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Farmers for a fortnight
3 hours 17 min agoWhy does a posh agricultural college open its doors in summer to urban teenagers?
It's 10 in the morning in a sunny Gloucestershire field, and four teenagers in pristine wellies are gathered excitedly round as a man in office trousers and white shirt introduces them to two giant tractors. "Anyone driven before?" he asks them.
"The last time I drove a car it ended up in a tree," volunteers one.
The other three laugh, but it soon becomes clear that the multiple gears, knobs, buttons and pedals in the tractor's cab are going to challenge even the most proficient young driver, and very soon they'll all be in the hot seat.
These teens are not used to being in this sort of environment, and their teacher, Nicholai Thomasin-Foster, is more accustomed to students who not only know their way around a tractor, but who quite possibly own a few hundred acres of their own, or stand to inherit them.
The Royal Agricultural College (RAC) in the leafy Cotswolds isn't where you'd expect to find urban youngsters from areas of disadvantage around the UK, but these are here for the RAC's Young City Farmer two-week summer school .
Agricultural settings are dangerous places, Thomasin-Foster, a lecturer in farm mechanisation, explains. So, if an accident happens in the countryside, how long does the group reckon it'll take for an ambulance to arrive?
Well-drilled by their ex-SAS first aid and health and safety instructor earlier in the week, the group know that it's likely to be the best part of 40 minutes before they'd see any flashing blue lights: should their tractor end up wrapped round a tree this morning, complete with injured driver and/or onlookers, they've been taught that the remoteness of the location means that someone will need to leg it to the main road to guide the ambulance in.
Farming as an industry is losing people fast – young people are moving into towns, and put plainly, older farmers are a dying breed. If it's to have a future in the UK, agriculture can no longer be the preserve of the double-barrelled. This is the fourth year the summer school has been run by the college as part of its efforts to interest more students from non-traditional backgrounds in a farming career. Offered completely free to successful applicants aged 16+, it gives a dozen city-based young people identified as coming from backgrounds of social, economic or educational disadvantage the chance to live the reality of what farming life is all about.
Even though by definition they won't have easy access to countryside, applicants have to demonstrate a passion for it in some way, says Emma Thomas, the RAC's widening participation officer – even if that's just an enthusiasm for growing vegetables in pots in their back garden. She targets her recruitment through town- and city-based Aim Higher co-ordinators, Connexions in urban centres, city council youth services and city farms.
"We want to give them a quality of experience, not just a dip-in and dip-out," she explains. "That's why it's two weeks."
The programme's length, she acknowledges, may put off some young people who lack the confidence to be away from home for such a long time, but it does mean that those who are selected on the assessment day are in for an intensive and hugely diverse fortnight.
"We don't usually finish until 11pm," says Thomas. "And we pack it in – there are some very early starts. The day we visited the dairy farm, they had to be on the bus at six."
Given that some participants have dropped out of school or are neets (not in education, employment or training), the routine, structure and pace of the programme can be tough – one participant, currently working as a butcher but with aspirations to be a chef, had to be up this morning at the crack of dawn to get to his one-day placement in the kitchen at a local gastropub.
From what the young people say, however, the sheer thrill of trying out such a range of new and exciting things has made it more than worth the effort. For some, it changes the direction of their lives: one student last year who'd dropped out of education was motivated to start again and is now studying animal science at Aberystwyth University. A girl who did her placement at a polo yard two years ago was taken on for six months' training and got a job as a groom. For others the change may be less dramatic, but many who have struggled to find a direction gain in motivation or refocus their plans.
Back at the skills training centre, Sam Thompson, 17, from Rotherham, sporting cool aviator shades, says that the fishing trip was a particular highlight. "We had to catch it, kill it and grill it," he grins.
Louise Williams, 16, from Salisbury, who was recruited through Aim Higher, says she had originally planned to work with animals and is about to start a veterinary science course at college; this course, however, has given her an insight into how she might integrate her love of animals with a career in an agricultural setting "and being outdoors, which I love".
"We had a talk about the issues of the future, and only 2% of UK industry is farming," she continues. "It used to be 80%, and I think they're trying to encourage young people into farming more."
Having climbed down from the cab to let the others have a turn, Ben Clark, 16, who explains that he lives on a Swindon housing estate that was built on former agricultural land, says he came because he wanted to learn how food from farms gets to supermarkets.
Clark thinks he may be interested in a career working in the organic side of food production: another course participant, Peter Chaloner, 16, says his interest in science – he's about to start on four A-levels including biology – means he's more interested in how developments in scientific research are driving farming practices.
Chaloner is spending the day on placement down the road at Butts Farm "doing a lot of cleaning out," he says, relatively cheerfully, considering the muckiness of his morning so far.
Originally from Cheltenham, he has spent much of his life moving around in foster care. One foster placement he loved, he says, was on a farm, and this course has helped him to appreciate "the troubles that farmers have, the changing prices of wheat, for example. I've got a lot of respect now – farmers work really hard and they don't make a lot."
His fellow cleaner-out, Naps Williams, 17, from Hackney, London, started volunteering aged 12 at her local city farm and is doing a diploma in animal management at Capel Manor Agricultural College in Enfield. "None of my friends or my family are interested in animals or farming," she says. "I'm probably a bit of a rebel."
But Williams has a clear vision for her future: she wants to open up her own farm-based educational centre. Until this summer school, she had been totally resistant to the idea of going to university. "I'd got fed up with the whole academic thing," she says.
"I had the idea that doing a degree was a lot of theory and only a bit of practical, and I'm a practical person. But I've come here and it's definitely changed my view. I'll probably apply to the RAC now."
Louise Tickleguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Categories: Education
Football managers in a league of their own
3 hours 17 min agoWhile teaching footballers management skills, Sue Bridgewater saw plenty of scope for research
Although the football season is only a few weeks old, it's easy enough to predict which Premier League clubs will be "there or thereabouts" next May. Only multi-millionaire and, increasingly, billionaire chairmen can buy a seat at the top end of the table.
Dr Sue Bridgewater has set out to offer an alternative analysis of what makes a successful coach, taking into account the resources they are working with. Bridgewater, who is associate professor of marketing and strategy at Warwick business school and director of its centre for management in sport, runs a course offering former footballers the chance to learn the skills necessary to become successful managers. But she freely admits that she has learned plenty from them and quickly saw their professional insights as a source of research.
"I became interested in the notion of what really constitutes success in football," she says. "On one level it's about winning points. But straightforward league tables don't reflect the full measure of success. It's rather like comparing a headteacher at an inner-city school with the head at an affluent independent school. Football has similar issues in terms of the resources the club is working with."
In her book, Football Management, she provides an alternative table of managers, taking into account the finances of each club, particularly the wage bills, which are a good measure of ability to attract top players. It was published shortly before the World Cup finals, and England fans would have been surprised to see the name of Steve McClaren lying second, with only Tony Pulis of Stoke City ahead of him. McClaren was dubbed the "wally with the brolly" after his tenure of the national side ended when they failed to qualify for the European Championships of 2008 and the heavens opened over Wembley.
"But before he became England manager, he had consistently over-achieved with Middlesbrough," Bridgewater insists, "and he's since gone on to take FC Twente [of the Netherlands] to the Dutch championship." Meanwhile, his successor, Fabio Capello, has become the new target of media scorn after England failed so lamentably at the World Cup finals in South Africa. Why is it that managers with such honourable records at club level are so often brought down to earth by international football?
It's an issue that Bridgewater has pondered after discussions with three former students on her course – England under-21 manager Stuart Pearce, former Manchester City and Wales manager Mark Hughes – currently Fulham manager – and Newcastle's Chris Hughton, who was assistant manager of Spurs and Ireland at the time.
"It became clear to me that club and country are two very different challenges," she says. "Admittedly there are some elements that are similar, insofar as you have to get the best out of a team. But at international level that team is made up of players who are stars at their clubs. They know each other, but they don't play together regularly. An international manager has to get the best out of them in a very intensive block of time, which often comes at the end of an exhausting league season. An international tournament is a big project, an event that you build up to under intense media scrutiny. There's always an element of luck in management and, if it goes against you at the knock-out stage, it's more significant because there's no way of coming back. "
Before it became clear that Capello's contract had made him too expensive for the Football Association to sack, Roy Hodgson was touted as a potential successor – until, that is, he accepted an invitation to take over at Liverpool. Hodgson's great achievement last season was to take Fulham, forever cast as humble neighbours to wealthy Chelsea, all the way to the final of the Europa League. So why was it that he was not in Bridgewater's alternative table when it was first published?
"He would have been right up there," she concedes. "But he had spent a lot of time coaching abroad before he took over at Fulham and there was a bit of a time lag in getting hold of the accounts that tell us how much money a manager has at his disposal."
She pauses, before adding: "This table was never intended to be viewed in isolation. It will be seen alongside the real league tables, which show what great managers like Sir Alec Ferguson or Arsène Wenger achieve season after season, albeit with high levels of resources. I'm just looking at a way to be fairer and highlight the achievements of some of the unsung heroes."
Bridgewater's latest strand of research looks at other career options faced by top-class sports people when they have to step down from the pinnacle. "It's not just about footballers," she stresses. "I'm also working with the Professional Cricketers Association and the Dame Kelly Holmes Legacy Trust. Olympic athletes, gymnasts and jockeys can face the same issue. They're people who have been very focused on achieving a status that begins to elude them in their 30s. What do they do with the rest of their lives?"
Top Premier League stars should surely have earned enough. "Yes, but everybody needs something to get up for in the morning. There's only so much golf you can play."
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Categories: Education
Education letters
10 hours 18 min agoTransparent academies, defending the A* grade and the problem with school IT
See-through academies
Last week Jeevan Vasagar reported that just 32 schools are converting to academy status this term
In the interests of transparency, I hope full accounts are published each year for all academies. So we can see
1 How much was spent on wages – including the salary of the head and other key staff members;
2 Who the contracts for supplies were signed with and on what basis they were chosen, along with the terms;
3 A full disclosure of the business interests of the staff and governors and any links – business/social/religious – between suppliers and staff/governors;
4 The amount of time staff spent on non-academic work, to see if we are getting highly paid teachers doing basic admin tasks previously performed by local education authority admin staff.
PridesPurge via EducationGuardian.co.uk
• Perhaps I could add to your admirable list: 5 Full details of all examinations taken and results achieved.
RickoShea via EducationGuardian.co.uk
• When we received Gove's letter [inviting applications for academy status], we had a special governors' meeting at which we agreed unanimously that we didn't have enough information. As a first step, the headteacher sought further information from the DfE. When the list of schools that had "expressed an interest in becoming an academy" was published, our school was on the list. The only thing that we had expressed an interest in was having more information. I suspect this is the case for the vast majority of the 2,000 schools that are reported to have "expressed an interest".
JayZed via EducationGuardian.co.uk
The case for the A*
University admissions tutors do not set entrance conditions first, then accept however many or few reach them (Trouble with the stars, 17 August). They have a fixed quota to recruit, so entrance conditions will be set accordingly. The introduction of the A* grade in A-levels gives additional data for those relatively few university departments where even setting an AAA grade offer would result in the quota being exceeded.
If the admissions tutors there choose not to use the A* factor, they will still pick the same number of students, but using other factors. Those other factors are likely to be the manner, confidence, and use of wealth and contacts to engage in interesting extracurricular activities, most likely found in those from an upper middle-class background. In allowing those who are quiet and have nothing but their intelligence to offer to distinguish themselves, the A* may help to widen access, not restrict it.
Dr Matthew Huntbach, London SE9
Change the IT curriculum
I, too, have been dismayed by what my children have been taught about IT, especially at GCSE level (Is school IT failing to click?, 17 August). However, it's not the technology that is the issue, it's the curriculum. There is too much focus on IT as an information-processing tool – word processors, spreadsheets and Google searches. Children need to know a lot more. You don't need state-of-the-art hardware and software, just a more balanced programme of study.
Computers affect almost every area of our lives, with huge implications around digital privacy, security, intellectual property and safety, for individuals and for society as a whole. The next generation will be poorly equipped to deal with these issues, since most of them will have only the vaguest idea how computers work, how they can improve our lives, and how they can be misused.
Nick Rozanski, London NW9
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Categories: Education
Cancer researcher wins science writing prize
10 hours 18 min agoRare childhood cancers are the subject of an award-winning essay by Nicola Harris in this year's Max Perutz prize
My palms are sweaty and my mouth is dry, but it's more excitement than nerves, though of course the nerves are there, too. I've got my cells out of the incubator and now I just can't resist having a quick glance at them down the microscope – will I see more dead cells floating in one set than the other? I know I can't tell properly till I add some staining solution and analyse them accurately, but that will take hours and I just can't wait that long to find out: has it worked or not?
If you've ever held that envelope of exam results and been desperate to tear them open and find out how you did, but also terrified to look in case you didn't get what you were hoping for, then you'll know exactly the sort of feelings I'm talking about.
I'm working on tumour cells from two childhood cancers, called neuroblastoma and Ewing's sarcoma. These are both very hard to treat, with less than half the children surviving for five years after their diagnosis. That's the problem with treating cancer: some patients do brilliantly on a particular drug, but for others it'll have little effect. At the moment, it's often a case of trial and error working out which drug is going work – and some people simply run out of time before we can find the right one. So what I'm trying to find out is what causes the differences in responses and how can we use that to our advantage.
The drug I'm using is called fenretinide, and it's similar to vitamin A (the vitamin found in carrots). It's able to kill cancer cells, while normal cells remain healthy. It works by causing a build-up of oxidants in the cells (you'll all probably have seen the adverts for beauty creams offering anti-oxidant properties to get glowing skin – that's because oxidants are bad news for cells!). Normal, healthy cells should be able to cope with the presence of a few oxidants, but cancer cells will already be exposed to high levels as they're produced when cells divide, and so they can't cope with the extra oxidants produced from fenretinide treatment.
Due to its similarity to vitamin A, fenretinide can get into receptors meant for that vitamin and so the main side effect with fenretinide treatment is that the patients get what's called night-blindness; basically, you can't see very well in the dark. This makes it particularly suitable for treating childhood cancers as it's a much easier side effect to deal with than many other treatments – it's easier to give a five-year-old a night light than to comfort them as they're losing their hair. The problem is that fenretinide seems to work really well for some neuroblastoma and Ewing's sarcoma tumours, but not others. And I want to know why!
I've found that some of the tumours have more of an enzyme called CYP26 than others, and this enzyme helps to metabolise fenretinide in the body. Usually, you'd expect the patients to do worse if their body is breaking down the drug, but fenretinide is a little different. As well as the drug itself being able to kill cancer cells (what we call an "active" compound), one of the metabolites of fenretinide is also active. This means there could be an extra hit from this second compound to those cancer cells where there is metabolism occurring. This is the reason I'm desperately hoping to see more dead cells in some of my flasks than others – these should hopefully be the cells with more CYP26.
So what would it mean if I'm right about the link between CYP26 and how many cancer cells die? There are a few options, actually – we could be selective and only give the drug to those whose cancer has been tested and shown to have CYP26, or there are other drugs that have been shown to increase concentrations of CYP26 in the body, so alternatively these could be used in combination with fenretinide. The important point is that we could decide on which drug or combination of drugs to use based on what should work for each particular patient, and that's what this is all about – taking the guesswork out of cancer treatment.
I've already analysed these cells to see how much CYP26 they have, and then I've added the drug and left them to grow for a few days (having a quick peek every day to see how they're getting on). Now it's the moment of truth, as I look down the microscope and bring the cells into focus...
The prizeThe Max Perutz Science Writing Award, now in its 13th year, encourages young Medical Research Council scientists to communicate their research to a wider audience. The competition is open to all MRC-funded PhD students and asks them to describe the importance and excitement of their research.
The 2010 award received a record number of submissions, with 114 entries. Twelve essays were shortlisted and judged by the MRC's outgoing chief executive, Sir Leszek Borysiewicz, the Guardian's science and environment correspondent Alok Jha; the head of the MRC Centre, Cambridge, Dr Megan Davies; the former winner Dr Jacqueline Maybin; and the author and broadcaster Dr Alice Roberts.
• Nicola Harris is at the Northern Institute of Cancer Research, Newcastle University
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Categories: Education
Free schools set out priorities: community, flexibility, performance
Mon 6 Sep - 21:44• Parent groups driven by need for more places
• Number of schools have strong religious flavour
With its emphasis on the role of the community, the free schools announced today by the government will arguably be the single most prominent part of David Cameron's "big society".
Drawing on 700 expressions of interest, the education secretary, Michael Gove, approved 16 projects – subject to them delivering a business plan that passes muster – to form the kernel of a new generation of independent state schools led by parents and teachers.
Most are grassroots groups, though there are two backed by private education firms, and a number of the schools will have a strong religious flavour.
Driving many of the parent groups is a simple desire for extra school places: seven of the applications are in London, where getting into the best state schools is fiercely competitive.
But the free schools template, which lets schools set their own curriculum and control their own admissions, encourages experimentation.
Penny Roberts, co-ordinator of the parent group behind St Luke's primary in Camden, north London, said the school might conduct immersion sessions in children's home languages. The school will have an initial intake of just 15 pupils being taught in a church hall, allowing it to be flexible with the curriculum.
"One of the big advantages of being a very small school, is to be able to adapt and vary the curriculum according to the children we have," Roberts said. "We will want to value children's home languages – we may well run immersion sessions in some of these home languages, just as a way of valuing them."
Keith Haisman, of the Stour Valley Community school in Suffolk, said the school aimed to integrate mobile and smartphones into the curriculum, as well as placing an emphasis on children's self-confidence and teamwork.
There is a strong emphasis on academic performance across all the free school projects. The Stour Valley school plans a traditional core of subjects, based on the "gold standard of GCSEs" but tied in with this will be an awareness of which courses will prove useful at work. "You might want to be a car mechanic and run your own garage – it would be really handy if you knew a bit about science, a bit about finance," Haisman said.
There will also be an emphasis on career mentoring at the King's Science Academy in Bradford. Sajid Hussain, who hopes to be the new school's head, said: "Every child in that school [will have] a three-year and five-year plan of what they're doing in terms of their careers."
Because the free schools will start afresh, the groups plan to be rigorous about selecting teaching staff. There are concerns that at present struggling teachers are simply shuffled between schools.
Free schools in England are inspired by the US charter schools movement, where such schools educate more than 1 million children. These schools often demand longer hours from teachers in return for better pay.
Mark Lehain, a maths teacher and spokesman for the Bedford and Kempston free school, said: "I'm absolutely passionate about teachers being free to do whatever the kids in front of them need them to do.
"We believe that free schools are part of a re-professionalisation of teachers, what they teach, how they should teach, and when they should teach it. We'd like to see every school in the country given this freedom."
Results from the US have been mixed, however. Research carried out at Stanford University and published last year found that more than a third of charter schools had results that were worse than the traditional system. But the US also found that poor children and those with English as a second language did well in the schools.
James Turner, projects and policy director of the Sutton Trust, which will work in partnership with one of the London schools, said: "The evidence shows that, of those factors which the school can control, the impact of teachers is critical. The best teachers can make a huge difference to the performance of their students, even when background and prior achievement is taken into account."
Identifying the best teachers is difficult, Turner said. "They are not always the high-fliers. But as a starting point a good academic grounding and a high-level qualification in the subject you are teaching – or one closely allied to it – must make sense. A number of the 'no excuses' school chains in the US pay more to attract and retain exceptional teachers with good track records of boosting results – and that's something we'll be looking at too." There is some unease over the prominent role of religion among the first crop of free schools.
Chris Keates, general secretary of the NASUWT teaching union, said: "The secretary of state suggests that he wants free schools to be engines of social mobility. But in many cases the free schools announced so far will only fragment communities and lead to greater social segregation and separation."
Some of the schools with a religious framework stressed the community aspect of their faiths.
Peter Kessler, who is leading a campaign to create a Jewish primary in Haringey, north London, said: it was true that some faith schools were "restrictive" and "blinkered".
"We will teach pupils to be broad-minded. You get a sense of community with a faith school."
Roberts said that while St Luke's would have a Christian ethos, the church was a focal point in the community. "We 're very family oriented. We have after-school clubs, drop-in clubs, not only attended by church families but by people who wouldn't dream of coming to church on a Sunday."The first XVI
Bedford and Kempston Bedford
The Childcare Company Slough
Discovery New School West Sussex
The Free School Norwich Norfolk
Haringey Jewish Primary Haringey
I-Foundation Primary Leicester
King's Science Academy Bradford
Mill Hill Jewish Primary Barnet
Nishkam Education Trust Birmingham
North Westminster Free School (ARK)Westminster
Priors Marston and Priors Hardwick Warwickshire
Rivendale Free School Hammersmith & Fulham
St Luke's Camden
Stour Valley School Suffolk
West London Free School Ealing/Hammersmith and Fulham
Wormholt North Hammersmith Free School (ARK) Hammersmith & Fulham
- Free schools
- Education policy
- Michael Gove
- Schools
- Conservative and Liberal Democrat cabinet
- Liberal Democrats
- Conservatives
- Liberal-Conservative coalition
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Categories: Education
Michael Gove's free schools to teach etiquette and fine dining
Mon 6 Sep - 21:37Just 16 schools have won approval from the education secretary as part of a radical experiment in English education
Schools offering training in etiquette and fine dining in Bradford, compulsory Latin in London, and lessons for all children in a musical instrument in Bedford were approved today by the government as part of a radical experiment in English education.
A new wave of free schools founded by parents, teachers or private firms will open in England next September, under plans announced by the education secretary, Michael Gove.
While the number who won initial approval today was small – just 16 – Gove welcomed them and said they were all a response to local demand.
The government backed plans for the West London Free School, which includes the journalist and author Toby Young on the steering committee. The school will have compulsory Latin for pupils aged 11 to 14, and a choice of either Latin or classical civilisation at GCSE.
The group behind the King's Science Academy, a free school due to open in Bradford, is driven by a vision of liberating inner city children from "ghettoisation". Sajid Hussain, a science teacher and assistant head who hopes to lead the new secondary school, said: "We hope to teach good manners. We're looking at a sense of responsibility, social conduct, sitting down and dining. Independent schools are quite good at this kind of stuff."
Hussain said: "I come from a working class background, my father was a bus driver and we really struggled in getting a good education. I've been working in inner city schools for the last 13-14 years, and children are still facing very similar challenges. Parents are looking for a particular dimension in schooling for their children, to ensure their children are safe from social vices. At the same time they want excellent results.
"Both of these areas are not being fulfilled by education in Bradford at the moment."
The new school will raise literacy standards by "collapsing the humanities subjects into English", Hussain said. "Instead of having three to four hours of English we will have eight to 10 hours. All subjects such as RE or history will have a literacy focus."
Mark Lehain, an assistant head and maths teacher who is a spokesman for Bedford and Kempston free school, said one aim was to create an intimate atmosphere in which teachers dealt with small, familiar groups of children across a range of subjects. "We want to be flexible in how we employ our staff, we're looking at a longer school day … a small team of teachers for each [age group]. We've got to completely rethink how a teacher is. If you go to most countries, teachers teach two or three main subjects."
It is also the aim for every child at the Bedford school to play an instrument, an idea drawn from Venezuela's El Sistema under which many poor children have been taught music.
There is a distinctly religious strand to the first wave, with seven of the 16 having faith affiliations. Among those expected to open next September will be two Jewish schools in London, a Hindu school in Leicester, a Sikh school in Birmingham and three with a Christian ethos.
Andrew Copson, chief executive of the British Humanist Association, said he was concerned this would lead to wider social divides.
"Since the government has made only token gestures to limit religious discrimination in the admissions criteria of free schools, we will see greater segregation and deeper divisions within communities."
The new schools, many more of which are expected to be approved in coming years, could also pose a challenge to the teaching unions because they emphasise raising standards through longer hours and more flexible teaching. Both methods could prove contentious.
Uniting the schools is an emphasis on improving academic results through longer hours, mandatory homework clubs, and stripping down subjects such as history if it is needed to focus on literacy.
Many of the groups want to focus pupils' minds on how their schoolwork translates into getting into the best universities and getting good jobs.
Two schools in London will be run in partnership with Ark, an academy sponsor backed by hedge fund money – and at least one of these will also be backed by the Sutton Trust, set up by the millionaire philanthropist Sir Peter Lampl.
James Turner, projects and policy director of the trust, said the group was aiming for a school which is "very academically focused" and encouraged pupils to apply for elite universities.
"We want to be clear that coming from a poor background does not preclude success – students from these areas can get good qualifications in valued subjects and gain access to top universities. We're addressing the inverse snobbery which says that 'people like you' don't go to certain universities or follow certain career paths or achieve at the highest levels."
Jeevan VasagarJessica Shepherdguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Categories: Education
Hands up if you believe teachers know best
Mon 6 Sep - 19:59New research suggests that pupils should hold up whiteboards rather than hands to attract the teacher's attention. But have they really thought this through?
There seems to be no end to research on teaching methods. I often pray for it to stop, but it never does. The latest suggests that academic performance improves if children are not allowed to put their hands up in class. This ghastly old method encourages a minority of brighter pupils to dominate, says Professor William of the Institute of Education.
But teachers have known about the hands-up problem for decades, thank you very much. Children stick their hands up and shout "Miss! Miss! Miss!" for different reasons. They may not be that bright, just desperate for attention. The clever ones may just shut up and get on with it. And most teachers have worked out strategies to deal with hands-up.
In my 24 years at the chalkface teaching Music and English, I learned to encourage the more timid and explain to the show-offs that it was someone else's turn. Luckily teachers often don't have to do that nowadays, because children don't always sit in regimented rows. They often work in groups or pairs, put all their ideas together and elect a spokesperson. That way, everyone contributes.
Prof William's researchers recommend the use of whiteboards. Instead of putting hands up, pupils write on their board and hold it up. But isn't that rather gruelling for everyone? How long does it take the teacher to read all the answers on the 30 or so boards? Can she or he remember them all, select an interesting one, while also keeping an eye on what the pupils at the back are doing behind the screen of massed whiteboards? How long does the class have to wait until the last person has finished writing, and what about the poorer writers with squiggly, all-over-the-place letters? Will the teacher be able to decipher it? Or will he or she just pick the clearer ones? And while the teacher does this, do the pupils' arms tire of holding up the boards? Have the researchers thought this through?
If this method is adopted nationwide, how will the children manage when they hit the real world, where there is always some pushy toad with a big mouth who barges to the front and gets in first? Because no one gives a stuff about fairness out there.
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Categories: Education
Colin Austin obituary
Mon 6 Sep - 18:30One of the world's leading scholars of ancient Greek texts
Colin Austin, who has died of cancer aged 69, was one of the world's leading specialists on ancient Greek texts. Thanks to his technical expertise and power of conjectural divination, Colin had a remarkable gift for the reconstruction and interpretation of fragmentary poetic texts preserved on Egyptian papyri. The monumental edition of the fragments of Greek comedy which he completed with Rudolf Kassel set new standards of scholarly accuracy. The first volume of Poetae Comici Graeci, or "Kassel-Austin" as it is usually known, was published by De Gruyter in 1983; seven further large-scale volumes followed.
At the time, the remains of Greek comedy, other than the extant plays of Aristophanes and some Menander, were only available in editions which were either completely out of date or marred by fantastic and improbable reconstructions. Poetae Comici Graeci put hundreds of verses of Greek poetry into the mainstream, so other scholars could no longer think of them as inaccessible or unimportant. The fragments are accompanied by a full textual history and a commentary which always goes straight to the point and the problems.
Poetae Comici Graeci has already transformed the way in which the fragments of comedy can be used to shed light on Greek cultural and literary history. From the biting satire and high farce of the Old Comedy of classical Athens to the social comedy of Menander, the ancestor of the western tradition of the comedy of manners, Greek comedy reflects the evolution of both political structures and moral attitudes. Poetae Comici Graeci offers scholars in those fields a fresh start with some crucial evidence. It is unlikely to be superseded for many decades.
Colin was born in Australia to Lloyd Austin, an Australian professor of French, and his French wife, Jeanne-Françoise Guèrin. The family moved to Britain when Colin was five and then to France. He was educated first in Paris, at the Lycée Lakanal, and then at Manchester grammar school and Jesus College, Cambridge, before moving to Christ Church, Oxford, where Sir Hugh Lloyd-Jones supervised his DPhil on Aristophanes, for which Colin edited Thesmophoriazusae, Aristophanes's play about the women of Athens' plans to take revenge on the playwright Euripides for the ways he has depicted them in his plays. Colin's translation of Thesmophoriazusae was published by the Oxford University Press in a 2004 edition co-edited by S Douglas Olson.
While in Oxford his aptitude for papyrology was nurtured by Peter Parsons. When he returned to Cambridge in 1965, as a research fellow and director of studies in classics at Trinity Hall, his future academic path was set. His growing reputation led to invitations to transcribe and edit several important papyri, including Martin Bodmer's Menander codex, one of the main sources for the plays of a major poet who had otherwise been lost to the world. The fruits of these labours appeared in vastly improved texts of the Aspis and the Samia in 1969-70. Colin kept up his love for, and services to, Menander throughout his life. At the time of his death, he had been working frantically to complete a new edition of Menander's plays for the Oxford Classical Texts series.
Colin's particular gift lay not merely in the fine detail of fibres and ink smudges with which papyrologists must be concerned, but with filling in the gaps of broken lines with supplements. He revelled in what he saw as the supernatural nature of the gift he had been given, and he likened such conjecture to a mystery or a dream. A childlike wonder at what the sands of Egypt had preserved for us and the puzzles they set us shone through his public lectures in which he delighted to read aloud the newest piece of Menander-Austin.
One of his notable projects was a remarkable papyrus containing more than 100 new epigrams by Posidippus, a poet of the third century BC, which was acquired by a Milan bank and of which the world only learned in 1993. Colin was asked by the Italian papyrologist Guido Bastianini to help with the editing and writing the commentary, and a lavish edition appeared in 2001, followed shortly afterwards by an editio minor of Posidippus by Austin and Bastianini. Much of this work was done while Colin was suffering from the effects of unstable angina; the major surgery it necessitated, and his excited devotion to the project, was to foreshadow the resolution with which he worked through great suffering at the end of his life.
Colin was appointed a lecturer in the faculty of classics at Cambridge in 1969; a readership followed in 1988 and a personal chair 10 years later. In 1983 he joined his father as a fellow of the British Academy. He served as treasurer of the Cambridge Philological Society for 40 years, and at Trinity Hall was a much- loved wine steward and praelector. If Colin felt a lack of sympathy with some aspects of academic life – computers and modern literary criticism were never to his taste – he was very generous with his time and his learning to those who shared his enthusiasms.
His greatest pride was his family and he took delight in writing Greek or Latin verse to accompany the marvellous batiks made by Mishtu, his wife of 43 years. She survives him, along with their son, Topun, and daughter, Teesta.
• Colin François Lloyd Austin, scholar of ancient Greek, born 26 July 1941; died 13 August 2010
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Categories: Education
Naming a school after Al Gore and Rachel Carson is a mistake | Leo Hickman
Mon 6 Sep - 17:29A new elementary school in Los Angeles named after giants of environmental movement is courting needless controversy
Here's a problem for any new school: what to call yourself. Do you opt for an iconic figure from history? Or what about a name which reflects the school's location? The first rule, however, should be not to choose a name that can in any way be deemed controversial. In other words, avoid any name that even has a passing whiff of politics about it.
Bottom of the class, then, for the governors of a new school set to open this month in Los Angeles. Not content - and who can blame them - with the name "Central Region Elementary School #13", as their new school was being described by architects and the local board of education, the school-naming committee decided to pick one of six possible suggestions.
The first suggestion - the Pete Seeger Community School, in honour of the folk singer - was rejected because the singer had "affiliations with the Communist party".
Such a decision suggests that the committee members were astute enough to avoid controversy. But this conclusion crumbles to dust when you hear what name they finally settled on: the Carson-Gore Academy of Environmental Sciences.
To name your school after one controversial figure might be judged careless by some. But to name it after two just seems positively reckless. Al Gore, the former US vice-president and force behind An Inconvenient Truth, and Rachel Carson, the author of the seminal environmental text Silent Spring, are deemed by many to be giants of the modern environmental movement. But they are also among its most divisive figures.
The school-naming committee surely must have known that by picking such an eye-catching name they would be casting an unnecessary spotlight on their new school?
Don't get me wrong: personally, I think it is refreshing that a public elementary school wishes to give such a heavy emphasis in its curriculum to environmental science. But, equally, there will be many out there – not least, the Glenn Beck/Tea Party contingent – who will think this is nothing less than the devil's work, with or without reference to Carson and Gore. (Just as I was writing this sentence, I noticed that the rightwing site NewsBusters had got hold of the news and reacted with predictable results.)
Spin it round the other way: would environmentalists be happy if a school was named after Glenn Beck? It doesn't even bear thinking about. That's my point.
The Los Angeles Times, which broke this story earlier today, is not really focusing on the naming of the school. It says the source of a bigger controversy is that the $75.5m school has been built on contaminated soil. It quotes a letter from a local environmental group called the California Safe Schools coalition which says the site has not been cleaned up properly:
Renaming this terribly contaminated school after famous environmental advocates is an affront to the great work that these individuals have done to protect the public's health from harm.
I don't know the ins and outs of this particular clean-up operation, but I would have thought the rules in California for cleaning up brownfield sites, particular if they are to be used to build schools, must be pretty exacting. Therefore, this is possibly the one time when Rachel Carson's name might actually seem appropriate for a school. But I can also understand why these parents are concerned that the site be unequivocally cleansed of the benzene, ethylbenzene, naphthalene, tetrachloroethylene, vinyl chloride and trimethylbenzene which California's Department of Toxic Substances Control said (pdf) it had detected in soil at the site before the clean-up began.
Meanwhile, the LA Times reports that the school principal Kurt Lowry says he intends to invite both Al Gore and members of Rachel Carson's family to the school's official opening in October. It adds:
Lowry said the school's environmental emphasis will do Gore proud, including recycling projects and research and beach cleanups. Cross-curriculum efforts will include environmental speeches and presentations in English, topsoil measurements in math and climate study in science. The principal also envisions an organic garden that could produce a student-led farmer's market.
No word yet on whether the pupils will get to watch An Inconvenient Truth in class. If they do, the school best prepare itself for a fresh round of outrage and controversy.
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Categories: Education
Should twins go to different schools – one state, one private?
Mon 6 Sep - 17:01It's a difficult decision to send your children to different schools – even if you think it's the best thing for them
If parental angst were an Olympic sport, I'd be on a podium next to Michael Phelps. I fret over whether the sun cream has been properly applied. Mention the word "schools", and my angst radar's on red alert. Nothing is of greater concern.
I blame it on having twins. It seems to have doubled this predicament. It began after their birth, watching them reach their developmental milestones. Which twin would smile first, roll over first, sit first or walk first? Which one would beat the other to saying "Mummy"?
Contrary to expectation, most twins aren't born an exact replica of each other. They develop at their own pace, and the biggest challenge is to treat them as individuals and to not make constant comparisons. Thankfully ours are a boy/girl duo – Holly and Alexander. Just as well, because when they started school, it became harder not to make comparisons. At the local state primary, Alexander made an exponential leap in reading and writing, while Holly, bang on target for her age, still grappled to sound out basic words.
Holly became increasingly sensitive to the fact that her brother was racing ahead. When Alexander bragged, we'd stamp on it, focusing instead on what Holly excelled in: drawing, beautiful handwriting, gymnastics. "Girls aren't the same as boys," we'd say. In that respect, their gender difference was a godsend.
Their school has a two-form entry, and at the end of reception Alexander craved independence, preferring to be placed in a different year 1 class from his sister. Holly, by contrast, preferred the security of having her brother close by. In letting one have their way, I'd be letting the other down.
I called a helpline for parents of multiples. "Tell me what I should do," I cried. "What are you most scared of?" "They're so young that it feels cruel to split them up, especially for Holly who doesn't want to be split." "Maybe," they said, "it would be better for Holly in the long run. They can't stay together forever. And it's not like she won't see her brother. He'll be in the classroom next door. They can play together at break-time."
The teachers were brilliant. Several discussions later, we decided to take the plunge. The worry was needless. Holly was happy in her new class and settled instantly. Indeed, out of his shadow, she began to flourish.
Fast-forward a year, and out of the blue a letter plopped on to our doormat. Having anticipated a house-move and uncertain we'd be in the catchment area of the primary we eventually sent the twins to, we'd put their names down for a private school as an insurance, and had forgotten all about it. The 7+ loomed – prospective parents and pupils were invited to an open day. I suggested to my husband that I might take Alexander to have a look.
"Why would you do that?" he asked.
Alexander was thriving at his school. He was excelling in literacy and maths and was well ahead of where he should be for a child his age. He devoured a book a day and was always searching for more homework. But there was a "but". In a mixed-ability class of 30 it's hard to focus on every child's needs, however great the teacher. At the private school, the class size would be smaller and the pupils all of a similar standard, allowing them to push ahead quicker. I knew that Alexander would relish the challenge. So we went to look. And Alexander liked what he saw. Science labs, sports fields, umpteen tennis courts, French lessons led entirely in French.
My husband tried to deter him. "You don't want to go there, do you?" "Yes, I do." "Why?" His answer was remarkably mature. "Because I like to learn." So we sat him for the 7+. And we didn't sit Holly. Not because she didn't stand a chance of getting in, but because she would be horrified by all the extra homework. She is a creative at heart, driven by art, drama and music, and we felt a turbo-charged environment would stifle her. We wanted the best for both of them, and to achieve that, we had to treat them as individuals.
I half wanted Alexander to not get in, so I could avoid the potential heartache. He did get in though, and a lot of soul-searching later, we decided to accept the place. Telling Holly was one of the hardest things I've ever had to do as a parent.
On the surface, sending one twin to a private school and the other to its state counterpart looks odd. A neighbour stops me in the street. "Is it true you're sending Alexander to the posh place?" Her expression resembles Prince Charles at his most quizzical.
"Yes," I admit.
"And leaving Holly where she is?"
Not for the first time, I find myself embarrassed into an outpouring about my decision, which tails off into a sort of apology. I walk away with faux confidence and a smile, but underneath, a whoosh of angst courses through my veins. And even now that term has started, the tension remains. Alexander loves his new school uniform. Holly wants one, too. Alexander raves about the "posh place". Holly now wants to go with him. The whoosh feels more like a tidal wave.
Genevieve King is a pseudonym
• Is it acceptable to send just one child in a family to private school? Education.letters@guardian.co.uk
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Categories: Education
The dead cat bounce and other stock market favourites
Mon 6 Sep - 16:29The stock market can bring out some strange metaphors in people
In struggling to make sense of the stock market, people reach and stretch for metaphors. Sometimes they even contort, dislocate, and mangle. In 1995, Geoff P Smith of the University of Hong Kong made a grand unified effort to gather and classify those metaphors.
Smith congealed the metaphors and his thoughts into a monograph called How High Can a Dead Cat Bounce?: Metaphor and the Hong Kong Stock Market. It appeared in the journal Hong Kong Papers in Linguistics and Language Teaching.
Smith collected mostly from three sources: the South China Morning Post's business supplement, the Asian Wall Street Journal, and the Asia Business News television programme.
Here are verbatim snippets, which I present in the form of a mixed-metaphor story.
"Strong bears came out of the woods determined to drag the market down."
"The bears had their claws firmly dug in and were not letting go."
"Optimists saw the makings of a baby bull, but naysayers warned it could be a bum steer ... after last year's grizzly bear market."
"Speculators played a cat-and-mouse game with stocks."
"The stock remained a dog."
"Investors [ran] like a herd of startled gazelles."
"The market was very nervous."
"The market was having trouble focusing on issues."
"Sick dollar ... groggy dollar ... dollar cringes."
"The market was suffering vertigo."
"The market started to drift and lose direction."
"[The market] precariously balanced on the 10,050 mark."
"The index hovered."
"[The market was] losing its footing."
"The index fell off the cliff."
"The Hang Seng Index dropped like a brick." (This one's a simile. I know, I know.)
"[The] index continued its tailspin."
"The market seemed to have come out of its freefall."
"Stock prices took a rollercoaster ride and ended up in the subway."
"The bounce was more technical than substantial."
"Those hoping for a big rebound to catapult it out of this bear trap would probably be disappointed."
"The question every trader will be asking himself this week is: just how high can a dead cat bounce?"
Surveying the hodgepodge of stock phrases and market-driving hype, Smith sighs: "Rarely do commentators say 'These events are totally unpredictable; I haven't the slightest idea what caused them to occur.'"
The possibility flaunts itself that no one quite understands what the stock market's doing. If that's the case, everyone's unlikely to come up with metaphors that truly fit. But that won't stop them from trying. Smith tells why, at the end of his report:
"A group with a significant stake in the maintenance of an impression of certainty are the financial 'gurus' whose words and actions can have profound effects on the way markets move ... To a lesser extent, a host of commentators, analysts and advisers benefit from the illusion that market events are controlled and rational and can be explained and predicted."
• Marc Abrahams is editor of the bimonthly Annals of Improbable Research and founder of the Ig Nobel prize
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Categories: Education
Video: Michael Gove 'inspired' by new free schools
Mon 6 Sep - 14:54Education secretary hails first 16 free schools, and promises teachers more freedom and 'sharper focus on underperforming primary schools'
Categories: Education
Half of first batch of free schools to have religious ethos
Mon 6 Sep - 13:29Education secretary Michael Gove has announced the first 16 free schools, which will be set up as early as next September
Almost half the first generation of new schools created by parents, teachers and charities will have a religious ethos, it was revealed today.
The education secretary, Michael Gove, announced the first 16 free schools, which will be set up as early as next September.
Two are Jewish, one is Sikh, one Hindu, one Church of England and two others will have a "Christian ethos".
Several do not yet have buildings, but others have found a church hall or temporary premises in existing schools. One will be based in a library on a council estate in west London.
The schools are in Bedford, Slough, West Sussex, Norfolk, north London, Leicester, Bradford, Suffolk and other areas.
Free schools – an idea taken from the US and Sweden – are one of the flagship Tory plans for education.
Parents and teachers are behind several of the schools, while charities are behind another, the Rivendale free school in Shepherd's Bush, west London.
The government rushed legislation through parliament before MPs' summer break to ensure that the free schools could be established as quickly as possible.
Labour accused Gove of presiding over a "chaotic shambles" after it emerged that only 16 free schools are on track to open next September.
In June, the education secretary hinted that 700 could be established. However, he said today that he was "flattered" by how many groups had applied to set up free schools.
"All of these proposals have been driven by demand from local people for improved choice for their young people," he added. "I am delighted that so many promising proposals have come forward at such an early stage."
The groups must now publish a business plan.
Jessica Shepherdguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Categories: Education
Ex-head jailed for 21 years for abuse
Mon 6 Sep - 13:25Paedophile Derek Slade ordered boarding school pupils to write about 'whackings I have had'
A former boarding school headmaster who sexually and physically abused boys during the late 1970s and early 1980s was today jailed for 21 years.
Derek Slade, 61, of Burton-on-Trent, Staffordshire, was found guilty of sexually assaulting and beating 12 boys aged between eight and 13 following a four-week trial at Ipswich crown court. He was convicted of more than 50 offences, including possessing pornographic images of children on a computer.
The judge, Peter Fenn, recommended that Slade serve at least 14 years before being released on parole and ordered him to pay £30,000 towards prosecution costs. He said Slade's victims – who were abused between 1978 and 1983 – had "lost days of childhood innocence", been left with feelings of inadequacy, blame and worthlessness, and had become men whose "lives were seriously damaged".
Jurors heard that Slade ran St George's private school, which was initially based in Wicklewood, Norfolk, then moved to Great Finborough, Suffolk, in 1980.
Prosecutors said Slade meted out "brutal" beatings, hitting boys with a slipper, a table tennis bat and his bare hand. He also ordered youngsters to write about "whackings I have had" and gave "kickings" to boys who upset him.
Boys had also been used as waiters at private dinners, then "chosen" by Slade and his guests, jurors were told.
The court heard that most pupils were the sons of service personnel and that pupil numbers rose from about 20 in 1978, when Slade and colleagues opened the school, to 350 in 1983, when Slade left.
Slade was arrested after former pupils complained two years ago. One victim said he had never told his parents what had happened. Another described Slade's assaults as "reigns of terror". Several victims were in court for the sentencing. Some wept and one applauded as Slade was led away. One victim said afterwards the sentence was "good enough".
Slade admitted assault, indecent assault and child pornography offences. He denied other allegations of assault and indecent assault but was found guilty after a month-long trial. He also admitted being a paedophile and told jurors there was a sexual motive behind the corporal punishment. However, he denied more serious sexual assaults, including prosecution allegations he hosted "midnight feasts" after which boys would be abused.
The court heard St George's had been in the spotlight in 1982 when the BBC Radio 4 Checkpoint programme reported on its harsh regime. School inspectors had investigated and made some criticisms but had not substantiated the BBC's allegations.
Speaking after the hearing, Detective Inspector Adrian Randall, who led the inquiry, said: "While Slade may have committed these offences 30 years ago, for the victims their pain remains very real. I cannot begin to imagine how difficult it must have been for these men to come forward and try to make sense of what happened to them decades ago as defenceless young boys."
Randall said about a dozen officers had spent 18 months investigating the allegations. Sources said after the hearing that investigations were continuing and the "chapter was not closed."
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Categories: Education
Peer review is no picnic | Jenny Rohn
Mon 6 Sep - 12:37Anyone who thinks peer review is a process of nudges and winks from your mates has never faced the harsh reality of having your work pulled apart, says Jenny Rohn (who has)
Jenny writes the Mind The Gap blog
While commuting into the lab the other day, I couldn't help overhearing an animated discussion between two men across the train carriage from me. From context, I pieced together that they were talking about climate science.
"The thing about these scientists," said the first guy, with a distasteful emphasis on the last word, "is that they get loads of grant money, so they just make stuff up that makes their research look good. They don't really care about the truth."
"They can't be objective," the second guy agreed. "It's all driven by money these days."
"It sounds more serious if they pretend that the ice caps are melting," said the first guy. "Then they're more likely to get more grants to make up more stuff the next time."
Many years of practice on public transport have taught me how to keep a straight face – and a firmly clenched jaw – when hearing utter poppycock in progress. But I still find it distressing when people bad-mouth my profession. This little exchange may not represent the views of your average person, but it is not the first time I've heard such an accusation. Even mainstream British journalists have been known to imply that scientists are motivated more by money than the truth.
Such disparaging claims are doubly infuriating considering the immense effort that most scientists employ to prevent themselves from being falsely swayed. Take peer review as a prime example. Far from being "largely hokum", or a biased perusal by a crony, liable to nudge-wink away any inaccuracies, a referee report can be about the harshest criticism you will ever face. Believe me, I've seen some that make a drubbing on RottenTomatoes.com look like a gushing five-star review. My friends and I like to collect amusing referee put-downs, and our list includes phrases such as "incredibly lame", "utterly puerile" and (my favourite) "What are these guys smoking?"
If even the remotest soft white underbelly exists in your research, peer reviewers will home in on it unerringly and make you fix it. And if you don't fix it to the journal editor's satisfaction, your paper will not see the light of day.
Although the safety of anonymity probably encourages the nastiness of some peer reviewers, punches don't get pulled much in the flesh, either. After the very first talk I ever gave at an international symposium, one of the field's worthies rose to his feet in the hushed auditorium and proclaimed, with a scathing sneer, that my theory was completely misguided. I was too shocked to make the reasoned rebuttal that I could easily manage today, and too innocent to realise that the man's chief objection stemmed from the threat that my (ultimately true) findings cast on his own work. Since then, I have seen many colleagues skewered on the podium in their turn, and know that such friction – whether misguided or spot-on – is all part of the process of polishing truths out of rough ore.
But the innate natural scepticism of scientists goes much deeper – and gets far more personal. Forget trying to dazzle my scientific critics – I'd be happy most days just managing to dazzle myself. So deeply steeped are we in thinking critically and sceptically that it can be hard to convince ourselves when our own research is – against all odds – actually going rather well. I myself have been battling with a recalcitrant theory for months now, about how cancer cells take up the shapes they do, and ultimately exploit this knack to migrate inappropriately around the body. The preliminary evidence was quite exciting, but with practised ease I managed to squelch any optimism when presenting it to my lab-mates in the weekly meeting. Similarly trained, my colleagues didn't even raise a collective eyebrow at the enticing result, instead peppering me with a fusillade of counter-arguments and potential fatal flaws that I'd need to rule out.
So back I trudged to the lab, convinced it would all come to nothing but determined to see it through nonetheless. I won't bore you with the twists and turns. Suffice it to say that I mashed up my cancer cells, stained them, poked and prodded them, gazed at them endlessly under the microscope, perturbed their genomes six ways from Sunday, week in and week out. The enticing result kept coming through in a faint shimmer, much like the sun on an overcast December afternoon in London: you sense it's there but you can't quite make out its outline.
Until one day – just last week – I performed the definitive experiment, looked through the microscope and felt an almost visceral clicking into place: my theory appeared to be true.
And I almost fell off my stool in surprise, so primed had I been to expect failure. You couldn't really call it a eureka moment: modern molecular biology doesn't tend to move in paradigm shifts. Every finding is incremental and bitty in the grand scale of biological complexity, and we scientists are but tiny cogs in a vast, global knowledge machine.
So let's call it a eurekalette. At any rate, I've been walking around with a little spring in my step ever since, and am looking forward to pulling it all together in the manuscript I'm writing.
So the next time you hear someone asserting that scientists aren't critical, of their own work or that of their colleagues, remember that if a finding has made its way into a reputable journal, it's most likely despite every last objection that the researcher and all of his lab-mates could come up with – to say nothing of those nasty peer reviewers.
Bless 'em.
Jenny Rohn is a research fellow at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Cell Biology at University College London and writes a regular blog at Mind The Gap
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Categories: Education
The books that send me back to school
Mon 6 Sep - 10:15It's the start of another school year and I'm dreaming of new pencil cases, satchels and the books I read in class. But what are the books you remember from your own school days?
Fourteen years after I finished school, there's still something about September which feels like the start of the year, and I'm nostalgic this morning for new pencils and felt tips, satchels and packed lunches. As the hope of the nation barrels back into classrooms, I'm also thinking back to the books I read in school.
I was away last weekend and talking about how we all read William Golding's Lord of the Flies (and no, the weekend wasn't that bad, it's just that one of my friends is currently making her way through his complete works, to settle a bet). I was 14, and I think there couldn't have been a more perfect book to pick for kids of that age – if you're not going to be hooked by Ralph and Piggy and Simon and Jack, and "kill the pig, cut his throat, spill his blood", then you're not going to be hooked by anything. This was the edition we had – just looking at it casts me back to yellow highlighters and doodling and the horrors of reading aloud.
Anyway, the shocking gloriousness of Lord of the Flies made me hungry for more Golding. Our school library was pretty small, but it did, impressively, have a copy of Pincher Martin. I am quite sure I failed to get any allegorical, existential meaning from the book, but it successfully terrified me, burning an image of Martin clinging to his lonely rock into my brain. In typically disorganised fashion, I promptly lost the book for about a month and was subsequently banned from the school library for giving it back so late – obviously as a sop to all those Golding fans clamouring for more of his work.
Golding and my thieving tendencies aside, Jane Eyre bored me, King Lear enthralled me, and I described Romeo and Juliet in my mock GSCE as a novel – so something clearly went wrong there (thankfully I'd got the right end of the stick by the time the real thing came around). But the other book which really stands out in my memory from schooldays is Wuthering Heights. I was on to A-levels by then, but for some reason we were still going through the purgatory of reading (droning) aloud in class – possibly one of the best ways to make a group of teenagers lose interest in a novel. I was lazy, more interested in messing around than working, but I was so caught up in the melodramas of Cathy and Heathcliff ("Do not leave me in this abyss where I cannot find you! Oh God! It is unutterable! I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul!") that I'd be pages ahead when it came to my turn to read and would get in trouble for not concentrating. And I distinctly remember spending a break time racing to the end.
The rest of it, though, the years of English classes and essays, revising and exams, has largely faded into oblivion, which is rather worrying. But how about you? Indulge my nostalgia and tell me what you remember of your own literary school days.
Alison Floodguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Categories: Education
Gap years: Wasted youth?
Mon 6 Sep - 07:59Ever wondered what students really get up to on their gap years? A report from the Full Moon Party in Thailand
Up and down the beach, young western men are unzipping their shorts and peeing into the Gulf of Thailand. Behind them, under the light of the full moon, thousands more shirtless, shoeless Europeans are massed outside 14 beachside bars, their knees bending awkwardly to a soundtrack of the Black Eyed Peas, Justin Bieber and generic drum'n'bass. And squeezed between the bars and the crowds are 35 wooden stalls, each selling plastic buckets filled with a litre's worth of vodka and Red Bull. The stalls are daubed with deeply dubious slogans, ranging from the lurid to the the moronic. "No Bucket No Boom Boom", "Fuck My Buckets", "Everybody Fuck My Strong Buckets" – that kind of thing.
Welcome to the Full Moon Party, the largest beach rave in the world. Twenty-five years ago, this was a little-known hippy hang-out on the remote Thai island of Koh Phangan. Today, frequented every month by between 10,000 and 30,000 European youngsters, the all-night party is the ultimate destination on south-east Asia's "banana pancake" trail; a mecca for footloose gap-year tourists. This party scene, right here on this beach, is arguably the epitome, the pinnacle, of the modern gap-year experience.
Three weeks ago, the chief executive of the universities and colleges admissions service (UCAS) declared to a Sunday newspaper that "the golden age of the gap year is over". Mary Curnock Cook argued that while in the past "a gap year has been when young people take a nice break and go out and see the world", the period should now "be used in a focused way to support an application to the course or university you are targeting". In a year when the number of university applications – a record 660,000 – has dwarfed the number of university places available – 450,000 – Curnock Cook may have a point.
But this is a point that has yet to trickle down, in practical terms, to the nation's school-leavers. In fact, the vast majority of gappers do not use their year-out in anything approaching a fashion that might – in the eyes of universities – be viewed as "constructive". Every year around 160,000 British school-leavers take a gap year before entering university. More than 80% of them, says Richard Oliver, chairman of trustees at Year Out, "just go off and travel independently without any real purpose. Sun, sand and sangria, as I call it." Indeed, the trend might even be away from the year of constructive good deeds that Curnock Cook might be thinking of – a trend towards increasingly mindless hedonism. Hans Hoefer is the founder of Insight travel books, and the man who co-ordinated one of the first guides to Thailand back in the 70s, when fewer tourists visited the entire country (150,000) than now visit Burma annually. These days "gappers" touring Koh Phangan and its surrounding islands are, says Hoefer, "not experiencing anything apart from tourism. It's an absolute joke. They don't want to understand the culture – they just want to binge. I don't understand why they go."
Attempting to understand why they go, however, why this is the modern gap-year experience, is exactly what brings me to the Full Moon Party, surrounded by scores of topless teenagers urinating into the ocean to the words of the Black Eyed Peas' "I gotta feeling/That tonight's gonna be a good night/That tonight's gonna be a good, good night." What exactly is the lure of this beach to teenagers who are, after all, meant to be Britain's brightest? I'm here to find out.
When gappers touch down in Bangkok, their first port-of-call is almost always the backpackers' ghetto on the Khao San Road. In The Beach, Alex Garland's 1996 novel about a young man's search for adventure in Thailand, Khao San is described as a decompression chamber between east and west. But when I arrive, it soon becomes clear that even this is a generous description; the Khao San Road actually doesn't feel like it's in Thailand at all. The street is crammed with bars showing premiership football; Britney Spears and Bob Dylan blare out of every speaker; hawkers selling European T-shirts jostle with those selling fake British ID cards. This April, 20 Thais were massacred in clashes between soldiers and anti-government redshirt protesters barely 100 metres from the Khao San Road. But it might as well have been 100 miles away: the Khao San's tourist festivities were barely disrupted. And when Alex, a well-travelled graphic designer from west London who "took several gap years", muses to me that "the Khao San just feels like home", he's spot on, though perhaps not in quite the way he intends: apart from the fat, bald westerners parading their suspiciously beautiful Thai girlfriends, the road could be a carbon copy of Camden High Street.
In years gone by, backpackers travelling onwards to the Full Moon Party might have briefly escaped this westernised gauntlet by taking the overnight train or bus down the coast to the ferry terminal of Surat Thani. Today, however, it's almost as cheap to take the plane down – and so this is what photographer Sean Smith and I end up doing. A couple of cramped ferry journeys bring us finally to Koh Phangan, and it isn't long before I'm talking to the cream of British gappers.
"You know what the worst thing about travelling is?" asks Londoner Jez, 19 years old, dressed in a vest, and approaching the end of his year out. He enlightens me: "TOURISTS." It's a slightly strange answer: we're sitting on the side of a dirt track near the centre of Had Rin, the main tourist town on Koh Phangan, and venue for tomorrow's Full Moon Party. Tourists are whizzing past every 30 seconds on mopeds belching out acrid fumes. Every second shop is an internet cafe packed with tourists checking Facebook. Every third shop is a travel agent's filled with tourists plotting their next move. It's an odd place to visit if you don't like tourists. And particularly if you yourself are one.
But Jez – a warm, welcoming guy – doesn't think of himself as a tourist: he's a backpacker. "Most of the people here are backpackers," he insists. "Backpackers are infinitely different to tourists. Backpackers will accept anyone. Whereas tourists are the kind of people who back home would end up in fights. But backpackers have no interest in fighting anyone, do they?"
Jez directs this question at Pete, an even friendlier backpacker whom he met a few months ago in Vietnam. Pete, earringed and also wearing a vest, is 23, British and on a different kind of gap year; he's been given a year's leave of absence from the army. For most of his time off, he has been working as a promoter for a bar in Vang Vieng, Laos, but he's back in Had Rin for one last Full Moon Party.
Pete couldn't agree more with Jez. "Yup," he says. "Tourists are the people who spend their time fighting here. Tourists are people who go on holiday for two weeks." He pauses, then adds: "So if you can, put in the Guardian, somehow, that this is not a place where you can go for two weeks. This is a place for backpackers. Tourists may pay more money, but they're fucking idiots."
Pete's not sure I've got the message, so he leans in once more. "Where I work in Vang Vieng, I saw these two tourist girls with handbags, wearing skirts and dresses. But in Vang Vieng you should be wearing a bikini, and nothing else. So I said to them, 'You girls are a fucking disgrace, get the fuck out of here.' And my job is to get people into a bar! So I've ruined the chance of those people coming into my bar. But that's how much backpackers hate tourists."
In The Beach, Richard, the protagonist, is told that "Hat Rin's [sic] a long way past its sell-by date. They sell printed flyers for the full-moon parties now." And that was 14 years ago. But to Jez, even in 2010, the town is still sacred. "I just fucking love this place," he says, "because it just sums up everything about youth. Ten thousand people condensed into one area where they can do every single thing they want to, without any regrets. Back home, you get really shit-faced and there are repercussions. Out here you can do what you want. It's somewhere like Ibiza before it turned shit. It's way cheaper, too."
And, of course, there are the backpackers. "As most of the people here are backpackers," Jez re-explains, "you'll be walking along and you'll see someone you know. And then you'll see them again and again. All the people you've met while you're travelling will be here. It's just awesome."
The drugs are also a big draw. These guys know exactly which pharmacies sell speed – and what to ask for when they're at the counter. They know where to go to buy weed, and can name the three bars in town that list magic mushroom milkshakes on the menu.
Sounds fun, I say, but if everything here is all so western and familiar – and if they're spending most of the week off their heads – are they really experiencing Thailand? Pete is brutally frank. "This isn't a Thai experience," he admits, instantly. "This is a party experience. Chiang Mai and Bangkok, you get a Thai experience. Koh Phangan is a party place." Jez agrees, but is quick to emphasise that, for them, the "party experience" is a supplement to, and not a replacement of, the "Thai experience".
"We've gone through the Thai experience," Jez clarifies. "We've seen it, we've done it. So for us this is just a nice way to cap it off and celebrate what we've achieved, all that we've been through. A lot of people just see the Khao San Road and here – and they're tourists. They're not travellers. They're not going to learn anything here about Thai culture. Whereas going to places like Chiang Mai, you just learn so much about their culture of respect, and the emphasis they place on those . . . those aspects."
Jez and Pete are having a "shroom" session with some of their many backpacker friends that evening, and, true to their backpacker philosophy, they invite me along. And so, a few hours later, we rendezvous once more in a bar built high above Sunrise Beach (where, in 24 hours, the Full Moon Party will take place) – a bar nicknamed, for reasons which soon become apparent, Mushroom Mountain. Turnout is lower than expected; Jez and Pete are joined only by two second-year medical students from Nottingham – Hailey, who took a gap year, and Laura, who didn't.
When I raise Curnock Cook's comments, I get: "That is one of the stupidest things I've ever heard," from Jez, who will start at Newcastle this autumn, studying philosophy. "Taking a gap year was probably the best decision I've ever made. It's taught me more than 18 years in school ever did. I could write you an essay on Shakespeare or tell you the strengths and weaknesses of Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, but at the end of the day that means fuck all in the real world, unless you go out and experience it. And fair enough, Koh Phangan isn't really the real world, but it's still an experience.
"I met a guy three days ago who'd done five tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, and he was telling me that during a Full Moon Party in 2008, he'd had to pull two Swedish girls who'd washed up, dead, out of the sea. To meet people like that, to see the lives that people go through, to escape the private-school bubble that a lot of kids end up in, it really opens your eyes to stuff. Shows you how life isn't just about getting good A-level results, getting a good degree and a good job."
Hailey's gap-year experiences were slightly different to Jez's. She didn't go travelling at all, she says, but spent the entire period working in a hospital in order to enhance her application to medical school; a perfect exemplar of the kind of gap year favoured by Curnock Cook. In many ways, though, she wishes she'd chosen a more relaxed path. "I don't know if I should say this," she starts, pauses, then continues: "I was in a verbally abusive relationship for three years, which meant I had no self-confidence. And I turned into a bit of a slut on my gap year because I was really messed up in the head. And then I went to uni, and I thought, 'I don't want to be either of those people I've been, I want to be someone else.' So then I sort of had three personalities. But coming out here on my own, having to go over and talk to people, having to be nice, not an asshole . . . It's been great. It teaches you how to socialise properly. It makes you so much more confident. Coming out here, travelling on your own . . ." She trails off, and then hurriedly starts again: "If I'd done the whole travelling on my own thing in my gap year, I would have been slightly less messed up at uni."
I'd been warned that as Full Moon night grew messier, the beach's toilets would be rammed full of lady-boys at work, their feet three-inches-deep in urine. Old hands predicted that when the sun rose the following morning, the sand would be carpeted with couples rolling around on a terrine of broken bottles, cups, buckets, straws, pills, lost flip-flops and unconscious drunks. This isn't quite how it happens on this full moon though. Certainly, the music is crap, and there are sordid aspects – the bucket stalls; the odd party-goer collapsing to the floor; one man vomiting into the sea beside that long line of urinators. But, despite being sober and solo, I find the atmosphere surprisingly euphoric, and my overall memories are of smiling dancers whose moves became more liberated as the night rolled into morning.
One such happy chappy is Francesco, a 19-year-old gapper from Bournemouth whom I encounter near a giant fiery skipping rope. "Mate," he says cheerily, "throw away that notebook, get a bucket, and just get TRASHED." Francesco would probably be described by official backpackers as a tourist – not that Francesco himself would mind. "There's different ways of travelling," he says. "This is about getting smashed. Getting in the buckets of Chang" – a local beer – "and just going for it. Back home, you walk in a pub, you get ID'd. Out here, you just lose the plot."
Working-class Francesco comes from the opposite end of the gap-year spectrum to most gappers I meet. "I had to work night and day to get here," he says. "I went round all the hotels back home trying to get work. I ended up working seven days a week, in a call-centre by day, and a pub by night." For him, then, the Full Moon is a once in a lifetime event, and it's hard to begrudge him his utter elation at being here.
There is though one group who seem less enamoured with this event: the locals. Though the Full Moon might be the festival highlight of the year for most of the gappers, tourists and backpackers on the beach, for the Thais that run it – and clean up after it – the party must seem like a monotonous, monthly chore. As Charlie Cassidy, a tall, bald expat who has lived in Hat Rin for the past decade, explains, "The locals don't actually go to the Full Moon. We go to the after-party up the hill the following morning. The Full Moon's just for the kiddies."
At four in the morning, I visit The Rock, a bar perched high above the sand at the opposite end of the beach to Mushroom Mountain. At the back, staring out over the partying crowds below, stands the long-haired Sutti Kuasurkul. Sutti's the man who opened Had Rin's first backpacker accommodation in the mid-80s – the Paradise Bungalows next door – and who, legend has it, organised the first Full Moon party shortly afterwards. But rather than smiling proudly at the institution he inspired, Sutti merely looks on forlornly, face motionless, eyes dulled. Would he mind answering a few questions about the origins of the party, I ask him? He shakes his head. Maybe tomorrow, or the next day, he says, before disappearing downstairs.
"Sutti doesn't really like talking about the party," explains Charlie. "For him, the Full Moon's just some farewell party he held for an Aussie mate back in the 80s, which just happened to catch on." Sutti, it seems, isn't too enamoured with what the party's become. "Sutti?" asks Charlie, rhetorically. "He'd rather be fishing."
Fifty metres away, in the DJ's booth at Paradise Bungalows, sits Burmese immigrant DJ Shine – or just plain Shane to his friends. Shane's 25 and he's lived in Had Rin since he was 16. This, then, is roughly his 50th Full Moon as a DJ, and his 100th overall. And Shane's bored – bored with playing the same electro-house on the same broken CDJ to the same crowds. He speaks perfect English, complete with a cockney accent, but he's never been to Britain, never visited the British friends he's made during his time on the island. And so, as he plays mix after mix after mix, month after month after month, Shane stares out at the thousands of Europeans who will soon be flying home, and wishes he could one day go with them. "But," he says, "I just can't afford it."
Up and down the beach, young western men are still unzipping their shorts and peeing into the Gulf of Thailand. Though I never took a gap year, never took the chance to either let my hair down like this, or do something more constructive, nothing that I've heard or seen here makes me want to join them.
Some names and details have been changed.
For more on travel gap years, go to
www.guardian.co.uk/travel/gap-year-travel
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Categories: Education
Letters: Pride and prejudice in state school choices
Mon 6 Sep - 00:05Please, no more articles about middle-class "panic" and secondary schools (Can't do God, can't pay fees … so what next?, Family, 4 September). The panic and fear doesn't help. Like the writer of the piece, Andrew Penman, I faced finding a secondary school in Merton for my son. I considered church schools but, for me, that would have been lying. I tutored my son for the grammar schools but the odds of 10/1 aren't great, even for bright boys. Private schools are too expensive. However, I held firm and my son is attending Rutlish school, the same school that sent Mr Penman running. Guess what? My son has been at Rutlish for a year, is very happy and learning well. Good behaviour and good results are expected (this summer's GCSE results are now 10% above the national average at A*-C). Positive stories about schools with pupils of mixed ability, social and racial diversity will do more for state education, our children and our society as a whole than more pages of cynical parents, running scared.
Christina Strupinska Brown
London
• While one sympathises with Andrew Penman and his struggle to find a secondary school for his son, surely the answer is not to up sticks but to get involved at his local senior school from day one – to join the PTA, to participate, to speak to teachers, to be as supportive as possible. Schools value concerned parents like Mr Penman (although his faking of religious belief for a primary school place is despicable). No school can do it all themselves. The best schools are a partnership between the school and the local community.
Roger Tagholm
London
• Andrew Penman could have saved himself and his family "three years of confusion and distress", not to mention vast sums of money, if he had been a little more open-minded. Andrew acknowledges that "there was a very good school in Tooting, but Tooting has had a couple too many murders for my tastes". Well, I've lived a few minutes' walk from the school in question for 30 years and my children, both now through university and out the other side, were educated there. None of us has been murdered. Nor have we murdered anyone.
Jean Ettridge
London
• In your informative article about the Heygate estate's use as a film set (Blowing more than the doors off – end of film-makers' favourite estate, 4 September) you incorrectly say that the estate had a "reputation for violence". My family lived there for 30 years and it wasn't a violent place to grow up – its a reputation that's largely been acquired by its use as a film set. The article might also have spared a line to ask why the estate is now empty, if it was formerly home to a "thriving community", and where that community has gone to? The answer is to other council houses not much better, or worse, than the ones on the Heygate – Southwark council reneged on its promise to build new ones.
Jerry Flynn
London
• The research from the Institute of Education and Bristol University regarding Brighton and Hove's much lauded system of secondary admissions is an important case study (Middle-class pupils still winners despite admissions lottery, 3 September). It provides clear evidence that lotteries are no panacea for social injustice in school admissions.
My own research has also shown a significant concentration of children eligible for free school meals within schools catering for the city's most deprived areas. As further cohorts move to secondary school, it appears likely that the gap between schools serving poorer areas and those in more affluent parts of the city will widen further. As the latest report suggests, children eligible for free school meals "were 'slightly' more likely to be at school with other pupils on free school meals under Brighton's lottery system than under the previous system". With the fixed catchments taking their toll year on year, even "slight" increases in social segregation have the potential to become increasingly significant.
As this new research highlights, random allocation may yet offer some potential for addressing increasing segregation. However, this can only be achieved if it is combined with other methods such as fair banding or more socially inclusive catchments, thereby facilitating more balanced intakes. Otherwise lotteries may be little more than a figleaf of social justice for local authorities, while social segregation increases as a result of other system features.
Keith Turvey
Senior lecturer, University of Brighton
• Your article concludes, rightly, with a reference to the decline in foreign language study (Social class affects white pupils' exam results, 3 September). The current threat to language-learning risks widening the social divide still further: there is a danger that the social confidence and career advantages which bilingualism bring will be restricted to children whose parents actively support or finance their languages education. This discrimination would represent a return to the years when languages were studied exclusively in independent and grammar schools.
Recent progress in introducing language diversity in primary schools is now at risk. Poorer white monolingual pupils and bilingual pupils from minority ethnic groups are all set to lose out if language-learning is not made part of the compulsory curriculum. Enthusiastic teachers have worked hard to develop young children's language skills and research has identified gains in overall literacy development where pupils have access to more than one language. Should this initiative fail through lack of support, the poor will get poorer – and the social advantages of linguistic competence will remain with the rich.
Anne Feltham
Brighton
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Categories: Education
One overseas student in five overstays in UK, Home Office report shows
Mon 6 Sep - 00:05A fifth of the international students who come to Britain to study remain after their visas expire
One international student in five remains in the UK after their initial visa has expired, according to Home Office research published today.
The study reveals that almost 40,000 of those who arrived on an overseas student visa in 2004 remained in Britain last year. Damian Green, the immigration minister, who is reviewing student visas, said he would be looking hard at the "very high numbers" of international students who remain, as part of government's plan to introduce an immigration cap.
"The limits we've already set among those on work visas are necessary but not sufficient. We need to look at other routes," Green said.
"We can see that 186,000 [international students] came in in 2004 and by 2009 more than 20% of them were still here. Student numbers have risen fast. In the year to June 2010, 300,000 visas were issued to students and their dependents.
"If a fifth of those are still here in five years' time, they are very high numbers."
The Home Office report, A Migrant's Journey, says that those who remained in 2009 were going on to further study or granted leave to remain because of work or for family reasons, such as marriage.
Green said his department had also discovered that, overseas students being granted visas, "half do not fit with everyone's image of the hard-working student in higher education … People think that they are the very brightest and the best, but we have discovered that only half are studying degree-level courses. Half are coming to study sub-degree courses. There are questions to be asked about whether the student route is just for the brightest and the best and whether this is the best use of our training system."
There were 281,000 non-EU students approved to study at educational establishments licensed by the UK Border Agency last year. The Home Office has estimated that 150,000 were at degree level and above, mostly at universities, while 131,000 were at sub-degree level, mostly at privately funded institutions.
Ministers, including the education secretary, Michael Gove, higher education minister, David Willetts, and the Lib Dem business secretary, Vince Cable, have warned that too rigid a formula for the cap could undermine vital income for some higher education institutions.
Yesterday, Hina Majid, policy director of the charity the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, warned: "Reducing opportunities for international study in the UK at a point in time when the current government is proposing to slash public expenditure on education, and kick-start a recovery fuelled by the private sector could have serious implications for many public and private educational establishments in the United Kingdom."
Karen McVeighguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Categories: Education
Tax 'would prompt graduates to leave'
Mon 6 Sep - 00:05Business leaders believe tens of thousands would emigrate to avoid being charged for degree according to salary
Tens of thousands of the UK's best graduates would emigrate if ministers went ahead with plans to charge university leavers for their degrees according to how much they earned, business leaders warn today.
The Confederation of British Industry said it was alarmed by the idea of a graduate tax, suggested by Vince Cable, the business secretary.
The government currently lends students money to cover the cost of their degrees. Graduates pay this back once they earn above £15,000 a year. They pay the same amount regardless of how much they earn, but those on high wages pay back quicker than those on low salaries.
Under a graduate tax, students who end up highly paid would be likely to pay far more for their degrees than they do now and prop up those went into low-paid jobs.
Richard Lambert, director-general of the CBI, said business leaders had decided a graduate tax would create more problems than it solved.
The CBI's higher education taskforce includes the president of McDonald's, the managing director of Microsoft UK and the chairman of Shell UK. The taskforce concluded that "the risks are great for a graduate tax", Lambert said. "If we had [this tax], UK students would have an incentive to work overseas to escape paying, especially when the top rate of tax is 50%," he said. "And how would you get EU students to pay for their degrees?"
Under a graduate tax, the government would pay fees directly to the universities instead of lending money to students to cover the cost of their studies. This, Lambert said, would "weaken the incentives for universities to sharpen up their act". He added: "A graduate tax would undermine universities' autonomy – part of what makes them great. It would just become another stealth tax."
The CBI taskforce recommends that the government continues to lend students money to cover the cost of degrees and graduates pay this back once they earn more than £15,000.
Lambert would not be drawn over whether fees – currently £3,290 a year – should rise. But the government could charge students a higher rate of interest, he suggested. At the moment they charge a near zero interest rate on their loans.
Ultimately, "we get a good bang for our buck", Lambert said. "Something like the present system, adjusted somewhat, would be the best way forward."
A review of student finance by Lord Browne has been tasked with finding a way to cut the public cost of funding students through university without curbing access to degree courses for the poor.
The review will be published just before the comprehensive spending review, which is expected to recommend dramatic cuts to public spending.
- University funding
- Higher education
- Confederation of British Industry (CBI)
- Vince Cable
- Tax and spending
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Categories: Education
