Last year, only 176, of the nearly 30,000 pupils who got three grade As at A-level were eligible for free school meals: that’s ½ of 1% ! http://education.guardian.co.uk/schools/story/0,,2259334,00.html Now, based on my personal experience and anecdotal evidence, I suspect that at least some of those golden 176 were children of recent asylum seekers and refugees; also, I suspect that a few will have been at private schools on scholarship programs for children from disadvantaged backgrounds. Consequently, I’m left wondering if any of the 176 who gained 3 As came through the mainstream school system. I might try and get a friendly Tory MP to ask the question. Perhaps that’s why Blair used to say education, education, education – there were three of them.
Tuesday, 26 February 2008
1 Stunning: well, it should be
2 Crisis, what crisis?
The public accounts committee (PAC) recently reviewed university dropout rates and their report was generally critical of the efforts being made by the universities http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/education/article3423483.ece . The headline of their investigation was that nearly 25% of students fail to complete their degree courses and that course drop-out was more prevalent amongst students from disadvantaged backgrounds; that despite many millions of pounds being spent by universities to supposedly address the failure rate, which had not improved over time http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/higher/leading-article-dropout-waste-784623.html . Problem, what problem, seemed to be the view from HEFCE http://education.guardian.co.uk/students/news/story/0,,2259840,00.html
3 Mistake
Under the new legislation, the government are going to allow some young people to leave education and training before the age of 18 if they can show they are in difficult personal circumstances http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7258913.stm. In my opinion, the government seem to have learnt nothing from the experience of incapacity benefit. Building in these exceptions is a bad idea; it will mean the very types of people who are now teenage NEETs will remain so, as they will leave the education system of the back of one of these exceptions. Yes, it will be hard to keep all young people in education and/or training until 18 but that was bound to be the case. We didn’t need a legislative change to keep those in education who would remain in it anyway. Government should stiffen its resolve, and remember what happened when education leaving dates were raised in the past – within a couple of years they became generally accepted.
4 Strength through work
I thought this was a good example of the arguments about single parents in employment http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2008/feb/23/workandcareers.familyfinance. Note the calculation at the end, which shows how essential the in-work benefits are to make work pay, even at this marginal level. This cost is important when calculating the cost of single parents working to the rest of society. I often find that liberal advocates of tax credits are shy about the costs of these schemes. I calculate that this person’s untaxed income without benefits would be £88.32 gross, way below the level of benefits income; it has to be toped-up with negative income tax and housing benefit, to make the worker marginally better off. I’m not against the project; I just don’t think we can hide this truth as it has major consequences for the welfare budget as a whole.
5 Advice
6 It was good enough for the Foreign Secretary and Nance
A study claims to show that middle class kids do educationally OK even when they attend less fashionable comprehensive schools. I know it is asking a lot of parents or guardians to make such a choice and possibly sad that their children’s good performance seems to be because they stick with their own, but it would make schooling in the UK so much easier if everyone did it. http://education.guardian.co.uk/schools/story/0,,2258392,00.html
7 Your call is valuable to us
While there has been much debate recently about top grade A levels and elite universities, in my opinion, the equally important arena for improving skills and educational qualifications in the UK, that of the workplace has tended to be neglected. This article considers the practical advantages and costs that someone working in a call centre faces when considering investing in a work based qualification http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2008/feb/18/2
Saturday, 16 February 2008
1 Bargain
According to this article, over the past 5 years the money spent on university widening participation schemes for the disadvantaged has amounted to £211,500 per extra student recruited http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=512336&in_page_id=1770 . I guess that we will be hearing more of this statistic when the government gets round to launching their plans for the next phase of Aimhigher, which were due to be published in January and yet, strangely, have yet to appear. I remain convinced that part of the reason for such limited success has been a strategic underestimation of the real and specific difficulties of attracting disadvantaged students into higher education. A recent piece of Sutton trust research, this time on university choice, sheds light on the subject http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/news/story/0,,2256262,00.html full report at http://www.suttontrust.com/reports/StaffordshireReportFinal.pdf
2 Mentoring for the gifted and talented
The government has moved to combine with what they see as the academically elite recruits in their ‘Teach First scheme’ with disadvantaged, but bright pupils, in a bid to raise their applications to Russell group universities. Pupils on free school meals and who have also been identified as "gifted and talented" will receive support from Teach First Advocates in applying for highly competitive courses http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7217619.stm The government sees this as a mentoring program and it will include participants from the Teach First scheme who have ceased teaching in schools and are now working outside of the education sector.
3 Attitudes to the poor and poverty
A report from the Joseph Rowntree Trust looked at public attitudes to the poor and poverty using data from the British Social Attitudes survey http://www.jrf.org.uk/bookshop/eBooks/1999-poverty-attitudes-survey.pdf . In summary, I think this survey shows that the majority of British people are sympathetic to those people living in some form of absolute poverty, such as those suffering inadequate nutrition or being unable to sustain life without going into debt but not towards those in relative poverty. Attitudes to the poor also seem to be hardening, as in the latest British Social Attitudes survey, one-third of the 3,000 people interviewed believed that poverty was "an inevitable part of modern life" and a rising number laid the blame on the poor themselves; 27% of those surveyed thinking that poverty was due to "laziness or lack of willpower", up from 19% in 1984. http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2008/jan/23/socialexclusion
4 Is this the future?
Last Sunday, Gordon Brown took the opportunity to place an article in the Observer newspaper where he tried to explain both the moral inspiration and the analysis that lies at the heart of this government’s education and economic policy: that educational opportunity and achievement is not only vital for personal development and personal economic success but is also essential for the economic success of the nation http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/feb/10/gordonbrown.education This argument is not new, it is built on the findings of the Leitch report of last year, which analysed the prospects for the UK’s economy for the next 20 years. This report was met with almost universal praise at the time of its publication and is now often wheeled out as an incontestable reference point. However, I fear that it makes a number of assumptions which are rarely discussed and which may cause problems in the future. First, for the most part, the report assumed that skills are the same thing as educational qualifications. The UK experience is that this is sometimes a fair assumption but sometimes it is not. Second, there is the much quoted assertion that by 2020 the number of jobs that require no qualifications will have shrunk from 3.6m to just 600,000. As this excellent article shows, this was an assumption about the nature of the future labour force not a projection of labour needs. http://education.guardian.co.uk/further/story/0,,2248309,00.html?gusrc=rss&feed=8 I do not think these factors negate Brown’s admirable vision for the future, but I wish that his policy makers would face up to these types of complication when developing programs, rather than ‘discovering’ them through the failure of well meaning but simplistic policy initiatives .
5 Halt, who goes where?
A Government plan to construct a national database of the educational careers and achievements of all UK citizens seems to be underway http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/02/13/nschool313.xml While some may see this as part of a secret liberal plot to destroy the British way of life, I prefer to dwell on a more mundane consolation; that any such database will be a significant boost to educational research, as it will make the tracking of detailed educational outcomes a much more practical venture. A major difficulty for any such research, until now, has been the lack of any mechanisms to track individuals once they have left the schooling system. This has been true even when they have only moved into higher education, as school and UCAS reference codes were different and not easily matched. If this database is implemented, then I would expect to see some early results, especially in areas such as assessing the effectiveness of widening participation schemes into higher education. It would also facilitate longer term assessments into the significance of education and training for people’s lives.
6 Dads Army
Some suggestions, however bad, just seem to keep coming around http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7245122.stm yes, I’m sure that’s what disadvantaged pupils need: being taught by battlefield survivors who are working through the psychological trauma of their futile cannon fodder years. Why stop at teachers? Surely there is a role as detached youth workers where they could bring their insights to cross community dialogue http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2008/feb/15/communities.uksecurity .
Tuesday, 29 January 2008
1 The government plan for children
The publication of this plan is intended to be a major policy statement that will shape children and families policy for the rest of the time of this government. I know people complain that they don’t have time to read this kind of long report, so here’s the minister in charge, Ed Balls, telling you about it, jackanory style http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6sAnrRe7Xk If this inspires you, then there is a summary that covers the main points http://www.dfes.gov.uk/publications/childrensplan/downloads/Childrens_Plan_Executive_Summary.pdf or even the whole plan at http://www.dfes.gov.uk/publications/childrensplan/downloads/The_Childrens_Plan.pdf .The children’s plan is intended to be both a guide for the department’s work and a reference point for existing and future initiatives. If you intend to read one summary, of one government plan this year, I guess this is it.
2 University challenge
The government’s planned expansion of higher education continues to be rolled out http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7201228.stm. These plans for expansion are being supplemented by new widening participation initiatives such as the ‘First to go campaign’ http://www.dius.gov.uk/press/03-01-08.html However, this expansion seems at times to be contradicted by practice, for example the news last week that there was a major under spend of widening participation monies at some universities http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/news/story/0,,2245216,00.html?
If universities are unsure as to how to spend this money I’m sure we could help them.
3 Welfare reform, the skilled workforce
5 Private parts
There has been a flurry of articles over the past month about the significance and proper role of private schooling in the UK. Most of this has been triggered by the recent changes to charity law and the ways in which private schools will have to ‘earn’ their charitable status. This produced a mighty volume of largely predictable words in defence of public schools such as this http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml;jsessionid=MDHURZQLC4LFZQFIQMGSFF4AVCBQWIV0?xml=/opinion/2008/01/16/dl1601.xml A smaller voice has taken the opportunity to criticise private schooling and argue strongly against their claim to special tax status. http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/joan-bakewell/joan-bakewell-theres-nothing-charitable-about-buying-privilege-770918.html you may have noticed that this article includes a swipe at one of the countries leading private school headteachers, Anthony Seldon, who I felt tried to break out of this rather obvious trench warfare by raising a number of important points in a major article in The Independent http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/dr-anthony-seldon-enough-of-this-educational-apartheid-770182.html In my opinion, if private schools can control their annoyance they would be wise to follow this advice and resist the temptation to hunker down and wait for a conservative government. Indeed, for me, the argument about private schools benefiting from tax breaks is a minor discussion, I think the major point made by Anthony Seldon is that the existing situation is one where private schools and the remaining state grammar schools act as a sort of cartel, an apartheid, controlling and limiting advancement and excellence ‘the stranglehold is almost total’. I’m not sure if his solutions will be enough but I think it is a far more interesting discussion than tax liability.
6 Camilla who?
In my opinion, a potentially important contributor to the debate as to why some young people in the UK are adopting openly anti-social and violent life-styles is Camilla Batmanghelidj. For example, in this article Camilla reflects on the trial and sentencing of those young men who beat to death Garry Newlove, ‘children are not born criminals or killers’ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2008/01/18/do1805.xml –
I recognise that Camilla’s explanation is focused on the most disadvantaged of disadvantaged children and is not an analysis of youth culture in general, but I find her unhappy remarks insightful. Unfortunately, I fear Camilla will be marginalised in any policy debates in the UK, as her analysis poses very difficult questions for government and policy makers. Those who shape the policy debate in the UK would rather not have the adequacy of their policy-pronouncements measured against this benchmark and consequently I fear that Camilla, while being widely praised for her work with damaged children, will rarely be invited to the social policy ball.
7 The great energy debate
So far, the debate about the future of energy generation in the UK seems to have been dominated by the choice of nuclear or renewables. I’m concerned that the question of energy affordability and fuel poverty has been marginalised. In particular, I’m worried that there is already a consensus that fuel will be much more expensive in the future, whatever the source. If this is the case, then the disproportionate losers will be the socially disadvantaged, especially the most disadvantaged, who are already paying punitive energy supply charges through the use of pay-as-you-go key meters. These people also tend live in the least energy efficient and lowest standard of housing, especially since the abandonment of national minimum standards in 1980 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parker_Morris_Committee Unfortunately, the likelihood of improving their housing stock, through the implementation of high quality insulation or other major energy saving building modifications, does not appear to be very great. I fear that a harbinger of how Housing Associations (HA) and local authority housing regimes will respond to this challenge has been the way that they have responded towards tenants who request permission to install water meters in their homes. For example Mosaic, one of London’s largest HAs, will only allow tenants to have water meters fitted when the tenant agrees, in advance, to pay any costs associated with installation of the meter. As the water supply is usually to a flat, where the plumbing is often a jerry-built bodge, rather than a standard street supply, there can be considerable damage to kitchen fixtures when plumbers trace and modify the pipe-work. The result, few dare risk the cost. The energy debate becomes even more abstract with discussion of how people might offset energy costs by generating their own supplies. Such schemes, though varied and imaginative, are all irrelevant to people living, for example in a third floor flat who are prohibited by the terms of their tenancy from fixing anything to the external wall of their home or making structural changes. I’m not arguing pro or anti-nuclear, frankly I’m more worried that that the narrow debate we seem to be having ignores the ways in which a future premised on more expensive energy will of itself increase social disadvantage and division in the UK.