Wanted English speakers with fluency in sarcasm
Posted by admin
What is the Russian for “sub-prime mortgage”? Anyone? Most of us will never know, which is just as well because Russian apparently has yet to coin a word or phrase for this risky brand of loan.But the question is being tossed out to a bunch of young people who do need to come up with [...]
Celia Hoyles The magic numbers
Posted by admin
Like Bertrand Russell, for whom mathematics was “my chief source of happiness”, Celia Hoyles has always adored a subject that terrifies and repels large sections of the population. She sees life, she says, through a numerical lens and instantly appreciates the mathematical patterns in things like snails’ shells. “There’s something wonderful about logical proof,” she [...]
A lifes journey
Posted by admin
Nur knew that as a bedouin - an Arab nomad - living in poverty in Israel’s Negev desert, the likelihood of going to university was remote. As a woman, it was almost unheard of. Tribal norms and finances ruled it out.So the 18-year-old applied in secret to Ben-Gurion University - and was accepted. Nur (a [...]
Letters
Posted by admin
Independent inspectionTransferring independent school inspection to Ofsted (Under scrutiny, December 18) is long overdue. For high-quality independent schools whose good practices extend far beyond examination performance into the pastoral, the sporting and the artistic, sector-wide cross-fertilisation is very much in the national interest. And when the independent school is under-performing, in terms of its intake’s [...]
Tales of student prostitutes shock France
Posted by admin
France’s education minister has vowed to improve student financial support after a series of accounts by undergraduates working as prostitutes.A memoir by a 19-year-old language student and a book of interviews with undergraduate sex workers has shocked France, lifting the lid on a practice which appears to be increasingly common. A new study showed a [...]
Immersion is a difficult lesson
Posted by admin
It was an ambitious plan pushed through by Malaysia’s leader, Mahathir Mohamad, despite fierce opposition. Five years on the decision that all Malaysian children should be taught maths and science in English still causes heated debate.With an election looming, nationalist politicians are again seizing on the charged issue of language in an ethnically diverse country [...]
Ministers can let themselves have a second chance
Posted by admin
The government has decided that it will no longer fund people seeking to do a degree course at an equivalent level to a degree they already have, or a so-called lesser course (an ELQ). In September, it announced that, from 2008, %26pound;100m of funding for students wishing to study ELQs is to be withdrawn.Back then, [...]
Intellectual literacy hour
Posted by admin
Research libraries have long been the proud curators of historic print collections and regarded as places of quiet study. But with the explosion of the internet and electronic publishing, users are increasingly turning their backs on libraries as a physical space, using them as virtual, digital environments instead. Libraries’ role in warehousing large book collections [...]
State teachers views of Oxbridge stop pupils from applying
Posted by admin
Teachers at state-run secondary schools are out of touch about the number of pupils from their sector who apply successfully to Oxford and Cambridge Universities, according to a survey today.More than a third think that fewer than 20% of Oxbridge students come from state schools, even though the latest figures show that the figure is [...]
Why pick a fight with Open University
Posted by admin
Tony Blair was famous for wanting to pick fights within the Labour family in order to define himself favourably with middle Britain’s voters. The Brown government is in danger of stumbling into scraps by accident.This week, MPs debated John Denham’s plans to shift %26pound;100m from the %26pound;7.5bn higher education budget - in England only - [...]
