Education

Forget a government-funded college - we need our own profession to create a institution led by, and accountable to, social workers, says Hilton Dawson

The 12,500 members of the British Association of Social Workers (BASW) are being urged to give a resounding "yes" vote in a referendum next month on the organisation's proposal to create a UK College of Social Work.

We want to transform our profession by creating an independent college to which all 105,000 social workers in the UK will be offered free registration. The college would set its own high standards for entry to the profession, accredit continuing professional development, license all employers of social workers, and set standards for a social work career structure.

This is in stark contrast to the rather puny suggestions of the Social Work Taskforce, which recommended a government-funded college that would give a stronger voice to social work, exercise influence over policy-making, and help improve public understanding of social work.

What we need from the government is not interference or money, but the legislation and the amendments to statutory guidance that would embed the college in critical decision-making about entry to the profession, training, professional development, the fitness of employers, and a career structure that retains the best qualified, most experienced social workers in social work practice.

We need devolved governments that will recognise the critical importance of social work to people's lives – that they are just as good as doctors, nurses, teachers and police officers. But, above all, we need our own profession to create a college led by, and accountable to, social workers.

This is not a case of the BASW taking over anything. It is a bold and historic move, but it is also a moment of considerable humility. It is the BASW putting our democracy, our organisation, our resources, our 40 years of experience, our skills and our international standing at the disposal of all social workers. Now is the time to take our profession into our own hands in order to take it forward.

If we do that together, we will transform the profession, ensuring that people can have great careers doing the best work in the world, and ensuring that social work serves people very well.

All we are doing is what every other successful and highly regarded profession would do. There is no other profession that would accept the government creating a college for it.

We reject criticism of "going it alone" because we want all organisations with social work members to join, in association with the BASW and, hopefully, with the college. We will ensure a UK college works with all governments and organisations in the best interests of social work.

To those who whisper that the BASW isn't up to it, we point to a growing membership and, as a consequence, independence, financial sustainability and coherent investment plans. We have access to world-class resources, and knowledge about the highest international standards of practice.

And as for those who say this is too bold, it remains to be seen whether the BASW members will support their own council and whether social workers will join their own college. My view is that support for a college is a compelling matter of professional and personal pride. This is such an important time for social work that we can hardly be too bold.

• Social care
• Social work
• Public sector careers

Lucy Neville-Rolfe attacks the quality of education received by many of the young Britons recruited by the retailer

A main board director of Tesco will today attack the quality of school-leavers and the standards achieved by A-level students and university graduates.

Lucy Neville-Rolfe, the retailer's director of corporate and legal affairs, says school-leavers have basic problems with literacy and numeracy and that many also have "what you might call an attitude problem". She adds: "They don't seem to understand the importance of a tidy appearance and have problems with timekeeping ... Some seem to think that the world owes them a living."

Neville-Rolfe also says: "There are growing questions over various aspects of our exam system." She adds that grade inflation makes it difficult to identify the highest achievers: "There seems to be a fair amount of evidence now that [exams] are getting easier and failing to stretch people. The proportion of firsts and 2:1s has risen enormously so it's much rarer to get a 2:2 than a first. People who are clever today are achieving the grades of the very clever a couple of decades ago."

Tesco is the largest private sector employer in the country, with 280,000 UK employees, and Neville-Rolfe, 56, is one of the most powerful and well paid women in British business. An Oxford graduate and former civil service high-flyer before joining Tesco, her total pay package last year was more than £1.6m.

Her broadside, in a speech to be delivered at a London conference, is the second time in under six months that Tesco has publicly criticised the education system and the quality of school-leavers. Last October, the grocer's chief executive, Sir Terry Leahy, said: "Despite all the money that has been spent, standards are still woefully low in too many schools. Employers like us ... are often left to pick up the pieces."

His comments were echoed by Richard Lambert, director general of the CBI, which represents business leaders and by Sir Stuart Rose, chairman of Marks & Spencer. Rose said millions of school-leavers were unfit for work because: "They cannot do reading. They cannot do arithmetic. They cannot do writing." Lambert said the education system was failing poorer children and producing "exam results we ought to be ashamed of".

Neville-Rolfe, says part of the problem is that there are too many agencies and oversight bodies and too much paperwork: "Our education system seems very complicated to me. I would guess that the paperwork mountain with which teachers have to struggle is even worse than the red tape we face in business. There are lots of agencies and bodies, often issuing reams of instructions to teachers. It isn't surprising if teachers sometimes get distracted from the most important task at hand: teaching children well in the classroom."

She says Tesco store managers are the "equivalent of a headteacher in a school" and that senior supermarket staff would make good school governors.

Heads should also be given more power and rewarded better. "Why don't we give heads and teachers more freedom to take responsibility and use their professional judgment?"

She also points to wider problems among the young and their attitudes to work, authority and discipline: "The truth is that a certain humility and an ability to work hard are important for success ... More broadly, a society where people don't feel the need to work to gain material possessions will not be a stable or successful society."

In her speech to the Institute of Grocery Distribution's conference on skills, she says that education "is set to be an important point of debate at the general election" and that the supermarket industry should come up with a "manifesto for education and skills which we can give to whoever wins".

The government and teaching unions have repeatedly dismissed the attacks by business leaders on educational standards, pointing out that they have never been higher.

• Tesco
• Confederation of British Industry (CBI)
• Terry Leahy
• Sir Stuart Rose
• Marks & Spencer
• Education in crisis
• A-levels
• University teaching
• Schools
• Graduation
• University of Oxford
• Graduate careers

The Living New Deal project was first conceived to mark the 75th anniversary of the New Deal. The driving force behind it, California academic Gray Brechin, likens it to a society-wide "archeological dig".

Prenuptial training for young people aims to tackle country's rising divorce rates

There was a time when Iranian women seeking husbands prioritised job status and financial security – not to mention love – at the top of their list of needs.

Now potential suitors face the prospect of having to fulfil a daunting new requirement before asking for a bride's hand – having the right government certificate.

Acquiring the appropriate official qualifications before popping the question is part of a plan for prenuptial training courses approved by the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, with the aim of reversing declining Iranian marriage rates and rising divorce statistics.

From next week, online courses will be offered to young people to prepare them for the pitfalls of married life. The three-month courses, involving weekly tests, will be run by the state-governed national youth organisation, and those who successfully complete them will receive a certificate as proof of their readiness for matrimony. Mohsen Zanganeh, the head of the national youth organisation for Tehran province, said the courses would provide young people with an understanding of the "alphabet of life" and were intended as an essential gateway to marriage.

"We intend that within the next two years, if a boy attempts to woo a girl, she will answer only if he has finished his course," he told the Fars news agency. "We are trying to increase the level of information among young people concerning marriage."

Zangeneh said the course would run along similar lines to a universityand have a panel of 40 experts serving as its scientific board. The idea has been partly prompted by the rising divorce rate.

Iranian decision-makers are also alarmed at a rise in the average marrying age, which scientists say is leading to an increase in premarital sex and abortions arising from unwanted pregnancies.

• Iran
• Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
• Marriage
• Divorce

As a boy, he walked into Keele University – and never left. And he counts bishops, sportsmen and politicians among his friends. So just who is Neil Baldwin?

Last weekend, Keele University celebrated Neil Baldwin's 50th anniversary there. It was a splendid two-day affair, with speeches from distinguished alumni, a dinner, a testimonial football match, and a service of thanksgiving for his work conducted by the Bishop of Lichfield, a Keele graduate.

But Baldwin has never worked at Keele in any capacity, or been a student there, or had any formal connection with the place. He walked into the students' union in 1960, an engaging schoolboy with learning difficulties from the local town of Newcastle-under-Lyme, and became a fixture. "I liked the campus and the chapel and the people," he tells me on the phone.

When, four years later, Malcolm Clarke walked nervously into the students' union on his first day at university, this stout, jovial young man ambled towards him and said: "Welcome to Keele. I'm Neil Baldwin." Clarke says today: "I appreciated his warm welcome, but who exactly was he? As always with Neil, his exact status was unclear."

Most Anglican bishops have met Baldwin at least once. A keen churchgoer, he turns up at their homes for tea like an old friend, and, though a little puzzled, that's how they treat him. At a thanksgiving in the Keele chapel a few years ago for Baldwin's work there, the visiting vicar recounted how he had first met Baldwin 20 years before, while at theological college in London. "He seemed to know all the bishops," he said.

Clarke became the student union president in the turbulent year of 1968, when Keele students occupied the registry. Clarke opposed the action and resigned as president over it, but not before proposing Baldwin for honorary life membership of the student union. For that, at least, he got unanimous support. I too was there in the late 60s and remember Baldwin as a solid if enigmatic figure. I'm pretty sure we first met in the union bar, late at night. In 1974, Clarke became mayor of Newcastle-under-Lyme, and on the day of his inauguration, Baldwin sat beside him in the back of the mayoral Daimler, waving regally at puzzled bystanders.

As the 70s closed, Keele appointed a new vice-chancellor and Baldwin phoned Clarke, by then living in Manchester, to give him the news. "It's Professor David Harrison of Cambridge," he said, "and 'e's a very nice man." "A very nice man" is one of Baldwin's most frequently imitated phrases; he says it emphatically, and as though there's a D in the middle of "very".

"Do you know him then?" asked Clarke. "I've just had tea with him and his wife in Cambridge," replied Baldwin. Clarke now says, rather carefully: "I think Professor Harrison may have been under the impression Neil was the Anglican chaplain."

Baldwin's Keele student friends thought he was fantasising when he talked about his friendships with Kevin Keegan, Gordon Banks, Graham Taylor and other famous footballers, until one day a well-known member of the Stoke City squad dropped him off at the student union, having given him a lift home from an away game. When Clarke met the players, they told him they knew Baldwin well – but had doubted his stories of his friendship with the mayor of Newcastle.

Eventually, Baldwin became a regular fixture on the Stoke City team coach for away matches. He makes it sound terribly simple. "I met Lou Macari [Stoke manager in the 1990s and a former Scottish international] outside the ground and we got talking. He made me the team's kit man." It sounds as though it can't be true, but it's confirmed in Macari's autobiography, Football, My Life, which has seven pages about Baldwin. Macari treated him as a kind of mascot, getting him to dress up and sit on the touchline for the amusement and morale of his squad – once in a chicken suit, another time in full white tie and tails.

Macari, like Clarke, grew to love him. He and Baldwin were often seen together in Stoke, walking Macari's dog. And one day in 1993, during a friendly against Aston Villa at Villa Park, Baldwin's old friends among the Stoke supporters saw him, in full Stoke kit, warming up on the touchline. With five minutes to go in the match, Macari actually sent this rather overweight man of nearly 50 on to the pitch. The players on both sides and the referee must have been in on the plan, because Macari then had 12 players on the pitch – and the players passed the ball to Baldwin, who almost got a shot at goal.

In his autobiography Macari calls him "my best-ever signing". Baldwin's unselfconscious remarks were a constant source of amusement for the players, and did wonders for morale. They never paid him properly as kit man, but have now given him free entrance to Stoke games for life. Baldwin says Macari is "a very nice man".

The late John Golding MP used to tell a story about how he walked into the House of Commons restaurant one night and saw Tony Benn, then energy secretary, at a table with Baldwin. Golding was a Keele graduate and MP for Newcastle-under-Lyme, so he knew him well. Golding was also the Labour right wing's chief fixer, and he loathed Benn with a passion, so he left swiftly before either of them saw him. He never worked out how Baldwin had got the energy secretary to invite him to dinner.

It was quite simple. Baldwin had come to the House of Commons and put in a card for Benn saying, "Neil Baldwin from Keele – friend of Steve's." "Steve" was Tony Benn's son Stephen, and Baldwin was not making it up. Like many Keele graduates, Stephen Benn keeps in touch with Baldwin to this day.

Stories about Baldwin abound, and they are almost always true. He once sold a Keele rag magazine to then prime minister Harold Wilson and buttonholed the Duke of Edinburgh for a chat about world problems. He wrote on spec to an American oarsman who was in the Cambridge boat race crew one year, and got himself on board the official launch that followed the race and into the boat-race ball afterwards.

"Neil's complete lack of self- consciousness has made him many genuine friendships with the famous," says Clarke. "People say he's a fantasist, but he isn't – he turns his fantasies into reality."

As a young man he had an unskilled job in the pottery industry in Stoke, and in the 80s he travelled as Nello the Clown in Sir Robert Fossett's circus. His other travels were aided by his habit of putting on a clerical collar before hitching lifts. His mother, Mary, used to worry about how he would cope after her death and sensibly made him move into his own flat; she died a few years ago, and Baldwin is managing.

People are always willing to help him, because, says Clarke "there's not an ounce of malice in him". Every generation of Keele students for 50 years has looked after Baldwin, and he in turn has enriched their lives with his extraordinary adventures. Generations of Keele students, including Stephen Benn, have played in the Neil Baldwin Football Club, of which he is the manager and captain, and in which he wins Player of the Year every year. Clarke calls it "a motley collection of students of the day, managed, coached, captained and kit-managed by Neil".

Now his footballing days are probably over. He is 64 this month and will go into hospital this year to have two new hips. He may continue to train his team, though. "I've always been grateful to the people at Keele," Baldwin says in his calm, gravelly voice with its strong Potteries accent. "The students have always been wonderful, they are still good friends to me."

Baldwin's old friend Malcolm Clarke now chairs the Football Supporters Federation and is the supporters' representative on the Football Association council. The two meet regularly at Stoke City matches.

Clarke and Keele alumni officer John Easom want the university to give Baldwin an honorary degree, as do many Keele graduates, including me. "He has contributed a lot more to the university than most people who get honorary degrees," says Clarke. For the moment the university establishment is resisting. Clarke has even bigger ambitions: he wants Baldwin to have an honour. He plans to petition Gordon Brown. It might just work. There could be votes in it. And it can only be a matter of time before I hear Baldwin say that "he's a very nice man".

• Keele University
• Higher education
• Religion

As parents struggle to answer GCSE-level questions, are you confident helping with your children's schoolwork?

Despite claims that exams are getting easier, a survey has shown that parents struggle to answer GCSE-level questions. Faced with 10 questions based on the curriculum in science, maths, history and geography, they managed to get an average of just two correct answers. The results of the quiz, taken by 500 people with children under 16, suggest that helping teenagers with their homework could be beyond the capabilities of many parents.

The parents were asked about subjects including the name of the bars on a synoptic chart (isobars), the total number of degrees in the exterior angles of an octagon (360) and the number of chromosomes in a human cell (46).

If you're a parent with school-age children, how has the curriculum changed since you were at school? Do you feel confident helping with homework, or does it leave you scratching your head?

• This article was amended at 16:10 on 9 March 2010. The original made reference to the angles of an octagon – it should have specified "exterior angles". This is now been corrected. D- for us

• GCSEs
• Schools
• Parents

The winner of the Ig Nobel prize demonstrates how her gas mask bra could save lives

The idea of making history with Kathryn Bigelow won the Academy over in the end – that along with the authenticity of The Hurt Locker and a clever awards campaign

Avatar and The Hurt Locker entered Sunday's Oscar ceremony like a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier and a dinghy bound for the same chunk of promised land. The seemingly mismatched opponents were the lead contenders for the major prizes outside the acting categories (Hurt Locker's Jeremy Renner was a deserving nominee but it was always going to be Jeff Bridges's night) and, of course, there was the added spice factor of marital history.

James Cameron glided into the 82nd annual Academy Awards at the helm of Avatar, Golden Globulised six weeks earlier in the best director and picture categories and, lest we forget, the biggest movie of all time. Here was a man whose films are so vast they dispense with definite articles and need only trade on one-word titles; the cinematic equivalent of Oprah, Madonna or Beckham. Here was a movie whose $2.5bn(£167bn)-and-counting box office is two-thirds the size of what Fiji's purchasing power was in 2009. Many believed the major Oscars were Cameron's to lose. But they hadn't reckoned on his former missus.

Kathryn Bigelow, a gifted storyteller and action director who had previously served up guilty pleasures such as Point Break, Blue Steel and the truly sensational, much misunderstood Strange Days, proved to be a force. Her latest, The Hurt Locker, refused to capsize in Avatar's monstrous wake and gamely stayed the course throughout the awards season. Despite only grossing $14.7m at the north American box office (the lowest grossing best picture winner ever – Summit Entertainment is considering a re-release), the thriller had become a critical darling, hailed as the best Iraq war film to come out of the US, and indeed the best visceral slice of war on screen in many a year.

Critics are so far removed from commercial sensibilities they might as well be living on Avatar's planet Pandora. This worked to the advantage of The Hurt Locker. Their steadfast belief in the anti-blockbuster allowed it to gain momentum so that, despite the Golden Globes shut-out, it had already reached the status of serious Oscar hopeful. As the season wore on, and more and more critics' groups across the US – Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Austin, Boston, to name a few – rewarded Bigelow and The Hurt Locker, its star continued to rise.

As the awards season entered February, voters agreed privately they had had enough of the blue-skinned giants. My own decidedly unscientific poll of a small number of Academy members who spoke on condition of anonymity was revealing. Avatar had reaped sufficient rewards, they said, and it was time to honour a movie that made them think, moved them, and embodied a sense of timeliness and timelessness.

Academy voters are a sentimental lot and the idea of making history is alluring. Enter awards specialist Cynthia Swartz of PR agency 42West. Hired by Summit Entertainment, Swartz devised a campaign that rightly cast Bigelow as a brilliant director who could hold her own in a man's world while raising the prospect of the first female director to win an Oscar. The idea was intoxicating and I can attest to the speed with which it coursed through Hollywood's bloodstream. Within a day of the nominations on 2 February, there was barely talk of anything else.

For the record, Swartz also got people talking about the man who started it all. Screenwriter Mark Boal was inspired by his time as a journalist embedded with US troops to write about his experiences. He would also win an Oscar on Sunday and introduced a valuable element of authenticity to the story, one that was potent enough to ensure that the usual 11th-hour sprinkling of ill-founded lawsuits and threats of plagiarism that besmirch almost every Oscar race largely fell on deaf ears. Besides, the members had already voted by the time most of the crackpots came out of the woodwork.

Swartz ensured that Academy voters received swanky DVD screeners. The critics awards kept on coming. Then on 31 January Bigelow became the first woman to clinch the Directors Guild Of America (DGA) award. By now the sense of history in the making was irresistible. The winner of the DGA has gone on to win the best directing Oscar on all but six occasions since the Guild launched its annual prize in 1948. The Bafta ceremony was a confidence booster, a dress rehearsal for what was to come, and by the time Barbra Streisand took to the stage at the Kodak theatre on Sunday to present the Academy award for best director, Cameron must have been shrinking in his seat. To be fair, the two remain on good terms, and he looked genuinely pleased for Bigelow when his ex-wife's name was read out. Cameron is probably pleased for everybody these days – so would you be if you'd just made the biggest movie of all time and earned a personal fortune in the region of $225m.

The Academy loves an epic, and on Sunday that epic was the story of David v Goliath. The best picture Oscar, The Hurt Locker's sixth on the night following other senior honours such as Boal's screenplay award and the editing prize, was a fitting finale for a plucky movie that deserved to be seen by a wider public audience. Thanks to a smart awards campaign it was seen by a wide audience of critics and awards voters, and in the end, that was all that counted.

• Oscars
• Kathryn Bigelow
• Film industry
• James Cameron
• Cuts and closures

Haikus, socks, robots, smoking guns and emergency lingerie

Conference season kicked off at the weekend with John Dunford's swansong appearance at the Association of School and College Leaders. It's been a particularly gloomy time for heads – 75% more of them were sacked this year than last. There were any number of downbeat stories to dismay ASCL delegates, including the news that Ofsted's new regime has resulted in the number of inadequate schools doubling, and the proportion of outstanding ones being cut in half. What chance the teachers can strike a more spring-like note when they gather later this month?

Emotional issue When residents of Canvey Island discovered a school for pupils with behaviour problems was to open in their midst, they were alarmed. Then the local MP turned up the heat…

Haikus of the modern age Teacher Phil Beadle, to his astonishment, falls for Twitter

At last, joy and light – and a smattering of downright madness – in the higher education fog. The Ig Nobel award winners go on tour in the UK this month, displaying their weird and wonderful achievements. Triumph of the night has got to be Elena Bodnar's Emergency Bra, which can be removed quickly by the wearer and transformed into two protective face masks. Dr Bodnar was inspired, she says, by Chernobyl.

Courtesy of the Times Higher, Malcolm Gillies, London Met's VC, decodes the signs of our times:

The sign at London's Green Park Underground station commands "keep right". At King's Cross it says "keep left". Neither has any apparent effect upon the seething mass of peak-hour commuters. They're utterly pragmatic, scrambling for the quickest route, with the words "sorry" - or "idiot" - ready when the inevitable collisions occur.
We're like that in universities at the moment. We know approximately where we need to go. But traditional order is breaking down and even the signage is confusing. Our courtesy is also tested. If you are not careful, you can be pinged by the funding police for over-recruiting and undercompleting at the same moment - like simultaneously receiving tickets for speeding and driving too slowly.

Agw31 commented on the news that 50% more men were applying for teacher training:

The real problem as I see it is that many more men end up as heads in primary schools. If the consensus really is that there should be more men in primary schools because boys need male role models (an argument of which I haven't been convinced yet) then why usher the few male primary teachers there are into senior management positions and eventually into headships, where they spend less time with children and more time managing. I hate the fact that any primary male teacher I have ever come across has been in a senior management position, never an ordinary class teacher.

Go hide that smoking gun As Climategate rumbles on, we offer legal tips for academics on the perils of emails and freedom of information requests

Socks over shoes, not shoes over socks It may sound plain silly, but according to researchers in the hilly New Zealand city of Dunedin, wearing socks over shoes is an "effective and inexpensive method to reduce the likelihood of slipping on icy footpaths". Why didn't they tell us that a couple of months ago?

The house of robots Work is going on in a Hatfield house to teach robots to become companiable creatures, able to assist older people and engage with autistic children

Ditch the 50% target Graduate recruiters say Labour strategy is driving down standards and devaluing degrees

How do you improve children's writing skills? Whether you're a teacher or a parent, join today's forum to find out. Between 12.30pm and 2.30pm, two experts from the National Strategies will be live online to answer your questions, share stories of effective practice, and support discussion.

• Teaching
• Schools
• Higher education

The government's strategy has driven down standards and devalued degrees, say graduate recruiters

Labour's target of getting 50% of young people to go to university has driven down standards and devalued degrees – and the next government should abolish it, leading graduate recruiters argued today.

The Association of Graduate Recruiters (AGR), which represents 750 employers, many of them blue-chip companies, also called for a phased increase in top-up fees. It said its proposals would force higher education institutions to be more open about the job prospects their courses offered.

The body, whose members recruit around 30,000 graduates a year, said families should be encouraged to save for university through a national savings scheme. It wants the current cap on tuition fees, which restricts them to £3,225 a year, to be gradually removed – with no limit to remain by 2020.

The AGR's chief executive, Carl Gilleard, said: "Too many young people are left to graduate without vital employability skills. We urge all political parties to consider the practical recommendations in our manifesto – adopting them would have huge benefits for the economy and help to reaffirm the value of a degree.

"We know that some of these calls to action – particularly those which relate to funding and finance – are unlikely to receive a universal welcome. After careful consideration, however, we have concluded that this package of measures is the best way to drive up standards in higher education, provide a better return on investment for students and parents, and ensure the UK remains competitive in a global knowledge economy."

The report called for "employability skills" to be embedded in all degree courses, more high-quality work experience for students before and during university, better careers advice, and the introduction of a "higher education achievement report" alongside degree classifications, to measure and record student development.

A review into the future of fees, headed by Lord Browne, will not report back until after the general election, and both Labour and the Tories have refused to state a position on raising the cap.

The National Union of Students (NUS) branded the AGR's proposals offensive. Its president, Wes Streeting, said: "The AGR does not seem to appreciate how much its own members benefit from our higher education system. It is in the long-term interest of our economy that the number of highly skilled graduates entering our workforce continues to increase.

"At a time when students are leaving university with record levels of debt, and graduate job prospects are at an all time low, it is offensive to argue that the cap on fees should be raised at all, let alone lifted entirely.

"The vast majority of the general public is against higher fees. If the cap on fees were scrapped, a disastrous market in higher education would open up, which would see poorer students priced out of more prestigious universities, and other students and universities consigned to the 'bargain basement'. This would be a disaster for UK higher education and must not be allowed to happen."

The University and College Union (UCU) said the report was out of touch. The union's general secretary, Sally Hunt, said: "The future for the UK is at the forefront of a high-skilled knowledge economy – and we won't get there with less graduates. The three main beneficiaries of higher education have been identified as the state, the individual and the employer, yet only two of them are picking up the bill.

It is time that business started to make a proper contribution to university funding, instead of parroting its siren calls to increase the debt of students and the burden on hardworking families struggling in tough economic times."

• Access to university
• Tuition fees
• University administration
• Higher education
• Graduate careers
• Graduation
• All sectors
• Graduate

If Twitter can cause the casually wept lonely tear to reach the ears of a concerned peer, then it is a useful resource

I signed up to bury Twitter. Not to praise it. The idea was to complete a trilogy of columns I had entitled the "wind up a spod" series, and deliberately elicit spluttering outrage about Twitter from educators who have been blogging about its noodle-boggling goodness.

My first "tweets" (and I still feel slightly bilious using this word as it makes me feel like an uncle dancing at a wedding to the happy teenage couple's favourite grime track) were brief exercises designed to satirise the somewhat ridiculous narcissism I perceived in the Twitter user. Who on earth could be so assured of their own importance that they would think their 140 character dribbles would be of any interest to anyone with anything corresponding to a life?

My first utterances included, on 25 June, "Realising I can't spell pheasant"; to be followed four days later by "Worrying about kidneys (mine)."

But then one day I got a response to one of my tweets that started to make me rethink. "Failing to be amusing on the subject of boys' achievement on a Saturday night," I had written. "Work/life balance. I've heard of it."

The current UK Secondary Teacher of the Year, David Miller, on recognising a soul in partial torment working too hard on a Saturday night and missing Match of the Day, used Twitter to reach all the way across from lower Dumbarton and, with it, dispensed a bit of much-needed virtual empathy. And at that very moment, my feelings about Twitter changed.

If this is a site that can cause the casually wept lonely tear to reach the ears of a concerned peer then, in an education system that seems less and less to recognise or care about teachers' humanity, it is a useful resource. It allows one to access the kind word, the piece of professional advice, perhaps even the readily located resource.

Twitter devotee Laura Doggett, director of e-learning at Westfield Community Technology College, has written an article available at www.lauradoggett.com that is held to be seminal by those inclined to witter about Twitter. In her "Nine Reasons Teachers Should Use Twitter", she lists, erm, nine reasons why it is a useful tool for professional development. Not the least of these is that, as a medium, it is instantaneous. You can ask a question from your network of newly minted professional allies and receive a reply almost instantly. The question could be about where to find a resource on a specific subject, or whether anyone has advice about how to deal with a difficult work situation, and it is likely it will receive a series of pithy yet considered answers within the hour from various sources.

Doggett also refers to the fact that Twitter gives access to experts both local and global. You have the option of following people you might see face-to-face, day-to-day or otherwise, or to follow globally recognised experts, who, given that it only costs them a minute to reply and there is no implication they will get into an onerous, protracted correspondence, will actually reply if you ask them a question.

As an example, following American educationist and former teacher Alfie Kohn has given me access to a series of articles that I would not otherwise have encountered; specifically, one about the results of the so-called marshmallow test that calls into question one of the central tenets of the burgeoning emotional intelligence industry.

Furthermore, having access to a ready network of peers means you have the ability to run ideas by people, get them peer-reviewed, so to speak. And if producing, for instance, a scheme of work, or an observed lesson, you can ask for and get immediate feedback as to where the best research has been done on this subject. All it takes is a cry for help, and such is the all-pervasive sense of fraternity on Twitter that you get a guiding hand on your shoulder within seconds of asking for it.

As a time commitment, getting something out of Twitter comes with negligible cost, and its potential benefits in terms of intellectual grazing away from the normal specific fenced enclave are manifold. Among the education bodies and professionals I follow, I also tune into the wisdoms of the two greatest songwriters of the late 20th and early 21st century: Cathal Coughlan and Mark Eitzel. Sadly, being wise, they have better things to do than sit in front of a screen three-quarters of their waking life recording every banal detail of their existence. But, y'know … as an idea, briefly engaging with the philosophical musings of the great on a day-to-day basis has value. As one twitterer puts it: "Following smart people on Twitter is like a mental shot of espresso." And if you have sufficient imagination to locate your heroes, then there is every possibility that just logging on would lead to a rewarding, transient engagement with a great mind.

I used to think it was foolish to be promoting – in school – a means of social networking that limits the number of characters one can use. It was, I thought, teaching children that communication must, by definition, lack depth. I have revised my opinion. The brevity of Twitter makes it potentially useful in the classroom. Were it not one of the sites banned by the network manager, we might be able to use it to teach children how to write with elegance and simplicity. We might even, if we were imaginative, get students to write a series of haikus in a lesson that they can then publish immediately. We might. But, generally speaking, we don't have the equipment for the 21st-century classroom, and where we do, it is usually broken.

http://twitter.com/philbeadle

• Teaching
• Schools
• Twitter

Michael Gove fails to answer the questions, and homework puts everyone under pressure

In his responses to readers' questions, Michael Gove demonstrates why no teacher of sound mind would ever vote Tory (2 March).

He fails to answer the majority of the questions, responding with party dogma, most of which could be contested by anyone with a knowledge of education and a sense of history. Second, he demonstrates an inability to engage with the research that he quotes. He ignores the Rose and Cambridge reviews. Praise is heaped on the Clackmannanshire project although its findings have been widely challenged.

The Tories are responsible for Ofsted, the national curriculum, Sats and the creeping privatisation of state education. Labour has maintained the status quo. When we have to make a choice it will be about which party will do least damage to state education. On the evidence from Gove's responses, it won't be the Tories.

John Wadsworth
Goldsmiths, London SE14

• Michael Gove partially reassures those campaigning against the Early Years Foundation Stage and its compulsory learning targets, but he erroneously assumes that it is appropriate for children under five to begin quasi-formal literacy learning. Research from Otago University in New Zealand shows conclusively that children gain no long-term advantage from early reading, and those who start later avoid the negative side-effects of early literacy (undue anxiety and reduced self-esteem due to early failure, a compromised love of learning, etc). New Zealand primary teachers are now instructed to forget reading and writing, and merely focus on good-quality conversation with a rich vocabulary. The fact that young children can be made to achieve something does not mean it is developmentally appropriate for them to do so.

Dr Richard House
Roehampton University

You report that the Tories are keen on the US charter schools, which allow groups of parents to get state funding for a new school (Free for all, 2 March). In a previous era, Rhodes Boyson said that this very same idea could mean schools for Trotskyists, and indeed there are enough of us in north London to do it. Then as now, though, we prefer universal liberal secondary education.

Keith Flett
London N17

Having recently retired from primary headship, I am seeing school practice through the experiences of my grandchildren and I am alarmed at the pressure put on families through homework (If the child does the homework, the teacher must mark it, 2 March). Fine, where parents have the time and ability to support their children, but what of those families whose opportunity is restricted either through work patterns or parents' genuine inability? Let's find other ways to ensure that the early years are creative rather than destructive.

Chris McDonnell
Little Haywood, Staffordshire

• As a secondary English teacher I was expected to mark both homework and classwork by careful assessment. I had six classes averaging over 25 pupils, who were given an essay and a comprehension homework most weeks. Occasionally, parents would complain that I had "ignored" a spelling mistake. When asked how much time should be spent checking each homework, they usually said 10 or 15 minutes. My reply was to multiply 10 by 25, by 6, and to point out that marking entailed 24 hours of work, in addition to teaching, supervision, administration, and much else.

David Ashton,
Sheringham, Norfolk

Whoever starts a new school, it needs democratic governance. Big strategic decisions can't be taken by one person alone, or by a company answerable only to itself

When my children were small, I used to go to extraordinary lengths to arrange my work around the holidays so that I could be free when they were off school. Now I find myself in the opposite situation, praying for the holidays so I can get on with some work.

Why? Some may think I am a glutton for punishment but, as chair of two school governing bodies, at least a third of my week in term time is taken up with meetings, paperwork, discussions with the heads or simply chatting to parents about their observations, concerns and wishes.

I also spend quite a lot of time thinking about what "good governance" means, as, I am sure, do many of the other 350,000 unpaid parents, staff and community representatives who sustain our education system. I wish the same could be said for our politicians.

The role of governors is almost always overlooked when new initiatives or policies are announced. At the moment, we hear a lot about who might start schools, but precious little about who will govern them. But if schools are to become even more detached from their elected local authorities, we need much more detail about how they will remain democratically accountable and responsive to their local communities.

The omens aren't good. In spite of measures to bring academies in line with maintained schools, Labour is still promoting fully independent state schools. These give sole control of the governing body to sponsors, who often oversee chains of schools from remote corporate headquarters with minimal parental or staff representation.

The co-operative trust model may sound more inclusive, but also has a convoluted chain of command – a "council" made up of interested parties, which then appoints a trust, which then appoints a governing body. Note the word appoint – not much elected representation there.

The governance arrangements for the new Conservative "free" schools are even more opaque. The website of the New Schools Network, the organisation which will deliver the new academies, suggests that although parents and teachers can campaign to start schools, they probably won't actually be running them. That potentially lucrative role will go to one of a number of recommended private providers, whose representatives coincidentally dominate both the NSN's trustee and advisory boards.

Far from being a vehicle for empowering parents and teachers, this charity, which won't even say where its own funding comes from, is more likely to be a Tory Trojan horse, subtly manoeuvring private providers into a promising share of the nation's education market.

Critics of the current system of "stakeholder" governance will argue, wrongly, that it fails too often. When schools are judged inadequate, a dysfunctional, complacent or unstrategic governing body is often to be found lurking in the background. However, most schools aren't failing, the current system works in many schools, sponsor-led governing bodies haven't saved some academies from brutal Ofsted judgments, and even when everything else has failed, and involvement from an outside body might help, that can easily be incorporated into a democratic model of governance.

Good governance isn't easy; it needs to be effective and representative. Governors need to know when to challenge and when to support, they need to balance the needs of their schools with accountability to the local community. But good governance matters because state schools spend vast amounts of public money, headteachers need to be answerable to someone, and big strategic decisions about schools can't be taken by one person alone, or by a company responsible only to itself.

So when you hear a politician talking about transparency, about ending the democratic deficit, decentralising power or giving people control over their local services, remember to ask about the governance arrangements of those services. Do they include local people in equal measure and give them genuine clout? Or do they pay lip service to real representation? If the latter is the case, take the promises of "power to the people" with a huge pinch of salt. What they really mean is that power will be transferred away from local parents and staff to ever more unaccountable bodies at a time when the opposite should be the case.

www.thetruthaboutourschools.com

• Academies
• School governors
• Schools

Are recent disputes between special schools and local residents indicative of a growing trend in people refusing to live alongside pupils with behavioural problems?

The Continuum school, Canvey Island, is an anonymous-looking place, tucked away down a side street on a gently decaying bit of the Essex coast. Inside, pupils and staff are winding up their day with a little awards ceremony – a bag of sweets for youngsters who managed their best behaviour during the day.

Callum Stimson, 14, has just had a bag of Haribos and is fizzing with energy. "I got six points in one lesson!" he exclaims. "The teachers are nicer here than at my old school and the classes are smaller. So I don't cause any trouble."

A casual visitor might be surprised to learn that when this small special school opened its doors last September it sparked a furore. There were complaints to Ofsted, a poster campaign, a public meeting, even questions in parliament – all with the clear aim of having the unit closed down. Why? Because its pupils have emotional and behavioural difficulties (EBD) and, therefore, according to local residents and their MP, they shouldn't be there. These teenagers, the protesters say, are not fit to be educated in a residential area.

Nationally, the number of young people classified as having behavioural problems is rising fast – there were 150,000 last year; a 25% increase in four years. So this local row raises questions that resonate well beyond the bridges that carry the traffic away from Canvey Island. Is it becoming increasingly common for people to refuse to live alongside these difficult pupils? Are we perhaps even experiencing a wave of nimbyism that extends not just to the sometimes unlovable "EBD" child but to other children and young people in general?

Around the country, similar disputes have been arising, though mostly on a less epic scale. In Somerset, a planning committee objected to the siting of a nursery in a residential area. In Gloucestershire, residents were up in arms when a secondary school applied to put in a new football pitch close to neighbouring homes. Down the road from Continuum, in Benfleet, Essex county council was forced to withdraw plans for a Sure Start centre at a local primary school because of complaints it would be too close to nearby homes.

The problem of where to put difficult teenagers is one that Bob Hall, the managing director of the Continuum group, which runs 12 independent special schools and 70 children's homes, grapples with daily.

"It is a growing issue," he says over a cup of tea in one of the Canvey school's tiny classrooms, where the 16 pupils work in groups of four with two staff. "You can't open a provision like this and not expect people to object – you never hear from the people who understand, but you always hear from the ones who are against you."

Hall says he was under no illusions when Essex county council asked him to provide a total of 80 places in three new special schools – he knew it wasn't going to be easy. He initially submitted an application to put the school on an industrial estate in Basildon, but in June last year – three months before the school was due to open – the local planning committee rejected the scheme. There'd be problems with access, it said – but Hall claims the underlying message was clear: teenagers with problems weren't welcome.

So Continuum's workmen moved in to this former doctors' surgery on Canvey Island, which had one major advantage – it didn't require permission for change of use because it was in the same category as a school for planning purposes.

Hall says he knew that when local residents got wind of the conversion, they were bound to be upset. But what happened next must have surpassed all his expectations – not least, he admits, because the school's pupils didn't begin by endearing themselves to their neighbours. There were complaints that in the first few days, some of them got on the roof and began throwing tiles; the local pharmacy reported youths barging their way behind its counter.

"Mistakes were made," Hall says. "There was rowdy behaviour. There was bad language. They would go into the shops and they would swear. But when you have young people like these you have a settling-in period whilst peer groups are established and they get to know one another. We haven't had a complaint now for weeks and weeks."

The rumpus might have died down as quickly as it arose had it not been for the involvement of the local Castle Point MP, Bob Spink, a former Conservative who is now independent. He made the issue a personal crusade, leafleting the area, calling a public meeting to protest at the school's presence and questioning ministers in the House of Commons, demanding its closure. Residential areas were not the right places to educate the wayward, he said.

At a public meeting in October, there were angry exchanges. Local education officials and even a community policewoman spoke up for the school, but Spink remained unconvinced.

"The officers who came to the meeting were totally offensive," he says. "They said I shouldn't call these out-of-control youths 'yobs'. They said I should seek to understand these children have had a difficult time. I said, 'No, they're yobs. We should confront bad behaviour and stop it, not tolerate it'."

Unimpressed by the response he got at the meeting, Spink continued his campaign, complaining to Ofsted that the school posed a safety hazard. An inspector duly arrived, unannounced, on a day when the pupils were due to go out. When they were told they couldn't because the inspector was there, they misbehaved and a critical report was posted on Ofsted's website. The school fired off a lengthy complaint; Ofsted withdrew the report and is investigating the incident.

Spink followed through in parliament, questioning education ministers at every opportunity and, finally, in January this year, Gordon Brown. "Teenage tearaways" were terrorising elderly residents, he said. Essex county council should be ashamed of its behaviour.

The prime minister responded, blandly, that no one should be expected to suffer from antisocial behaviour. But Spink's point had hit home.

Essex county council issued a statement saying it viewed the Canvey site as temporary, and that it was looking for alternatives. Spink remains determined to continue his campaign until the school is moved.

"We get difficult children and we must try to put them back on the right tracks, society has a duty, I totally accept that," he says. "But the area already had problems with antisocial behaviour. Fancy sending a group of bad lads to somewhere like that."

The saga of the beleaguered Canvey Island Continuum school does not come as a shock to the wider community of special needs experts. Claire Dorer, chief executive of the National Association of Independent Schools and Non-Maintained Special Schools, says local residents often react with alarm to the opening of new facilities. But, she says, in most cases their fears are allayed once they get used to their new neighbours.

"We do come across these issues in terms of anxiety from local communities about what having a school for children with emotional and behavioural difficulties might mean for them. If you ask people if they would like 50 difficult 15-year-old boys at the end of their garden, they will say no," she says.

"But our experience is when young people are given the chance to have their needs met, they don't display the same level of behaviour. And, generally, local communities end up being fairly welcoming."

Perhaps a case in point is the Grafham Grange Special Educational Trust at Bramley, Surrey, which met resistance from planners when it applied to put in a new football pitch – there were concerns that the floodlighting would cause a nuisance and would be inappropriate because the building was Grade 2 listed.

The trust's chief executive, Susan Tresman, decided to meet the issue head-on, and immediately set about wooing the decision-makers.

"We had a very forthright meeting on the site, she says. "I introduced them to some of our students. And it was brilliant. That was the beginning of what's become an extremely productive relationship."

Tresman says the key is to welcome in the local community, and to involve it. Now local football teams come every week to use her school's pitches.

"You do need to be resilient and creative, and to be prepared to challenge in a positive way," she says. "We don't want people to pass by at the end of the drive and say: 'We don't know who's in there'."

Back at the Continuum school, Hall remains unrepentant about his more bullish approach.

"These pupils just weren't getting an education," he says. "Our mistake, if it was a mistake, was bringing them quickly into a new facility. I don't apologise for that because the only other option was for them to be on the street – it was the right thing to do."

• Special educational needs
• Schools
• Learning disability
• Pupil behaviour
• Young people