professor Alan Smithers has said at the recent NUT conference that “unlike previous governments (New Labour) has taken upon itself responsibility for ‘delivery’ through targets and pressure from the centre.
“Schools have been reduced almost to factories for producing test and exam scores.
“But scores are not the product of education in the way that [...]
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The Six-Lesson Schoolteacher
by John Taylor Gatto, New York State Teacher of the Year, 1991
“Call me Mr. Gatto, please. Twenty-six years ago, having nothing better to do, I tried my hand at schoolteaching. My license certifies me as an instructor of English language and literature, but that isn’t what I do at all. What I teach [...]
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Why are there so many exam boards? The Edumonolith is the supplier of patronage, we know, but is it really necessary to have exams tailored to every level. Learning doesn’t happen in such a cosy way so why then do we still persist with levels and grades? One exam level to join them all, please. [...]
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Interesting reading on the Beeb. Reported that there are now 34,000 students being taught at home. They say there is a dispute regarding the figures. But, are we to believe that these figures are any less reliable than those quoted elsewhere?
Are the DfES deliberately sowing the seeds of suspicion in our minds so that we [...]
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News today that a new curriculum will as they put it ‘excite learning’. Really? Sounds like the end is nigh for the Curriculum. If, with all the changes that have taken place, it still isn’t ‘exciting’ then maybe it needs wholesale reform. We know, why not get rid of it, stop telling teachers what to [...]
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