Education Articles
School meals 'help fussy eaters' 
BBC - Wed, 01 Sep 2010 23:15:47 GMT
School lunches can tempt fussy eaters to try new foods, a survey carried out in England for the School Food Trust suggests.
Ellen MacArthur's global ambition
BBC - Wed, 01 Sep 2010 23:15:20 GMT
Yachtswoman Ellen MacArthur has set herself a new challenge - creating an educational foundation to promote sustainability.
Shoesmith given leave to appeal
BBC - Wed, 01 Sep 2010 17:15:40 GMT
Sharon Shoesmith is given leave to appeal over her sacking as the head of children's services at Haringey Council after the death of Baby Peter.
One in nine schools 'half empty'
BBC - Thu, 02 Sep 2010 11:41:20 GMT
Figures obtained by the BBC suggest that in one in nine Scottish primary schools at least 60% of places are unfilled.
First wave of new-style academies
BBC - Wed, 01 Sep 2010 16:56:46 GMT
Teachers' unions are branding the government's relaunch of academies in England as a "failure", with about 30 expected this term.
Imperial College expands overseas
BBC - Wed, 01 Sep 2010 14:27:44 GMT
Imperial College is going to open its first branch outside the UK - a medical school in Singapore, run in partnership with a local university.
Higher student loan rates begin
BBC - Wed, 01 Sep 2010 13:42:00 GMT
Millions of graduates will now start paying interest on their student loans again as new interest rates come into effect.
School gender views 'start early'
BBC - Wed, 01 Sep 2010 11:20:11 GMT
Girls believe they are cleverer, better behaved and try harder than boys from as early as the age of four, research suggests.
Disabled are 'socially excluded'
BBC - Tue, 31 Aug 2010 23:03:30 GMT
Most people in Britain do not meet disabled people either in their social or working lives, suggests a survey.
Inquiry into exam marking errors
BBC - Tue, 31 Aug 2010 16:41:16 GMT
Northern Ireland's Education Minister Caitriona Ruane launches an investigation into how incorrect grades were sent to chemistry A-level students.
GCSE triumphs: Whizz kids and athletes
BBC - Tue, 24 Aug 2010 15:58:30 GMT
Across England, Wales and Northern Ireland thousands of pupils are celebrating and commiserating with each other after receiving their results for their GCSE exams.
GCSE pupils score record results
BBC - Tue, 24 Aug 2010 12:53:45 GMT
Teenagers score another GCSE record with almost seven out of 10 exams awarded a C grade or above, as separate science entries rise.
'One in four' students unplaced
BBC - Mon, 23 Aug 2010 12:26:36 GMT
The latest figures show that currently more than a quarter of UK university applicants are unplaced.
Did the new A* make the grade?
BBC - Fri, 20 Aug 2010 23:24:49 GMT
Did the new A-level grade do what it said on the tin?
The bright pupils shunning university
BBC - Thu, 19 Aug 2010 00:16:02 GMT
The bright, young things shunning university
No university place...? Go Dutch
BBC - Wed, 18 Aug 2010 18:26:09 GMT
With UK students facing a tough battle for places at home, universities in the Netherlands are promoting themselves as an alternative - and still have spaces left for this year, reports the BBC's Jonty Bloom.
A* boosts record A-level results
BBC - Thu, 19 Aug 2010 18:24:15 GMT
One in 12 A-level entries is awarded the new A* grade, as pupils attain record results.
Ditch the flute and get swotting, students told
BBC - Fri, 27 Aug 2010 10:59:28 GMT
Oxford's head of admissions tells candidates it wants the academically gifted, not 'second-rate historians' who play the flute.
Why has studying French lost its élan?
BBC - Fri, 27 Aug 2010 10:59:22 GMT
Is the big fall in the number of British school children studying French something to be concerned about?
After-school clubs 'too costly'
BBC - Sun, 29 Aug 2010 06:58:03 GMT
Nearly two-thirds of UK parents cannot afford after-school activities for their children, a poll for the Save the Children charity suggests.
Private schools score at A-level
BBC - Sat, 28 Aug 2010 00:28:54 GMT
Half the A-levels taken by pupils at independent schools in the UK were graded A or A* this year, figures from the sector suggest.
Watchdog vets alternative exams
BBC - Fri, 27 Aug 2010 16:25:11 GMT
England's exams watchdog Ofqual is to compare A-levels and GCSEs with alternative qualifications, including vocational equivalents.
Call for fairer school admissions
BBC - Fri, 27 Aug 2010 06:58:15 GMT
A children's charity calls for schools to take an equal share of the ability bands to help poorer pupils succeed.
Science GCSEs 'not tough enough'
BBC - Thu, 26 Aug 2010 23:44:28 GMT
The head of exams regulator Ofqual says this year's science GCSEs were not tough enough and there is inconsistency in standards between different boards.
Pupil affair teacher sent to jail
BBC - Fri, 27 Aug 2010 11:29:16 GMT
A married teacher who had sexual relationships with three teenage girls is jailed for nearly seven years.
Budget 'hits the poorest hardest'
BBC - Wed, 25 Aug 2010 11:46:13 GMT
The coalition government's Budget announced in June has hit the poorest families hardest, says an economic think tank.
Charity loses gay adoption appeal
BBC - Thu, 19 Aug 2010 06:34:33 GMT
The Charity Commission rejects an appeal by a Roman Catholic charity to allow it to discriminate against gay people seeking to adopt.
Warning over 'untracked' children
BBC - Tue, 17 Aug 2010 00:27:40 GMT
Some children are not being educated because local authorities are often unable to track youngsters who are not being taught, inspectors warn.
Hundreds of playgrounds scrapped
BBC - Wed, 11 Aug 2010 15:07:18 GMT
Hundreds of playground developments in England are being mothballed as the Department for Education cuts funding for them.
Adult drinking sparks child calls
BBC - Mon, 16 Aug 2010 09:07:02 GMT
More than 100 children a week are turning to the ChildLine helpline with worries about their parents' drinking or drug use, the NSPCC says.
Row over bus breastfeeding claims
BBC - Wed, 11 Aug 2010 14:08:05 GMT
A young mother says she was ordered off a Manchester bus because she was breastfeeding her baby.
'Sailing taught me sustainability'
BBC - Thu, 02 Sep 2010 14:20:28 GMT
Dame Ellen MacArthur tells how sailing around the world taught her how finite the planet is.
Parents on after-school activities
BBC - Sun, 29 Aug 2010 19:52:23 GMT
Nearly two-thirds of UK parents cannot afford after-school activities for their children, a Save the Children poll suggests.
Tour of new-style academy school
BBC - Wed, 01 Sep 2010 17:45:00 GMT
The first of 32 academies in England established under new legislation from the coalition government opened on Wednesday.
'One in four lap-dancers has a degree'
BBC - Sat, 28 Aug 2010 11:39:58 GMT
Lap-dance club owner Peter Stringfellow and university researcher Dr Belinda Brooks-Gordon discuss the findings of university research which reveals that one in four lap-dancers has a degree.
Group-think
BBC - Tue, 31 Aug 2010 23:57:23 GMT
Why do UK leaders all study for the same qualification?
Blast from the past
BBC - Wed, 25 Aug 2010 08:02:56 GMT
BBC Micros help train young student programmers
Young achievers
BBC - Tue, 24 Aug 2010 14:22:33 GMT
Why are more pupils taking GCSEs early?
GCSE trends explained
BBC - Wed, 25 Aug 2010 07:41:26 GMT
Single sciences and Polish are up, but French and ICT are down
Teen drift
BBC - Fri, 27 Aug 2010 09:13:23 GMT
A scheme aimed at stopping teenagers from becoming NEETS, could soon be abolished.
'Our nightmare'
BBC - Mon, 23 Aug 2010 00:01:25 GMT
A couple wrongly accused of hurting their child tell their story
Psychology soaring...
BBC - Fri, 20 Aug 2010 15:25:12 GMT
Subject trends and rising grades as A-levels change
Schools must earn poor pupil payment, charity tells Gove
Education Guardian - Thu, 02 Sep 2010 06:00:21 GMT
<div class="track"><img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.20.4/18310?ns=guardian&pageName=Schools+must+earn+poor+pupil+payment%2C+charity+tells+education+secretary+%3AArticle%3A1446371&ch=Education&c3=Guardian&c4=Education%2CSchools%2CPoverty+%28Society%29%2CAcademies+%28Education%29%2CUK+news&c5=Not+commercially+useful%2CEducation+Weekly+Education%2CCharities%2CSchools+Education&c6=Jeevan+Vasagar&c7=10-Sep-02&c8=1446371&c9=Article&c10=News&c11=Education&c13=&c25=&c30=content&h2=GU%2FEducation%2FSchools" width="1" height="1" /></div><p class="standfirst">Disadvantaged children would be expected to be given priority in order for schools to get incentive reward</p><p>Schools would be expected to give priority to poorer children when admitting new pupils and judged on the extent to which they narrow the gap between disadvantaged youngsters and their better-off classmates under plans submitted to government by an influential charity.</p><p>In proposals which are being studied closely by education secretary Michael Gove, the Sutton Trust has advised that only schools which agree to give priority to disadvantaged children should get the full benefit of the pupil premium, a new financial incentive to reward schools for accepting poorer pupils.</p><p>This funding should be set at £3,000 a child if it is to have an impact, the Sutton Trust's paper suggests.</p><p>Schools rated as outstanding by Ofsted should have poorer children automatically entered into their application process, the paper argues.</p><p>Ministers are expected to review the school admissions code in the coming weeks amid concern that schools have skewed intakes which do not reflect their neighbourhoods.</p><p>The best secondary schools in England take on average just 5% of pupils entitled to free school meals.</p><p>The Sutton Trust's paper also calls on government to ensure that academies and parent-led free schools declare how they will deploy resources from the pupil premium to benefit disadvantaged children.</p><p>As increasing numbers of schools opt out of local authority control, councils could find a new role monitoring the use of this funding, the charity suggests.</p><p>The Sutton Trust, which campaigns to improve social mobility and funds projects aimed at narrowing the gap between rich and poor in education, draws attention to concerns that the coalition's school reforms, by expanding academies and enabling parents to set up their own schools, "will lead to further social segregation among schools and hinder social mobility."</p><p>A spokesman for the Department for Education said: "This is a really interesting report that we will study in detail. We agree that the attainment gap in our schools is too wide and we need to ensure that children from poorer backgrounds enjoy far greater opportunities in life.</p><p>"That is why we are introducing a pupil premium so that extra funding is targeted at those deprived pupils that most need it, as well as reforming the admissions system to make it simpler and fairer for all."</p><p>Britain's biggest children's charity, Barnardo's, warned last week that impenetrable "clusters of privilege" are forming around the best state schools. Poorer families are losing out to better-off neighbours who move house or attend church to get a better education, Barnardo's said.</p><p>Proposals to make admissions fairer are being looked at as the government confirmed yesterday that more than 140 schools are expected to convert to academy status in the coming school year.</p><p>The schools, which are taking advantage of a new law allowing every school in England to opt out of council control, will take charge of their own admissions.</p><p>Some fear this will widen the gap between poorer families and their better-off neighbours. Gove said yesterday the reform would give head teachers more control over how schools are run.</p><p>"This will give heads more power to tackle disruptive children, to protect and reward teachers better, and to give children the specialist teaching they need."</p><p>Gove wrote to every primary, secondary and special school in England in May inviting them to apply for academy status as the government moved swiftly to pass a new law that enabled schools to convert.</p><p>The schools converting this year include the first primaries with academy status. Among them is Britain's biggest primary, Durand, in Brixton, south London.</p><p>Greg Martin, Executive Head of Durand Academy, said: "The freedom that academy status brings will allow us to deliver and develop a flexible curriculum to ensure that [our] children reach their full potential."</p><p>Meanwhile, business leaders will today call on the government to make it easier for the private sector to help run schools.</p><p>In a report published today, the CBI welcomed the expansion in the number of academies and plans to set up free schools.</p><p>The employers' group urged ministers to set out a clear strategy for business involvement in education. The CBI wants to see more federations of schools set up, in which good schools support struggling ones. These could be run by a business, the report suggests.</p><p>It also urged the government to broaden the range of organisations that can set up a free school. Currently, only parent and teachers' groups or charities are eligible.</p><p>Susan Anderson, CBI Director of Education and Skills, said: "Businesses have a key role to play in raising educational outcomes, not just by offering students work experience and career support, or acting as school governors, but also by bringing their vast, largely untapped, reservoir of experience to bear in advising, managing and partnering with schools."</p><div class="related" style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"><ul><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/schools">Schools</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/poverty">Poverty</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/academies">Academies</a></li></ul></div><div class="author"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/jeevanvasagar">Jeevan Vasagar</a></div><br/><div class="terms"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk">guardian.co.uk</a> © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our <a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds">More Feeds</a></div><p style="clear:both" /> <p><a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/7DEuqnlAGbVOiZlwQV0tRws001U/0/da"><img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/7DEuqnlAGbVOiZlwQV0tRws001U/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a><br/> <a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/7DEuqnlAGbVOiZlwQV0tRws001U/1/da"><img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/7DEuqnlAGbVOiZlwQV0tRws001U/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a></p>
142 schools to convert to academies this year
Education Guardian - Wed, 01 Sep 2010 09:32:02 GMT
<div class="track"><img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.20.4/51380?ns=guardian&pageName=140+schools+to+convert+to+academies+this+school+year%3AArticle%3A1445868&ch=Education&c3=GU.co.uk&c4=Academies+%28Education%29%2CSchools%2CEducation%2CPrimary+schools%2CSecondary+schools%2CEducation+policy%2CPolitics%2CMichael+Gove&c5=Not+commercially+useful%2CPolicy+Society%2CEducation+Weekly+Education%2CSchools+Education&c6=Jeevan+Vasagar&c7=10-Sep-01&c8=1445868&c9=Article&c10=News&c11=Education&c13=&c25=&c30=content&h2=GU%2FEducation%2FAcademies" width="1" height="1" /></div><p class="standfirst">In response to Michael Gove's education reforms, 32 schools will open as academies this month out of 2,000 that have expressed interest since May</p><p>Over 140 schools are expected to convert to academy status in the coming school year after the <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/jul/27/mps-pass-academies-bill" title="government passed a new law to allow every school">government passed a new law to allow every school</a> in England to opt out of local authority control.</p><p>A total of <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/sep/01/schools-converting-academies">32 are expected to open</a> as academies this month. It is understood that the majority of those opening are "outstanding" schools, or involved in federations with such schools.</p><p>Gove wrote to every primary, secondary and special school in England in May inviting them to apply for academy status while the coalition government moved swiftly to pass a new law to allow schools to take up the offer.</p><p><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/jul/19/michael-gove-schools-academies-plan" title="The speed at which the legislation moved">The speed at which the legislation moved through parliament</a> led to accusations that ministers rushed the reforms using a timetable usually reserved for emergency laws, such as anti-terror powers.</p><p>Official figures from the Department for Education will today show that six weeks after the legislation became law, only 32 schools have completed the process to open as academies this month, with 142 in total expected to convert over the coming academic year. More than 2,000 schools have <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2010/jul/19/academy-schools-list-applied" title="expressed an interest in becoming an academy">expressed an interest in becoming an academy</a>.</p><p>Announcing that every school could apply for the freedoms in May, Gove said academies could become "the norm" in England's education system, adding he anticipated a high take-up of his offer. He insisted it was down to individual schools to make the decision.</p><p>Schools rated "outstanding" by Ofsted were pre-approved, meaning that those under this category who applied immediately are the most likely to open as academies first.</p><p>A spokesman forGove said today: "This is part of Mr Gove's overall vision – that teachers and heads should control schools, not politicians and bureaucrats."</p><p>The announcement comes as children across the country prepare to return to school after the summer holidays.</p><p>Among the schools which have converted is Durand, Britain's biggest primary, in Brixton, south London. Jim Davies, chair of governors at Durand primary school, said: "For Durand, gaining academy status gives us freedom to develop and structure education tailored to our intake, supporting each and every child to reach their full potential.</p><p>"The Durand Academy will provide excellence in education for children from one of the most socially disadvantaged areas of the UK."</p><p>Chris Keates, general secretary of the NASUWT teaching union said there were concerns that schools had not properly consulted with staff, parents and their local community over decisions to convert.</p><p>She said: "However, despite the unacceptable tactics to seek to tempt schools into becoming academies and repeated claims by the secretary of state for education of widespread interest in academy status, only a handful of schools it seems will convert on 1 September."</p><p>The reason for "low take-up" is because the government has "misjudged the situation", Ms Keates said.</p><p>"Those promoting academy status are bankrupt of strong, persuasive arguments. Assertions of vast amounts of additional money for academies have proved to be gross exaggerations.</p><p>"The fact that on becoming an academy a school becomes a charitable company limited by guarantee sits uneasily with many governors and parents. The unseemly manner and speed with which the Academies Act was bludgeoned through parliament has left important points of detail unaddressed.</p><p>"But the killer blow is that there is no evidence to present that academy status is the key to raising standards."</p><div class="related" style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"><ul><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/academies">Academies</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/schools">Schools</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/primary-schools">Primary schools</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/secondary-schools">Secondary schools</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/education">Education policy</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/michaelgove">Michael Gove</a></li></ul></div><div class="author"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/jeevanvasagar">Jeevan Vasagar</a></div><br/><div class="terms"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk">guardian.co.uk</a> © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our <a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds">More Feeds</a></div><p style="clear:both" /> <p><a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/6dmgwFWRh7FVO1Rt8TH-wKhdyJk/0/da"><img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/6dmgwFWRh7FVO1Rt8TH-wKhdyJk/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a><br/> <a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/6dmgwFWRh7FVO1Rt8TH-wKhdyJk/1/da"><img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/6dmgwFWRh7FVO1Rt8TH-wKhdyJk/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a></p>
You can't judge the value of a degree course by the number of contact hours
Education Guardian - Wed, 01 Sep 2010 14:00:09 GMT
<div class="track"><img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.20.4/31697?ns=guardian&pageName=Arts+and+science+degrees+are+different+*+but+both+are+equally+valuable+%7C%3AArticle%3A1445903&ch=Comment+is+free&c3=GU.co.uk&c4=University+teaching%2CTuition+fees%2CHigher+education%2CScience%2CArts+%28Higher+education%29%2CUniversity+funding%2CEducation%2CLecturers&c5=Not+commercially+useful%2CEducation+Weekly+Education%2CHigher+Education&c6=Robert+Woolfson&c7=10-Sep-01&c8=1445903&c9=Article&c10=Comment&c11=Comment+is+free&c13=&c25=Comment+is+free&c30=content&h2=GU%2FComment+is+free%2Fblog%2FComment+is+free" width="1" height="1" /></div><p class="standfirst">Any student willing to engage will get good value for money</p><p>The <a href="http://hereview.independent.gov.uk/hereview/" title="Independent Review of Higher Education Funding and Student Finance">Browne review</a> into the funding of higher education has led to a debate on whether a university education provides value for money. In the last three months, there have been two comment pieces by arts students complaining about the <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/mortarboard/2010/jul/15/elite-universities-not-better-for-students" title="Guardian: Elite universities are better for students? I don't think so">"paucity of teaching"</a> within their degrees and suggesting that the <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/aug/28/non-science-students-tuition-contact-hours" title="Cif: Non-science students don't get much tuition for their money">disparity between arts and science contact hours</a> should be reflected in the fees.</p><p>I'm entering my third year of a chemistry degree at the University of Manchester and I would not be surprised if, as a result of the Browne review, science undergraduates are asked to pay considerably higher fees without any real debate about whether they actually get more value for money than arts students.</p><p>Last year, my fees "bought" between 15 and 20 contact hours a week. Eight hours of lectures, nine of labs, along with regular tutorials and workshops. I got the chemicals I needed to run my experiments, the support I needed to do them safely and the journal subscriptions necessary to place my experiments in context. So far so good.</p><p>And what experiments did I do? The same standard set of experiments that were performed last year and will be performed next year. That's not a complaint; learning the basic techniques is an essential part of any science degree. But it does preclude original thinking; all my assessments to date have involved "right" answers that can be logically deduced from the available knowledge.</p><p>By comparison arts students, if they are lucky, get six to eight hours of lectures, seminars and tutorials a week. Instead of labs and workshops, they get extensive reading lists: they are <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/aug/28/non-science-students-tuition-contact-hours" title="Guardian: Non-science students don't get much tuition for their money">"paying for the privilege of reading textbooks"</a>. So for three years and almost £10,000 in tuition fees, what do they really get?</p><p>Well, for one thing, they get a sounding board for their ideas. Once arts students have worked through their reading list, they're going to have ideas about what they've read and how these ideas fit into the grand scheme of things. At university, they get access to a knowledgeable faculty and, through discussions, can clarify and better express their ideas.</p><p>Their fees also pay for the supply and maintenance of the huge collection of books necessary to develop the required depth of knowledge – otherwise known as the library. It's a telling fact that at the main University of Manchester library, there is part of <a href="http://www.library.manchester.ac.uk/aboutus/librarysites/main/_files2/fileuploadmax10mb,136739,en.pdf" title="">one floor</a> devoted to science and nearly five wings devoted to the arts.</p><p>Another, more abstract, way of looking at value for money is by examining the skills learned through a degree. Again, arts students apparently don't get value for money. What do they learn? How to read a book? How to analyse a theme? Compare that to a science student who has potentially learned the basics of probing the nature of the universe.</p><p>Yet the majority of graduate <a href="http://www.bris.ac.uk/careers/grads/dept/sociology.asp" title="University of Bristol: What do Bristol Sociology graduates do? ">entry jobs</a> simply require a degree, irrelevant of specialisation, so there must be something valuable about an arts degree. All students are essentially taught the same skills; the ability to work self-sufficiently, a toolkit of problem-solving methods and the skills and confidence to apply it in unknown situations.</p><p>The more you put in to your degree the more you get out. Those who take the time to seek out lecturers and use all the resources their fees pay for get far higher value for money than those who simply cruise through. Also, whether you're studying 10th-century Norse poetry or the stereochemistry of heterocyclic molecules, degree-level study requires a stupendous amount of work to reach the standard required.</p><p>Arts and science degrees are different but equal, and equally valuable. So please, stop demonising science students because we spend more time in labs and less time in the library.</p><div class="related" style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"><ul><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/universityteaching">University teaching</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/tuition-fees">Tuition fees</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/higher-education">Higher education</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/arts">Arts</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/universityfunding">University funding</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/lecturers">Lecturers</a></li></ul></div><div class="author"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/woolfson-robert">Robert Woolfson</a></div><br/><div class="terms"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk">guardian.co.uk</a> © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our <a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds">More Feeds</a></div><p style="clear:both" /> <p><a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/uDz1WiqJmXth43h4HdmYsDN80dM/0/da"><img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/uDz1WiqJmXth43h4HdmYsDN80dM/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a><br/> <a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/uDz1WiqJmXth43h4HdmYsDN80dM/1/da"><img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/uDz1WiqJmXth43h4HdmYsDN80dM/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a></p>
Margaret Way
Education Guardian - Thu, 02 Sep 2010 16:49:59 GMT
<div class="track"><img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.20.4/16077?ns=guardian&pageName=Margaret+Way%3AArticle%3A1446772&ch=Education&c3=Guardian&c4=Drama+and+dance+%28Education+subject%29&c5=Higher+Education&c6=Elizabeth+Jenner&c7=10-Sep-02&c8=1446772&c9=Article&c10=Obituary&c11=Education&c13=Other+lives+%28series%29&c25=&c30=content&h2=GU%2FEducation%2FDrama+and+dance" width="1" height="1" /></div><p>My great-aunt Margaret Way, who has died aged 92, taught speech and drama in Taunton, Somerset, for more than 60 years and was an integral figure in the performing arts community there.</p><p>Born in Taunton, she took a three-year course when she left school at 17, and began teaching elocution, speech and drama in 1941. One notable lesson in Exeter took place during a second world war bombing raid. After a year's teaching, Margaret joined the ATS, the women's army service. By the end of the war, she had become a captain, in charge of ATS permanent staff at Welbeck Abbey, Nottinghamshire.</p><p>On her return to Taunton, she rebuilt her teaching career. She established Saturday morning drama courses for primary school children, taught for more than 40 years at St Christopher's school, in Burnham-On-Sea, and was teaching at Queen's College and King's College, Taunton, until earlier this year.</p><p>As well as coaching many entrants for the annual Taunton festival, Margaret became a committee member in 1946, a patron of the festival in 1963, lifetime vice-president in 1978, and competitions secretary for speech and drama in 1979, a position she held for the next 30 years. Since 1935 she had also been a member of the Taunton Thespians, directing and acting.</p><p>Margaret was passionately committed to her work. She kept in touch with an incredible number of former pupils, and had taught three generations of several Taunton families. She was always cheerful, warm, lively and fascinating. In 2007 Margaret received the Somerset High Sheriff's award and a Taunton Deane citizenship award. She was appointed MBE in 2009.</p><p>She is survived by her brother, Michael, her nephew and niece, Robert and Katherine, and myself.</p><div class="related" style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"><ul><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/dramaanddance">Drama and dance</a></li></ul></div><br/><div class="terms"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk">guardian.co.uk</a> © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our <a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds">More Feeds</a></div><p style="clear:both" /> <p><a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/3mGo1eIGvACUJJVeq6RcaFqiqOs/0/da"><img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/3mGo1eIGvACUJJVeq6RcaFqiqOs/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a><br/> <a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/3mGo1eIGvACUJJVeq6RcaFqiqOs/1/da"><img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/3mGo1eIGvACUJJVeq6RcaFqiqOs/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a></p>
Australian school drops 'gay' from Kookaburra song
Education Guardian - Thu, 02 Sep 2010 08:27:04 GMT
<div class="track"><img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.20.4/77995?ns=guardian&pageName=Australian+school+drops+%27gay%27+from+Kookaburra+song%3AArticle%3A1446398&ch=World+news&c3=GU.co.uk&c4=Australia+%28News%29%2CWorld+news%2CSchools&c5=Not+commercially+useful%2CSchools+Education&c6=Associated+Press+in+Sydney&c7=10-Sep-02&c8=1446398&c9=Article&c10=News&c11=World+news&c13=&c25=&c30=content&h2=GU%2FWorld+news%2FAustralia" width="1" height="1" /></div><p class="standfirst">Headteacher says he only substituted word 'fun' into Kookaburra Sits in the Old Gum Tree to stop pupils sniggering</p><p>An Australian school headteacher has asked students to stop using the word "gay" when singing a classic children's song, but today said no offence was intended – he was simply trying to keep the children from laughing.</p><p>Garry Martin of Le Page primary school, in Melbourne, said he instructed students to substitute the line "Fun your life must be" for the original "Gay your life must be" when singing Kookaburra Sits in the Old Gum Tree. The song about a native Australian bird is a favourite around campfires.</p><p>Martin said he was playing a recording of the song for the students about a month ago when the line "gay your life must be" produced a flurry of giggles throughout the classroom.</p><p>Some of the students use the word "gay" as a schoolyard taunt, he said, but don't understand its true meaning. And so, to calm them down, he told them to swap in the word "fun" for "gay".</p><p>"It wasn't misplaced political correctness, it wasn't homophobia, there was nothing really calculated in doing it," he said.</p><p>"I could've stopped the whole class and gone into a very caring, supportive explanation of gay being quite a reasonable choice in lifestyle that some people make, but I was only talking with seven and eight year olds, and I think that sort of thing is better explained more fully with parents."</p><p>His decision erupted into controversy, he said, after one of the students told his parents about Martin's change to the song. Word then spread from the parents to friends to the local newspaper, which ran a story – and Martin found himself being bombarded with angry emails.</p><p>"Some think I'm the devil incarnate," he said.</p><p>Crusader Hillis, CEO of the gay and lesbian advocacy group The Also Foundation, did not go that far – but he did call the lyrical swap an overreaction.</p><p>"It sends a signal to people that just because a word has two meanings, that one of those meanings is unacceptable and that's really putting us backwards," Hillis said.</p><p>"Even if it's done for good intentions because 'gay' is being used in schoolyards as a slur, I think they need to use the word as a conversation rather than banning it."</p><p>Martin said his decision was a mistake made with the best of intentions, and he plans to speak to the students about how different words hold different meanings across generations.</p><p>He also plans to ask students to sing the original version of the song. But, he added: "We might not sing it that often now."</p><div class="related" style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"><ul><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/australia">Australia</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/schools">Schools</a></li></ul></div><br/><div class="terms"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk">guardian.co.uk</a> © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our <a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds">More Feeds</a></div><p style="clear:both" /> <p><a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/t_v9yt7nRrBKCWWmFLxiLoYVjuU/0/da"><img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/t_v9yt7nRrBKCWWmFLxiLoYVjuU/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a><br/> <a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/t_v9yt7nRrBKCWWmFLxiLoYVjuU/1/da"><img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/t_v9yt7nRrBKCWWmFLxiLoYVjuU/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a></p>
Degrees in lap-dancing? | Deborah Orr
Education Guardian - Thu, 02 Sep 2010 08:00:13 GMT
<div class="track"><img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.20.4/55695?ns=guardian&pageName=Degrees+in+lap-dancing%3F+%7C+Deborah+Orr%3AArticle%3A1446279&ch=Education&c3=Guardian&c4=Higher+education%2CWomen+and+women%27s+interests%2CLife+and+style%2CEducation%2CEducation+policy&c5=Policy+Society%2CNot+commercially+useful%2CEducation+Weekly+Education%2CWomen%2CHigher+Education&c6=Deborah+Orr&c7=10-Sep-02&c8=1446279&c9=Article&c10=Comment&c11=Education&c13=&c25=&c30=content&h2=GU%2FEducation%2FHigher+education" width="1" height="1" /></div><p class="standfirst">It seems qualifications in traditional subjects are no longer useful</p><p>Earlier in the summer there were rumblings of rage at the recent trend towards educating half the population to degree level. This expansion appears to have spawned the disagreeable but predictable consequence that university qualifications have been devalued. Then, more recently, the news that one in four lap-dancers have degrees was greeted in some quarters with suggestions that lap-dancing was, ergo, a perfectly respectable career choice for intelligent young ladies. Clearly, fewer degrees in English literature and classics should be offered, to make way for the range of degrees in sex work that must be swiftly established.</p><div class="related" style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"><ul><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/higher-education">Higher education</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/women">Women</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/education">Education policy</a></li></ul></div><div class="author"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/deborah-orr">Deborah Orr</a></div><br/><div class="terms"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk">guardian.co.uk</a> © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our <a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds">More Feeds</a></div><p style="clear:both" /> <p><a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/rWLRBfStyD4iCA1jrJesyVJHKys/0/da"><img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/rWLRBfStyD4iCA1jrJesyVJHKys/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a><br/> <a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/rWLRBfStyD4iCA1jrJesyVJHKys/1/da"><img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/rWLRBfStyD4iCA1jrJesyVJHKys/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a></p>
Margaret Gray
Education Guardian - Wed, 01 Sep 2010 16:55:07 GMT
<div class="track"><img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.20.4/74981?ns=guardian&pageName=Margaret+Gray%3AArticle%3A1446251&ch=Education&c3=Guardian&c4=Teaching&c5=Schools+Education&c6=Sean+Day-Lewis&c7=10-Sep-01&c8=1446251&c9=Article&c10=Obituary&c11=Education&c13=Other+lives+%28series%29&c25=&c30=content&h2=GU%2FEducation%2FTeaching" width="1" height="1" /></div><p>Margaret Gray, who has died aged 97, was head of the Godolphin and Latymer school in Hammersmith, west London, from 1963 to 1973. Her ability to listen to and empathise with the girls, especially the younger ones, made her the kind of head every school wants.</p><p>For all of us descended from the Gray family of Edinburgh, which still has its name above the door of the large hardware shop in George Street, Margaret was the undoubted star of her generation. She was the youngest child of Mary and the Rev Herbert Gray, a Scottish Presbyterian minister who founded the Marriage Guidance Council in 1938.</p><p>Margaret proved an apt pupil at St Mary's Hall, Brighton, and a diligent undergraduate at Newnham College, Cambridge, before taking a postgraduate fellowship to Smith College in Massachusetts. Her professional life began in 1937, teaching history at Westcliff high school for girls in Essex. She went on to head the history department of Mary Datchelor girls' school in Camberwell, south London.</p><p>In 1952 she took her first headship, at the Skinners' Company's school in Stamford Hill, north London. In 1963 she moved to Godolphin and Latymer. Soon after her official retirement, in 1973, the school lost its voluntary aided status and had to either amalgamate with another school as a comprehensive or go private. It chose the latter, but Margaret was left in a dilemma. She wanted the school to keep what made it special but strongly disapproved of entrance restricted to the wealthy. She launched, and for many years ran, a bursary scheme.</p><p>My first encounter with Margaret happened when she was in her 30s while I was doing national service at the air ministry and living in London with two of my great-aunts, strong admirers of their niece Margaret and particularly her "wonderful" driving. I was offered a trip and soon deduced, from her alarming speed between and up to traffic lights, that she was not a woman who wasted time. In Who's Who she listed motoring as a main recreation along with gardening and walking. Even at 91 she was driving around the Scottish Highlands, blessedly free of traffic lights. At school she had used traffic lights outside her office: green for "come in", amber for "please wait", red for "not free for ages".</p><p>Margaret was once asked if she had ever been in love. "Yes, but never enough to get married," she replied. She was always surrounded by friends, nephews and nieces, including the journalist Katharine Whitehorn. She finally settled in Kew, south-west London, with two other retired schoolteachers. She was a tireless correspondent and a regular assistant at the local Oxfam shop.</p><div class="related" style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"><ul><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/teaching">Teaching</a></li></ul></div><br/><div class="terms"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk">guardian.co.uk</a> © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our <a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds">More Feeds</a></div><p style="clear:both" /> <p><a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/xgBgd8VE-2v1RnzZG7Cm2RZ-x1M/0/da"><img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/xgBgd8VE-2v1RnzZG7Cm2RZ-x1M/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a><br/> <a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/xgBgd8VE-2v1RnzZG7Cm2RZ-x1M/1/da"><img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/xgBgd8VE-2v1RnzZG7Cm2RZ-x1M/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a></p>
Six to watch: TV schools
Education Guardian - Wed, 01 Sep 2010 12:15:07 GMT
<div class="track"><img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.20.4/55038?ns=guardian&pageName=Six+to+watch%3A+TV+schools%3AArticle%3A1445951&ch=Television+%26amp%3B+radio&c3=GU.co.uk&c4=Drama+%28TV+genre%29%2CTelevision+and+radio+TV%2CTelevision+%28Culture%29%2CGlee%2CSchools&c5=Not+commercially+useful%2CTelevision+Media%2CSchools+Education%2CTV&c6=Stuart+Heritage&c7=10-Sep-01&c8=1445951&c9=Article&c10=Blogpost&c11=Television+%26amp%3B+radio&c13=Six+to+watch+%28series%29&c25=TV+and+radio+blog+%28television%29&c30=content&h2=GU%2FTelevision+%26amp%3B+radio%2FDrama" width="1" height="1" /></div><p class="standfirst">As a new term begins at Waterloo Road, which are the programmes it should it be taking lessons from?</p><p>This week the nation's kids return to school, all bright-eyed and smelling of hope. Ditto the cast of Waterloo Road – basically Holby City for former soap actors who don't have complexions that suit medical scrubs – which will also return for its sixth series tonight.</p><p>It's all change at the school, with Amanda Burton's fiery new headteacher replacing Eva Pope's fiery old headteacher, and the likes of Angela Griffin and Denise Welch replaced by <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2010/08_august/06/waterloo.shtml" title="">someone from Waking the Dead</a> and, later in the series, him out of Spandau Ballet. Still, at least <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-bkVYFf42Q" title="">Grantly Budgen</a> – the marvellously gloomy English teacher with a face that resembles a melting waxwork of Geoffrey Palmer with gout – is still around. That's something.</p><p>So let's ring in the new term – at Waterloo Road and elsewhere – by revisiting six of our favourite school-based TV shows. As ever, don't hesitate to remind me of any glaring omissions...</p><h2>Grange Hill (1978-2008) </h2><p>The definitive school-based show. Grange Hill ran for so long that several successive generations could each take their own iconic moments from it. Some loved Grange Hill for Tucker Jenkins, some for <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snm6tulJPqM" title="">Just Say No</a> and some for the time that little Kevin <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=paFNPWekUYM" title="">accidentally took LSD and got freaked out by a piece of chalk</a>. And the flying sausage. Never forget the flying sausage.</p><h2>Teachers (2001-2004) </h2><p>Post-This Life Andrew Lincoln vehicle that destroyed the myth of the teacher as the uptight fuddy-duddy. Instead, Teachers showed that educators could get drunk and have as much casual sex as anybody else. And what's more, they could do it to a soundtrack of forgettable millennial indie music, too.</p><h2>Please Sir! (1968-1972) </h2><p>Boasting a theme tune that rivalled even Grange Hill for catchiness, Please Sir! followed the adventures of John Alderton's idealistic new teacher Bernard Hedges in a school where all the pupils appeared to be in their mid-30s. Creepy.</p><h2>Saved by the Bell (1989-1993) </h2><p>Like a funnier Beverly Hills 90210, Saved by the Bell showed us how great life was at Bayside high school under the watchful eye of dumbly benevolent principal Mr Belding. Not always that great, as it turns out.</p><h2>Glee (2009-) </h2><p>The show that accurately describes what it's like to be a student. So long as you're needy and self-infatuated. And you can't go for more than five or six seconds without bursting into a semi-ironic rendition of a 1980s power ballad. And you mistakenly think that it's clever and cute to add the letters 'Gl' to the start of most things you say. And you're relentlessly annoying.</p><h2>The Charlie Brown and Snoopy Show (1983-1985) </h2><p>Not entirely school-based, but memorable for its classroom scenes nonetheless. Charlie Brown's teacher refused to speak English to her students, preferring to communicate via a bizarre wordless method involving a wah-wah trumpet. The knock-on effect of this is that Charlie Brown and his friends failed to learn anything at school, dooming them to a lifetime of head-smackingly inane pseudo-philosophical conversations with each other. Let this be a lesson to teachers everywhere – it helps to use actual words during lessons.</p><h2>Honourable mentions</h2><p>Gloriously observed Australian import <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_O5U9irS3iA">Summer Heights High</a>, genuinely terrifying <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jiW6DIRzvsM">The Demon Headmaster</a> and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3goaKpDp-Y8">good old Sweet Valley High</a>. Also worth noting - despite their not-entirely-classroom-based nature - E4's <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fjhmFcyk_I">The Inbetweeners</a>, and Skins.</p><div class="related" style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"><ul><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/drama">Drama</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/television">Television</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/glee">Glee</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/schools">Schools</a></li></ul></div><div class="author"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/stuart-heritage">Stuart Heritage</a></div><br/><div class="terms"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk">guardian.co.uk</a> © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our <a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds">More Feeds</a></div><p style="clear:both" /> <p><a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/Aag9BElKn0Zbnkyo3VWs-vVi8gc/0/da"><img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/Aag9BElKn0Zbnkyo3VWs-vVi8gc/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a><br/> <a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/Aag9BElKn0Zbnkyo3VWs-vVi8gc/1/da"><img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/Aag9BElKn0Zbnkyo3VWs-vVi8gc/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a></p>
Schools converting to academies in September 2010
Education Guardian - Wed, 01 Sep 2010 11:13:33 GMT
<div class="track"><img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.20.4/60125?ns=guardian&pageName=Schools+converting+to+academies+in+September+2010%3AArticle%3A1445954&ch=Education&c3=GU.co.uk&c4=Academies+%28Education%29%2CSchools%2CEducation%2CEducation+policy%2CPolitics%2CMichael+Gove&c5=Not+commercially+useful%2CPolicy+Society%2CEducation+Weekly+Education%2CSchools+Education&c6=&c7=10-Sep-01&c8=1445954&c9=Article&c10=&c11=Education&c13=&c25=&c30=content&h2=GU%2FEducation%2FAcademies" width="1" height="1" /></div><p class="standfirst">A list of the 32 schools <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/sep/01/140-schools-academies" title="converting to academy status this month">converting to academy status this month</a></p><p>Queen Elizabeth's School, Barnet</p><p>Kemnal Technology College (part of the Kemnal Trust), Bromley</p><p>Brine Leas High School, Cheshire East</p><p>Fallibroome High School, Cheshire East</p><p>St Buryan Primary School, Cornwall</p><p>Seaton Infant School, Cumbria</p><p>Broadclyst Community Primary School, Devon</p><p>Uffculme School, Devon</p><p>Cuckoo Hall Primary School, Enfield</p><p>The Cotswold School, Gloucestershire</p><p>Watford Grammar School for Boys, Hertfordshire</p><p>Watford Grammar School for Girls, Hertfordshire</p><p>Lampton School, Hounslow</p><p>The Westlands School (in federation with The Woodgrove Primary School), Kent</p><p>The Woodgrove Primary School (in federation with The Westlands School), Kent</p><p>Heckmondwike Grammar School, Kirklees</p><p>Durand Primary School, Lambeth</p><p>The Giles School, Lincolnshire</p><p>Eaton Mill Foundation Primary School, Milton Keynes</p><p>Healing School, a Specialist Science and Foundation College, North East Lincolnshire</p><p>Tollbar Business Enterprise & Humanities College, North East Lincolnshire</p><p>Northampton School for Boys, Northamptonshire</p><p>George Spencer Foundation School and Technology College, Nottinghamshire</p><p>Arthur Mellows Village College, Peterborough</p><p>The Chadwell Heath Foundation School, Redbridge</p><p>Holyrood Community School, Somerset</p><p>Huish Episcopi School, Somerset</p><p>Westcliff High School for Boys, Southend-on-Sea</p><p>Hartismere School, Suffolk</p><p>Audenshaw School, Tameside</p><p>Urmston Grammar School, Trafford</p><p>Hardenhuish School, Wiltshire</p><p></p><p>Source: Department for Education</p><div class="related" style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"><ul><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/academies">Academies</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/schools">Schools</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/education">Education policy</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/michaelgove">Michael Gove</a></li></ul></div><br/><div class="terms"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk">guardian.co.uk</a> © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our <a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds">More Feeds</a></div><p style="clear:both" /> <p><a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/0ebpcmeHqkwNUjsEE4dOsv8JQNo/0/da"><img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/0ebpcmeHqkwNUjsEE4dOsv8JQNo/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a><br/> <a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/0ebpcmeHqkwNUjsEE4dOsv8JQNo/1/da"><img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/0ebpcmeHqkwNUjsEE4dOsv8JQNo/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a></p>
Imperial College to establish medical school in Singapore
Education Guardian - Wed, 01 Sep 2010 10:14:59 GMT
<div class="track"><img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.20.4/26601?ns=guardian&pageName=Imperial+College+to+establish+medical+school+in+Singapore%3AArticle%3A1445904&ch=Education&c3=GU.co.uk&c4=Imperial+College+London%2CMedicine+%28Education+subject%29%2CSingapore+%28News%29%2CHigher+education%2CEducation%2CWorld+news&c5=Not+commercially+useful%2CEducation+Weekly+Education%2CHigher+Education&c6=Jeevan+Vasagar&c7=10-Sep-01&c8=1445904&c9=Article&c10=News&c11=Education&c13=&c25=&c30=content&h2=GU%2FEducation%2FImperial+College+London" width="1" height="1" /></div><p class="standfirst">Joint teaching venture sees the London university forge presence in funding-rich Asia</p><p>Imperial College London is to set up a new medical school in Singapore in the latest move by an elite British university to establish a presence in Asia.</p><p>Jointly run by Imperial and Singapore's Nanyang Technological University, the medical school will teach over 750 students when it is fully established, the majority of whom will be local residents.</p><p>Professor Martyn Partridge, who holds Imperial's chair in respiratory medicine and is to be senior vice dean of the new school, said Imperial had developed an "innovative" course employing electronic learning and simulations of patient care, which the university hoped to develop further in Singapore.</p><p>The medical school will be publicly funded. Imperial, which was invited to set up the partnership by Singapore's government, will benefit financially from sharing expertise and the college hopes the partnership will lead to long-term benefits. The college aims to tap into "generous research funding" available in the Asian city-state, Prof Partridge said.</p><p>"I don't think anybody knows the exact bottom line, but I can categorically say that Imperial is not going to do this in any way at a loss."</p><p>International students are a significant source of revenue for British universities, and increasing numbers want to study here. Overseas applications rose from just over 55,000 last year to over 71,000 this February. At present the proportion of overseas medical students at UK schools is capped at 7.5%. A foreign medical student who starts at Imperial this autumn can expect to pay £26,250 a year.</p><p>Other top British universities which have expanded abroad include Nottingham, which has a campus in Malaysia, while Liverpool has set up a partnership with a Chinese university in Suzhou, near Shanghai.</p><p>The new medical school will admit its first 50 students in 2013. A British student who trained at the Singapore school would have no automatic right to practise in the NHS, as it is outside the EU. However, the college hopes to set up student exchanges between the UK and Singapore.</p><p>Sir Keith O'Nions , rector of Imperial College London, said: "We are extremely proud to be working with Singapore, a country we have long admired for its support and application of world-class science, engineering and medicine.</p><p>"We have many members of the Imperial family already in Singapore — the country is home to nearly 2,000 of our alumni."</p><p>Paul Madden, British High Commissioner for Singapore, said the partnership was a further example of the "deep linkages" between Britain and Singapore in science, culture and trade.</p><p>Imperial's school of medicine, formed in 1997, is one of the largest in the UK. Over 2,000 undergraduates and 500 postgraduates studied there in the last academic year.</p><div class="related" style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"><ul><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/imperialcollegelondon">Imperial College London</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/medicine">Medicine</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/singapore">Singapore</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/higher-education">Higher education</a></li></ul></div><div class="author"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/jeevanvasagar">Jeevan Vasagar</a></div><br/><div class="terms"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk">guardian.co.uk</a> © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our <a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds">More Feeds</a></div><p style="clear:both" /> <p><a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/c5hiZc4XMlVgFuhGSvTXDvneJi8/0/da"><img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/c5hiZc4XMlVgFuhGSvTXDvneJi8/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a><br/> <a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/c5hiZc4XMlVgFuhGSvTXDvneJi8/1/da"><img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/c5hiZc4XMlVgFuhGSvTXDvneJi8/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a></p>
School dinners or a packed lunch?
Education Guardian - Wed, 01 Sep 2010 10:10:00 GMT
<div class="track"><img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.20.4/39453?ns=guardian&pageName=School+dinners+or+a+packed+lunch%3F%3AArticle%3A1445643&ch=Life+and+style&c3=GU.co.uk&c4=Food+and+drink+%28Life+and+style%29%2CLife+and+style%2CEducation%2CSchool+meals%2CSchools&c5=Not+commercially+useful%2CEducation+Weekly+Education%2CFood+and+Drink%2CSchools+Education&c6=Karen+Homer&c7=10-Sep-01&c8=1445643&c9=Article&c10=Blogpost&c11=Life+and+style&c13=&c25=Word+of+Mouth+blog&c30=content&h2=GU%2FLife+and+style%2Fblog%2FWord+of+Mouth+blog" width="1" height="1" /></div><p class="standfirst">What do your children eat for lunch at school and why?</p><p>It may not have felt like much of a summer but school's back this week and in a few days the autumn term will officially start; new shoes are being bought, PE kit labelled, and unopened book-bags and forgotten homework unearthed from the deep recesses of children's rooms around the country. One thing you may or may not need to dig out is a lunchbox, depending on whether you, along with <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10552560">just over a third</a> of British parents, decide your child should eat school dinners.<br /><br />There is little doubt that it is essential for children to <a href="http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/uk/healthy+school+meals+boost+concentration/3255172?FORM=ZZNR4">eat a good lunch</a>, but what this is and how it is best delivered is contentious. When canvassing opinion from other mothers I discovered that one friend has such horrible memories of her childhood school dinners she refuses to inflict them on her own daughter. Another who is particularly nutritionally-savvy is adamant that school dinners are the best choice from a health perspective; having assumed she'd be packing additive-free lunchboxes I was somewhat surprised, but it <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/7888081/Parents-told-packed-lunches-too-unhealthy.html">has been suggested</a> that it's parents who are less likely to feed their children healthy food that prefer the packed lunch option. </p><p>Of course, <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/jun/29/healthy-school-lunches">cost is important too</a> and some people find the daily rate of around £2 per child prohibitive, making the lowest income group the segment of the community where take-up is at its lowest. Across the board time pressures also appear to be a deciding factor, with many I spoke to saying they opted for school lunches because they had enough to do in the morning without packing a lunchbox or three.</p><p>Since the 2005 <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/oliver">Jamie Oliver school dinners campaign</a> lifted the lid then nailed shut the coffin of the <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2005/mar/23/broadcasting1">Turkey Twizzlers</a> and other junk food being served to schoolchildren across the country, school dinners have enjoyed a far healthier reputation. Or at least they did until Andrew Lansley put the boot in by <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jul/01/jamie-oliver-school-dinners-andrew-lansley">denouncing the campaign</a> as an <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2009/jul/09/failure-school-meals-revolution">abject failure</a>. But Oliver <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/jun/30/jamie-oliver-school-meals-lansley">hit back equally hard</a> and in fact not only did the uptake of school lunches <a href="http://www.teachers.tv/news/66581">increase by over 320,000</a> in the past academic year alone, but research also indicates the meals are <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/mar/29/jamie-oliver-school-dinners-meals">improving children's performance</a> at school. So Jamie remains canonized by the public and probably deserves his <a href="http://www.jamieoliver.com/news/jamie-wins-prestigious-ted-prize">plaudits and awards</a>.</p><p>What I would most love to see is a bit of <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marlene-h-phillips/school-lunches-around-the_b_206802.html">European savoir faire</a> when it comes to school lunch culture. In France and Italy pupils and teachers sit down together for a three-course meal of fresh, seasonal food; in Japan manners are emphasised as pupils serve the midday meal of rice, soup, fish and milk to their peers and teachers alike. </p><p>Although our school meals conform to stricter nutritional guidelines than in the past the culture is still bolt and run. Once, the the youngest children ate before the general rabble hit the canteen and dinner ladies watched over them to make sure they ate some vegetables. Not any more, and at secondary schools the temptation is to avoid the cafeteria completely and buy (often less healthy food) elsewhere, though there are <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/aug/10/healthy-school-meals-attract-pupils">heartening reports</a> of some secondaries offering healthy meals that pupils genuinely want to eat. </p><p>But what of the packed lunch? I remember feeling smug as can be the day I carried my new pink Barbie lunchbox into school aged about 11, but I can't remember what was inside, probably because it was exactly the same as everyone else's lunch. Not so the recollections of a friend whose Spanish mother packed him long rolls filled with ham she'd imported from her native Catalonia, rice and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chickpea">garbanzos</a> and other very un-English delicacies. He says having to open that box with all its accompanying smells has scarred him for life - well, almost. From what I have gathered the same holds true today - foodie parents beware if you're thinking of offering anything other than plastic ham sandwiches on <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2010/jul/13/consider-cheap-white-bread">cotton-wool bread</a>.</p><p>On balance, I incline more towards a hot meal in winter than in summer and confess to sometimes finding the morning lunch-packing too much of a grind. But for me the worst part is that unless your child is a speedy eater, before much more than the second bite his or her mates will be off to play, at which point the food will be forgotten. What do your children eat for lunch at school and why?</p><div class="related" style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"><ul><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/food-and-drink">Food & drink</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/schoolmeals">School meals</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/schools">Schools</a></li></ul></div><div class="author"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/karen-homer">Karen Homer</a></div><br/><div class="terms"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk">guardian.co.uk</a> © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our <a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds">More Feeds</a></div><p style="clear:both" /> <p><a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/GWQnhEq5sk9RnafbaszrWP0UUCA/0/da"><img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/GWQnhEq5sk9RnafbaszrWP0UUCA/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a><br/> <a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/GWQnhEq5sk9RnafbaszrWP0UUCA/1/da"><img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/GWQnhEq5sk9RnafbaszrWP0UUCA/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a></p>
From the archive, 1 September 1930: Obituary: Dr WA Spooner
Education Guardian - Wed, 01 Sep 2010 09:02:35 GMT
<div class="track"><img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.20.4/38181?ns=guardian&pageName=From+the+archive%2C+1+September+1930%3A+Obituary%3A+Dr+WA+Spooner%3AArticle%3A1445850&ch=From+the+Guardian&c3=Guardian&c4=UK+news%2CWords+and+language%2CBooks%2CEducation%2CLinguistics+%28Education+subject%29%2COxford+University&c5=Not+commercially+useful%2CEducation+Weekly+Education%2CHigher+Education&c6=&c7=10-Sep-01&c8=1445850&c9=Article&c10=Obituary&c11=From+the+Guardian&c13=From+the+archive+%28series%29&c25=&c30=content&h2=GU%2FFrom+the+Guardian%2FWords+and+language" width="1" height="1" /></div><p class="standfirst">Originally published in the Manchester Guardian on 1 September 1930</p><p>The death occurred at Oxford on Friday evening of Dr. William Archibald Spooner, who was for twenty-one years Warden of New College, Oxford.</p><p>Dr Spooner was born on July 22. 1844, and was the son of a Staffordshire County Court judge. He was educated at Oswestry and New College, of which he became a scholar in 1862 and a Fellow in 1867. Ordained a deacon in 1872 and a priest in 1875, he became chaplain to Archbishop Tait in 1878 and was examining chaplain to the Bishop of Peterborough from 1809 to 1916. He became Warden of his college in 1903 and held that office till he retired in 1924. A lecturer and teacher of ability, he devoted himself to the college and its members.</p><p>He published little, and the outside world knew him only from the scholarship of the well-known edition of Tacitus' "Histories" and his memoirs of Butler and William of Wykeham.</p><p>But to a series of generations of his countrymen Dr. Spooner was known not for his administrative abilities nor his scholarship but for the "Spoonerism." A "Spoonerism" is defined as "a ludicrous form of metathesis or the transposing of initial letters to form a laughable combination."</p><p>In 1879 it was a favourite Oxford anecdote that Spooner from the pulpit gave out the first line of a well-known hymn as "Kinkering Kongs their titles take."</p><p>The anecdote is well enough authenticated, but according to most people who knew Spooner well that was the only "Spoonerism" he ever made – the essence of a "Spoonerism" being, of course, lack of intent, – though later when, thanks to indefatigable undergraduate and alas! graduates and dignified Fellows of colleges, the legends had become legion, he often used deliberately to "indulge in metathesis," to live up to his reputation.</p><p>All sorts of stories, probable and improbable, were invented, the most of which have only to be heard to be recognised as unauthentic. Of the well-worn ones the best are those which made Spooner declare that he was leaving Oxford by "the town drain," that some unauthorised person was "occupewing his pie," that at a marriage it was "kistomary to cuss the bride," and that he was tired of addressing "beery wenches." Much better authenticated and not even a Spoonerism is his famous reply to a young lady who asked him if he liked bananas. He is said to have retorted, "I'm afraid I always wear the old-fashioned nightshirt."</p><p>Although other famous men have been guilty of "Spoonerisms", it was the doctor who had to bear the brunt of most of them and to be honoured by having his name enshrined in a word that is a permanent addition to the English language.</p><div class="related" style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"><ul><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/wordsandlanguage">Words and language</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/linguistics">Linguistics</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/oxforduniversity">University of Oxford</a></li></ul></div><br/><div class="terms"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk">guardian.co.uk</a> © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our <a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds">More Feeds</a></div><p style="clear:both" /> <p><a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/Xf4b8Irmvy9umsSeipiktor2d9w/0/da"><img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/Xf4b8Irmvy9umsSeipiktor2d9w/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a><br/> <a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/Xf4b8Irmvy9umsSeipiktor2d9w/1/da"><img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/Xf4b8Irmvy9umsSeipiktor2d9w/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a></p>
Why demon heads of children's fiction are role models for trainee teachers
Education Guardian - Wed, 01 Sep 2010 06:00:10 GMT
<div class="track"><img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.20.4/27267?ns=guardian&pageName=Why+demon+heads+of+children%27s+fiction+are+role+models+for+trainee+teache%3AArticle%3A1445632&ch=Books&c3=Guardian&c4=Books%2CChildren+and+teenagers+%28Books+genre%29%2CTeacher+training%2CTeaching%2CEducation%2CRoald+Dahl%2CJK+Rowling+%28Author%29%2CHarry+Potter+%28Books%29%2CFiction+%28Books+genre%29%2CUK+news&c5=Not+commercially+useful%2CEducation+Weekly+Education%2CSchools+Education&c6=Jeevan+Vasagar&c7=10-Sep-01&c8=1445632&c9=Article&c10=News&c11=Books&c13=&c25=&c30=content&h2=GU%2FBooks%2FChildren+and+teenagers" width="1" height="1" /></div><p class="standfirst">Roald Dahl's Miss Trunchbull or Gillian Cross's Demon Headmaster demonstrate the exercise of power, study finds</p><p>They may be sadistic figures who hate children, but a study suggests that the savage portrayal of headteachers in children's literature possesses a grain of truth and may even be helpful when it comes to training teachers who aspire to lead schools.</p><p>Characters like Miss Agatha Trunchbull, from Roald Dahl's Matilda, or the Demon Headmaster, from the sequence by Gillian Cross, can teach children to think about power and how it can be used for malign purposes, Professor Pat Thomson, director of the centre for research in schools and communities at Nottingham University school of education, has found.</p><p>The study of 19 fictional headteachers found that nine are portrayed as evil or authoritarian, a further six are remote figures of power, and just one - JK Rowling's Professor Albus Dumbledore - is a positive role model.</p><p>The study traces the origins of school stories to 19th century British fiction which – in stories aimed at boys – focused on the muscular discipline and militarism required for empire building.</p><p>The books in the study were published between 1975 and 2009, and included Robert Cormier's The Chocolate War and Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events as well as Matilda and Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone.</p><p>Many of the books show power can be used corruptly, according to Prof Thomson.</p><p>Sometimes this can have a contemporary, political twist: in The Inflatable School by Peter Wynne-Willson, the "evil, messianic" Mr Stemple plans to turn his school into an academy sponsored by a business with whom his family has a profitable relationship.</p><p>Miss Trunchbull is one of only two female heads in the books studied and is described, as "formidable and repulsive". Thomson says Matilda's triumph over Miss Trunchbull – who is replaced by the forgiving Miss Jennifer Honey – as "designed to show the benefits of the gentle use of pastoral power".</p><p>In a study to be presented to the British Educational Research Association's annual conference at Warwick University today, Thomson says the books' willingness to encourage children to think about power may help to make the stories more truthful than many adult discussions about school leadership. The books encouraged children to take responsibility and overturn unreasonable social conventions. The stories also acted as cautionary tales, warning that children who made the wrong choices must learn to be responsible.</p><p>Children were encouraged to acquire self-discipline "not because of the need for adult citizens to serve God and empire as in the traditional school story, but rather because the … modern citizen needs to serve and save themselves in a world where adults are often fallible, self-serving and myopic, and sometimes venal, corrupt and brutal."</p><p>Power is often regarded by real headteachers as a dirty word not to be discussed,says Thomson, while serious texts on school management often avoid identifying the head's central task as the exercise of power. Children's books could be used as part of school leadership courses to address this gap.</p><p>"Children's stories come clean about headteachers' work in ways that mainstream educational leadership texts often do not," Thomson concludes. "The implied reader of children's books is a child who recognises that power can be used wisely and to ethical ends – or not; who understands that pupils can use their individual and collective power to challenge authority."</p><div class="related" style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"><ul><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksforchildrenandteenagers">Children and teenagers</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/teachertraining">Teacher training</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/teaching">Teaching</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/roalddahl">Roald Dahl</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/jkrowling">JK Rowling</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/harrypotter">Harry Potter</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/fiction">Fiction</a></li></ul></div><div class="author"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/jeevanvasagar">Jeevan Vasagar</a></div><br/><div class="terms"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk">guardian.co.uk</a> © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our <a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds">More Feeds</a></div><p style="clear:both" /> <p><a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/H1NzXaIBYzcOhiFNaYP2Onks6s8/0/da"><img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/H1NzXaIBYzcOhiFNaYP2Onks6s8/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a><br/> <a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/H1NzXaIBYzcOhiFNaYP2Onks6s8/1/da"><img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/H1NzXaIBYzcOhiFNaYP2Onks6s8/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a></p>
Girls think they are cleverer than boys from age four, study finds
Education Guardian - Wed, 01 Sep 2010 05:00:08 GMT
<div class="track"><img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.20.4/75250?ns=guardian&pageName=Girls+think+they+are+cleverer+than+boys+from+age+four%2C+study+finds%3AArticle%3A1445651&ch=Education&c3=Guardian&c4=Schools%2CEducation%2CGCSEs%2CGender+%28News%29%2CUK+news&c5=Not+commercially+useful%2CEducation+Weekly+Education%2CSchools+Education&c6=Jessica+Shepherd&c7=10-Sep-01&c8=1445651&c9=Article&c10=News&c11=Education&c13=&c25=&c30=content&h2=GU%2FEducation%2FSchools" width="1" height="1" /></div><p class="standfirst">Teachers' expectations may reinforce gender gap in school performance</p><p>Girls think they are cleverer, more successful and harder working than boys from as young as four, a study has found.</p><p>Boys come round to this view by the age of seven or eight and assume that girls will outperform them at school and behave better in lessons, research from the University of Kent shows.</p><p>The study – Gender Expectations and Stereotype Threat – will be presented to the British Educational Research Association's conference tomorrow.</p><p>The paper argues that teachers have lower expectations of boys than of girls and this belief fulfils itself throughout primary and secondary school.</p><p>Girls' performance at school may be boosted by what they perceive to be their teachers' belief that they will achieve higher results and be more conscientious than boys, the academics claim. Boys may underachieve because they pick up on teachers' assumptions that they will obtain lower results than girls and have less drive.</p><p>The findings come just over a week after exam results revealed that the gap between boys and girls at GCSE is widening. This summer, the pass rate for girls was 72.6% at A* to C, compared with 65.4% for boys. Last year, the rate was 70.5% for girls and 63.6% for boys.</p><p>The gender gap has been the focus of public and academic concern for at least 20 years.</p><p>The study's findings are based on detailed questioning of 238 children aged between four and 10. The researchers presented the pupils with statements such as "this child is really clever" and "the teacher is taking the register and this child sits very quietly". They asked the children which the statement best fitted – a picture of a girl or one of a boy.</p><p>The academics, Bonny Hartley and Robbie Sutton, also asked the children to point to one of the pictures in answer to the question "who do you think is cleverer" and "who is better behaved".</p><p>Girls at all ages said girls were cleverer, performed better and were more focused. Boys aged between four and seven were evenly divided as to which gender was cleverer and more hardworking. But by the time boys reached seven or eight, they agreed with their female peers that girls were more likely to be cleverer and more successful.</p><p>In a separate experiment, 140 of the children were divided into two groups. The academics told the first group that boys do not perform as well as girls. The second group were not told this. All the pupils were tested in maths, reading and writing.</p><p>The academics found the boys in the first group performed "significantly worse" than boys in the second group, while girls' performance was similar in both groups.</p><p>Teachers should be discouraged from using phrases such as "silly boys" and "schoolboy pranks" or asking boys why they can't "sit nicely like the girls" because this may help break the cycle of lower expectations of boys, the researchers argue.</p><p>"By seven or eight years old, children of both genders believe that boys are less focused, able and successful than girls – and think that adults endorse this stereotype," Hartley said. "There are signs that these expectations have the potential to become self-fulfilling in influencing children's actual conduct and achievement." Hartley said that while it was unacceptable to divide classes by the race of their pupils, this was not the case for gender.</p><p>"This is likely to be due to gender bias being represented as much more socially and normatively acceptable in society," Hartley said. "In this way, it is widely acceptable to pitch the boys against the girls or 'harmlessly' divide the class in this way for practical ease."</p><p>Jenny Parkes, senior lecturer in education, gender and international development at the Institute of Education, University of London, said there had been marked changes in girls' achievement in the UK in the latter half of the 20th century, in part thanks to feminism's influence on the way girls view themselves.</p><p>"This seems to be particularly the case for middle-class girls. Some studies have looked at how academic work is seen as 'feminine' and so for some boys achieving highly at school risks being labelled as feminine," Parkes said.</p><p>"At the same time, this differs across different countries, ethnic and social class groups and from subject to subject. Adults do have an important role in helping children – whether they are girls or boys, high or low achievers – to have confidence in themselves as learners."</p><div class="related" style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"><ul><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/schools">Schools</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/gcses">GCSEs</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/gender">Gender</a></li></ul></div><div class="author"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/jessicashepherd">Jessica Shepherd</a></div><br/><div class="terms"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk">guardian.co.uk</a> © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our <a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds">More Feeds</a></div><p style="clear:both" /> <p><a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/L_wknVayWGAH6_ISs8gdXZDGPFY/0/da"><img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/L_wknVayWGAH6_ISs8gdXZDGPFY/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a><br/> <a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/L_wknVayWGAH6_ISs8gdXZDGPFY/1/da"><img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/L_wknVayWGAH6_ISs8gdXZDGPFY/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a></p>
Michael Gove's odd schools obsession | James Plunkett
Education Guardian - Tue, 31 Aug 2010 20:30:08 GMT
<div class="track"><img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.20.4/66135?ns=guardian&pageName=Michael+Gove%27s+odd+schools+obsession+%7C+James+Plunkett%3AArticle%3A1445734&ch=Comment+is+free&c3=Guardian&c4=Academies+%28Education%29%2CEducation+policy%2CEducation%2CMichael+Gove%2CConservatives%2CSchools%2CPolitics%2CUK+news%2CUS+news&c5=Not+commercially+useful%2CPolicy+Society%2CEducation+Weekly+Education%2CSchools+Education&c6=James+Plunkett&c7=10-Aug-31&c8=1445734&c9=Article&c10=Comment&c11=Comment+is+free&c13=&c25=CIF+America+%28Blog%29%2CComment+is+free&c30=content&h2=GU%2FComment+is+free%2Fblog%2FCif+America" width="1" height="1" /></div><p class="standfirst">If US charter schools have inspired Tory reforms, academic excellence can't be the reason</p><p>The new school year was supposed to bring a great wave of new academies. In the event, it will be a trickle. In June Michael Gove claimed that 1,100 schools had applied for academy status. <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/jul/29/michael-gove-academies-schools-claims" title="">Then it turned out the true number was 153.</a> Take away those not yet approved, and it looks like fewer than 50 academies will open this year. Gove's obsession with school freedom is not being driven by demand from headteachers.</p><p>So what is driving Gove's reforms? It is ideology all the way. Look first at his changing justifications: back in 2009, he claimed that his inspiration was Sweden, where a system of free schools was giving parents new choices and driving up results for the poorest. Then the evidence came out. Even in that most equal of countries, <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10376457" title="">free schools had benefited only the children of wealthy parents</a>, widening opportunity gaps.</p><p>Since then Gove has quietly shifted his attentions to the US charter school movement. Run by independent providers, charter schools are free to set their own curriculums, and operate outside local controls. Speaking to MPs in June, Gove praised them for doing a <a href="http://www.michaelgove.com/content/academies_bill" title="">"fantastic job, free from bureaucratic control, of transforming the life chances of young people"</a>. The reforms he planned were "exactly analogous".</p><p>Watching from the US, that still seems a strange star to be chasing. Yes, the best charter schools are thriving: freed from constraints, they're fighting in the ditches – with 10-hour days and Saturday school – to buck trends for disadvantaged kids. But with over 5,000 of the schools now serving 1.5 million children, it's not enough to talk about a handful of successes.</p><p>The hard truth is that, the more you look at the US charter school movement, the more the glow fades. Stanford University found that fewer than one in five charter schools were outperforming comparable state schools; about half were performing at a similar level; and 37% were doing "significantly worse".</p><p>So yes, Gove can point to successes, but for every one there are two hidden failures. Indeed, of the 5,250 charter schools that have opened here since 1992, one in eight has closed. Last year, nine out of 10 schools in the Texans Can group were rated "academically unacceptable" by the state. On one campus, slated for closure, not a single freshman had gone on to graduate. Yet the <a href="http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/6833260.html" title="">Can chief executive still drew a salary of $236,000 (£150,000)</a>.</p><p>Elsewhere, charter providers have been charged with serious financial mismanagement. Several have been caught excluding huge numbers of students to boost results. Serious concerns are growing over the large, for-profit industry that has sprung up around this lucrative sector. One school offered students $100 to recruit friends, chasing the public money that would come with them.</p><p>The point is not that additional freedoms are bad but that, on the basis of evidence, they're a curious obsession. As the US experience shows, schools are not all helium-filled balloons, tethered by government and straining to soar. But nor are they all lead weights, destined to sink without support. Instead, cast adrift, some thrive and some fail; they simply float apart.</p><p>Gove may talk of charter schools as a system forging ahead of the pack, but in reality they're a roll of the dice from one that's falling behind. On international tests in reading, science and maths, US students made no gains from 1964 to 2003. On almost all measures the US school system now trails the UK's. Many in a school system paralysed by toxic union relations, perpetual funding crises and fragmented governance have given up on improving from within. Charter school leaders have become vigilantes, going it alone.</p><p>That's not an ambitious reform agenda for the UK, any more than it is one based on evidence. In June Gove told school leaders: <a href="http://www.education.gov.uk/news/speeches/nationalcollegeannualconference" title="">"Government action has held our education system back"</a> – and that basic disbelief in government – tired old Tory ideology – is driving this destructive experiment.</p><div class="related" style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"><ul><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/academies">Academies</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/education">Education policy</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/michaelgove">Michael Gove</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/conservatives">Conservatives</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/schools">Schools</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/usa">United States</a></li></ul></div><div class="author"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/james-plunkett">James Plunkett</a></div><br/><div class="terms"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk">guardian.co.uk</a> © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our <a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds">More Feeds</a></div><p style="clear:both" /> <p><a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/0jkeiidk5wFNqDCduerEQ1AGlQo/0/da"><img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/0jkeiidk5wFNqDCduerEQ1AGlQo/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a><br/> <a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/0jkeiidk5wFNqDCduerEQ1AGlQo/1/da"><img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/0jkeiidk5wFNqDCduerEQ1AGlQo/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a></p>
Stephen Wall obituary
Education Guardian - Tue, 31 Aug 2010 16:51:31 GMT
<div class="track"><img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.20.4/22603?ns=guardian&pageName=Stephen+Wall+obituary%3AArticle%3A1445665&ch=Books&c3=Guardian&c4=Literary+criticism%2CBooks%2COxford+University&c5=Not+commercially+useful%2CHigher+Education&c6=Christopher+Ricks&c7=10-Aug-31&c8=1445665&c9=Article&c10=Obituary&c11=Books&c13=&c25=&c30=content&h2=GU%2FBooks%2FLiterary+criticism" width="1" height="1" /></div><p class="standfirst">Literary historian, academic and longstanding editor of Essays in Criticism</p><p>The achievements of Stephen Wall, who has died after a lung infection aged 79, were exceptional for their humane generosity. As a literary historian and a critic of the Victorian novel, pre-eminently of Trollope and Dickens; as a reviewer – at once welcoming and discriminating – of new fiction and of theatre; as a director not only of Shakespeare but of Henry Purcell, informed by a love of enduring music; and as the author of a novel rewardingly patient in its nocturnal rhythms and chequered crosscurrents, he exercised an influence always benign and never sentimental. Likewise, as editor for 40 years of the quarterly journal Essays in Criticism, he was gently exacting, attentive to the very wording in a manner that contributors never forgot; and he was an inspiring teacher of English at Oxford University.</p><p>"Of joy in widest commonalty spread" – Wordsworth spoke to Wall as no other poet did, while there was added something for which this poet was not notable: a vivid sense of humour, together with a laconic wit, a sidelong glance endearingly free of anything furtive, a gift for offering advice in a way that made it a pleasure to take it and a mischievous delight that was the opposite of mischief-making. In his happy possession of these qualities, Wall was always keen to acknowledge how much he owed to the character of his friends FW Bateson, founder of Essays in Criticism, and Ian Hamilton, poet, wit, and founder of the Review. And, lifelong and supreme, to the love and the loving kindness of Yvonne, his wife of more than 50 years, and his daughters, Alisoun and Cassandra.</p><p>Not every obituary should be a tribute, but this one should. For it is necessary to speak here of that which Wall himself judged it his responsibility not to invite attention to: his having been struck down by polio 54 years ago and lived since then from a wheelchair. Confined to a wheelchair is not the right way of putting it, though, since, thanks to courage, self-discipline and indomitability, his life was in so many respects unconfined.</p><p>He travelled to the dramatic and musical performances that he loved and needed, to the professional occasions that helped him to help others to think, and to the country that meant almost as much to him as England did: France. Widest of all was the circle of his friends, particularly of those who having been his pupils, or contributors to Essays in Criticism, became for ever his friends. But whereas Yeats could say "and say my glory was I had such friends", for Wall it was not a matter of glory for anyone, but simply a happiness. Wordsworth, again: "The best portion of a good man's life,/His little, nameless, unremembered acts/Of kindness and of love." For unremembered, read unforgotten.</p><p>Wall was not concerned to make a mark, still less to make <em>his</em> mark; secure in his sense of his own self, he especially valued the opportunity that writing, teaching and editing gave him, the opportunity to help others to be, or to become, themselves. His sense of succinctness was an art and not just an economy, and he valued humour not as a diversion but as a mode of persuasion against the absurd, the pretentious or the professionalised.</p><p>Born in London, Wall had a Quaker background and schooling that fortified him despite changes in his beliefs, and an Oxford education at New College that confirmed him in the liberal humanism by which he lived. His research at Oxford in the late 1950s gained from the supervision and friendship of John Bayley, and led to his becoming, first, a tutor at Mansfield College, and then a fellow of Keble College, a post that he held from 1964 to 1991. In the 1970s, for the Oxford University Dramatic Society and at the Oxford Playhouse, he directed several Shakespeare productions, and for the Oxford Operatic Society, Purcell's The Indian Queen.</p><p>At the invitation of Bateson, in 1969, he joined the editorial board of Essays in Criticism, becoming in 1973 its editor, a responsibility that he exercised with fervour until his final illness. The editor of Charles Dickens: A Critical Anthology (1970), of Trollope's Can You Forgive Her? (1972) and (with Helen Small) of Little Dorrit (1988), he was the author not only of Trollope and Character (1988) but of many pieces that have greatly affected editorial enterprises (for instance, his essay on the claim that classic novels should have annotation on the substantial scale that has long been usual for classic poetry) and also of the novel Double Lives (1991).</p><p>He is survived by Yvonne, Alisoun and Cassandra.</p><p></p><p></p><p><strong>Seamus Perry writes: </strong>Stephen was an editor of genius. He brought to Essays in Criticism the very highest academic standards, but also something of the spirit of the literary journalist. An issue of the journal was not a catch-all of recent submissions, but a paperback book that someone ought to enjoy reading, and everything had to be right.</p><p>Having a piece edited by Stephen, consequently, was an experience no one forgot. Preferably, he would invite you to his flat in north Oxford, a little before tea. After a long and anecdotal chat – he was a brilliant raconteur, though he never hogged the stage – Stephen would come to the matter in hand. Out would come your typescript, now decorated extensively in his filigree strokes of pencil or fine black ballpoint pen, every page – often every sentence – tightened and tuned: inelegances and stock expressions would be trimmed, jargon discarded, jokes improved, ease added.</p><p>When I had the honour of being appointed the baby editor of the journal, there were, in the least constrictive of ways, serious editorial dicta to be learned: every essay should join a conversation and take it a step further; a theory should be used to elucidate what mattered about a text, and not a text deployed to exemplify the general truth of a theory; there was no article that could not be improved by losing a few hundred words. His judgments were kindly, catholic, discursive, firm.</p><p>He enjoyed especially the company of younger members of the profession and saw a key role of the journal as encouraging new talent. Even rejection could be a form of encouragement. The first piece I sent to the journal when still a graduate student, a comparative account of Wordsworth and Seamus Heaney, earned the gentlest of rebukes for its structural incoherence: "I liked it very much, but felt it had a bit too much 'meanwhile back at the ranch' about it." Magisterial surveys of the critical scene did not win favour either: "The trouble with a tour d'horizon is that there is just so much horizon."</p><p>The strength of an Essays in Criticism essay, by contrast, lay in the humanity of its response and the agility of its voice, its independence from formulae and its specific eye for textual detail. With Christopher Ricks, he presided for almost four decades, in the least showy of ways, over one of the most remarkable literary periodicals to appear since FR Leavis's Scrutiny, with wonderful wisdom and humour and self-deprecating grace.</p><p></p><p>• Stephen de Rocfort Wall, literary scholar, born 29 July 1931; died 6 August 2010</p><div class="related" style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"><ul><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/literary-criticism">Literary criticism</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/oxforduniversity">University of Oxford</a></li></ul></div><br/><div class="terms"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk">guardian.co.uk</a> © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our <a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds">More Feeds</a></div><p style="clear:both" /> <p><a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/RoG5TgdCBdBrIfe7pOotQA0F2OQ/0/da"><img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/RoG5TgdCBdBrIfe7pOotQA0F2OQ/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a><br/> <a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/RoG5TgdCBdBrIfe7pOotQA0F2OQ/1/da"><img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/RoG5TgdCBdBrIfe7pOotQA0F2OQ/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a></p>
Banded school admissions provide a quick route to fairer education | Charles Hotham
Education Guardian - Tue, 31 Aug 2010 13:01:03 GMT
<div class="track"><img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.20.4/64723?ns=guardian&pageName=Banded+school+admissions+provide+a+quick+route+to+fairer+education++%7C+Ch%3AArticle%3A1445487&ch=Comment+is+free&c3=GU.co.uk&c4=School+admissions%2CSchools%2CEducation%2CEquality+%28Society%29%2CSocial+exclusion+%28Society%29%2CSociety%2CEducation+policy%2CPolitics&c5=Society+Weekly%2CNot+commercially+useful%2CPolicy+Society%2CEducation+Weekly+Education%2CSocial+Care+Society%2CCommunities+Society%2CSchools+Education&c6=Charles+Hotham&c7=10-Aug-31&c8=1445487&c9=Article&c10=Comment&c11=Comment+is+free&c13=&c25=Comment+is+free&c30=content&h2=GU%2FComment+is+free%2Fblog%2FComment+is+free" width="1" height="1" /></div><p class="standfirst">Let's expose disadvantaged children to a culture of achievement</p><p>Over the course of my five years as a teacher at a central London comprehensive school, there was a noticeable shift in the tone of conversation among students about university applications. Increasingly the talk was of Russell Group universities, Oxford and Cambridge, medicine and law. By the time I was in charge of university applications, students were asking for advice on applying to the country's best universities, and requesting support for admissions tests and interviews. This sort of interest raises everyone's sights and tends to happen when you have a critical mass of students (and their parents) who want to aim high. This happened here partly because of the school's banded admissions policy.</p><p>Such policies are a way to improve educational outcomes for disadvantaged children quickly. Realistically, pupil premiums and independence for more state schools are only ever going to help in the long term, and we can't afford to fail another generation of children in poor schools while that happens.</p><p>In a <a href="http://www.barnardos.org.uk/what_we_do/campaigns/education_campaigns.htm" title="Barnado's: Education campaigns">report</a> released last week, the children's charity Barnardo's recommended that all state-funded schools pursue a "fair banding" admissions policy. Under their proposals, oversubscribed schools admit a fixed proportion of students within defined bands across the ability spectrum as measured by a short admissions test.</p><p>The result is a "true" comprehensive, rather than one that simply reflects the local area. That catchment area may be very disadvantaged and therefore present concentrated challenges, or may be made up of "high-involvement, high-aspiration" families who have been able to move into the area to take advantage of the good local school. As a young-ish researcher with the thinktank <a href="http://centreforum.org/" title="CentreForum">CentreForum</a>, who has spent the last five years teaching in one these "fair-banded" schools, I found myself listening particularly intently to the discussion last week. Barnardo's has argued that a change in the admissions policy of schools would improve the life chances of the most disadvantaged considerably. They sketch a picture of the existing system as one in which parents who demonstrate very little interest in the school choice system are put off further by a complex process dominated by parents who make the effort – the oft-mentioned middle-class pushy parents. Those children already disadvantaged by their parents' inability to manipulate the system are therefore condemned to join similar children in schools wracked by the challenges associated with poverty and which struggle to attract good teachers.</p><p>David Green from the thinktank <a href="http://www.civitas.org.uk/books/about.php" title="Civitas">Civitas</a> criticised this on Radio 4's <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/b006qj9z/console" title="BBC iPlayer: Today">Today</a> programme as "a kind of social engineering that's based on animosity towards middle-class parents" and suggested that the solution was to "plonk brand new schools of the best kind into our poorest inner-city areas". Well, as education secretary Michael Gove agreed, this would indeed help, but how difficult is it? Gove rightly suggested that the proposed pupil premium would help, especially if the schools in receipt of the extra funds have the flexibility to attract, retain and train the best teachers through discretion over pay.</p><p>The recruitment of a handful of good teachers could in theory happen almost immediately. A significant proportion of the children in that school will start benefiting quickly (though, without increasing the overall supply of teachers, another school will lose out). But how long will it take to attract large numbers of good teachers? How long for the reputation of the school to increase sufficiently so that those "high-involvement, high-aspiration" parents start to send their children to the school? When this does happen, an environment is created in which the whole tone of the student and parent body becomes one of aspiration and achievement – a tone which is possible for teachers to create against the tide, but is more difficult, and slower, without the assistance of students and parents who demonstrate that same desire more openly.</p><p>It is now widely acknowledged that the single most important factor for improving schools is the quality of teachers. What seems to be stated less often is that the teaching profession is like any other walk of life – there will always be better teachers and worse teachers. Given the universally acknowledged importance of education, however, there is an understandable desire to eradicate the "bad" teachers.</p><p>Of course we should aim to improve the overall standard, to ensure minimum standards are met and to attract high achieving graduates into the profession. But we should also set a framework in which the moderately good teachers can achieve the best possible outcomes for the greatest number of children.</p><p>The pupil premium may not reach as many students as we would wish. New academies and free schools may take a while to recruit the best teachers, especially if their budgets are limited. The elimination of inadequate teachers from the system will be very slow and tortuous to achieve. At a time when funds are scarce, a fair banding admissions framework is a much quicker way to enable our most disadvantaged children to be exposed to good teaching and a culture of achievement and aspiration.</p><div class="related" style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"><ul><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/schooladmissions">School admissions</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/schools">Schools</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/equality">Equality</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/socialexclusion">Social exclusion</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/education">Education policy</a></li></ul></div><div class="author"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/charles-hotham">Charles Hotham</a></div><br/><div class="terms"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk">guardian.co.uk</a> © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our <a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds">More Feeds</a></div><p style="clear:both" /> <p><a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/FK3ErZAkquOD6N_z3DNzlolapGw/0/da"><img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/FK3ErZAkquOD6N_z3DNzlolapGw/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a><br/> <a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/FK3ErZAkquOD6N_z3DNzlolapGw/1/da"><img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/FK3ErZAkquOD6N_z3DNzlolapGw/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a></p>
Faith in science is not enough – people deserve proof | Alom Shaha
Education Guardian - Tue, 31 Aug 2010 11:30:02 GMT
<div class="track"><img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.20.4/32419?ns=guardian&pageName=Faith+in+science+is+not+enough+*+people+deserve+proof+%7C+Alom+Shaha%3AArticle%3A1445425&ch=Comment+is+free&c3=GU.co.uk&c4=Science%2CScience+policy%2CScience+%28Education+subject%29%2CEducation%2CReligion+%28News%29%2CWorld+news&c5=Not+commercially+useful%2CEducation+Weekly+Education%2CHigher+Education&c6=Alom+Shaha&c7=10-Aug-31&c8=1445425&c9=Article&c10=Comment&c11=Comment+is+free&c13=&c25=Cif+belief%2CComment+is+free&c30=content&h2=GU%2FComment+is+free%2Fblog%2FCif+belief" width="1" height="1" /></div><p class="standfirst">Education must be at the heart of science communication, or else we are simply asking people to 'believe'</p><p>I am an evangelist. But instead of spreading the gospel or any other religious message, I spend my time trying to share the knowledge of what I believe to be <a href="http://whyscience.co.uk/contributors/michael-de-podesta/michael-de-podesta.html" title="Why science: Michael de Podesta: Humanity's Greatest Achievement">humanity's greatest cultural achievement</a>: science. There is a more mundane term for what I do – "science communication". It's a horrible term, smacking of exactly the kind of thing that turns some people off science. It covers a wide range of activities – from science film-making to working for medical-research charities to going into schools and throwing liquid nitrogen around in a desperate attempt to convince teenagers that "science is fun". Funnily enough, it's not used to describe those who teach science, even though science teachers arguably do more "science communication" than anyone else.</p><p>The UK's best known science communicator is probably Professor Brian Cox. He's doing a great job of making science <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/apr/13/science-cool" title="Guardian: How science became cool">seem cool and sexy</a> to the public and, in my opinion, deserves the accolade of modern-day Carl Sagan for his contribution to the cultural status of science. I've known Brian for years and <a href=" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v="67q_2V6xOxE"" title="YouTube: Big Bang v2.0">worked with him</a> before his celebrity status went supernova. I would love to say "I told you so" to all the TV commissioning editors who rejected my suggestions to use him as a presenter. I suspect Brian finds it as ironic as I do that TV companies now regularly put out adverts looking for "the next Brian Cox".</p><p>As much as I love Brian's work, I don't think we need any more like him at the moment. Instead, we need more really good science teachers, and here's why: I don't want to see science become something that people "believe" is important and cool and sexy without understanding why. I don't want people to mindlessly buy into the geek scene in the same way that they might have bought into the alternative lifestyle scene, had they encountered it first in the right circumstances. But that's what I've seen happening – people attending the lectures, events and festivals organised by "science communicators" and going home convinced that science is the "right" way to look at the world, without really understanding why science is special. I've encountered people who are desperate to hang out with the science in-crowd (yes, there really is such a crowd), and even "science communicators" who struggle to explain what it is they think is special or important about science. When I ask them why they want to be science communicators they invariably talk about wanting to share their love of science with the world. Perhaps this is not so different from people who want to share their love of Jesus, Muhammad or Krishna.</p><p>It seems to me that many of these people are looking for an identity, something to believe in, and they've "found" science in much the same way that others find religion or spirituality. Some of these science groupies are scarily reminiscent of the kids who were in the Christian Union at school.</p><p>As a child, it would frustrate me that my friends would bang on about how great Islam was and how the Qur'an was this amazing book with the Truth in it – when they had little idea what the Qur'an really said or what the details of the Islamic faith were. Recently, I've been feeling a disconcertingly similar sense of frustration when talking to people who are part of the "sceptic" movement, or the geek scene.</p><p>Sure, science by its very nature requires us to take things on faith – we cannot individually verify every scientific statement ever made, heck, few of us know how to prove <a href="http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/question.php?number=190" title="Cornell university: Ask an astronomer">that the Earth orbits the Sun</a> and not the other way round, but without ensuring that education is at the heart of science communication, we are simply asking people to "believe" in science. If we can't do better than that, than we're no better than the religious leaders that so many self-proclaimed geeks are contemptuous of.</p><p>I have encountered priests who seemed simply to want to increase the numbers of their flocks, and I've met others who genuinely want to pass on their understanding of god. There is a parallel with science communicators – there are ones who think that getting people to believe "science is fun / important" is what matters and there are others who want people to understand why this is so. It's a subtle but important distinction – the latter is more difficult to do and my feeling is that the best place to do it is in the classroom.</p><p>My friend Jonathan Sanderson, a science communicator I admire hugely, has pointed out that it looks like I am advocating a return to the "empty vessel" model of communication. I'm not sure he's wrong, but I'd happily concede that, particularly with adult audiences, we need a range of approaches, from saying "this is how the greenhouse effect works" to "take a look at this, you might find it interesting". But Jonathan agrees with me that, "most science communicators would have a dramatically larger impact over their lifetimes if they quit the scene and took teaching jobs". I'm not disparaging the good work that many science communicators do, but some of the most talented, creative people I know work in this peculiar field and I just wish more of them would aspire to become teachers instead of dreaming of becoming the next Brian Cox.</p><div class="related" style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"><ul><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/science-policy">Science policy</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/science">Science</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/religion">Religion</a></li></ul></div><div class="author"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/alom-shaha">Alom Shaha</a></div><br/><div class="terms"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk">guardian.co.uk</a> © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our <a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds">More Feeds</a></div><p style="clear:both" /> <p><a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/pHIqrezOneUwwiO5tbv6RSUgKrw/0/da"><img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/pHIqrezOneUwwiO5tbv6RSUgKrw/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a><br/> <a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/pHIqrezOneUwwiO5tbv6RSUgKrw/1/da"><img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/pHIqrezOneUwwiO5tbv6RSUgKrw/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a></p>
JK Rowling gives £10m to set up multiple sclerosis research clinic
Education Guardian - Tue, 31 Aug 2010 10:37:44 GMT
<div class="track"><img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.20.4/36760?ns=guardian&pageName=JK+Rowling+gives+*10m+to+set+up+multiple+sclerosis+research+clinic%3AArticle%3A1445399&ch=Books&c3=Guardian&c4=JK+Rowling+%28Author%29%2CBooks%2CMultiple+sclerosis%2CEdinburgh+%28News%29%2CHealth+and+wellbeing+%28Life+and+style%29%2CLife+and+style%2CResearch+%28Higher+education%29%2CHigher+education%2CHealth+%28Society%29%2CEducation%2CResearch+funding%2CScotland+%28News%29%2CNHS+%28Society%29%2CUK+news&c5=Not+commercially+useful%2CEducation+Weekly+Education%2CHealth+Society%2CHigher+Education%2CHealth&c6=Severin+Carrell&c7=10-Aug-31&c8=1445399&c9=Article&c10=News&c11=Books&c13=&c25=&c30=content&h2=GU%2FBooks%2FJK+Rowling" width="1" height="1" /></div><p class="standfirst">Harry Potter author funds Edinburgh university research centre named after her mother, who was killed by the disease</p><p><strong> </strong></p><p>The author JK Rowling has donated £10m to set up a clinic to research treatments for multiple sclerosis, the degenerative disease that killed her mother at the age of 45, it was announced today.</p><p>The Anne Rowling regenerative neurology clinic, which will be based at the University of Edinburgh, will carry out research into a range of degenerative neurological conditions and diseases including Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, Huntingdon's and motor neurone disease.</p><p>The Harry Potter author has championed research into multiple sclerosis. In 2006, it emerged that she had given a "major" but undisclosed gift to Multiple Sclerosis Society Scotland towards setting up the university's centre for multiple sclerosis research.</p><p>She had served as the patron of the society, but resigned last year after an internal battle over the charity's reorganisation.</p><p>The university said the £10m was the largest direct donation Rowling had made to a charitable cause, and the biggest single gift the university had ever received.</p><p>"I have supported research into the cause and treatment of multiple sclerosis for many years now – but when I first saw the proposal for this clinic, I knew that I had found a project more exciting, more innovative, and, I believe, more likely to succeed in unravelling the mysteries of MS than any other I had read about or been asked to fund," the author said.</p><p>"I have just turned 45, the age at which my mother, Anne, died of complications related to her MS.</p><p>"I know that she would rather have had her name on this clinic than on any statue, flower garden or commemorative plaque, so this donation is on her behalf, too, and in gratitude for everything she gave me in her far too short life."</p><p>Unlike laboratory-based research centres, the new clinic will work with MS sufferers and help develop and test new treatments that could slow, stop and eventually reverse degenerative diseases. It will be based in a purpose-built unit within the BioQuarter medical research campus, in south-east Edinburgh.</p><p>Staff will work closely with other university and NHS research units specialising in regenerative and neurological diseases.</p><p>Rowling's £10m gift is being included in the university's campaign to raise £350m towards research, increasing scholarships and bursaries and conserving its historic buildings.</p><p>Prof Sir Timothy O'Shea, the university's principal, said: "This exceptionally generous donation will provide great help in the worldwide effort to improve treatments for multiple sclerosis.</p><p>"Work at the clinic will build on the already existing important research strengths in neuro-degenerative disorders at the university, which benefit very considerably from our close partnership with NHS Lothian."</p><p>Rowling, whose personal wealth was estimated at £519m earlier this year thanks to the bestselling Harry Potter novels and films, has a long track record of charitable donations. She has also given £1m to the Labour party.</p><p>She had previously set up another trust – the Volant Trust, commemorating her mother's maiden name – which has an annual budget of £5.1m to support women and young people at risk of social exclusion.</p><div class="related" style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"><ul><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/jkrowling">JK Rowling</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/multiple-sclerosis">Multiple sclerosis</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/edinburgh">Edinburgh</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/health-and-wellbeing">Health & wellbeing</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/research">Research</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/higher-education">Higher education</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/health">Health</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/researchfunding">Research funding</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/scotland">Scotland</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/nhs">NHS</a></li></ul></div><div class="author"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/severincarrell">Severin Carrell</a></div><br/><div class="terms"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk">guardian.co.uk</a> © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our <a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds">More Feeds</a></div><p style="clear:both" /> <p><a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/XbvP7AL-AV6Y6QvOVkvI54BGxB0/0/da"><img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/XbvP7AL-AV6Y6QvOVkvI54BGxB0/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a><br/> <a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/XbvP7AL-AV6Y6QvOVkvI54BGxB0/1/da"><img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/XbvP7AL-AV6Y6QvOVkvI54BGxB0/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a></p>
University architecture shapes up for a revolution
Education Guardian - Tue, 31 Aug 2010 07:30:05 GMT
<div class="track"><img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.20.4/36789?ns=guardian&pageName=University+architecture+shapes+up+for+a+revolution%3AArticle%3A1443956&ch=Education&c3=Guardian&c4=Higher+education%2CEducation%2CArchitecture%2CArt+and+design&c5=Art%2CEducation+Weekly+Education%2CArchitecture%2CHigher+Education&c6=Jonathan+Glancey&c7=10-Aug-31&c8=1443956&c9=Article&c10=Feature&c11=Education&c13=&c25=&c30=content&h2=GU%2FEducation%2FHigher+education" width="1" height="1" /></div><p class="standfirst">Learning Landscapes, a research project into the relationship between students, lecturers and researchers and the buildings they use, aims to bring a new creativity to campus design</p><p>Student hostels aren't hotels", says Professor Mike Neary, "nor are university campuses business parks." That, though, is what they have been in danger of turning into over the last decade, says Neary, political sociologist, dean of teaching and learning, and director of the centre for educational research and development at the University of Lincoln. "A decade," he says, "in which neo-liberal economics and the business model for education and politics, as well as business itself, appeared to have triumphed. Yet, it's all over now. Finished."</p><p>You can tell that Neary is more than pleased that attitudes to education in Britain are changing now that politicians and educators have finally realised that the brutal, roller-coaster ways of global capitalism are no friends to learning. And yet, over the last decade, many universities have invested in eye-catching architecture aimed, he says, at attracting investors and business, as a way of transforming places that should be free-thinking and outside the immediate commercial equation into marketing-driven "brands". Students have become "customers" in business-style machines for teaching; these are expected to serve the economy by slotting graduates neatly into profitable jobs.</p><p>To counteract this tendency and help re-think what universities are, what they are for and how they might build, occupy and use space intelligently – even critically, Neary has spent much of the last three years <a href=" http://learninglandscapes.blogs.lincoln.ac.uk/" title="leading the research for a project called Learning Landscapes in Higher Education">leading the research for a project called Learning Landscapes in Higher Education</a>. This was set up at Lincoln with Professor David Chiddick, former vice-chancellor of the university, in the chair. Chiddick is the town planner, urban and transport economist who led the University of Lincoln from its old home in Hull to the cathedral city in the 1990s. He has been responsible for some fine-looking buildings on the new Lincoln campus, not least the elegant new school of architecture designed by Rick Mather in the long Gothic shadow of the medieval cathedral.</p><p>The Learning Landscapes project probed the ways those who commission university buildings, those who run them, as well as those who teach, learn and research in them actually relate to built space. What role, if any, do students and academics play in the design and use of lecture theatres and other conventional teaching spaces? To what extent are new buildings simply supplied, something that staff and students blindly accept? Is there a growing gap between the concerns of academia, architecture and estate management?</p><p>Working with the architects and space-planners DEGW, Neary and his colleagues visited 12 universities in Scotland, England and Wales, conducting extensive interviews in each. The team asked their hosts, including student representatives, what buildings on their campus they would like to "keep, toss or create". What sort of buildings and spaces did they think might live up to Neary's "three Es" – "efficiency, effectiveness and expression"?</p><p>As John Worthington of DEGW puts it, the practical aim of this research has been "to dissolve the division between estate departments and teaching and learning that so often results in silos of responsibility and a lack of understanding of each others' work and needs."</p><p>Neary, though, believes that the <a href="http://learninglandscapes.lincoln.ac.uk" title="">research – published in the spring</a> – is only a stepping-stone on the way to campuses that function as well as they should. "It's been an academic exercise," he says, "and this is just what it needs to have been. Universities are academic. What we need to do is to think of the ways in which the process of research, of critical, academic thinking by students and teachers alike can shape the physical environment around them. A university's architecture and the spaces within it, though, might adopt many different forms and models."</p><p>Before I get the chance to ask how such buildings and spaces might possibly look, and how they might be used, Neary points me to Virginia Woolf's advice on how to build a university in Three Guineas, a book-length essay published in 1938. Seeing, during the heyday of totalitarianism in Europe, that our universities had done precious little to breed either a respect for liberty or a hatred for war, Woolf believed such institutions should go back to true basics. "Let it be built on lines of its own. It must be built not of carved stone and stained glass, but of some cheap easily combustible material, which does not hoard dust and perpetrate traditions. Do not have chapels. Do not have museums and libraries with chained books and first editions under glass cages. Let the pictures and books be new and always changing. Let it be decorated afresh by each generation by their own hands cheaply."</p><p>"The most convincing new university buildings", says Neary, "are those where students are given real responsibility for managing and supervising the spaces within which they learn, as well as acting as support for other students' learning. The Learning Grid at the University of Warwick is the most developed form of this new kind of space."</p><p>Neary was at Warwick before Lincoln. Designed by the university library with architects MacCormac Jamieson Prichard, the Learning Grid is, according to its manager, Rachel Edwards, "a technology-rich, flexible and informal learning environment, open 24/7 with a capacity for 300 people". Essentially, this is a fusion of a library and a common room. It allows disciplines to cross. It encourages students to help one another as well as themselves. It is generating fresh lines of research. "It's been breaking down the gap between students and teachers," says Neary, "with students becoming part of the academic project rather than consumers of dispensed knowledge."</p><p>Now that Neary had given me a concrete, and successful, example of what a new "learning landscape" might be, my mind flashed back to the visit I made a few months ago to <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/interactive/2010/feb/19/rolex-learning-centre-lausanne-switzerland" title="the new Rolex learning centre at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, Switzerland">the new Rolex learning centre at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, Switzerland</a>. Designed by the Tokyo-based architects, SANAA, this extraordinary curved and light-filled building, with its garden courtyards, its continually shifting floors, its almost complete rejection of conventional rooms, its lack of corridors and doors, and its gentle spirit of playfulness and inquiry, has been built to bring students from all faculties together. Here is a happily uncertain place of research, of academic inquiry, of debate, research and new thinking. Everything seems possible here. No restrictions on physical movement or thought. "Our focus", says SANAA, "is always to find different relationships."</p><p>This is very much what Neary and his colleagues are rooting for, too. It implies, though, nothing less than a quiet revolution in the ways British universities are designed and run. It also demands fresh and original thinking. "One thing I noticed as we travelled from university to university", says Neary, "was how there's a tendency to copy or clone what other universities have already done. While this leads to some incremental learning about what makes teaching and learning spaces work, it does point to a rush to conformity rather than experimentation."</p><p>"You can't contain a university," says Neary, meaning that its academic mind should always be expanding and that architecture and space planning within buildings need to respond to this idea. "I suppose you could sum up my approach, in headline terms, as a damning critique of the neo-liberal university. It is, but it's far from impractical. In fact, as Woolf implied, you could create a new, innovative and academically challenging environment in buildings designed in a spirit of poverty."</p><p>Neary doesn't demur when I suggest that is what certain orders of medieval monks tried to do. The austere beauty of a Cistercian monastery was no real bridle to thought, although, of course, such places were there to serve God before anyone or anything else.</p><p>So, has much of new university building been carried out in vain over the past decade? "Of course there've been some beautiful and excellent buildings", says Neary. "What's been wrong is the whole approach to treating universities as businesses, as an appendage to the economy, rather than places where ideas can be dangerous."</p><p>Learning Landscapes in Higher Education makes the point that while academics have been able to make an important contribution "as clients and customers of the project management process", they need to inject academic ideas into the shaping of university buildings and campuses. The Learning Grid at Warwick and the Rolex learning centre at Lausanne give some idea of what may yet be done, and yet, as Neary would say, these examples, no matter how alluring, are not there to be copied. Universities must work things out for themselves.</p><p>Meanwhile, as Morag Schiach, pro-vice chancellor for teaching and learning at Queen Mary, University of London and one of Neary's interviewees, bluntly reminds us, "the extent to which higher education should foster intellectual and cultural liberty in the face of pressing economic demands from industry and government is still unresolved."</p><div class="related" style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"><ul><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/higher-education">Higher education</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/architecture">Architecture</a></li></ul></div><div class="author"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/jonathanglancey">Jonathan Glancey</a></div><br/><div class="terms"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk">guardian.co.uk</a> © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our <a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds">More Feeds</a></div><p style="clear:both" /> <p><a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/Z03rMF_kr09HSxzJVj81XmaFQuU/0/da"><img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/Z03rMF_kr09HSxzJVj81XmaFQuU/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a><br/> <a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/Z03rMF_kr09HSxzJVj81XmaFQuU/1/da"><img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/Z03rMF_kr09HSxzJVj81XmaFQuU/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a></p>
Secondary school: how parents can help make the transition easier
Education Guardian - Tue, 31 Aug 2010 07:15:03 GMT
<div class="track"><img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.20.4/16647?ns=guardian&pageName=Secondary+school%3A+how+parents+can+help+make+the+transition+easier%3AArticle%3A1443829&ch=Education&c3=Guardian&c4=Secondary+schools%2CParents+%28Education%29%2CSchools%2CEducation&c5=Education+Weekly+Education%2CSchools+Education&c6=Glynis+Kozma&c7=10-Aug-31&c8=1443829&c9=Article&c10=Feature&c11=Education&c13=&c25=&c30=content&h2=GU%2FEducation%2FSecondary+schools" width="1" height="1" /></div><p class="standfirst">Moving up to year 7 is a big step. Here are 10 tips on how to help your children make the change smoothly</p><p>For families of year 6s, the summer holidays can seem like a long run-up to that great mountain of mystery and fear that is big school. Some children will be starting a new school that is 10 times larger than their primary. Moving up to year 7 is a big step.</p><p>Professor Julian Elliott, an educational psychologist at Durham University, says: "For many children, secondary school represents a step towards autonomy and the whole process of growing up and leaving childhood behind." It can be overwhelming for children and parents alike.</p><p>But there are things you can do to make things easier, and things you can think about now that will help your child adjust and settle in quickly.</p><p></p><p>• Build your child's confidence. Settling in well is all about self-esteem. Children with high self-esteem are less likely to be bullied, or to bully, or belong to gangs. They are more likely to gather a wide circle of friends. They can confidently say "no" to anything with which they don't feel comfortable. So tell them how great they are. When did you last pay them a compliment? They don't have to have done anything special to deserve one; a compliment on how well they look after a pet, or that they are kind or thoughtful, goes a long way. Do this daily and watch their confidence develop.</p><p>• Listen to their fears. Your child is possibly anxious and also afraid their concerns will appear trivial. For instance, if they become lost in the maze of corridors, what should they do? They could make their way to the school office – they should have a map – or find a pupil or teacher to direct them. What they shouldn't do is hide in the toilets until the lesson is over. Talk through the options with them. Do this for every concern they may have so that they know you take it seriously.</p><p>• Remind your child that being a good friend, especially to shy and quiet children, is one way to make friends. Be encouraging if they want to invite friends home and suggest it if they don't.</p><p>• Show that you feel positive about their school and "talk it up" even if it was not your first choice or you lost an admissions appeal. If you have high expectations, these will be sensed by your child.</p><p>• Have a trial run of the route, especially if they walk or cycle. If they miss a school bus home you need to talk through what they will do, especially if you are working and can't pick them up straight away.</p><p>• Get up earlier during the last week of the holidays so that early starts for school aren't a shock to the system.</p><p>• Stick to the uniform code. Your child will feel more comfortable from day one.</p><p>• Make sure they have emergency money and credit on their mobile phone – if it's allowed in school.</p><p>• Think about any changes you might need to make at home so they have the time, space and energy for homework. One parent who has three children shared her strategy: homework begins at a set time every day, after dinner, with all three children working simultaneously to avoid distractions. In the early days you should check their homework diary daily and if it looks empty, check with other parents or the school. Your child may simply forget to write it down.</p><p>• Encourage them to join lunchtime or after-school clubs. They are a great way to make friends. If after half a term they really don't enjoy it, they can drop it.</p><p>Give your child a few weeks to settle in. Ensure you know who to contact for any situation, and the school's preferred means of contact. If they are having any problems, social or educational, make an appointment to see their form tutor.</p><p>• Glynis Kozma is author of Secondary School: A Parent's Guide, and was a teacher for 30 years</p><div class="related" style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"><ul><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/secondary-schools">Secondary schools</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/parents">Parents</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/schools">Schools</a></li></ul></div><br/><div class="terms"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk">guardian.co.uk</a> © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our <a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds">More Feeds</a></div><p style="clear:both" /> <p><a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/2dppXOHzi5JsUSAzK7el7w7co6Y/0/da"><img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/2dppXOHzi5JsUSAzK7el7w7co6Y/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a><br/> <a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/2dppXOHzi5JsUSAzK7el7w7co6Y/1/da"><img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/2dppXOHzi5JsUSAzK7el7w7co6Y/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a></p>
Vocational education is vital for Britain's business future
Education Guardian - Tue, 31 Aug 2010 07:00:08 GMT
<div class="track"><img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.20.4/42827?ns=guardian&pageName=Vocational+education+is+vital+for+Britain%27s+business+future%3AArticle%3A1443940&ch=Education&c3=Guardian&c4=Business+and+management+studies+%28Education+subject%29%2CGCSEs%2CA-levels%2CSchools%2CEducation%2C14+-+19+education%2CMIC%3A+Guardian+careers+%28microsite%29%2CMIC%3A+Sectors+%28careers%29+%28microsite%29&c5=Not+commercially+useful%2CEducation+Weekly+Education%2CHigher+Education%2CSchools+Education&c6=Peter+Jones&c7=10-Aug-31&c8=1443940&c9=Article&c10=Comment%2CFeature&c11=Education&c13=&c25=&c30=content&h2=GU%2FEducation%2FBusiness+and+management+studies" width="1" height="1" /></div><p class="standfirst">It is disappointing that business studies is becoming less popular, says Dragon Peter Jones, because Britain needs entrepreneurs and inspired employees</p><p>Last week's GCSE results highlighted the perennial debate about attitudes to traditional and more vocational subjects. While it is <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/aug/24/gcse-results-2010-coursework" title="fantastic that the pass rates improved for the 23rd year in a row">fantastic that the pass rates improved for the 23rd year in a row</a>, with over two-thirds achieving five A*-Cs, I am disappointed that languages and business studies seem to be increasingly unpopular.</p><p>In the absence of more vocational GCSEs, it is a shame that there were 7% fewer entries for business studies this year and that almost three-quarters of students didn't take French. Yet both teach skills that are vital for UK industry.</p><p>For those with an interest in traditional subject such as English and science, the pathway to success is clearly laid out. However, for those with a flair for business and a keen interest in enterprise, it is not so clear, and their experience of education so far has not always been a convincing one.</p><p>While it's true that traditional business GCSEs equip students with a wealth of valuable theoretical business knowledge, the English education system has not looked particularly kindly on business studies, in particular the topic of enterprise. Too often, there has been confusion between entrepreneurship and business studies. Enterprise is not the mechanics of setting up and running a business, but a state of mind, a confidence that you have the knowledge and the right mindset to be successful. A lot of people think you are born with it. I couldn't disagree more. The skills of how to be more enterprising are real and can be taught.</p><p>I believe we are still missing key ingredients that are discouraging young people from following their entrepreneurial dream, particularly in relation to academic versus vocational GSCEs. Not every student has a flair for textbook education, and generally many young people who have a flair for business and enterprise perhaps do not excel through traditional education methods.</p><p>But should we assume that these individuals who did not receive good results will not make successful entrepreneurs? We need more options available for students who are passionate about business and enterprise, but perhaps do not have the desire or academic talent to follow the traditional and more accepted route of taking A-level business studies. While there is definitely a place and need for business courses at GCSE and A-level, there is still a gap that needs to be filled.</p><p>My career path was not a traditional one. Although I obtained O-levels and A-levels in economics, biology and geography, I decided not to go to university. Two years ago, however, I was challenged to sit the A-level business studies exam and was awarded an A. The fact that I took, and successfully passed, the exam later in my career demonstrates that experience and the qualifications gained from hands-on, vocational learning are equally as beneficial as those offered by academic routes.</p><p>My primary point here is not to discard traditional business studies courses – they have their rightful place within the education system. However, as we look towards the future, we have the opportunity to take a serious look at how to unlock the entrepreneurial talent within this country through better business education.</p><p>My experience of education is that we tend to put everyone, all the learners, in one room and expect them to learn in the same way and at the same pace, but not everyone learns like that. What we need to unlock entrepreneurial talent in this country is to give young people high-quality, practical experience that fosters their skills – and this should begin early in their education journey, with vocational GCSEs being a prime opportunity.</p><p>To date, there have been a series of unsuccessful attempts to get industry involved in running schools, starting with Education Action Zones in 1998. Education providers and businesses must learn to collaborate much more effectively. The UK needs entrepreneurs to stimulate the economy, and businesses need inspired employees to help their companies recover quickly from the recession. In order to achieve this, we must foster greater links between the business and the education world through vocational education.</p><p>• Peter Jones appears on Dragons' Den, is an entrepreneur and is founder of the <a href="http://www.thenea.org" title="National Enterprise Academy">National Enterprise Academy</a></p><div class="related" style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"><ul><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/businessandmanagementstudies">Business and management studies</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/gcses">GCSEs</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/alevels">A-levels</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/schools">Schools</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/14-19-education">14 - 19 education</a></li><li><a href="http://careers.guardian.co.uk/sectors-industry-roles">All sectors</a></li></ul></div><div class="author"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/peter-jones">Peter Jones</a></div><br/><div class="terms"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk">guardian.co.uk</a> © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our <a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds">More Feeds</a></div><p style="clear:both" /> <p><a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/KQu2MlCg_hLlgA4HvvGksH7J3vw/0/da"><img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/KQu2MlCg_hLlgA4HvvGksH7J3vw/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a><br/> <a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/KQu2MlCg_hLlgA4HvvGksH7J3vw/1/da"><img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/KQu2MlCg_hLlgA4HvvGksH7J3vw/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a></p>
Reading Agency defends libraries' impact on literacy
Education Guardian - Tue, 31 Aug 2010 06:45:04 GMT
<div class="track"><img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.20.4/56397?ns=guardian&pageName=Reading+Agency+defends+libraries%27+impact+on+literacy%3AArticle%3A1443917&ch=Education&c3=Guardian&c4=Literacy%2CLibraries%2CPrimary+schools%2CSchools%2CEducation%2CBooks&c5=Not+commercially+useful%2CSkills+Education%2CEducation+Weekly+Education%2CSchools+Education&c6=Lucy+Tobin&c7=10-Aug-31&c8=1443917&c9=Article&c10=Feature&c11=Education&c13=&c25=&c30=content&h2=GU%2FEducation%2FLiteracy" width="1" height="1" /></div><p class="standfirst">As government cuts threaten libraries, the Reading Agency comes to their defence with a success story – the Summer Reading Challenge</p><p>With the government looking in every direction to wield its cost-cutting axe, the Reading Agency last week put out a plea that libraries should "not be a soft target for cuts". The declaration came in response to statistics released by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport last week showing that <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/aug/24/libraries-need-investment-thrive" title="nearly two-thirds of Britons didn't visit a library last year">nearly two-thirds of Britons didn't visit a library last year</a>. That triggered fears that the figures were a prelude to mass library closures.</p><p>The Reading Agency hit back, saying "where libraries offer a more dynamic, interactive reading service, the public respond with alacrity". One of its textbook examples was the Summer Reading Challenge (SRC), its literary initiative that encourages thousands of children to become avid readers every year.</p><p>Since its creation 12 years ago, the SRC has become an annual part of the long holidays for more than 750,000 children aged four to 11. Every year there's a theme: this year it's outer space, so children are encountering foil aliens, Plasticine planets and more. The libraries then display relevant books, distribute reading rewards such as stickers, certificates, folders and charts, and encourage children to read six or more books during the holidays.</p><p>On a warm summer afternoon in Wherwell, a small village in Hampshire, a bus covered in pictures of fairies and monsters has pulled up outside the local primary school. It's attracting scores of children, who chat excitedly as they await their turn. But this is no ice-cream van drawing the crowds: it's a library bus, and one of almost 4,000 libraries around the UK running projects encouraging children to read over the holidays as part of the reading challenge.</p><p>Among those standing in line at Hampshire's library bus this year are the Collis family – Deborah and her children Natasha, seven, and Isabella, five. Living in a remote village, Collis describes the bus as a "lifesaver". She says: "I couldn't troop all the way to Andover library that often, but the fact that the bus turns up every Monday with the books and rewards for the reading challenge is brilliant. Last summer, Natasha was moving up from year 1 to 2, and at that age they have minds like goldfish. I was worried that she would forget all of her reading progress, but in fact she got really into the reading challenge, and read a book a week.</p><p>"When she got back to school, her reading had not only kept pace, but actually improved – she went up a stage. It wasn't long before she was a 'free reader', choosing books without the structure of a reading scheme." Collis also credits the project with easing the back-to-school process in September. "It kept Natasha's brain ticking over, and stopped the barrage of 'can I watch TV all day'," she says. "It also meant she kept her school friendships going during the long break, because most of her classmates were at the bus every week."</p><p>The reading challenge might sound like a fun way for parents to fill the long, structureless summer, but there's serious academic reasoning behind it. After research showed that learners face a dip in reading levels during the summer holidays, Miranda McKearney, chief executive of the Reading Agency, decided that libraries could have a significant role in combating this. "They were the obvious place to encourage reading, but at that time, some of the projects being run by library authorities were ghastly," she explains. "It was clear that pooling everyone's resources nationally would create both serious economies of scale and great opportunities to innovate, and give everyone the chance to share ideas for a national summer reading activity."</p><p>When the scheme first ran in 1999, 65% of libraries took part. Now that figure has risen to 97%. Libraries pay the Reading Agency 40p per child for the packs of medals, posters and stickers, which are then free for children. "Every year I hear fantastic feedback," McKearney adds.</p><p>To find out more about the SRC's impact, last year the UK Literacy Association carried out more scientific analysis. Researchers compared the reading ability of 75 participants in the challenge with 75 children who did not take part. They used a combination of Assessing Pupils' Progress (APP) tests plus interviews with the children and their teachers.</p><p>After taking part in the challenge, more than 90% of the children who had previously recorded themselves as loving reading retained that level of enjoyment, whereas it dipped significantly for the non-participants. Teachers reported that almost twice as many SRC participants had improved in motivation over the summer compared with their classmates. The report also noted that almost all either maintained or improved their levels of reading achievement, while only those who did not undertake the SRC did not read any books at all during the summer.</p><p>Marie Harris, school literacy co-ordinator at St Mary Magdalen Catholic primary school in Brighton, says her students originally thought reading six books over the holidays was an "enormous, unachievable" number – but did it with great results. "I was impressed to see the boost in ability of the children who took part," she says. "Some were just starting to sound out individual words, using their phonic knowledge to blend and read the words, but after the SRC they could read text much more fluently. As they were not focusing on the actual reading of the words, they developed a love of reading books."</p><p>Only 12 year 1 and 2 students took part at Harris's school last year, but she still noted whole-school effects. "The SRC forged much closer school and library links. Some parents began going to the library in the summer as part of a routine for the first time, and said they continued after the SRC finished." In the UK as a whole, 47,000 children signed up as new library members through the SRC last year.</p><p>In north London, Sona Pandya, mother of Roshni, 13, and Hiren, 11, says that it now forms "the cornerstone of the summer". She adds: "Without the challenge, my children probably would pick up a few books, but with it they really look forward to it and their reading gets better and better. At first, the stickers and medals were a good incentive and helped get them into reading; now, they love doing it all themselves. They compete with each other to read more books." Her daughter Roshni says the SRC is "fun because you get to read books that the library recommends, and sometimes they are ones that I wouldn't have read otherwise. One year, I won a little yellow stretchy man, and a medal and certificate and stickers. I think the challenge has made me better at reading. I definitely enjoy it more, especially in the summer because you have more time."</p><p>Ahead of the massive spending cuts to be set out by the coalition government in October, McKearney is hopeful the scheme will survive. "This project is so important for children, and for libraries: the number of books issued as a result of the SRC now represents 20% of the total books issued every year.</p><p>"The scheme has built up really strong momentum. Although we're a tiny team – just one director and a few part-time staff – we have a huge impact on children. With all the talk of a 'big society', this is a very interesting model of how you can support local innovation through national charity co-ordination," she adds.</p><p>McKearney believes that schools and parents shouldn't be left alone to support children's reading. "It should be whole community effort. Through the SRC, libraries encourage children to become enthusiastic readers when schools aren't in action. They add value to a child's reading growth in a unique way that combines so beautifully with what schools are doing." And, McKearney adds with a nod to the fears of library cuts, "long may it continue."</p><div class="related" style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"><ul><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/literacy">Literacy</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/libraries">Libraries</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/primary-schools">Primary schools</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/schools">Schools</a></li></ul></div><div class="author"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/lucy-tobin">Lucy Tobin</a></div><br/><div class="terms"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk">guardian.co.uk</a> © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our <a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds">More Feeds</a></div><p style="clear:both" /> <p><a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/oJPt8ghIyu-nTtzCP9JJNazx33E/0/da"><img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/oJPt8ghIyu-nTtzCP9JJNazx33E/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a><br/> <a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/oJPt8ghIyu-nTtzCP9JJNazx33E/1/da"><img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/oJPt8ghIyu-nTtzCP9JJNazx33E/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a></p>
Singing workshop offers world-class tuition with a different beat
Education Guardian - Tue, 31 Aug 2010 06:00:04 GMT
<div class="track"><img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.20.4/79101?ns=guardian&pageName=Singing+workshop+offers+world-class+tuition+with+a+different+beat%3AArticle%3A1443822&ch=Education&c3=Guardian&c4=Music+%28Education+subject%29%2CDance%2CFurther+education%2CEducation&c5=Not+commercially+useful%2CEducation+Weekly+Education%2CFE+Education%2CHigher+Education&c6=Louise+Tickle&c7=10-Aug-31&c8=1443822&c9=Article&c10=Feature&c11=Education&c13=&c25=&c30=content&h2=GU%2FEducation%2FMusic" width="1" height="1" /></div><p class="standfirst">Specialist teachers from around the world head to the Devon countryside for Tribe of Doris, an unusual music and dance summer school</p><p>Stomping across a sopping wet field towards a blue-and-white striped tent called the Harmony House, I suddenly realise I'm not feeling all that keen on the singing workshop I'm booked in for.</p><p>In fact, I want to run away and hide in the car, not join in with the group that's now about to learn Jewish niggun, a traditional chanting song that uses syllables instead of words.</p><p>My recalcitrance, I instantly recognise, is the result of being dragged as a child round various damp, hippyish festivals and protest camps featuring parental exhortations to get up and let myself sway with the music. I shrank from it then, but today I realise that I do actually enjoy singing and need to get over myself.</p><p>The Jewish niggun session is just one of a series of dance and music workshops being held over five days at the Tribe of Doris summer school in the Devon countryside. Established 18 years ago by west African music and dance enthusiasts Siobhan Kierans and Deasy Bamford, the summer school is aimed at anyone interested in musical traditions from around the world, who "wants to actively participate rather than just consume". The gathering provides the chance to learn from specialist teachers from across Europe, Africa, Asia and Latin America. Its popularity spans the generations: this year 1,000 people have turned up, ranging from babes in arms to people in their 80s.</p><p>When they put together the first workshop sessions, explains Kierans, "drumming had a bad name – just lots of people banging away on bongos".</p><p>This year, the summer school aims to give people access to the best tuition in various dance and music disciplines from around the world, taught in a mix-and-match programme of daily two-hour sessions. Options include sufi whirling, Ghanaian percussion, animal spirit dance and sacred songs from Cuba and Braziland the five days culminates in a series of short performances to celebrate what has been learned.</p><p>Tribe of Doris is always organised on a shoestring; because it gets no funding from the Arts Council or any other body, it is financed entirely from entry fees and the mainly volunteer labour of Keirans and Bamford.</p><p>The event's motto is "many cultures, one race", and Keirans says the ethos is intercultural understanding and appreciation of the distinctiveness of individual art forms and the historical and political context in which they have evolved.</p><p>For instance, the South African gumboot dance, she explains, was created by miners who were not allowed to drum or otherwise communicate with each other, "so they developed their own way of boot-slapping dancing. It shows that creativity cannot be repressed, ever".</p><p>This improvised dance has since become an intricate combination of calf-slapping, leg-twisting and hip-wiggling that I try out later in a class, nearly falling over my own wellies in the process.</p><p>Many of those who turn up are veterans; this is the eighth consecutive year that Rebecca Smart, a trainer from Bristol, has attended.</p><p>"It has that lovely earthy feeling of a festival without being fluffy or flaky," she says. "The teachers are of the highest quality and you can be really stretched no matter what your level. And there's something else that happens here that's a bit magical."</p><p>While it certainly has a committed educational intent, there's no point pretending that Tribe of Doris is part of the mainstream, but participants say they like it all the better for that.</p><p>"I'm really passionate about African dance, and this is pretty much the only place in the country where you get this level of teaching," says Kat Cousins, who works for the National Refugee Centre in Sheffield. "Plus, I really like the opportunity to try out other things."</p><p>Some people come just for a bit of time out of the daily grind. Tim Lartique, a builder from Bristol, says that his impression before coming was that it would be "a bit hippy, a bit new-agey perhaps", and grins as he adds, "it's interesting to watch the British middle classes engage in a bit of cross-cultural malarkey".</p><p>But he and others point out that it's a pleasantly novel sensation to be at an event of this sort that doesn't involve constant frantic dashing to overcrowded gigs, miles of walking, "uppers, downers, alcohol, coffee, sugar and food overload".</p><p>In my class, I'm feeling slightly less shy after a rousing warm-up led by animated workshop leader Beth de Lange. Jewish niggun singing, she explains, developed in the 1700s as a result of a split in the European Jewish tradition which, among other things, gave rise to fevered arguments about what the words in songs meant. "So somebody, somewhere, said, why not sing without words, so you get closer to God quicker, and without any arguments."</p><p>Learning a song in syllables is relatively easy to start off with, but gradually gets tougher, particularly as the eastern European tunes have unfamiliar cadences and rhythms that I struggle to remember. But by the end of the session, I've belted out three or four Jewish niggunim while doing an energetic conga with my fellow participants. Singing, it seems, can work up quite a sweat, and I can't wait to wet my whistle on an organic smoothie from the Fruit Shack at the far end of what has become a beautiful green field slowly drying out in the pale summer sunshine.</p><div class="related" style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"><ul><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/music">Music</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/dance">Dance</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/further-education">Further education</a></li></ul></div><div class="author"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/louise-tickle">Louise Tickle</a></div><br/><div class="terms"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk">guardian.co.uk</a> © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our <a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds">More Feeds</a></div><p style="clear:both" /> <p><a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/PhF6hqsKPd7b5ksNVburzJwTuYY/0/da"><img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/PhF6hqsKPd7b5ksNVburzJwTuYY/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a><br/> <a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/PhF6hqsKPd7b5ksNVburzJwTuYY/1/da"><img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/PhF6hqsKPd7b5ksNVburzJwTuYY/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a></p>
Letters: Examining results
Education Guardian - Mon, 30 Aug 2010 23:05:07 GMT
<div class="track"><img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.20.4/47185?ns=guardian&pageName=Letters%3A+Examining+results%3AArticle%3A1445237&ch=Education&c3=Guardian&c4=GCSEs%2CSchools%2CEducation%2CA-levels%2CPrivate+schools&c5=Education+Weekly+Education%2CSchools+Education&c6=&c7=10-Aug-31&c8=1445237&c9=Article&c10=Letter&c11=Education&c13=&c25=&c30=content&h2=GU%2FEducation%2FGCSEs" width="1" height="1" /></div><p>Is there any chance the Guardian could go beyond the press releases of the independent schools for its analysis of exam results (<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/aug/28/a-level-results-private-school" title="Fifth of A-levels taken by private school pupils awarded A*">Fifth of A-levels taken by private school pupils awarded A*</a>, 28 August) It's true that private school students are more likely to get As. This is hardly surprising given the greater privilege and affluence of their background. But it's also true that the gap is closing. "Comprehensives rising, private schools falling" would have been an accurate summary of <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2010/aug/24/gcse-results-2010-exam-breakdown" title="the GCSE results">the GCSE results</a> you published. Last year the proportion of comprehensive students achieving GCSE grade A or better rose by 0.9% and those getting C or better rose 2.2%. For private school students, both figures fell. In 2002 private sector students were 3.9 times as likely as comprehensive students to get an A. Now they are only 2.9 times as likely. That is a big shift, though it may not be a viewpoint you will get from the private schools.</p><p><strong>Henry Stewart</strong></p><p><em>Chair of governors, </em><a href="http://www.sns.hackney.sch.uk/" title="Stoke Newington school"><em>Stoke Newington school</em></a><em>, London</em></p><div class="related" style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"><ul><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/gcses">GCSEs</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/schools">Schools</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/alevels">A-levels</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/private-schools">Private schools</a></li></ul></div><br/><div class="terms"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk">guardian.co.uk</a> © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our <a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds">More Feeds</a></div><p style="clear:both" /> <p><a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/uxjeh4E0QZHlxXHFpjaZLhvTCik/0/da"><img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/uxjeh4E0QZHlxXHFpjaZLhvTCik/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a><br/> <a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/uxjeh4E0QZHlxXHFpjaZLhvTCik/1/da"><img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/uxjeh4E0QZHlxXHFpjaZLhvTCik/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a></p>
Letters: Look at and listen to other cultures
Education Guardian - Mon, 30 Aug 2010 23:05:07 GMT
<div class="track"><img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.20.4/69719?ns=guardian&pageName=Letters%3A+Look+at+and+listen+to+other+cultures%3AArticle%3A1445235&ch=Education&c3=Guardian&c4=Languages+%28Higher+education%29%2CEducation&c5=Education+Weekly+Education%2CHigher+Education&c6=&c7=10-Aug-31&c8=1445235&c9=Article&c10=Letter&c11=Education&c13=&c25=&c30=content&h2=GU%2FEducation%2FLanguages" width="1" height="1" /></div><p>The reactions to the lack of foreign language learning seem to miss the point (<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/aug/30/learning-languages-still-matters" title="Letters">Letters</a>, 30 August): it is not about the quality of teaching, or any obligation to learn in school, or as an entry qualification for further education. Any teacher who has taught in the UK and in other parts of the world will know: it is about a cultural climate in which there is a desire to speak and understand another language for work or leisure. It is not an issue for so many UK citizens who speak a different language at home and within their communities. What about focusing on how we make the ideas, sounds, pleasures and intrigues of other countries part of our lives: promoting foreign films and news items without dubbing, sharing solutions and dreams from non-English speaking places, broadcasting music from outside the Anglo-Saxon sphere, and so on? It may be far more complicated than relying on "education" as a panacea, but it could be a genuine approach towards real progress. Who is going to influence a change of direction from our self-satisfied, mono-cultural, world view?</p><p><strong>Tim Bos</strong></p><p><em>York</em></p><p></p><p>• Encouraging and assisting language learning is greatly enhanced when one sees and hears real native speakers talking in everyday language. I am suggesting to the BBC and ITV that it would be a good service to show French, Spanish etc dramas in their own languages, without subtitles. A daily soap of French/Spanish etc cool young people having a good time could do for languages what Neighbours did for popularising Australia.</p><p><strong>John Launder </strong></p><p><em>Winchester, Hampshire</em></p><div class="related" style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"><ul><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/languages">Languages</a></li></ul></div><br/><div class="terms"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk">guardian.co.uk</a> © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our <a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds">More Feeds</a></div><p style="clear:both" /> <p><a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/1Zi69m942xkUsTv6WGIZKP6YS-c/0/da"><img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/1Zi69m942xkUsTv6WGIZKP6YS-c/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a><br/> <a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/1Zi69m942xkUsTv6WGIZKP6YS-c/1/da"><img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/1Zi69m942xkUsTv6WGIZKP6YS-c/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a></p>
Bjørn Lomborg: the dissenting climate change voice who changed his tune
Education Guardian - Mon, 30 Aug 2010 22:19:48 GMT
<div class="track"><img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.20.4/83276?ns=guardian&pageName=Bj*rn+Lomborg%3A+the+dissenting+climate+change+voice+who+changed+his+tune%3AArticle%3A1445274&ch=Environment&c3=Guardian&c4=Climate+change+%28Environment%29%2CClimate+change+scepticism+%28environment%29%2CEnvironment%2CClimate+change+%28Science%29%2CCarbon+emissions+%28Environment%29%2CGlobal+climate+talks+%28environment%29%2CScience%2CBooks%2CEducation%2CWorld+news&c5=Not+commercially+useful%2CClimate+Change%2CEducation+Weekly+Education%2CEthical+Living&c6=Juliette+Jowit&c7=10-Aug-30&c8=1445274&c9=Article&c10=&c11=Environment&c13=&c25=&c30=content&h2=GU%2FEnvironment%2FClimate+change" width="1" height="1" /></div><p class="standfirst">With his new book, Danish scientist Bjørn Lomborg has become an unlikely advocate for huge investment in fighting global warming. But his answers are unlikely to satisfy all climate change campaigners</p><p>Few statisticians can have inspired more passion than Bjørn Lomborg, the Danish academic who became famous as the author of the controversial (some would say contrarian) Skeptical Environmentalist, which set him up as perhaps the world's best-known critic of the dominant scientific view of global warming and the ensuing climate change.</p><p>Lomborg's prolific output has been almost matched by books rubbishing his work: critics have described him as selective, unprofessional and confused. Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the UN's climate change panel, has compared him to Adolf Hitler – for the statistical crime of treating human beings too much like numbers.</p><p>Meanwhile, Time Magazine declared Lomborg one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2004. The respected Cambridge University Press (CUP) has published many of his books in the UK and the US, and the award-winning documentary maker Ondi Timoner and X-Men films producer, Ralph Winter, are about to release a film of his 2007 book Cool It (which carries the subtitle: the first optimistic film about global warming).</p><p>The Danish Committee on Scientific Dishonesty once declared Lomborg guilty of exactly that, but a government review later cleared him.</p><p>Lomborg's latest book, published by CUP next month, is likely to reignite these passions, because it appears to contradict so much of what he has said before and because he is straying into newly controversial territory. He is advocating that much more attention and money be lavished on climate engineering methods, such as whitening clouds so that they reflect back more of the sun's heat.</p><p>Heat is something he is resigned to. When he gives talks, he says, he often meets "people who come up and say: 'I thought I'd hate you.'"</p><p>But Lomborg's record on climate change is more nuanced than the stereotype suggests. From the beginning, he has said global warming is happening and is largely caused by humans. However, he has been consistently critical of what he sees as exaggeration of how much this matters, and of policies to tackle the problem. These would achieve too little and cost too much, he argues, meaning the money would be better spent on, say, reducing malaria and HIV/Aids, or extending clean water and sanitation.</p><p>In an example of the approach that enraged Pachauri, Lomborg argues in Cool It that predicted temperature rises could save more than 1.3 million lives a year. This, he says, is because many more people would be spared early cold-related deaths than would be at risk from heat-related respiratory fatalities. (Other academics reject his figures.) Lomborg concludes that because of imbalances in where deaths occur, the proposed extension of the Kyoto protocol to cut carbon emissions would "save 4,000 people annually in the developing world [but] end up sacrificing more than a trillion dollars and 80,000 people annually."</p><p>Given this background, the title of Lomborg's new book immediately indicates a change of emphasis. It is called Smart Solutions to Climate Change: Comparing Costs and Benefits. This impression is reinforced by comments in the introduction that climate change is "undoubtedly one of the chief concerns facing the world" and "a challenge that humanity must confront".</p><p>Later in the book, reflecting on analysis by five economists of eight types of solution, he estimates that spending $100bn (£65bn) a year "could essentially resolve the climate change problem by the end of this century".</p><p>He finishes: "If we care about the environment and about leaving this planet and its inhabitants with the best possible future, we actually have only one option: we all need to start seriously focusing, right now, on the most effective ways to fix global warming."</p><p>Speaking to the Guardian about climate engineering as a back-up plan, he raises the possibility of "something really bad lurking around the corner": the small-chance, big-consequence outcome his previous work appeared to dismiss.</p><p>Not unexpectedly, however, Lomborg denies performing a U-turn. He reiterates that he has never denied anthropogenic global warming, and insists that he long ago accepted the cost of damage would be between 2% and 3% of world wealth by the end of this century. This estimate is the same, he says, as that quoted by Lord Stern, whose report for the British government argued that the world should spend 1-2% of gross domestic product on tackling climate change to avoid future damage.</p><p>The Stern report estimated that damage at 5-20% of GDP, however, not 2-3%. The difference, according to Lomborg, is that the two use a different "discount factor". This is the method by which economists recalculate the value today of money spent or saved in the future – or, to put it another way, the value today of this generation's grandchildren's lives. Neither is measurably "right", he says: they are judgments, albeit ones with a profound impact on subsequent analysis of the costs and benefits of spending money now to stop climate change.</p><p>Lomborg says false views of his position are held mostly by people who have never read his work. He says: "I keep trying to fight this, mainly because people often hear what I say through others." These intermediaries are often hostile critics, he adds.</p><p>Another cause of misunderstandings could be the difference between the content and the tone of his work. In it, brief statements about the unarguable fact of man-made global warming are accompanied by long arguments about how greenhouse gas emissions, the main man-made cause, and temperatures have been higher in the (very distant) past, and by claims that impacts such as rising sea levels and the threat to polar bears have been distorted.</p><p>Meanwhile, some statements appear to contradict each other directly. In the space of four pages of Cool It, he writes that "climate change will not cause massive disruptions or huge death tolls", that "the general and long-term impact will be predominantly negative", and that it is "obvious that there are many other and more pressing issues".</p><p>"The point I've always been making," he explains now, "is, it's not the end of the world. That is why we should be measuring up to what everybody else says, which is we should be spending our money well."</p><p>This detailed analysis by economists of how best to spend money to help the world's people was first reported in his book Global Crises, Global Solutions in 2004. It has now been institutionalised in the Copenhagen Consensus Centre, of which Lomborg is the director, and is the model for the latest book on climate "solutions".</p><p>This result is where Lomborg is most vulnerable to allegations of a volte-face on the need to take action on climate change and the value of doing so. But he says circumstances have changed. The first Copenhagen Consensus considered only the predominant idea of cutting carbon emissions through a cap or tax. When the exercise was repeated in 2008, however, the team examined new ideas. Lomborg says he then challenged himself and selected economists to look at eight different "solutions" (comprising 15 policy suggestions). These included boosting R&D in technology, cleaning up soot and methane, which also contribute significantly to global warming, planting more trees, and climate engineering. Critics may argue he should have carried out this study before rubbishing climate policies.</p><p>As a result, he is still deeply critical of the dominant, cutting-carbon approach, which four of the five economists who were asked to rank the options put at the bottom of their lists. Only Nancy Stokey, of the University of Chicago, ranked lower- and mid-level carbon taxes more highly, around the middle of her list. Instead, the book suggests the best policies would be investment in clean technology research and development, and more climate engineering development work. He suggests this could be funded by a $7-a-tonne tax on carbon emissions, which he says would raise $250bn a year. Of this, $100bn could be spent on clean-tech R&D, about $1bn on climate engineering, $50bn on adapting to changes (building sea defences, for example), and the remaining $99bn or so on "getting virtually everybody on the planet healthcare, basic education, clean drinking water, and so on. It seems a pretty good deal," he says.</p><p>Lomborg is not alone in finding fault with the Kyoto process, which many variously agree has been too slow to deliver, too vulnerable to unkept promises, and unrealistic in restraining the aspirations of developing countries. Critics add that it has proved to be a clumsy, ineffective way of delivering necessary investment in energy efficiency and clean electricity, and has resulted in often unnecessarily expensive policies. For most policy areas, such as crime, says Lomborg: "We say to people, what are the smartest ways to deal with this?" Curiously, with climate change, they say there's a right solution: that's cutting carbon."</p><p>The "biggest bang for the buck" Copenhagen Consensus approach is instinctively commonsense. But it is flawed, say critics, because it relies too heavily on the huge assumptions needed to convert human wellbeing and suffering into numbers (such as the discount rates) and excludes many factors that have simply never been quantified, such as the predicted total loss of coral reefs and other impacts of rapid ocean acidification.</p><p>Professor Katherine Richardson, a marine biology expert and vice-dean of science at the University of Copenhagen, says: "A lot hinges on whether you think that societal decision should be made by economists alone. [For example] I can think of much cheaper ways of taking care of our elderly in society than building expensive and modern nursing homes. In reality, we get very little return for that investment."</p><p>Many climate change scientists also fear huge disruption caused by changing tack will delay political action on avoiding the worst of the problem for a dangerously long time.</p><p>Lomborg's aggressively sceptical reputation will no doubt win few such people over, although he says he has no regrets about how he has conducted the debate. "Fundamentally," he says, "it would have been better if Pachauri or Stern were to make this argument. This isn't about ownership of the idea, but it's an idea we need to listen to if we want to get the climate fixed."</p><p>• <em>Smart Solutions to Climate Change: Comparing Costs and Benefits is published by Cambridge University Press in September in the UK, October in the US</em></p><div class="related" style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"><ul><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/climate-change">Climate change</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/climate-change-scepticism">Climate change scepticism</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/scienceofclimatechange">Climate change</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/carbon-emissions">Carbon emissions</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/global-climate-talks">Global climate talks</a></li></ul></div><div class="author"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/juliettejowit">Juliette Jowit</a></div><br/><div class="terms"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk">guardian.co.uk</a> © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our <a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds">More Feeds</a></div><p style="clear:both" /> <p><a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/9bCiCZ2UuIZLaKQ0weuFTXlqgy4/0/da"><img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/9bCiCZ2UuIZLaKQ0weuFTXlqgy4/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a><br/> <a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/9bCiCZ2UuIZLaKQ0weuFTXlqgy4/1/da"><img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/9bCiCZ2UuIZLaKQ0weuFTXlqgy4/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a></p>
CBI to host climate change 'clash of the titans' debate
Education Guardian - Mon, 30 Aug 2010 21:00:02 GMT
<div class="track"><img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.20.4/16911?ns=guardian&pageName=CBI+to+host+climate+change+%27clash+of+the+titans%27+debate%3AArticle%3A1445129&ch=Environment&c3=Guardian&c4=Climate+change+%28Environment%29%2CClimate+change+scepticism+%28environment%29%2CCBI%2CEnvironment%2CScience%2CBusiness%2CUK+news%2CWorld+news%2CUniversity+of+East+Anglia%2CHigher+education%2CEducation%2CMIC%3A+Guardian+Sustainable+Business&c5=Environment+Conservation%2CNot+commercially+useful%2CBusiness+Markets%2CClimate+Change%2CEducation+Weekly+Education%2CEthical+Living%2CHigher+Education&c6=Juliette+Jowit&c7=10-Sep-01&c8=1445129&c9=Article&c10=&c11=Environment&c13=&c25=&c30=content&h2=GU%2FEnvironment%2FClimate+change" width="1" height="1" /></div><p class="standfirst">Former government chief scientist Sir David King, in the green corner, to take on arch-sceptic Lord Lawson in public showdown</p><p>The most prominent climate sceptic and the most vocal advocate of the cause in the UK are to take part in their first public debate on the subject.</p><p>The "clash of the titans" will be between Lord Lawson of Blaby, the former Conservative chancellor and chairman of the sceptical Global Warming Policy Foundation, and Sir David King, a former government chief scientist who once warned that climate change was <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2004/jan/09/sciencenews.greenpolitics" title="">"more serious even than the threat of terrorism"</a>.</p><p>The CBI will host the event at its annual climate change conference in November, and it is likely to inject renewed vigour into a deadlocked debate between two camps that seldom meet face to face and appear to be increasingly entrenched in their positions.</p><p>King, head of the Smith school of enterprise and the environment at Oxford University, told the Guardian he had accepted the challenge because he was concerned about a rise in public scepticism about climate change since the affair of the leaked emails from the University of East Anglia last year. These appeared to show that scientists had manipulated data and abused the academic review process, though they were later cleared of these charges.</p><p>"It is important to deal with the climate sceptics' arguments and deal with them fairly robustly," said King. "I usually avoid the climate sceptics because I seem to be giving them airtime. [But] Lawson is a well-known speaker, so it is not as though I'm taking somebody lightweight on."</p><p>In a written statement, Lawson said: "I have agreed to do this because this is clearly an important issue which needs to be properly debated, and those who promote the conventional wisdom on the issue are usually reluctant to engage in rational debate.</p><p>"The cause of reasoned debate on this issue in the UK is not helped, of course, by the fact that there is no difference between the policies of the three political parties so far as global warming is concerned."</p><p>Lawson has previously written that he accepts that global warming is happening,<a href="http://thegwpf.org/opinion-pros-a-cons/1197-nigel-lawson-adaptation-not-decarbonisation-is-the-only-way-forward.html" title=""> although he has also described climate science as "particularly uncertain". In a recent article, he repeated the sceptics' argument: "So far this century there has been no recorded warming at all."</a></p><p>Lawson also claims the impacts on humans have been exaggerated and is critical of current policies to tackle the problem by cutting carbon emissions, writing that the international political pledge to limit warming to 2C above the average before the industrial revolution is <a href="http://thegwpf.org/opinion-pros-a-cons/1197-nigel-lawson-adaptation-not-decarbonisation-is-the-only-way-forward.html" title="">"devoid of either scientific basis or the slightest operational significance"</a>, and advocating mass spending on adapting to the changes instead.</p><p>King said that with <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jul/28/global-temperatures-2010-record" title="">2010 projected to be the hottest year on record</a>, it was a good time publicly to counter the claim that temperatures are not rising: although most years since 1998 had been cooler than that record hot year, they were still among the hottest years on record and above the long-term average.</p><p>Emma Wild, the CBI's principal policy adviser for climate change, said: "Both are high-profile figures and passionate advocates for their views. We expect a frank and engaging debate." <strong>Juliette Jowit</strong></p><div class="related" style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"><ul><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/climate-change">Climate change</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/climate-change-scepticism">Climate change scepticism</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/cbi">Confederation of British Industry (CBI)</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/universityofeastanglia">University of East Anglia</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/higher-education">Higher education</a></li></ul></div><div class="author"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/juliettejowit">Juliette Jowit</a></div><br/><div class="terms"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk">guardian.co.uk</a> © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our <a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds">More Feeds</a></div><p style="clear:both" /> <p><a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/D9K1oEvJeaujnsWxskSm9zRe3KU/0/da"><img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/D9K1oEvJeaujnsWxskSm9zRe3KU/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a><br/> <a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/D9K1oEvJeaujnsWxskSm9zRe3KU/1/da"><img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/D9K1oEvJeaujnsWxskSm9zRe3KU/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a></p>
Online dictionaries: which is best?
Education Guardian - Mon, 30 Aug 2010 19:00:06 GMT
<div class="track"><img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.20.4/27877?ns=guardian&pageName=Online+dictionaries%3A+which+is+best%3F%3AArticle%3A1445216&ch=Books&c3=Guardian&c4=Words+and+language%2CBooks%2CPublishing+%28Books%29%2CInternet%2CEducation%2CHigher+education%2CLanguage%2CDigital+media%2CMedia&c5=Digital+Media%2CNot+commercially+useful%2CMedia+Weekly%2CEducation+Weekly+Education%2CTechnology+Gadgets%2CHigher+Education&c6=Aida+Edemariam&c7=10-Sep-01&c8=1445216&c9=Article&c10=Feature&c11=Books&c13=Shortcuts+%28series%29&c25=&c30=content&h2=GU%2FBooks%2FWords+and+language" width="1" height="1" /></div><p class="standfirst">The new edition of the Oxford English Dictionary will be online-only. Many of its rivals – Collins, Chambers et al - have already launched free web versions. But which one is the wordsmith's best friend?</p><p>Sad news for those of us with fond memories of long minutes lost in the more arcane histories of English words: the third edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, which a team of 80 lexicographers has been working on since 1989, will probably never be printed. "The print dictionary market is just disappearing," Oxford University Press CEO Nigel Portwood told a Sunday newspaper. It will still be available online – in fact, in December, <a href="http://dictionary.oed.com/" title="Oxford English Dictionary online">the web version </a>is being relaunched, including for the first time the historical thesaurus of the OED, which contains almost every word in English from Old English to the present. The problem is that it is a tad pricey: £7 plus VAT for a week's access; £205 plus VAT for a year. Luckily, there are alternatives:</p><h2><a href="http://www.collinslanguage.com/" title="Collins dictionary online"><strong>Collins</strong></a></h2><p>This paper's preferred arbiter, in its print version, the pocket version is available free online – though, it must be said, boasting some rather confusing orthography. The second entry for the word "help", for example, reads "2. to contribute to, to help Latin America's economies" – some italics, or brackets, or bold letters would help. You can buy a 1,888-page hard copy for £70, or download it for a mere £9.99.</p><h2><a href="http://www.chambersharrap.co.uk/chambers/features/chref/chref.py/main" title="Chambers online"><strong>Chambers</strong></a></h2><p>The Chambers 21st Century Dictionary, with its 75,000 words and phrases and 110,000 definitions, is free online. This is much more presentable, with quite satisfying lists of definitions, and examples of the word in context. A little bit of etymology, too. Chambers is not, however, accepting new subscribers to the full shebang – 170,000 words and phrases and 270,000 definitions. The 1,871-page print version sells for £40.</p><h2><a href="http://www.macmillandictionary.com/" title="Macmillan dictionary online"><strong>Macmillan</strong></a></h2><p>The definitions are short and to the point, with no information about sources or background (though there are sample phrases, and a direct link to a thesaurus). It also lets you submit words of your own, and gives you the option of British or American English. Macmillan's particular wheeze, useful to learners of English, is to highlight the 7,500 core, high-frequency words in the English language: three-star words are the most frequent; one-star words less so. It's free online, but you'll pay £24 for a hard copy.</p><h2><a href="http://www.onelook.com/" title="OneLook"><strong>OneLook</strong></a></h2><p>A real discovery, this online site trawls 18,967,499 words in 1,060 different dictionaries – all the major English ones, but also dictionaries for specific subjects (business, art, medicine) or languages. You can customise your search – only in slang, for example; compare entries in different dictionaries; do a wildcard search (asterisks, hashtags or @ symbols account for the characters you can't remember), or a reverse search (type in "being tried twice for the same crime", for "double jeopardy", for example). It doesn't, however, link to a Scrabble dictionary, which some might feel is an important omission.</p><div class="related" style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"><ul><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/wordsandlanguage">Words and language</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/publishing">Publishing</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/internet">Internet</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/higher-education">Higher education</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/language">Language</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/digital-media">Digital media</a></li></ul></div><div class="author"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/aidaedemariam">Aida Edemariam</a></div><br/><div class="terms"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk">guardian.co.uk</a> © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our <a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds">More Feeds</a></div><p style="clear:both" /> <p><a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/7vNjOUVSgOsVoapTi07L9iBYyPg/0/da"><img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/7vNjOUVSgOsVoapTi07L9iBYyPg/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a><br/> <a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/7vNjOUVSgOsVoapTi07L9iBYyPg/1/da"><img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/7vNjOUVSgOsVoapTi07L9iBYyPg/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a></p>
Sex and the city of Berlin
Education Guardian - Mon, 30 Aug 2010 15:30:02 GMT
<div class="track"><img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.20.4/47420?ns=guardian&pageName=Sex+and+the+city+of+Berlin%3AArticle%3A1443926&ch=Education&c3=Guardian&c4=Research+%28Higher+education%29%2CHigher+education%2CEducation%2CSex+%28Life+%26+style%29%2CLife+and+style%2CGermany&c5=Not+commercially+useful%2CEducation+Weekly+Education%2CHigher+Education%2CFamily+and+Relationships&c6=Marc+Abrahams&c7=10-Aug-30&c8=1443926&c9=Article&c10=Feature&c11=Education&c13=Improbable+research+%28series%29&c25=&c30=content&h2=GU%2FEducation%2FResearch" width="1" height="1" /></div><p class="standfirst">The sexual unification of Germany appears to have resulted in lots of talk, but not much action, researchers find</p><p>A study called <a href="http://www.muse.uq.edu.au/login?uri=/journals/journal_of_the_history_of_sexuality/v013/13.3sharp.pdf" title="The Sexual Unification of Germany">The Sexual Unification of Germany</a> tells what happened, on paper and in some people's heads, when East Germany hooked up with West.</p><p>After the Berlin Wall came tumbling down in 1989, salacious minds wondered how many, how quickly, how often, and just how Easterners would fall into bed with Westerners.</p><p>Ingrid Sharp, a senior lecturer in German at the University of Leeds, pored through newspapers and academic papers in search of something related to the answer. She published her findings in a 2004 issue of the Journal of the History of Sexuality.</p><p>Sharp focused on a single question: "What happened to GDR [German Democratic Republic] sexuality when it was confronted with the sexual mores of West Germany?" "The answer," she writes, "appears to have been an explosion of discourse surrounding sex."</p><p>In other words: lots of talk, not much action. In press accounts, though, the joint was jumping. For a little while, anyway. Sharp describes one of the main storylines: "While the traditional behavior of conquering armies (killing the men and raping the women) was obviously inappropriate for Western men after the collapse of Communism, something very similar seemed to be happening on a metaphorical level ... The context was the ideological battle between East and West, the cold war being slogged out in the arena of sexuality, with orgasmic potential replacing nuclear capacity."</p><p>The tabloid press enjoyed a circulation-boosting "brief obsession with GDR sexuality". And a grand yet debilitating obsession it was: "GDR women were represented as products for the fantasies of Western men, while the East German men were dismissed as both socially and sexually inadequate."</p><p>Sharp recounts a West German man's televised claim that "GDR women are not really uglier than West German women, and they dress as well. But the real advantage is that they are more [modest, undemanding, easily satisfied]".</p><p>On the other side of the former fence, a GDR sexologist named Dr Kurt Starke "linked findings about women's greater sexual enjoyment to the social policies of the GDR". The daily tabloid Bild-Zeitung countered with the headline "Do GDR women really come more often? The orgasm professor is talking rubbish" above a story in which an East German nurse named Adelheid said: "We really don't have more orgasms in the GDR. Not me, anyway, because I have to work up to 12 hours a day and that doesn't leave much time for love."</p><p>For the most part, Sharp tells of two Germanies united first by hype about sex, and then by disappointment as most people's sex lives, no matter where they lived, remained humdrum.</p><p>The report ends with a deflating comment from journalist Regine Sylvester, who tried to sum up both her own experience and that of the entire nation. The supposed "sex boom" that happened right after unification, Sylvester opined, "did not turn the Federal Republic into a noisily copulating society, nor did the official taboos turn the old GDR into an ascetic one."</p><p><strong>• </strong>Marc Abrahams is editor of the bimonthly Annals of Improbable Research and organiser of the Ig Nobel prize</p><div class="related" style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"><ul><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/research">Research</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/higher-education">Higher education</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/sex">Sex</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/germany">Germany</a></li></ul></div><div class="author"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/marcabrahams">Marc Abrahams</a></div><br/><div class="terms"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk">guardian.co.uk</a> © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our <a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds">More Feeds</a></div><p style="clear:both" /> <p><a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/ceU-m4q0LilWxJm72BzFGjyAtYg/0/da"><img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/ceU-m4q0LilWxJm72BzFGjyAtYg/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a><br/> <a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/ceU-m4q0LilWxJm72BzFGjyAtYg/1/da"><img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/ceU-m4q0LilWxJm72BzFGjyAtYg/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a></p>
