Education

Extra marks for exam day ‘stress’

There has been a sharp rise in the number of pupils being given extra marks due to “special considerations” on the day of their GCSEs or A-levels. Figures from England’s exams watchdog show 329,119 requests were approved in 2008, compared to 255,200 in 2005.

Special consideration can cover issues such as bereavement, but also headaches, stress or hay fever. There was also a doubling in the number of pupils being awarded extra time for exams because of other special needs.The figures from ofqual detail how many candidates have been given special consideration in their final marks to reflect “temporary injury, illness, indisposition or other unforeseen incident immediately before or during the exams period”.

APPROVED SPECIAL CONSIDERATION

REQUESTS 2005: 255,200 2006: 274,967 2007: 300,378 2008: 329,119 The most a candidate can be given is an extra 5% of the maximum mark for the question paper.

This is given in more extreme cases, for example, in the case of terminal illness of the candidate or parent or a bereavement in the immediate family. Candidates suffering from more minor complaints - illness, hay fever, effects of pregnancy, concussion, extreme distress, ongoing noise, illness of another candidate in the room, stress or anxiety, minor ailments or a headache - would typically receive an extra 1 or 2% of the maximum mark. The statistics for “access arrangements and special consideration” relate to public exams set by the examination boards AQA, Edexcel and OCR.Prompters and bilingual dictionaries The statistics also give details of special arrangements given prior to the day of an exam.

For example, a growing number of candidates needed assistance to stay focused during exams.

We will continue to monitor the situation closely to ensure that the system remains fair for all Chair of Ofqual Kathleen Tattersall A prompter - “a responsible adult who may sit beside the candidate in order to keep his or her attention on the task in hand” - was requested in 383 cases in 2005, compared to 2,926 in 2008.

The number of pupils being given pre-arranged extra time in exams was 78,570 last year, more than double the 35,319 cases in 2005. The figures also show a rise in the number of candidates using bi-lingual dictionaries in exams.

In 2008, 9,716 arrangements were made for pupils to use a dictionary and have extra time to complete the exam. In 2005, the figure was 4,083.

In 2008, 4,660 entries used a dictionary without extra time, compared to 1,680 three years earlier.

Transcripts were requested in 2,553 cases in 2008, compared to 485 in 2005.

Monitoring Chair of Ofqual Kathleen Tattersall said it was important that all candidates had fair access qualifications to enable them to show their knowledge, skills and understanding. “The number of candidates with access arrangements has risen again this year,” she said.

“There are a number of reasons for this increase, including more awareness amongst teachers and parents and more information about the types of arrangements that are available.

“In addition, examination officers in schools and colleges work very hard to ensure that candidates get the fair access they are entitled to.

“We will continue to monitor the situation closely to ensure that the system remains fair for all.”

John Bangs, assistant secretary for the National Union of Teachers, said the union was not worried about the rise in applications for special considerations.7

Education chief favors longer school year

Those lazy days of summer may become a thing of the past if the new secretary of education has his way.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan suggests giving incentives to teachers whose students perform well.

Arne Duncan, the Cabinet secretary charged with overhauling America’s educational system, is studying programs that keep kids in school longer to boost their academic achievements.

“When I go out and talk about that, that doesn’t always make me popular with students.

They like the long summers,” Duncan said in an interview Wednesday with CNN conducted in the Education Department’s library.

But Duncan said American students are “at a competitive disadvantage” because the United States has shorter school years than other countries such as India and China.

iReport.com: Longer year a good idea?

“It doesn’t matter how poor, how tough the family background, socioeconomic challenges,” Duncan said. “Where students have longer days, longer weeks, longer years — that’s making a difference.”

More time in school is one of several ideas under consideration as Duncan settles into his new role. Watch as the secretary discusses his strategy to improve U.S. education”

The lanky former college basketball player and father of two speaks quickly, with remarkable energy in the face of daunting challenges.

Thirty percent of high school students drop out before graduation, and another 50 percent won’t finish college, according to Education Sector, a nonprofit think tank.

For Latino and African-American students, the numbers are more dramatic.

About half of them will graduate from high school, the Washington-based group said.

As school administrators struggle with dropout rates, they also are confronting drastic budget cuts amid national economic uncertainty.

Districts are slashing jobs and putting off plans to repair crumbling school buildings.

“What’s going on, state after state, due to this tough economy, is devastating educationally. And we can’t afford to get worse now. We have to get dramatically better,” said Duncan, former chief of Chicago Public Schools.

President Obama and lawmakers have directed billions of dollars to the Department of Education through the stimulus package, and they propose to send more in the 2010 budget Obama announced Thursday.

Duncan said some of that money will provide schools with immediate relief to keep teachers.

“Thanks to the stimulus package, we have the chance to save literally hundreds of thousands of teacher positions.

This is a huge, huge deal,” he said, citing a University of Washington study that suggests 600,000 teachers could be lost this year without drastic intervention.

“We’re going to be able to avert maybe not all of those cuts but a huge percentage of those, and that’s very very important,” he said.

But the new funds may be only enough to keep a crisis at bay, said Kevin Carey of Education Sector. State and local shortages are forcing schools to make do with much less.

“The economic situation is hurting school budgets,” Carey said. “The stimulus package that just passed will help that somewhat, but there still isn’t a whole lot of new money to pay teachers more, reduce class sizes, reduce high school dropout rates.”

Duncan also suggested giving incentives to teachers whose students perform well, an unpopular idea with teachers’ unions. And he said school systems may need to make tough decisions about teachers who don’t perform at par.

“If teachers aren’t making it, we want to support them and help them develop, but ultimately if it’s not working, our children deserve the best,” Duncan said. “They probably need to find something else to do.”

Duncan also is pushing for new benchmarks that would use international standards to compare American students with those overseas.

He faults No Child Left Behind for standards that he said don’t accurately monitor some children’s progress.“When you’re told you’re meeting those standards, you think you’re doing OK.

You’re really not,” Duncan said.

“Our children are not competing for jobs down the block or in the district or in the state — they’re competing against children in India or China, and they need to know how they stack up.”

Carey said Duncan’s efforts to meet education goals are an immensely complicated task.

“There are 50 states, there are 14,000 school districts, 90,000 schools, and Secretary Duncan is responsible for every one of them. But they all have their own ideas, their own funding sources, their own local leadership,” Carey said.

Grammar pilot helping deaf people

A new approach to teaching English-language reading and writing skills to deaf people is delivering “immensely promising” results, a charity has said. Glasgow-based, Deaf Connections, is the first organisation in Europe to pilot Manipulative Visual Language (MVL).The system makes use of coded “tactile wooden blocks” to symbolise different aspects of English grammar, which deaf people can find difficult to grasp. Trials of MVL began in January on 12 deaf people from Glasgow. So far, the results have impressed literacy tutor, Lucy Cole, who is overseeing the project. “Basically, it can be very difficult for people who are deaf to grasp the grammatical rules underpinning English language,” she said.

‘Grammatical concepts’

“The MVL system breaks down this difficulty and addresses the unique learning needs of our profoundly deaf literacy students.

“Many people who are born deaf and have grown up pre-lingually deaf use British Sign Language as their first language and this may have huge implications on their English language development. “BSL is very different from English in relation to grammatical concepts and structures.

” MVL was developed over the past decade by Jimmy Challis Gore, a professor at Gallaudet University in Washington DC, and Rob Gillies, a teacher at the Governor Baxter School for the deaf in Maine.

 Throwing billions at schools won’t fix them

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, President Obama’s stimulus package, could serve as a historic investment in our children’s future, an initiative that could very well change the course of our nation.

It is an opportunity that cannot be squandered.

However, there is good reason for concern that the funds made available for education under the act will not result in the change we need.

Over the past eight years, educational progress in the United States has been modest at best.

According to a national study by the Gates Foundation (“The Silent Epidemic,” 2006), dropout rates in many of our nation’s largest cities are 50 percent or higher.

Similarly, large numbers of students lack proficiency in reading and math in many school districts across the country, and many who graduate and go on to college are largely unprepared for the rigors of college-level course work.

Seven years after the adoption of the No Child Left Behind law, it is clear we are still leaving many children behind.

Tinkering with existing policy is unlikely to produce different results.

The Obama administration needs a bold new strategy for reforming our public education system if it hopes that our schools.

However, so far, and certainly it is still is early in the term of this administration, no new vision or strategy for reforming the nation’s schools has been articulated.

There is justifiable reason to be concerned that by calling for funds from the stimulus package to be spent quickly on “shovel-ready” projects in order to produce the jobs that are so desperately needed, the administration will not have the time to develop a thoughtful strategy that can guide the reform of the nation’s public schools.

Obama has spoken out about the challenges confronting public education, most notably in his inauguration speech and most recently in his address before Congress. On each occasion, he has lauded the achievements of charter schools and chided public schools for their failures.

The president’s use of the bully pulpit will undoubtedly be essential to usher in new reforms, but given that 90 percent of children in the United States attend public schools, it is clear that he or one of his appointees will need to do more than criticize public schools to address the tremendous challenges we face.

Education Secretary *Arne Duncan* may soon have $15 billion at his discretion.

These funds should be used to encourage school districts to employ research-based strategies for intervening early with slow learners, raising academic standards most important, improving learning conditions in underperforming schools.

He must also recognize that one of the unintended consequences of using test scores as a barometer for judging schools has been that many schools have narrowed the focus of the curriculum to test preparation.

That effectively denies students who desperately need help the most the kind of enriched learning environment that cultivates the imagination and stimulates achievement.

The administration must realize that America’s schools need more than just money to address the many problems they face and to promote the kind of education that will be needed to support our economy and democracy in the 21st century.

More funds are needed, especially in communities where the schools have been sorely neglected, but increased funding alone will not produce better results.

The most successful charter schools — and let’s be clear, not all charters are successful — have demonstrated that increased autonomy, combined with site-based decision-making over the use of resources, can sometimes contribute to greater effectiveness.

There is no reason why similar strategies cannot be deployed in regular public schools.

At the same time, some schools need far more help than they have received, and clearly, pressure alone will not produce a change in results.

Policies and systems must be in place to promote best practices in teaching, to address the non-academic health and social needs of disadvantaged children, to reward innovation and success, and to intervene effectively in schools in need of improvement.

We must also ensure that, like the countries we typically compare ourselves to, we provide quality early childhood education, health care and extended learning opportunities to all children in need.

The United States will not be a leader in the 21st century if we continue to ignore the basic needs of vast numbers of our children.

Perhaps most important, there is the possibility that education can also play a role in the economic recovery.

Over the longer term, there must be more strategic investments made to ensure some degree of alignment between the curriculum of our secondary schools and the sectors of the economy where growth can be anticipated.

Schools should be supported in developing career academies and internships with industries in biotechnology, organic food production, telecommunications, robotics and a wide variety of “green jobs.”

This is especially true in economically depressed areas like the de-industrialized rust belt cities of the northeast and Midwest.

Put most bluntly, there can be no future for the auto industry if the public schools in Detroit, Flint or Gary are not capable of educating a new generation of workers to design the cars of the future.

In cities and towns across America where jobs are being lost at a dramatic rate, revival of local and regional economies will require strategic investments in human capital made possible by highly trained and motivated teachers and a curriculum that provides students with 21st -century skills.

To solve the pressing problems confronting our economy and our schools, national leadership by the Obama administration and the teachers’ unions will be needed.

We must avoid the tendency that has become popular in some political circles to blame teachers and unions for the failings of our schools.

Unions must play a greater role in addressing the performance of their members, but we must also acknowledge that if unions were the problem, the South would have the best schools.

We have to move the conversation about teacher quality forward, beyond a narrow debate over merit pay and job protection, to one focused more broadly on how to insure that teachers receive adequate support and training to meet the academic needs of their students and to ascertain their effectiveness in the classroom.

Strong leadership by Obama and Duncan will be needed if we expect to see superior academic outcomes and greater accountability for the dollars we invest.

The federal government must send a clear message to the states that “failure is not an option.”

We have a tremendous opportunity to move our nation forward by substantially improving our schools.

We cannot afford to waste it. Our children deserve it, and our future as a nation depends upon it.

Unemployed workers heading back to school

The Pennsylvania woman was laid off in November after working at the same company for nearly 20 years.

Now, as she looks for a job, McFadden worries about losing her home and uprooting her 8-year-old daughter.

But when McFadden talks about the future, she has found some cause for hope.

In January, the 43-year-old enrolled in the tuition assistance program at Montgomery County Community College in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania.

The program offers county residents who have been laid off since September 2008 the opportunity to take 12 college credits — usually four courses — for free.

McFadden said the program will allow her to reassess her options while she improves her marketability and salary potential.

“I have all of the capabilities, but I don’t have that piece of paper, which is a requirement for a lot of jobs,” said McFadden, who is taking night courses in economics and English composition.

“I never thought that I would go back to school, all this time, and I’m glad I did.”

She is one of more than 1,100 Pennsylvanians taking tuition-free community college courses as they search for a job. Many are concentrating on new job skills, such as computer programming and accounting, to retrofit their résumés so they can compete in a turbulent job market.

“The response was incredible,” said MCCC President Karen Stout. “The day after we announced the program, our call center lines were clogged up. We had more than 300 calls in the first two or three days, and we had information sessions that had standing-room-only attendance.”

It’s a trend echoed at community colleges across the country.

George Boggs, president of the American Association of Community Colleges, said he has heard from 75 college presidents reporting double-digit increases this semester.

“Community colleges are a big part of the solution to this economic downturn,” Boggs said.

“We are the institutions that are on the ground bringing these individuals into our institutions and preparing them for a new career.”

Boggs pointed to programs in hard-hit industrial manufacturing states, such as Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania, as being particularly geared toward mid-career students.

Many community colleges have cut or frozen tuition for laid-off workers, established scholarship programs or offered financial assistance to pay for textbooks and transportation costs.

However, the spike in applications has put a burden on some schools that already are struggling to keep tuition low and upgrade their facilities.

“Many [community colleges] are reporting that it is the highest-ever enrollment that they have had,” Boggs said. “And several are reporting a waiting list of students that they can not accommodate.

“It wouldn’t surprise me to hear that about a half-million students are being turned away from our community colleges today.”

At MCCC, enrollment is up 10 percent since spring 2008. But the school has been able to place the new students in courses that aren’t at capacity.

“We are worried about our bottom line, especially in this economic environment,” MCCC President Stout said. “But we do have classes that are scheduled to go that have open seats.

So basically, these were empty seats that we’re filling with unemployed workers.”

If *unemployment continues to rise — in Pennsylvania the jobless rate is 6.7 percent — Stout wants to continue offering tuition-free classes.

And even once these mid-career students get back on their feet, she’s hoping to see them around campus still.

“Our goal is that these students want to come back and be lifelong learners that they understand that in today’s economy, you have to continue to keep your job skills relevant and up to date,” Stout said.

“None of us can be complacent about our own learning.”

Her plan may be working. Much to Janice McFadden’s surprise, she has discovered she loves being a student.

Children of foreclosure falling behind in school

Some of the people hit hardest by this bad economy are the youngest.

Almost 2 million children nationwide have had or will have their lives disrupted by home foreclosures, according to one study.

These are the children whose families have had to move, sometimes more than once.

The youngsters are pulled out of school, often leaving their friends behind without even saying goodbye.

Nine-year-old Kenia, who is in the fourth grade at Fairview Elementary School in Modesto, California, said that is what happened to her.

She is new to the school, having moved to the area just a few months ago.

She said it is really hard and she misses her friends.

Her classmate Bethany said her best friend since kindergarten just left without saying goodbye.

Heather Sharp, the principal at Fairview, said her school has been the one most affected by the bad economy in the Modesto City School system. “We have, over the last couple of months, 50 students coming new to the school and 50 students leaving,” Sharp said. It was so bad that the school conducted a door-to-door search for missing students, she said.

“We had our community aide going out to houses. And they were boarded up, windows boarded, yard brown. She had to go to neighbors to find out where the kids were.”

In terms of raw numbers, California had the most foreclosures of any state from 2007 through January 2009. More than 57,000 homes entered foreclosure.

Many of those were in Stanislaus County, where home prices have declined 65 percent since December 2005, according to the Modesto Bee.

Fourth-grade teacher Suzell Tougas said she has lost 10 kids from her class so far this year and is braced to lose more. She usually has a room full of children with every desk occupied. Now, it “looks empty ... it’s like a “ghost town”.

She said constant moving is hard on kids.

“Just having to start over and start over is really hard on a child,” Tougas said.

“It takes six weeks for a child to adjust ... at least.”

While children are in that period of adjustment, she said, they aren’t learning and their studies suffer.

“The biggest issue is that when [children have to move] when there are other stressors going on, we know it puts these kids at greater risk for being behind in their academics,” said Pat Popp, a past president of the National Association for the Education of Homeless Children and Youth.

That is borne out in a recent study by a nonpartisan group in Washington called First Focus. It said that children who move twice in one year are only half as likely as others to be able to read proficiently, and may have a greater chance of being held back.

It also found that moving a lot reduces the student’s chance of graduating from high school by half. *Read the report here.

The report, published in May, estimated that 1.95 million children will be affected by foreclosure over the next two years.

The number of homeless students is increasing dramatically.

A study by the National Association for the Education of Homeless Children reported that more than 450 school districts across the nation had an increase of at least 25 percent in the number of identified homeless students between the 2006-2007 and 2007-2008 school years. Read the report here

A student who moves “may hear the same information again that you learned in your previous classroom or miss information that has already been covered in your class but wasn’t taught in your previous school,” Popp said.

The fallout from the rash of foreclosures likely will have a long-term impact on education, especially in California. Schools get much of their funding from property tax revenues.

Real estate values are spiraling downward and so is the revenue.

At Fairview Elementary, Principal Sharp worries about students like 9-year-old Eunice, who has moved twice in the last year.

Her parents told her that after they pay their mortgage this month, they won’t have any money for a week.

CNN

Fees fuel campus consumer culture

What do student newspapers complain about these days?* ** How about this headline in Swansea University’s student paper following the recent bad weather.

“Students lose £20 a lecture after snow sends university into lockdown.” It pointed out that fee-paying students are not getting full value for money if lectures are cancelled.

Students were seeing their “money disappear quicker than the snow melted”.

It illustrates something about changed attitudes on campus when students are complaining that they are not getting enough lectures.

Paying fees means that students are customers as well as learners.

The student union president at Swansea University, James Houston, says that going to university is “still different from a shopping experience” - but that paying fees is pushing it in that direction.

‘Customer service’

“There is a strong argument that if you charge more, then people will want to know where their money is going,” he says.

Consumer campus

More students now live with parents Students want value for money from courses Increase in student complaints ‘Helicopter parents’ meddle with university life More students have paid jobs during term Universities are more than a business, he says.

But he fears that fees are driving a campus consumer ethic.

The students’ union already has complaints from students about not getting “value for money”.

This shift in attitude is also reflected in an increase in complaints by students to the Office of the Independent Adjudicator for Higher Education - which it attributes to fees.

“We believe that one reason for the increase is the rise in tuition fees.

There is also more consumerist thinking amongst students.

Students have become more assertive about their rights, and the services they are entitled to,” said chief executive, Rob Behrens.

While the debate about fees was once about whether it would be a social barrier to poorer students, in practice there have been other less expected changes.

The combination of fees and debts from student loans means that university courses are judged by their price tags as well as academic worth.

Frank Furedi, social commentator and academic at the University of Kent, says that the campus culture is “unrecognisable” from a generation ago.

Students now ring lecturers at home at the weekend, he says, seeing this as being part of the service they are buying with their fees.

“They feel they can make all kinds of demands,” says Prof Furedi.

“Fees give a clear and tangible form to the idea of students as consumers.

“The relationship with the student is no longer academic, it’s a service provider and customer. The academic relationship is an endangered species.” There are still students who want to be inspired and intellectually challenged, he says.

Extended school

But the landscape is one in which many students expect to have everything done for them.

“School has extended into higher education. Students behave like schoolchildren.” If tuition fees are hiked further, he says it will intensify the sense of consumerism among students.

There are other signs of how fees have changed life on campus.

Students are more careers-focused than ever before, the accumulation of large debts putting pressure on them to get a degree that will help them in the jobs market.

Beginning a university degree course is a serious financial undertaking and that now shapes the experience of student life.

There are other practical changes. More students than ever are living at home while at university - with surveys suggesting that perhaps a fifth of students continue to live with their parents.

This in turn means that more students, particularly from less well-off families, are choosing from universities close to where they live.

Helicopter parents

The role of parents, who pay towards student costs, has also been seen as becoming more prominent.

This has been caricatured as “helicopter parents” who hover over every decision taken by their student offspring, including contacting lecturers.

Parents can now act as agents for their children in university applications - and have even been allowed to sit in on admissions interviews.

Cary Cooper, pro-vice chancellor at Lancaster University, also points to the structural consequences of a further increase in fees.

At present, he says, the current level of student debt means that many more students have to take part-time jobs to pay their way.

Another hike in fees will mean even more students will need to work - including those who will only be able to study part-time.

This will mean universities will have to adapt, such as providing courses which can be passed in individual units, accumulating credits over a number of years.

Professor Cooper says this could mean a fundamental change for higher education, moving away from the traditional model of 18 to 21-year-olds taking a three-year degree course.

Pupils ‘should study Twitter’

Primary school pupils should learn how to blog and use internet sites like Twitter and Wikipedia and spend less time studying history, it is claimed.

A review of the primary school curriculum in England will be published in a final report next month.

But the Guardian newspaper says draft copies it has seen shows pupils will no longer have to study the Victorian period or the Second World War.

Ministers said British history would always be a core part of education.

The review of the primary school curriculum was commissioned by Schools Secretary Ed Balls last year and is being drawn up by Sir Jim Rose, former chief of England’s schools watchdog, Ofsted.

The Guardian said the draft review requires primary school children to be familiar with blogging, podcasts, Wikipedia and Twitter as sources of information and forms of communication.

They must gain “fluency” in handwriting and keyboard skills, and learn how to use a spellchecker alongside how to spell, the article said.

Every child would learn two key periods of British history but it would be up to the school to decide which ones. While schools would still be able to opt to teach Victorian history or the Second World War, they would not be required to, the Guardian said.

Flexible timetable

In an interim report published in December, Sir Jim said primary age children needed a greater understanding of information technology.

He also said he wanted to create a more flexible, less “overloaded” timetable.

His interim review suggested there could be six broader “areas of learning”, rather than up to 14 individual subjects, such as history, geography and science.

The proposals suggested that “key ideas” might overlap different subjects - for example, the way that learning about human settlements could teach about both history and geography.

‘AREAS OF LEARNING’ understanding English, communication and languages mathematical understanding scientific and technological understanding human, social and environmental understanding physical health and well-being understanding the arts and design

He also said the level of lessons in information, communication and technology (ICT) currently taught in secondary schools should now be taught to primary-age pupils.

Technological advances were driving a pace of change that would have been “unimaginable” when the national curriculum was created 20 years ago, he added.

Commenting on the claims in the Guardian newspaper on Wednesday, Schools Minister Jim Knight said: “Sir Jim Rose’s report has not been completed let alone published yet - but we are already getting stories about dropping this or removing that from the curriculum.

“The bottom line is that we are working with experts to free up the curriculum in a way that teachers have asked us to do but British history has, and always will be, a core part of education in this country.

“Of course pupils in primary school will learn about major periods including the Romans, the Tudors and the Victorians and will be taught to understand a broad chronology of major events in this country and the wider world.”

Ministers will formally respond to Sir Jim’s proposals when they are published in April.

Renewed push for adult learning

Pubs, museums and churches could be used for adult education classes in a £20m government plan to promote informal learning in England.

The government’s White Paper on adult education proposes that more than 7,000 rooms in public buildings and private firms could provide space for lessons.

Skills Secretary John Denham says he wants to “raise the profile and take-up of learning wherever it happens”.

There have been complaints that adult learning has been cut in recent years.

The government’s adult learning plan, the Learning Revolution, is aimed at supporting learning for pleasure and for “personal development”.

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Further education minister Sion Simon says pubs, museums and churches could be used

Pubs and museums*

It wants to allow individuals and groups to have places to meet and learn together - whether they are shops, galleries, offices or pubs.

Among the 65 organisations supporting the campaign are the National Trust, the British Library, the Church of England, the Women’s Institute, Microsoft and private health company Bupa.

“Over the past few years there has been a quiet learning revolution, but the government wants to ignite this, raising the profile and take-up of learning wherever it happens,” says Mr Denham.

The National Institute of Adult Continuing Education welcomed the announcement as “a bright light at the end of the tunnel for adult learning”.

“It is no mean achievement to find new money on this scale at a time when there have never been more pressures on public funding,” said chief executive Alan Tuckett.

The government’s plan comes against a background in which there have been protests that adult education is being cut - as the emphasis has been shifted to improving the work skills of young people.

Funding for training*

The Campaigning Alliance for Lifelong Learning claims there have been “two million learners’ places lost from further and adult education in England since 2005”.Campaigners, who warned about the wider cultural and health consequences of cutting evening courses, were angered by the response from the government, which characterised such learning as “holiday Spanish”.

There have also been complaints over a change in student funding which has withdrawn support for students wanting to take a degree if they already hold an equivalent qualification.Student unions and opposition parties have warned that this could stand in the way of anyone seeking to re-train for a new career.

The shadow secretary for innovation, universities and skills, David Willetts, described the announcement on adult learning as “total hypocrisy”.

“It is an attempt to hide the loss of 1.5 million adult learner places under this government.”

primary school curriculum:

Twitter to replace Victorians

Primary school pupils could be taught to master Twitter instead of learning about the Victorians, under proposed changes to the curriculum.

Sir Jim Rose, the former head of Ofsted, is due recommendations for updating the primary curriculum to ministers next month.

Three months ago he said in his interim report that primary age children need a greater understanding of information technology. In his final report he is expected to flesh this recommendation out, suggesting that children should be familiar with blogging, podcasts, Wikipedia and Twitter by the time they go to secondary school.

Schools will no longer be required to teach Victorian history or the Second World War, although they can still opt to include them, the Guardian reported today.

Children will be expected to be able to place historical events which they have studied in date order under the new proposals.

Sir Jim has said his aim is to create “a primary curriculum which is challenging and constantly enriches children’s understanding, where they can apply knowledge and skills learnt in one subject to better understand another”.

The Government today played down the apparent leak. Jim Knight, the Schools Minister, said: “Sir Jim Rose’s report has not been completed let alone published yet - but we are already getting stories about dropping this or removing that from the curriculum.

“The bottom line is that we are working with experts to free up the curriculum in a way that teachers have asked us to do but British history has, and always will be, a core part of education in this country.

“Of course pupils in primary school will learn about major periods including the Romans, the Tudors and the Victorians and will be taught to understand a broad chronology of major events in this country and the wider world.”

Ministers will formally respond to Sir Jim’s proposals when they are published next month.

UK youths among worst for drink

British teenagers are the third worst binge drinkers in Europe and their alcohol abuse is causing serious illnesses, a report has found.

More than half of 15 and 16-year-olds admitted regularly drinking to excess, the research by the University of the West of England revealed.

Only those in Denmark and the Isle of Man fared worse out of 35 nations.

Prof. Martin Plant, who led the study, said a minimum price for alcohol of 50p per unit would save 3,000 lives a year.

The government’s top medical adviser, Sir Liam Donaldson, has drawn up plans for a similar minimum price for alcohol which would double the cost of some drinks in England.

Prof Plant said doctors are treating patients at an ever-younger age for serious complaints like liver sclerosis and psychiatric problems.

Many were dying prematurely as a result, he added.

TOP FIVE BINGE DRINK NATIONS

Denmark: 49% Isle of Man: 35% UK: 33% Austria: 31% Ireland: 26%

Source: European School Survey Project on Alcohol (Teenagers aged 15 and 16 who admitted being drunk in last 30 days).

“There is a clear scientific consensus that alcohol education and mass media campaigns have a very poor track record in influencing drinking habits,” he said.

“Far more effective - and cost effective - policies include using taxation to make alcohol less affordable.

“It is therefore recommended that a minimum price of 50p per unit of alcohol should be introduced.

This would save over 3,000 lives per year.”

The study recorded how many youngsters admitted being drunk in the month before they were interviewed.

The figures, from 2007, also showed UK girls are more likely to get drunk than boys.

The UK sample included 1,004 boys and 1,175 girls.

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A teenager on her drinking habits - extract from BBC School Report.

Whole report at port Young People’s Minister Delyth Morgan said the problem was known and was already being tackled.

“We have not ruled out taking action on very cheap alcohol - it’s clearly linked to people drinking more and the subsequent harm to their health,” Baroness Morgan said.

Graduates `need work experience’

Students should get work experience to boost their chances of getting jobs in the downturn, the head of the CBI says.

Richard Lambert says students must get skills and first-hand experience of work while still at university.

Launching a report with Universities UK on preparing graduates for work, Mr. Lambert will say competition for jobs in 2009 will be particularly intense.

Of the 581 recruiters surveyed for the report, 78% rated employability skills, such as team working, as essential.

And of the 80 higher education institutions which responded to the report’s survey, 91% thought it likely or highly likely their graduates would acquire five out of the seven desired employability skills while at university.

Employability skills

Self-management Team working Business and customer awareness Problem solving Communication and literacy Application of numeracy Application of information technology

The report, Preparing graduates for the world of work, gives examples of how businesses and universities are working together to offer students work placements during their studies and to incorporate employability into courses.

For example, at Surrey University 70% of undergraduates participate in “professional training” or workplace-based skills development, usually as the third year of a four-year course.

This training is open to students studying all subjects, even those not traditionally regarded as vocational.

At Exeter University students are given an “employability matters” handbook every year and across campus - often outside lecture theatres - there is information on employability and careers in every academic building.

Good practice among employers is also cited in the CBI and Universities UK report.

Energy company Centrica offers paid summer work placements to undertake specific projects and the chief executive of marine engineering company Yellowfin works with local universities to encourage entrepreneurship.

Intense competition

Launching the report, Mr. Lambert will say: “To say that the class of 2009 won’t have it easy after graduation is an understatement - competition for jobs will be the most intense for many years.

“Of course, businesses don’t expect graduates to arrive on day one fully trained, but what they do value in graduates are their people skills, a focus on the customer and a keenness to solve problems.

“It’s no good graduates regretting not taking up opportunities once they leave university - many universities are keen to help them gain work experience during their degree.”

Universities and business must do more to meet demand among students for doing work placements and internships during a degree, he will stress.

Professor Rick Trainor, President of Universities UK, will say: “The report shows how universities - in collaboration with employers - are changing the way courses are taught, building employability skills into the curriculum, and offering placements and career-related approaches to give their graduates the edge.

“Skills and attributes that will help graduates get jobs and manage their careers over a lifetime are being developed as part of the broader higher education experience.

“This is now more important than ever, as universities - and their graduates - will be key to the UK’s growth path out of recession.”

The report was sponsored by the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills. Higher Education Minister David Lammy said: “Graduates need to be equipped with the right skills to succeed in the workplace, and today’s labour market is bringing home to students the need to take personal responsibility for developing the skills they need.”

School is better without boys:

Girls still on top of the class -Research

Until she was 16, Jess Buckley attended Godolphin & Laty-mer, a high-ranking, girls-only private school in west London.

She obtained a string of top grades at GCSE. Then she decided she wanted a more varied sixth-form experience - one in which she could mingle with boys - and moved to Canford in Dor-set, where she became a boarder.

“My headmistress at Godolphin sat me down on the day I was leaving and said, ‘You do know your grades will go down when you go to a mixed school’,” says Buckley, 28, who now works as a fundraising manager for a charity.

After two years at Canford, and having survived an initiation ceremony in which the boys hurled buckets of water over her, she was disappointed with an A, B and a C grade in her A-levels. It seemed her headmistress had been right.

Getting the best for girls has always been a vexed issue. Do they do better in single-sex schools or when taught alongside boys? In recent years single-sex schools have been tarred as old-fashioned and antiquated, a throwback to the Victorian era, but a report published last week looks like the last word on the issue: girls really do do better in single-sex schools.

The study, by The Good Schools Guide, followed 700,000 girls and found that those who sat GCSEs in single-sex state schools all did better than could have been predicted by their scores at the end of primary school.

By contrast, 20% of those who attended coed schools did worse than could have been expected from their school records, aged 11.

The effect was even more marked among less clever girls.

Janette Wallis, who commissioned the research, says: “To disregard the evidence of this study would be a mistake.

We never expected to see such a difference.” According to Wallis, although her research focuses on GCSE results, the findings hold true for sixth-form study too. “Attending a single-sex school is likely to have a positive impact on girls’ academic performance up to the age of 18,” she says.

However, she adds, as girls got older other concerns came into play.

“A lot of parents will look at the benefits of coed schools, like the fact that girls and boys are educated side by side, preparing them for the world of work and life.

After the age of 16, some parents might think that such social considerations outweighed getting better exam results.”

For Bryony Gordon, media commentator and alumna of a girls’ school, weighing up all the factors is crucial. “Of course girls do better when schooled alone, freed from the exhausting study of Jake in the upper sixth,” she argues.

However, “on the nonacademic side, girls’ schools go badly wrong”.

In some, she claimed, pupils were at risk of eating disorders, and of being so starved of boys’ company that, in their twenties, they became promiscuous.

Certainly, Buckley doesn’t regret her move to Canford, despite the slump in her grades.

“I still look back on it as the turning point of my life, and don’t mind that I sacrificed a few exam results because I’ve turned out a more rounded person,” she asserts.

For others, though, being around boys doesn’t make up for what can sometimes be a disastrous academic slide. Take Kay Seary, for instance.

Seary, 18, decided to leave Lodge school in Purley, Surrey, at the start of the sixth form for a co-educational college.

After notching up good GCSE results, she was horrified to discover, after a year in her college, that she had only scored a B and three E grades in AS-levels.

“I made the wrong decision,” says Seary, who was so concerned that she rejoined Lodge school.

She thinks that the distracting effect of teenage boys was partly to blame for the slide in her grades.

Rachel Sullivan, also 18, of Cheltenham ladies’ college, is equally outspoken about how off-putting boys can be.

Sullivan, who has just won a place to read English at New College, Oxford, was taught in a mixed primary school.

“I have definitely learnt more without having boys around,” she says. “In French lessons in primary school we’d be lucky to get to grips with three words of the language - the rest of the time was spent watching the boys throw things at the waste paper bin.”

For Jill Berry, president of the Girls’ Schools Association, it’s all about how boys and girls respond to teaching styles. “Girls have to be encouraged to take risks and make mistakes; boys, however, have to be held back.

Girls like to work collabora-tively; boys are less keen. In science classes, girls prefer not to be in a minority.” Despite this the rush to coeducation continues apace.

Most of the top boys’ public schools have started admitting girls, in spite of teething problems.

At Wellington college, Berkshire, the introduction of girls into the sixth form several years ago resulted in three boys setting up a secret video camera to film one of them having sex with his girlfriend.

At Downside, near Bath, pupils protested angrily at the news that girls would be allowed in.

One girl who joined Rugby in the sixth form recalls an anxious first week working on her appearance after being told “the boys would hold up cards, giving us marks out of 10, when we went to chapel”.

Two more public schools, Magdalen college school in Oxford and King’s college school, Wimbledon, southwest London, have recently announced that they will admit girls into the sixth form. Only a handful remain bastions of boys’ education. They include Eton.

Tony Little, the head master, says that what matters most isn’t whether a school is single sex or co-educational but whether it is well run and whether, if it is a mixed school, it has roughly equal numbers of girls and boys.

Like many others he refuses to accept that the latest research is the last word in the debate.

“I am always rather sceptical about studies of this kind,” he says. “You cannot define a school by the gender of its pupils.

There are plenty of lousy single-sex schools out there, just as there are plenty of excellent co-educational ones.” *Additional reporting: Lucy Denyer and Jack Grimston.