Big Mac and a degree to go
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Who needs A-levels when you can have a Big Mac degree? Plans to allow McDonald’s and other companies to run national qualification schemes will be unveiled by the government tomorrow, despite misgivings among some education experts.It is hoped that, armed with these awards, employees could make it to university, despite possibly never having sat a [...]
Letters
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No democracy for the NUSThe NUS leadership condemns critics of its plans for governance changes as the “hard left” (New year, new union, January 8). Many of the dissenters are, in fact, moderates, at least on the student politics scale - people like the Young Greens, who have no truck with hard-left factionalism.The critics object [...]
Diplomas off to a halting start
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The government has a long way to go to convince secondary headteachers that their new, and much trumpeted, diplomas for 14- to 19-year-olds will be a success. This was one of the findings of a survey, published for the first time today, of 803 UK primary and secondary heads’ views.The study, which quizzed heads on [...]
Tara Brabazon Bowling Google a googly
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It comes as no surprise to learn that Germaine Greer is featured in Ladies Who Lunge, one of Professor Tara Brabazon’s growing pile of published works. Like Greer, Brabazon is an iconoclastic Australian who has hit these shores with some force and begun to make waves in her own branch of academia. That book, says [...]
News
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Learning platforms’Free’ digital bankA comprehensive bank of copyright-free resources has been tagged ready for use with learning platforms in a new initiative from North West Learning Grid and the city learning centres in Manchester and Salford. Materials will range from tutorials, activities and interactive games covering entire courses through individual photographs, audio clips and worksheets. [...]
New year new union
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The National Union of Students has staged a quiet revolution over the course of last year, gently steering the traditionally feisty, hard leftwing organisation into more corporate Blairite waters.Its president, Gemma Tumelty, has been instrumental in making the changes. She wants the organisation and students to be seen as more than just firefighters, reacting to [...]
The primary curriculum review will solve nothing
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However little (or much) senior civil servants know about the state of education, there is no doubt that they are politically astute. Their drafting of schools secretary Ed Balls’ brief to Sir Jim Rose, the former director of inspection at Ofsted, to conduct an “independent” review of the primary curriculum (announced as part of the [...]
Where state schools are so good few go private
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“One family rented a house for a week in the school catchment area and fitted out the front room,” says John Wilson, education director for East Renfrewshire. “The school was suspicious and an inspector went along to check. He looked in the front window and saw them all sitting around the table eating dinner. But [...]
Crib sheet
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Small babes, large lessonsSeventeen-year-old Nathan Carson used to think having a baby with his girlfriend wouldn’t be too bad. “I probably thought, if it happens, it happens - we’ll manage somehow,” he says. Being involved in the reality TV show the Baby Borrowers, in which the BBC gave teenage couples live babies to care for [...]
Cataloguing the past
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This Sunday is Holocaust Memorial Day, an international day of remembrance dedicated to those who lost their lives in the Holocaust. Events and activities held this weekend will aim to draw the attention of the world to ongoing humanitarian tragedies (including the recent atrocities in Kenya and the continued suffering of the people of Darfur).This [...]
