As the teachers' union conferences loom, a row is brewing with the government over academies
As the schools minister, Nick Gibb, travels north this week to address the annual teachers' union conferences, he might sense a hint of tension in the air.
Up to now, union leaders say, relations with the coalition government have been cordial, if inconsequential. But a row is brewing which could mean that instead of locking horns over coffee and biscuits, officials and ministers could soon find themselves doing battle in the courts.
The general secretary of the NASUWT teachers union, Chris Keates, has been embroiled in an increasingly fraught exchange of letters and meetings over pay and conditions for teachers working at academies that now looks likely to result in legal action. And the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL) is threatening to go to law over the same issue.
Underlying their growing sense of frustration is a novel problem. While previous education ministers – both Labour and Conservative – were sometimes publicly bullish in their approach to the unions, the current crop are both urbane and accessible. But the end result, the unions say, is much the same.
"They are very charming and polite, and they listen – and then they carry on," says Mary Bousted, general secretary of the ATL, whose conference started yesterday in Liverpool and will be addressed by Gibb tomorrow. "It's like tanks rolling over your lawn. There's never any ceasefire; there's never a chance to map out the lie of the land – they just carry on, and they are going to be left with many unintended consequences."
She says her representations about synthetic phonics, the reform of the national curriculum and free schools have all yielded little or nothing in terms of policy change. But the real flashpoint between the government and unions concerns academies.
It all started when the NASUWT wrote to schools that were considering becoming academies, asking them to sign up to an agreement that their teachers would continue to work under national pay and conditions. Lord Hill, the minister responsible for academies, responded with his own letter to the same schools in December last year, telling them to ignore the NASUWT's demands.
But the philosophy behind academies is all about giving schools greater freedom to run themselves and Hill said there was no requirement to reach such agreements. Furthermore, he hinted, ministers might even turn down schools for academy status if they declared themselves happy to stick with national pay agreements.
"We consider the ability to set the pay and conditions of staff to be one of the key freedoms of academy status," he wrote in a letter passed to the Guardian by the union. "Consequently, the existence of any such agreement will be a significant factor in the assessment the secretary of state will make before deciding whether or not to enter into a funding agreement for an academy."
Unsurprisingly, the letter drew an angry response from NASUWT, which has accused Hill of encouraging schools to flout the law – schools must consult teachers' representatives about any change to their terms and conditions. In a missive peppered with words such as "ludicrous", "astonished" and "unprecedented", Keates warned him that schools that failed to consult unions about academy plans faced possible legal action.
"We are evaluating schools' procedures against whether they are meeting a test of public law, and we are not going to pull back – they could face judicial review or an employment tribunal, because Lord Hill's letter was wrong," she says.
"It's perfectly appropriate for the government to write to schools saying: 'We want to remind you you don't have to enter into an agreement with the unions.' But it isn't appropriate for it to then say: 'What's more you shouldn't, and some action will follow if you do.' That's where it oversteps the line."
The government's response has been intransigent. Keates met the education secretary, Michael Gove, last month to discuss the issue, but saw no signs of a concession: "Basically, we got no clear answers. What we have done is to go back to our counsel, who is reviewing the situation."
Both the NASUWT and the ATL are now preparing to launch legal cases against schools that fail to consult them fully on plans to convert to academy status.
Meanwhile, the National Union of Teachers (NUT) will gather for its annual conference in Harrogate on Friday, with no expectation of a ministerial visit – it is many years since the NUT invited a government spokesperson to address its delegates.
The NUT's relations with the current crop of ministers have been polite but unproductive, says Christine Blower, NUT general secretary. And, as with the other unions, the issue of academies is causing concern. Earlier this month, new figures revealed that one secondary school in six is now an academy, and many more are in the process of conversion.
"All the unions, ourselves more than most, were highly critical of the unseemly haste with which the coalition put through the Academies Act when it first came into office. That meant they set off on the wrong path with us," Blower says. "Michael Gove is courteous in the sense that he listens, but whether he actually hears what we're saying is a different matter. We have significant differences with him on a number of issues, including academies and free schools, the English baccalaureate and the use of synthetic phonics."
She warns that the issue of academies, in particular, is likely to lead to protests by teachers: "There is, of course, a risk that there might be industrial action about academy status, because none of the unions support it."
Threats of legal or industrial action are nothing new, of course – they happened under the last Labour government, too. John Bangs, former head of education at the NUT and now a senior research associate at the University of Cambridge, says that in some ways the unions' relationships with Labour were even more fraught.
"I don't think Labour does pluralism very well," he says. "I think they believe the trade unions to be part of the family, so if they are being oppositional, they get upset. Looking back over 20 years of working with secretaries of state and ministers, it all revolves around individual personalities. Some ministers will go out of their way to talk to the unions, and some won't. I suspect Michael Gove is probably quite interested in what teachers have to say."
A Department for Education (DfE) press officer said he didn't feel able to comment on union complaints that its ministers were not listening. Nor did the DfE respond to a request to defend the legality of Hill's suggestion that he might refuse academy status to schools that signed agreements with the unions.
"The ability for academies to set their own pay and conditions for staff is one of the key freedoms of academy status," Hill said in a statement. "In response to questions from schools over communications from NASUWT on the academy conversion process, we have written to clarify that there is absolutely no requirement for any school taking up the academy freedoms to enter into an agreement with the union to maintain national pay and conditions."
Keates remains unimpressed, though. Despite all the outward cordiality – Gibb will address her union's conference in Glasgow this weekend – she does not predict an early end to hostilities. In general, the unions' relations with the new government have been far less productive than with the old one, she claims.
"It's markedly different from the conversation we had with the last government," she says. "I wouldn't want to give the impression our relationship with them was all smiley meetings, and that if we asked for something we got it. But I would say we had some common ground. And they had a genuine willingness to actually listen.
"Now you can meet ministers, but the question is, are they listening? And if they aren't listening, it means deep down they don't really think we've got anything to contribute. That's the only impression you can come away with."
Colleges are training stewards for London 2012 in a link-up with the security industry
If you're planning to fetch up at any of the Olympic or Paralympic venues next summer, it's likely that sporting prowess rather than security concerns will be at the forefront of your mind.
But ensuring that London 2012 events are safe for spectators and competitors will require about 10,000 security personnel, which poses something of a challenge for organisers – where are all these qualified stewards going to come from?
Further education colleges are providing the answer.
Uzi Khan, 18, is studying for a level 3 BTec in health and social care at North Hertfordshire College. He has also got a weekend job that he loves, as a bouncer – or door supervisor, to give it its more formal title – at a local pub.
Khan is one of 85,000 college students and unemployed people who have undertaken accredited security industry training over the last two years in an initiative spearheaded by North Hertfordshire College. Known as Bridging the Gap, the scheme is a partnership between the Games organisers, UK security industry representative bodies and North Hertfordshire College to bring thousands of new recruits into the security industry in time for the Games next July.
Students who complete the basic course in understanding security at spectator events (USSE), usually offered alongside their core college curriculum, can then go on to gain the more rigorous door supervisor qualification.
"We start with 16-year-olds who do the USSE training while they're in full-time education," explains Michael Wright, executive director for education at Bridging the Gap. "Usually the course is offered to students studying on public services courses or those with a public service aspect." It is a qualification that makes them "instantly employable", he says.
Khan has passed both qualifications and says he'll definitely apply for a job at the Games – security is one of the few paid, rather than volunteer, short-term roles available.
"On the first course, the most interesting part was the real-life scenarios we studied and the roleplay," says Khan.
"We also looked at how things shouldn't be managed, like a football stadium when it collapsed and door supervisors when they cause conflict and end up in court."
In addition to his weekend job, Khan recently volunteered as a steward at a conference that explored the role of further and higher education providers in London 2012. The work experience he has gained has developed his confidence, interpersonal skills and initiative, he says – all qualities that should make him attractive to any employer, and not just those in the security sector.
"It's such a great job, security," enthuses fellow student Josh Rothon, 17, who is studying for a BTec in public services at East Norfolk College. He hopes to work either in the security industry or to join the army. Having completed both qualifications, he's now just waiting for his door supervisor's badge to come through.
"The courses were brilliant. We did a lot about teamwork, and it built your confidence up, which is what you need in security," he says.
"The most interesting part was when we went to the Norfolk Show as stewards to get practical experience. Dealing with the public meant we met lots of colourful characters. We did the Great British Cycle Race too, which involved basic stewarding duties, handling the car park and entrances, and giving directions."
Much of the training, Rothon explains, "is to help you avoid getting on people's nerves, and learn to be calm in how you talk to people". He has also learned how to evaluate body language to predict how a crowd might react.
The opportunity to enhance students' future employability is what most interested Fintan Donohue, principal of North Hertfordshire College, when he was first approached with the idea of colleges providing training in the security skills required for London 2012.
"I had no idea of how transformational it could be for FE students," he explains. "But the Olympics contractor, G4S, is the second largest private employer in the world – and at that point we had no relationship with them. Now, some 8,000 college students will be employed by them."
But the "real legacy story", he says, is that the initiative is connecting young people to part-time employment and training in tough economic times.
The wages for part-time work aren't at all bad for a student trying to augment their income, says Khan – between £8 and £15 an hour depending on the role.
And although the image of security may need a bit of burnishing (Khan acknowledges that doormen, for instance, often have a poor reputation), there is no doubt that the sector offers fascinating career options. G4S protects rock stars and sport stars, secures iconic buildings, ensures safety at ports and airports, and manages the security at major entertainment, political and business events worldwide.
With opportunities for international travel, excitement, variety and responsibility, it is hardly surprising that Khan has been keen to gain further qualifications in first aid, drugs awareness, child protection, safeguarding and behavioural management to boost his CV.
But how are qualified students going to get jobs at the Games? Part of the deal with colleges is that any FE student who has completed the USSE qualification and wants to apply for a security job at London 2012 is guaranteed an interview. Those who are selected will participate in some of the 40 live test events that will take place before the Games kick off.
Kim Barry, 19, who is currently studying uniformed public services at Fareham College, is hoping that she'll get the chance to try out for an Olympics role.
She did her USSE work experience at a football match. "It was overwhelming! I won't lie, we were all nervous beforehand and really on our toes. But the atmosphere, the crowd, you just go away buzzing."
There's likely to be a similar buzz, she says, when she volunteers as a steward later this month at the royal wedding. Barry, Khan and Rothon are all clearly grasping the opportunity they have been given with both hands, but, says Donohue, there's a long-term vision for this model of training FE students in industry-accredited qualifications that goes beyond the security sector – in events, catering and technology.
"If we get this right we believe that industry employers will come to colleges over the next decade, as a single point where they can recruit," he says. "It has the potential to create a prototype and to transform the relationship between industries and colleges."
The government is railroading schools into becoming academies and directing what subjects they teach through the English baccalaureate, despite the rhetoric on autonomy
The Easter school holidays are a landmark – and I am not thinking about the build-up to the royal wedding. At their annual conferences, the teacher unions will get their first chance since the general election to voice collective opposition to the coalition government's policies.
But while they are busy condemning the spread of academies and free schools, headteachers and governors will be using the holiday period to ponder whether to join the growing rush towards academy status.
By the time schools return from the holidays, the first anniversary of the coalition government will be virtually upon us. And, make no mistake, for all the talk about boosting school autonomy and ending central interference, it is becoming clear that this government is driving extensive change in the school system.
Twenty years ago, on becoming education secretary Kenneth Clarke complained that "half the levers are missing". He felt unable to affect what happened in thousands of individual schools. Today the levers are all there, and Michael Gove is pulling them like an enthusiastic railway controller.
In particular, he is using the two most powerful levers: finance and accountability targets. Let's begin with finance. The biggest change to the school system right now is the conversion to academy status.
Last month, a poll conducted by the Association of School and College Leaders showed that almost half of secondary schools had either converted or were actively considering doing so. A further 34% of school leaders were undecided, and only 19% remained defiantly against the change.
And what was driving all these schools to consider becoming academies? Of those considering change, 72% said they believed it would help them financially. Only 24% were motivated by dissatisfaction with their local authority.
Headteachers I speak to are quite clear that academy status offers a financial cushion to soften the hard landing that is coming with the April budgets.
Soon, a tipping point will be reached and even the most reluctant will feel unable to resist the tide. Once several large secondary schools have converted, taking their share of central budgets, a local authority will be unable to support those schools that remain.
This is the fear of many primary heads. They do not want to convert, but see an inevitability to it. Anticipating this, some councils even suggested that their schools should convert en masse.
I predict that by the next general election most schools will have become academies. This will be the coalition government's big legacy, far more significant than the relative sideshow of free schools.
And while academy status will benefit many schools, I predict casualties. There have always been some schools that have gone off the rails, but local authorities were usually there to pick up the pieces. In a fragmented, cash-squeezed system, more schools will hit trouble, and who will step in to save them?
Now it could be argued that we are only getting what we voted for. The Conservative 2010 manifesto promised every school "the chance to achieve academy status". But it was meant to be permissive; no one warned schools they would feel stampeded to convert.
The Liberal Democrats would prefer to forget that their manifesto promised to replace academies with their own model of "sponsor-managed schools" commissioned by and accountable to local authorities.
Meanwhile, the other big lever, accountability, is driving curriculum and classroom reform. With the Ebacc, Michael Gove can shape what pupils are taught. It will be much more influential than the national curriculum review, which can be ignored by academies.
Schools are changing their timetable options and focusing their teaching resources to maximise Ebacc scores. It has some positive aspects, not least as a guarantee of minimum curriculum entitlement. But, once again, a Whitehall lever is replacing what should be a local judgment of what is right for particular pupils.
Many other levers have been pulled over the last year: IGCSEs, the pupil premium, discipline rules, the cull of Building Schools for the Future and quangos, and the withdrawal of support for diplomas. All do rather more than just "nudge" change in schools.
So, as we approach the government's first anniversary, be in no doubt that elections do matter and that governments can direct change, even when their rhetoric is all about school autonomy.
University of the Arts London and other major arts colleges forced to look elsewhere for funding as cuts hit
The University of the Arts London (UAL), England's largest art and design university, should be planning the launch of its new state-of-the-art campus in King's Cross, which is due to open in September.
But this has been marred by a collapse in its public funding, which has led UAL to embark on a radical restructure of its courses.
Set to lose more than £50m in public funding by 2015, the university, which comprises six colleges including Central Saint Martins (which is moving to the new campus), Chelsea College of Art and Design and the London College of Fashion (LCF), is having to think creatively about how it might secure its financial future.
Among other things, it is looking to set up courses in China and the Middle East while amalgamating three of its loss-making further education foundation courses and expanding its range of more lucrative postgraduate degrees.
It is not the only major art and design school under financial pressure. Goldsmiths also faces the loss of its teaching budget as it only runs arts and humanities courses, which have been particularly hard hit by the funding cuts.
The postgraduate Royal College of Art (RCA) plans to increase student numbers by 50% over the next three years to increase its income.
But of the big London art schools, UAL faces perhaps the greatest challenge. A relatively new university, it has undergone a series of significant structural changes, including the recent amalgamation of Byam Shaw School of Art and Central Saint Martins (CSM).
Nigel Carrington, rector of the UAL, admits the university is in a challenging financial position. Not only is it set to lose almost all its public funding for teaching over the next three years, but like other universities set up after 1992, it has already lost millions of pounds of research funding.
"There is a complete collapse of funding for universities like this," says Carrington. "We have to assume we are being privatised. We will have virtually no public funding at all by 2015. We have £52m of teaching funding at the moment. We expect all but £1m-£2m of that to have gone by 2015."
Over the last three years, he says, the institution has been hit hard by pretty much every budget cut, including a loss of just over 34% of its government funding for the coming academic year.
Last week, UAL announced its undergraduate fees would be £9,000 a year from 2012. Carrington says there isn't much choice; by 2015, 75% of its income will come directly from its 20,000 students and only about 5-7% will come from the public sector.
"It would be impossible for us to charge £6,000, given the high cost of running technical workshops and providing studio space in central London. We're about to see a massive capital budget cut when we need to refurbish several of our sites."
UAL has already taken "a huge number of efficiencies," he says, including a redundancy programme that should shave about £4.5m from staff costs.
As well as expanding its overseas and postgraduate provision, plans include scaling back loss-making courses (including art foundation courses); amalgamating technical and support services, and expanding its short taught courses, which bring in about £10m a year. But Carrington admits that moving from "a public sector institution into an entrepreneurial institution" won't be easy.
Efforts will be focused on maintaining UAL's high number of international students, who make up a quarter of the total. The London College of Fashion ran courses in Dubai last year aimed at attracting students to study in the UK. China is the next target – Carrington notes that the Chinese are "furiously building" art and design schools in a bid to stem the flow of young talent to the west.
"We are looking at whether we can teach something like a foundation [art foundation course] in China," he explains. "Those who either can't or don't want to come here straight after school can do a course offshore, which is then quickly topped up here and then they go straight into our undergraduate courses. We're not looking to set up an overseas campus – we're looking at sending staff over."
This plan is likely to prove controversial. The foundation course in art and design at the London College of Fashion is due to close in May, while from September, Camberwell, Chelsea and Wimbledon foundation students will all be taught at a new venue in Camberwell, with the aim of steering them into UAL undergraduate courses rather than studying at rival art and design institutions.
But Susan Collins, director of the Slade School of Fine Art, part of University College London (UCL), is concerned that this will reduce access to degree courses. "Our worry is that getting rid of foundation courses is going to turn higher education into an inverted pyramid," she says.
Meanwhile, UAL is increasing its postgraduate portfolio, including a fashion MBA, while CSM will run six master's courses, three practice-based MAs, including one in art and science, and three research-based MRes courses. Carrington also warns that postgraduate fees will jump to be the same as or slightly higher than those for undergraduate degrees as they are set to lose all their funding for new entrants from 2012.
But with students set to amass far greater debts due to rising undergraduate fees, UAL is trying to design courses that give students more time to work, not least because its students also have substantial material costs.
Its taught master's degree programmes are increasingly what are known as "extended mode" courses, running two to three days a week over two years – putting them somewhere between a traditional part-time course and a full-time course. For example, the new photography MA will run on 3.5 days in the first year and 2.5 in the second, charging £3,800 per year – compared with £7,500 for the full-time MA at the RCA or £6,000 at the London College of Communication.
Mark Dunhill, the dean of fine arts at CSM, believes scholarships, bursaries and subsidised accommodation should be on offer for less well-off students to ensure art and design does not become "the preserve of the wealthy".
He also believes arts institutions should be running more short courses and evening classes and offering modules that allow students to build up credits over a longer period of time as is common in the US. "There, they could choose whether they wanted to take a class in the morning or in the evening or do a 'minimester' in the summer. So maybe a kind of mixed economy, a mix of pay as you go and a loan."
While Dunhill is reasonably optimistic that UAL and other big-name art and design colleges will adapt to the new market, he fears some non-specialist universities may dump departments to cut costs. "There's a danger we could dismantle art education in response to market demand. To be honest, I think everyone is in a state of shock. I don't think anyone believed this could happen. It's such an assault on the success UK art schools have demonstrated over the past 20 years."
Free schools, secular education and Middle East studies
Last week Sara Gaines reported on growing interest from the independent sector on converting to free schools.
Would you believe it? Michael Gove is nationalising all the private schools! Seriously though, those fee-paying parents must be laughing their way to the bank. We are certainly all in this together! No soul searching by Moorlands school (Luton) parents about their £6,000-a-year fees being paid out of the free meals budget. Chokes, doesn't it?
Keith F Cox,
Bedfordshire
• So Gove wants to help out a generation of parents by enabling them to continue attending fee-paying schools but with the state paying their fees – to the detriment of the rest of the schools budget.
Where is this additional funding coming from to fund these pupils who currently do not require public funding? Of course, all their siblings are likely to now get preferential entry into these schools. How is Gove planning to guarantee the funding that will allow class sizes of 18, something that small maintained schools cannot afford? Why should already privileged children get this benefit? How is this a good way to spend taxpayers' money – and don't we deserve to know exactly how much is being spent?
JudgeMental11 via EducationGuardian.co.uk
• Gove and his coalition cronies will come up with any stupid gimmick to distract attention away from the fact that they have no real education policies but want all schools to fall into the "open market" where anything goes, profit-making is the main driver, and schooling just becomes another utility to be bought and sold like some shoddy commodity. Hence, the fruitcake schools wanting to become free schools, keep their charitable status, and claw away large chunks of the monies directed to ordinary state schools.
blackfirscharlie via EducationGuardian.co.uk
What an awfully sad article ("I've never really met any Christians", 12 April) about the primary school children who had to be brought together in an artificial environment so that they could at least meet a similar-age child from a different faith. This is an indictment of us all in the way we deliberately neglect our children's wellbeing and their future security by forcing them to live a good part of their childhood in environments that promote difference and are based on religious dogma. A civilised society should insist on a free secular education that promotes intellectual curiosity and builds emotional resilience for all children in schools nearest to their homes. Anything less than that is a scandal of national neglect.
Shirley Williams,
Stockport
Harriet Swain's article "Lessons on Israel" (12 April) carries the lead-in: "A new association aims to fulfil growing demand from students for knowledge about the Middle East". If that is the case, why does it promote Israel studies rather than Middle East studies? And if it is neutral with regard to Israel/Palestine, then why is the European Association of Israel Studies not called the European Association of Israel/Palestine since 1948 studies? The backer of the new Soas Israel studies posts, the Pears Foundation, is said to be rooted in Jewish (not Middle Eastern or Palestinian) values; the foundation's attitude towards Zionism is not mentioned. One can only speculate.
Sophie Richmond,
London N8
This letter has been amended to read "the new Soas Israel studies posts", rather than LSE, which it said originally.
'Blended learning' – combining face-to-face sessions with online work and forums – is one of the fastest-growing trends in education
When Melanie Liley donned mortarboard and gown to graduate with a degree in business studies last week, it was the end of five years of juggling essays and revision with a full-time job in marketing.
And, thanks to blended learning – one of the fastest-growing trends in education – Liley did it all without taking a day off work. "Blended learning meant I could squeeze the degree into my spare time, and study whenever I wanted, but still receive personalised advice and help from tutors and other students," she explains.
Blended learning describes courses that mix classroom-based education with distance learning, often via online features that allow students to receive tailored help from tutors, such as online forums, video conferencing and internet telephony technology such as Skype.
Liley began blended learning after spending a year on a traditional course studying marketing and English at Keele University in Staffordshire. "I was having a really good time and learning a huge amount," she says. "But in my first summer off, I got a marketing role working for Triumph motorcycles and, at the end of the holiday, the company offered me the position of marketing manager. It was too good an opportunity to turn down, so I decided to leave university. But I realised that for a good career, I'd need a degree. So after researching the options online, I found out about blended learning on the Open University's business course. It really appealed to me as I could fit studies into my own time around work."
Liley spent about 12 hours a week studying, both after work and at the weekend, but wasn't always toiling alone with textbooks. "I'd find it really hard to do it just that way," she says. "Instead, there was a really good focus on mixing up the way you learn, speaking to tutors by phone and email, using chat forums, and face-to-face study sessions. I met up with tutors and other students six times during my course. That helped hugely – you can't pick up everything from a book or even an online tutorial. I stored up lots of questions and blitzed my tutors with them all in one go."
"I struggled with the finance part of my course, so the forums were really helpful. Other students would respond, saying things like, 'I look at it this way, maybe it can help you'. Blended learning was crucial to helping me get my degree while working, and now I'm graduating with five years' full-time work experience, too."
Next year's increase in tuition fees is expected to fuel demand for alternative ways of obtaining a degree, particularly options that allow students to work at the same time. Blended learning is top of the agenda for many of the private education providers who are set to become big players in the UK when the government implements its plans to open up higher education to a wider range of providers. The white paper on the issue is to be published over the next few months. For students such as Liley, the days of distance learning being a one-way stream of static study materials and mailed essays are over.
The OU – the UK's biggest distance learning provider – already has 7,000 academics hosting tutorials in person, marking online assignments and teaching live sessions on the internet – often in unusual ways. The university's science courses, for example, use a "virtual microscope" application, where students and tutors look at tissue samples together, with the technology able to change the lighting conditions and "move" the samples around as if under a real microscope.
"Students come together through organised face-to-face events, but the convenience of not having to travel to classes means that online ones are appealing to a growing number of our learners," says Niall Sclater, director of learning innovation at the university. "A lot of language tuition takes place using audio conferencing, and the mathematicians teach classes using shared whiteboards which are visible on students' home computers, talking to students as they reveal one line of an equation at a time."
Even hands-on courses are now being studied at a distance with the help of blended learning. The University of Northumbria runs a practical anatomy postgraduate certificate for health workers: it's all online apart from a summer school.
Many universities are now opting to teach modules to distance learners at the same time as traditional students to help avoid isolation. Birkbeck College, University of London, is one of them. "Distance learning students are encouraged to join in the face-to-face activities as much as possible," says spokeswoman Bryony Merritt. "From attending lectures and field classes to coming to Saturday sessions, revision classes and making other visits, for example for social events. It encourages a sense of belonging."
Blended learning has also become a key way for universities to attract international students. Students on Portsmouth University's master's in international criminal justice include a Japanese postgraduate working for an international NGO in Afghanistan, a Czech student working for a victim support agency in London, and British police officers working in the UK, Europe and North America. They meet each other and tutors for a two-day induction session at the university before dispersing around the world and working using virtual classrooms.
Similarly, current graduates on the screenwriting master's at Bournemouth University are studying from as far afield as Japan, Sri Lanka and Germany. The course content includes online lectures, seminars and discussions via web forums.
Throughout the two-year part-time course there are four residential stays at Bournemouth's Media School, with five days of workshops, seminars, lectures and networking opportunities each time.
Blended learning is booming as higher education becomes more demand-focused. London South Bank University sends professors from its faculty of business around the country as it guarantees at least three contact days for distance learners each academic year. "We go to venues near them – Edinburgh, Belfast, Manchester, Sheffield, Newcastle, Birmingham, Bristol and Plymouth, as well as London," says Nigel Scott, course director. "Blended learning suits those whose role requires travel or absence during the academic year, plus those who prefer to learn at their own pace."
What do the Chinese like about Europe? Researchers hope the answers will improve our relationship with them
David Beckham is an icon. Louis Vuitton handbags are a "must have" (but not necessarily among football fans) and sales of the latest Volkswagen Golf GTi are buoyant. Welcome to Communist China in the second decade of the 21st century. A new research project suggests that football, cars and fashion are what intrigue the Chinese most about Europe. Next up is perfume, historical sites, music, film, nature, technology and beer.
More than 3,000 Chinese citizens were asked how they see Europeans and the European Union as part of a project known as Chinese Views of the EU, funded by £1.4m from the European Commission's research support programme. The programme is being led by the University of Nottingham working with researchers in universities in Beijing, Leiden in the Netherlands and Bremen in Germany.
The researchers point out that consumerism hasn't completely taken over Chinese consciousness, as more than half of the respondents said they like European ideas of democracy. But there may still be some way to go: when respondents were asked to name European historical figures they knew, Napoleon Bonaparte, Adolf Hitler, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin and Karl Marx topped the list.
While the main part of the study concentrated on the city dwellers, a separate survey of 700 or so government officials, NGOs, business people and media people showed better knowledge of the EU.
"The greater the knowledge of European procedures, the greater the tendency to be positive about the EU," says Richard Pascoe, consultant to and former director of Nottingham University's China Policy Institute. "The survey suggests that if we engage more effectively with Chinese people, they will have a more positive view of Europe."
Beckham may not have made it on to the list of historical figures, but the Chinese are certainly seduced by the magnetism of his instantly recognisable image. "Premier League and European Champions League have been beamed into bars as well as homes across China for some time," says Pascoe, who set up the project three years ago. Replica shirts with footballers Wayne Rooney and Lionel Messi's names on the back are worn, as well as woven, in China.
Dr Jasmine Zhang Li, a research fellow at Nottingham University's School of Contemporary Chinese Studies, says there is a rapidly growing urban middle class with spending power. "Louis Vuitton handbags are mostly bought by Chinese tourists. Like anything with a Burberry label, it's a very popular brand."
Cars that were once made in Europe are popular, too. "Almost all the European motor companies have joint ventures in China and well over 1,500 cars are sold in Beijing in any one day," she says.
But, as ever, progress can have downsides. "That's why the streets are so congested," says Pascoe, who is old enough to remember a very different China. He went there first as an undergraduate in the mid 1970s, when the Pudong district of Shanghai was made up of rice fields and a ferry terminal rather than "a forest of skyscrapers". Back then, you wouldn't have been allowed to conduct a survey like this, he says. "And even if you had been, all the answers would have been the same, as everybody would have parroted the Communist party line. Otherwise, they would have been arrested and sent to a prison camp. Nowadays you can get honest answers, as people are not afraid any more."
But social networking sites are still banned, and the Chinese government has put in place a sophisticated censorship mechanism to block comment on controversial topics such as Tibet and Tiananmen Square. But Pascoe says the Chinese have not totally missed out on the internet explosion. "It's not democracy as we would understand it," he says, "but this amazing forum for communication and debate has had a hugely positive impact on the way people can express their opinions."
Yet there are still big differences between Chinese and European culture. "We are prone to constantly misunderstanding one another," he says. "There was virtually no contact between us for 2,000 years and then, as soon as there was, it quickly became a clash of civilisations in which, as the Chinese see it, the warlike Europeans got the upper hand and started to colonise chunks of Chinese cities such as Shanghai, Tianjin and Guangzhou."
According to Pascoe, Chinese people have long memories and still see us Europeans as being quite aggressive. But, the research shows, there is a certain fondness for all things European, which could be capitalised on. "The EU needs to tap in more to this reservoir of goodwill. But you can't improve a relationship unless you make a real effort to understand the other side and take the trouble to work out why they think what they think. That's what this project is all about."
Finger-length ratio can point to potential top doctors, new research says
A new Italian study points towards a handy way to identify who might become a top doctor. The method: Compare the lengths of a person's second finger and fourth finger. It's that simple.
The monograph is called The Second-To-Fourth Digit Ratio Correlates with the Rate of Academic Performance in Medical School Students and appears in the May-June issue of the journal Molecular Medical Reports.
Researchers who spend time studying this finger ratio – the individuals who have found meaning by looking to both sides when someone shows them a middle finger – call it "2D:4D". That's shorthand for the phrase "second-to-fourth digit length ratio".
The big dog, the Einstein of the field, is Professor John Manning of the University of Liverpool, whose work has included how to spot footballing stars of the future, by looking at finger length.
The authors of the new study, mostly medical researchers from the University of Catania in Sicily, and Kore University in Enna, Italy, write that: "2D:4D has been shown to predict the success of men who play sports and of financial traders." But, they claim, their paper is the first to reveal what 2D:4D says about high flyers in a highly competitive university system such as the state-run Italian medical schools.
After measuring the fingers of 48 male medical students using callipers accurate to 0.2 millimetres, they concluded that students with a slightly lower 2D:4D ratio of the right hand (although, confusingly, it is not quite clear whether this means the fingers are more similar or different in length) are more likely to be successful. The researchers noted in particular how those who passed their medical school admissions test had a significantly lower 2D:4D ratio of the right than those who failed. Interestingly, however, finger ratios could not predict how those students performed in their exams.
Their findings contrast with a series of reports done by a different group at the University of Catania, which I described here a few months ago. Those other researchers, mainly physicists, published a study called The Peter Principle Revisited: A Computational Study. It demonstrates mathematically that organisations would become more efficient by promoting people at random. This earned them an Ig Nobel prize last year, in the field of management. In a subsequent paper they demonstrate, also mathematically, that democracies would work better if they selected politicians at random.
It's possible that identifying future stars by examining their fingers is even better than choosing people at random. But until and unless somebody does the research, no one can say for sure.
• Marc Abrahams is editor of the bimonthly Annals of Improbable Research and organiser of the Ig Nobel prize
One charity's strategy for getting poorer students into top universities is clearly working
The launch of Nick Clegg's social mobility strategy earlier this month seemed doomed from the start. After pledging to end a culture where career progression is less dependent on "who your father's friend are", the revelation that Clegg's father got him an internship at a bank fuelled a row about MPs whose daddies gave them a leg-up in their career. This was swiftly followed by David Cameron's Oxbridge admissions gaffe, where he claimed – inaccurately it transpired – that he had seen figures suggesting that just one black student made it into Oxford last year.
While seemingly blighted by blunders, the government's social mobility strategy is an attempt to narrow the differences in attainment of different social groups. And one of the biggest dilemmas for government is: how do you get more bright students from poorer homes into the most competitive universities without lowering entry standards?
It is catch-22 for ministers committed to improving social mobility, but opposed to social engineering. The rush towards the maximum £9,000 tuition fee has prompted renewed concern about the failure of selective universities to broaden their intake. It is also a pressing issue for universities themselves since, as a condition of charging higher fees, they must show that they are using some of that cash to improve access from so-called non-traditional students.
The evidence from recent years shows that, while there has been progress in getting a wider range of young people into higher education, there has been precious little movement towards "fairer access" (that is, ensuring a broader intake at top universities). Recently published research from the Sutton Trust – a charity that aims to promote social mobility through education – shows private-school students are 55 times more likely to win a place at Oxbridge and 22 times more likely to go to a top-ranked university than students at state schools who qualify for free school meals.
And while the universities minister, David Willetts, says universities can now admit students on the basis of potential, there is a suspicion that fairer access means a bias against the middle classes. The general consensus seems to be: start young.
In a forthcoming report to the prime minister, Simon Hughes, the government's newly appointed advocate for access to education, is set to recommend greater use of mentors and "higher education advocates" to work in schools with little experience of sending students to leading universities.
However, amid all this scratching of heads over fairer access, one charity is providing an answer. Villiers Park Educational Trust, already one of England's leading specialist charities working with gifted and talented pupils, has changed its strategy to focus on able but disadvantaged pupils through a new initiative known as the scholars programme.
The goal is to get able students from less advantaged backgrounds to gain places at leading universities, but the charity's chief executive, Richard Gould, is adamant that this should be achieved without skewing admissions arrangements. "After 14 years of schooling, it is only right that students should get the universities' standard offer at A-level," he says.
Launched in 2009, the Villiers Park scholars programme currently has 240 students from years 10 to 13, drawn from relatively disadvantaged areas of Swindon in Wiltshire and Hastings and Bexhill in East Sussex.
To qualify for the programme, students must score high marks in either non-verbal reasoning tests or GCSEs, and must be in receipt of free school meals, the education maintenance allowance (EMA) or be the first generation of their family intending to enter sixth form or university.
Once accepted on to the programme, Villiers Park scholars receive a range of support including regular one-to-ones with a learning mentor, masterclasses, workshops to prepare for university admissions, and residential courses. The charity also works with the scholars' schools and colleges to develop everyday classroom provision.
Tim O'Brien, executive director for young learners at Sussex Coast College in Hastings, which encourages its students to apply for the programme, says it has "boosted students' confidence and helped them realise they have the potential to go to a top university or to apply for competitive courses like veterinary science".
Year 13 student Aisha Merrick is one such example. She says she was unsure about her future before she joined the programme. Now she has five conditional offers to read business studies. "I had no idea what I wanted to do and was not sure about going to university". But, she says, the mentoring was "brilliant" and really helped to boost her confidence.
It was the residential courses, held at the Villiers Park centre in the Cambridgeshire village of Foxton, that really changed her mind about applying to university. There are two types of courses: general study skills (such as research, presentation and problem-solving) and subject-specific courses where students work at degree level with very able students from across the UK. "Back at college we didn't talk much about going to university, but coming and meeting different people made me think about it," says Merrick.
Laurence Flint needs three As at A-level to study architecture at Nottingham. Being involved in the programme has opened up new possibilities for him, he says. "The best part was meeting people from other parts of the country. They were all very set on what they were going to do and some were from grammar and private schools. It gave me confidence that I could do it, too."
Dean Slidel has a similar story to tell. Like Merrick and Flint, he receives EMA and – if he gets to university – will be in the first generation of his family to do so. He is studying maths, law and art at A-level, and needs two As and a B to get into the University of Westminster to study architecture. The subject masterclasses have been invaluable, he says. "It takes you into new areas and gets you thinking."
But it is not just about changing the lives of the individuals involved, says Sir Dexter Hutt, executive leader of the Hastings Federation of Schools, which also has students on the programme. "The magic has been the impact not just on the scholars, but on their families, too. It influences both parents' aspirations and siblings' plans for the future."
O'Brien agrees, saying that "involving families and teachers is all about raising aspirations, particularly in a town like Hastings with high levels of social deprivation."
It is clearly an approach that works, says Gould. To date, more than 17,000 students have been helped by Villiers Park across all its programmes. More than 50% of those were young people from less advantaged homes, and more than 80% went on to leading universities. To avoid charges of elitism, Villiers Park defines "leading universities" as any course ranked in the top 20% in the country. For some subjects that might be a handful of universities, for others it will be more.
The dilemma now is how to expand the model. The programme costs about £1,700 a year for each scholar. As a charity, Villiers Park provides this free. But cash is running out. A fundraising campaign is planned, but the charity is now appealing to universities to use some of their additional fee income to support scholars programmes in their own areas. It also hopes schools will use the government's pupil premium – set at £430 per pupil on free schools meals or in care – to fund students on the scheme.
That puts the ball squarely in the court of the government, universities, schools and perhaps wealthy philanthropists wanting to support social mobility. As Gould puts it: "We have a strong belief that this could become a leading national initiative to address fair access, but we will need financial support to move it on."
• Mike Baker is a trustee of the Villiers Park Educational Trust
A student's class of degree has a major effect on their life chances, yet the difference in academic achievement between a 2:1 and a 2:2 can be almost nothing, says Professor Nigel Seaton
Degree classification has a long history in our universities. It is widely accepted by students, parents and employers as the measure of academic achievement. However, this system has fundamental and damaging weaknesses.
First, degree classification is unfair to some students. The life chances available to a student with a 2:1 and a student with a 2:2 are very different indeed. Many blue-chip companies will only interview graduates with a first or a 2:1. A top-class degree also makes it much easier to get a scholarship for postgraduate research.
Yet the difference in academic achievement, and, therefore, their potential as an employee, between a student with a 2:1 and one with a 2:2 might be almost nothing – 60.1% compared with 59.9%. In such a case, the difference in life chances reflects no difference at all in academic achievement.
Universities recognise the effect of fine academic judgments on the degree class a student receives, and the moral responsibility that goes with it. This feeling of responsibility gives rise to schemes to give some students a degree class that is higher than it otherwise would be.
Some universities, for example, identify a "border region" of marks just below a class boundary in which a board of examiners is permitted to move a student up to the next degree class. A student with 58% might be awarded a 2:1, despite getting less than 60% (the usual boundary between a 2:1 and a 2:2).
This might be done because the student has scored very high marks in parts of their degree – indicating exceptional ability – even if they have slipped down in a couple of modules.
Almost the opposite line of thinking is sometimes used to increase the class of a student with a very "even" performance; in this case consistency rather than occasional brilliance might be rewarded.
That this tactic is morally, rather than academically, motivated is made very clear by the fact that there is no corresponding border region just above the class boundary; students are never demoted to a lower class after the board of examiners has reflected on their performance.
Other tactics exist to "do the right thing" for individual students by moving them from one class to another, but none does anything to address the fundamental unfairness of the process.
Another critical weakness of the current degree classification system is that the richness of the student's experience – subjects taken and marks achieved – is submerged, leaving only the class of the degree.
A potential employer might not get to find out that the engineering student scored top marks in an optional course in Spanish or excelled in a particular aspect of the course. All they see is a 2:1 or a 2:2. So, in effect, the act of degree classification trivialises the student's achievement.
A full account of the student's academic record does exist. This is the graduation "transcript", which is issued to all graduating students: it detailas what subjects or modules were taken, and how well the student did in those specific areas.
A proposed standard version of the transcript for all UK universities, called the Higher Education Achievement Report (Hear), is currently being piloted in some universities. If the pilot is deemed successful, the Hear will then be issued to students on graduation.
This is being done on the recommendation of the Burgess Group, a national steering group looking at better ways to recognise student achievement, which envisaged that the Hear might eventually make degree classification obsolete.
As things stand, this will not happen. The degree class is still seen as the definitive mark of achievement by both students and employers. It's difficult to see how gradually changing attitudes among everyone – not just students and employers – by explanation and persuasion can possibly work.
We need to be more radical. We should stop classifying degrees, now, and allow the transcript to do its job.
• Professor Nigel Seaton is senior deputy vice-chancellor, University of Surrey
And a new association will be launched this year, as student demand grows for knowledge about Israel
From tackling campus extremism to dealing with donating dictators, UK universities have been forced to focus on polarised views of the Middle East in recent months.
But there have also been increasing efforts by institutions and others to promote a more nuanced and academic understanding of what is happening in the region.
The latest of these is the announcement of an expansion in Israel studies at the School of African and Oriental Studies (Soas) in London, and a new European Association of Israel Studies (EAIS) to be launched in September.
Colin Shindler, professor of Israeli studies at Soas and future chair of the association, says the decision to expand Israel studies is a response to growing demand from students to know more about the political, cultural, social and economic background to events in the Middle East and is an attempt to offer an academic alternative to what he terms "the megaphone war".
"The Middle East conflict is always a hot subject that people want to understand because it's so convoluted," he says. "People want rational responses. They are fed-up with slogans and one-sided approaches."
The new posts at Soas will be funded with £485,000 over four years from the Pears Foundation, a British family foundation rooted in Jewish values. The foundation, which also funds fellowships in Israel studies at Oxford and Manchester universities and plans more in future, is also backing the EAIS.
Charles Keidan, director of the foundation, stresses that the aim is to meet demand for better scholarship in the area rather than to promote a cause.
"We have been very conscious not to be involved in this as any form of Israel advocacy," he says. "This is advocacy for Israel studies, not for Israel."
He says the foundation is particularly aware of the delicate role of philanthropists, given recent controversies about donations connected to the Middle East – notably the London School of Economics's recent embarrassment over its £1.5m donation from Saif Gaddafi, son of the Libyan dictator.
"We hope we can be an example in terms of philanthropy and how a relationship can be constructed with a university," he says. "If we can do this with Israel studies of all areas, we can show the way to less contentious areas."
Certainly the area is a sensitive one. Rafaella Del Sarto, Pears fellow in Israel and Mediterranean studies at Oxford University, says recent interest in Israel studies as an academic undertaking derives from a desire to counter growing politicisation of academia, particularly in the field of Middle Eastern studies and international relations. "Both pro-Israel and pro-Arab or Palestinian advocacy groups have been happy to recruit Middle East scholars or academics researching and teaching on Israel for their respective 'cause'," she says. "Yet scholarship should be distinct from advocacy and polemics."
Clive Jones, chair of Middle East studies and international politics at Leeds University, and a member of the steering committee of the EAIS, says the association is determined to avoid any involvement from external bodies out to promote their particular point of view.
"It's not supposed to be some tub-thumping bastion of Zionism," he says. "It's supposed to be a serious academic endeavour to examine the state of Israel from a number of disciplinary perspectives – culturally, sociologically, politically – and how those impact on Israel's position in the region and globally."
For Shindler, it is ironic that Soas, which has a reputation for being anti-Israel, has become a leading institution for Israel studies in Europe.
"Soas as an intellectual body doesn't take sides in any conflict, but wants to encourage good intellectual endeavour," he says.
A former chemistry teacher, he has taught the Israel-Palestine conflict to students from all religious and cultural backgrounds there for more than 10 years and was appointed the UK's first professor of Israeli studies in 2009. Student numbers have more than doubled since he started, and he has sometimes had trouble finding classrooms big enough to hold them all.
"I teach Jews, Muslims, Israelis and Palestinians and it works very well," he says. "I don't impose my views on them. I tell them they have to justify their views in their essays and examinations. What it comes down to is teaching complexity to show that the conflict isn't one-sided, but highly complex, and that's what people go away with."
While students often arrive repeating slogans and cliches they have heard about the conflict, he says, they soon realise that these are simplistic and begin to understand that it is less black and white than they thought.
The decision to set up the EAIS came from the realisation that academics teaching the subject across Europe were reporting the same approaches and experiences, and also needed a chance to network, collaborate on research and to support younger academics interested in entering the field.
Shindler says he has already identified groups of Israel scholars in France, Italy, Germany, Denmark and across Eastern Europe, including Uzbekistan, Belarus and Lithuania, and he expects to discover more. Many of them, he hopes, will attend the association's inaugural conference on 18 September.
An Association for Israel Studies has existed in the US since the 1980s, and while Shindler will have a role on the board, as well as having links with the Middle East Studies Association in the UK, he stresses that the European association will be very much a distinct organisation.
Recent efforts to establish a more academic approach to studies of the region in the UK have not been confined to Israel. Two years ago, Exeter University established the first centre for Palestine studies in a western university, and is planning to support more doctoral and post-doctoral students in Palestinian studies.
Keidan says that, like any effort towards better academic understanding of what is happening in the Middle East, this is to be supported. And he says recent events in the Middle East and north Africa are only likely to increase the desire for knowledge about the region.
For Shindler, the increasing interest being shown by students in different aspects of Israel, from its politics to its art and films, is part of a drive to understand the country and people outside the context of the Israel/Palestine conflict. Too often, he says, academic study of the country of Israel gets submerged in UK universities into Middle Eastern or Jewish studies.
He suggests that people are interested in Israel because it does not fit into any conventional boxes. The conflict has become so central to discussions, and views on it are so strong and polarised, that students find it difficult to know what to think.
"There is a natural idealism from younger people to want to repair the world," he says. "They want to change it, and before they can change it, they have to understand it."
Comprehensives see surge in private school pupils applying to do A-levels in their sixth forms
A growing number of teenagers from private schools are applying to attend top comprehensives for their A-levels, it has emerged.
Headteachers from leading state schools have told Education Guardian that in the last couple of years, the number of teenagers from private schools who are applying for a place in their sixth forms has, in some cases, quadrupled.
They argue that this is partly because families have less money to spend on school fees, but also because more parents are realising that many state schools provide as good an education as their nearby private schools do.
Some believe that it may also be because parents think the switch to the state sector will give their children a better chance of a place at a top university. Some universities, such as Bristol, now take into account when making offers whether an applicant has had the benefits of a private school, with its smaller class sizes, or has attended a comprehensive.
The Guardian has spoken to 11 headteachers, all of whose state schools are in The Good Schools Guide.
Norman Hoare, head of St George's school, a comprehensive in Hertfordshire, says the number of teenagers from private schools applying for a place in the sixth form has quadrupled over the last few years. Its sixth form has only 10 places for students who do not already study at the school. This year it has had 80 applications for those places, half of which were from pupils at private schools.
"There is at long last a realisation [on the part of parents] that there are some very good state schools," Hoare says. "Ofsted – the school inspectorate – has done a good job of identifying the good schools and blowing our trumpets."
Hoare says parents may be making the switch to the state sector to give their teenager a better chance of getting a place at a top university, but that "they had not declared this to be a reason for changing schools".
Alasdair Coates, head of St Christopher's Church of England high school, a comprehensive in Lancashire, says the number of private school pupils applying to his sixth form has doubled in the last year. Out of 39 places available to pupils not already at the school, 13 applications have been made from private school pupils this year.
Sexey's school, a comprehensive in Somerset, has found the number of private school pupils applying to its sixth form has more than doubled in the last two or three years. This year about 20 private school pupils started in the sixth form, compared to six a couple of years ago. "The standard of education that pupils get is at least comparable with that of the independent schools in the area, and it's obviously substantially cheaper," Raymond McGovern, the headteacher, says. "I think people are realising this more and more."
This year, half a dozen private school pupils applied to the sixth form of The Latymer school, a selective grammar in north London, compared to none or very few in previous years. "It is more of a sacrifice for parents to send their children to independent schools in the current climate," Mark Garbett, the head, says. And at Slough grammar school, the proportion of applications to its sixth form from private school pupils rose 3% this year.
However, Rudolf Eliott Lockhart, head of research and intelligence at the Independent Schools Council, which represents 1,260 schools, says there is no evidence of a drop in interest in independent schools' sixth forms. A survey conducted in January by the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference, an association of 250 private schools, "points to the same conclusion", he says.
"Parents choose independent sixth forms because year on year their pupils achieve outstanding results at A-level and equivalent, and we have seen nothing to suggest the picture is changing this year."
The Good Schools Guide says half the parents who phone its advice service now inquire about state schools, compared to just 10% five years ago. It receives about 50 calls a week.
Janette Wallis, senior editor of the guide, says the "new middle-class dream was finessing a top education via a high-achieving state school, topped up with tutoring.
"Most parents asking about independent schools are now also asking for recommendations of state schools ... that is a recent development. First choice for many affluent parents is a top comprehensive or grammar school, but they will have an independent school up their sleeve as a safety net."
All 11 headteachers Education Guardian has spoken to say competition for places at their schools is getting more fierce, despite a drop in the number of pupils of secondary school age across the country. All but one of the schools has already become, or is looking into becoming an academy.
Private schools are queueing up to convert to free school status; the subsequent lack of fees may please parents, but critics fear neighbouring state schools will be devastated
The school register taken, infants in royal blue sweatshirts rise from their desks and begin to walk around their classroom in silence as they meditate. Down the corridor, senior pupils remain seated in their classes, repeating a mantra with eyes closed as they practise a more sophisticated transcendental meditation before lessons begin.
It's this meditation, and a curriculum inspired by the teachings of former Beatles guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, which makes the Maharishi school in Lancashire unorthodox. Just 70 pupils aged four to 16 currently attend the school, but the headteacher, Derek Cassells, is keen for more to share the experience.
"We would like as many people as possible to benefit from our system of education, children from all backgrounds. We want to expand and not have people miss out because they can't meet the fees."
His vision for expansion may soon become possible thanks to the government's free schools policy, which allows parents, teachers and other community groups to set up their own new schools.
The £5,000-£7,000-a-year Maharishi school, near Skelmersdale in Lancashire, is one of six private schools in line to become free schools from September. More than a dozen more aim to make the switch next year.
Their bids are controversial, not least because if they are successful, parents who had opted to pay school fees for their children's education will suddenly find themselves gifted it by the government.
Parents of children at Moorlands, a £5,000-a-year preparatory school in Luton, bought flowers for staff when they heard fees were being abolished, says the principal, Andrew Cook, proudly. "We don't want to change one aspect of what we do; 18 is our maximum class size. We believe our particular traditional brand of education works with children from all social backgrounds."
But according to the National Union of Teachers (NUT), staff at other schools in Luton are dejected by the news, after the Building Schools for the Future (BSF) scheme was axed last year. Under the £55bn scheme, introduced by the Labour government, every secondary school in England was to be either rebuilt or refurbished, but now many have to make do with delapidated classrooms and outdated IT equipment.
According to the NUT general secretary, Kevin Courtney, it is a pattern that is being replicated across the country. He says it is "incredible" that the Department for Education (DfE) can find money to subsidise the well-off when existing state schools have had budgets slashed, funding for school repairs axed and some face making staff redundant. "There's been no debate about whether people want a national state school system or all these independent schools coming in. It's an untried experiment and could devastate state schools."
And he fears worse is to come. Because funding for places follows the pupil, if children flock to free schools, it could leave neighbouring schools with surplus places and budget shortfalls.
The idea of turning private schools into state-funded institutions isn't a new one. Under the Labour government, six private schools became state academies.
But Labour insists the coalition government's plans are completely different, because they involve far more private schools, and are being rushed through, and threaten to cause more harm than good. Under Labour, newly formed academies were accountable to local authorities. Free schools are, essentially, state-funded independent schools; they can set their own curriculum, control their own admissions and even recruit unqualified teachers if they wish.
The shadow education secretary, Andy Burnham, says: "It seems [Michael] Gove has been waving cheques at anyone who wants to open a free school and this is money that could have gone to schools which badly need it. He is prioritising his pet project. It tears at the fabric of state education. I'm very worried about the future of state schools."
The government, meanwhile, insists the demand for free schools is there and that parents want more choice for their children.
Brigid Tulle, headteacher of Batley grammar in West Yorkshire, an independent school that is also bidding for free school status, agrees. She says that the vast number of applications she gets for bursaries is proof that parents want something different to what is currently on offer in state schools.
But she admits that falling rolls and pressures facing cash-strapped parents in meeting the cost of fees (currently £6,000-£8,800 a year) are driving the bid to become a free school. "Over the last 15 years or so, the school has only really managed to maintain a certain fee-paying population. We have 350 pupils and want to get back to around 700. Free schools provide an opportunity to expand back to capacity."
But, as in Luton, the plans have angered local state schools. Jackie Eames, headteacher of nearby Batley Girls high school, is furious after £19m was lost when the BSF was axed. The school also faces the threat of losing 500 of its 1,180 places as part of a reorganisation of secondary schools in the area. "It feels wrong to take from the poor to give to the relatively rich," she says.
"I've been here nine years and it's been a huge success story. Now it's in danger of being destroyed for political vanity."
Joanne Hardcastle, who has a child at the school, is also angry. "I'm worried my daughter, who's in year 7, might not be able to finish her education at Batley Girls."
But some free school bidders are hard-headed about the potential effect on other schools. David Mann is chairman of a free school planned for Rotherham, Three Valleys academy, which is backed by the private education chain the Nationwide Independent College of Higher Education. He says: "Lots of schools in the town are not very good. We are aiming to raise the bar. Unions are obsessed with schools and teachers' jobs, not parents' requirements."
Mann faces a challenge from local education authorities concerning his new 850-place secondary school, which will draw pupils from existing state schools. Barnsley, Rotherham and Doncaster council are fighting the plans and say a new school would inevitably lead to job losses at other schools.
"I don't want that trouble. We just want to build a new school. Manvers [where the school will be built] is a new town development of 1,000 houses. They've got everything there except a school," Mann says.
On quite a different scale is the Priors school in Warwickshire, which aims to be the first free school by opening on 1 September, a few days before the others. It will abolish fees of £3,600- £4,500 and hopes to expand from 30 pupils to at least 45.
Also in the first wave is St Michael's Catholic secondary in Truro, Cornwall. It is abolishing its £3,600-a-year fees to become a free school this year.
Waiting in the wings are over a dozen more private schools, preparing for when applications open in May for the second wave of free schools, starting September 2012.
They include a bid by the founder of Stillbrook Montessori, Bournemouth, which originally hoped to launch a free primary school this year, but withdrew to submit more ambitious plans for a four-to-18 school opening in 2012.
Also in line are Exeter Tutorial college; Rock Hall school in Alnwick, Northumbria; Oxford Montessori; Wisdom school in north London; Lincolnshire Montessori; and a string of Steiner schools.
A DfE spokesman says any private school can bid for free school status and each is considered on a case-by-case basis, but Burnham thinks the government has overlooked the wider implications of its flagship scheme. "The test for a free school is not just if the school gets good results. You need to look at what happens to the ring of schools around it."
In a campaign against homophobia in education, Stonewall has enlisted the actor Sir Ian McKellen to do a nationwide tour of schools
"Do you know any gay people?" asks Sir Ian McKellen asks. Silence. Heads shake. "Well, you do now. I'm gay." It's my turn to speak up. "You know two now. I used to go to this school – and I'm gay," I offer. "You know three now," a sixth-former chips in. The other pupils don't look too surprised, and he seems admirably comfortable in his sexuality. Silence. Then: "Erm. Well. You know four now." Heads shoot around to see a uniformed boy, leaning close to McKellen. Mouths fall slightly open – including mine – but nobody speaks. Then McKellen says, in that mellifluous voice of his, "Well. How about that? It turns out we all know quite a few more gay people than we thought we did."
This is the third month of McKellen's nationwide "role model" tour of secondary schools on behalf of Stonewall, the gay equality charity that he co-founded, and which I work for, and the two of us have come to Hundred of Hoo comprehensive in Kent, which I left over a decade ago.
It has become a familiar scene for him. "My school visits are often rewarded by people coming out," he says. "And I don't just mean pupils – I've heard staff coming out to their heads on my visits, too."
McKellen obviously has a powerful effect on the schools he visits; how does this make him feel? "A bit overwhelmed – and privileged," he says.
Gandalf has worked his magic in 54 secondary schools over the last two years. His dream? An education system free of the homophobia that has plagued it for years – and a curriculum that fully includes lesbian, gay and bisexual people.
Hundred of Hoo has recently come out of special measures and is no stranger to underachievement. McKellen and Stonewall see visits to schools like this as crucial to ensure that not one ounce of potential is lost for today's gay pupils – especially for those who under-perform because their confidence has been battered by bullying.
Homophobia was rife when I was a pupil. "Freak", "queer" and "disgusting" were familiar words, aimed at anyone, like me, who was perceived to be gay. Consequently, nobody dared to come out. This created an un-virtuous circle; teachers could see no reason to address gay issues in lessons when there appeared to be no gay pupils. It wasn't until I left that I discovered three of my best school friends were also gay. We had been too scared even to admit it to each other.
The notorious "section 28" law, introduced in 1988 when Margaret Thatcher was prime minister, was to blame for much of this. This made it illegal to "promote" homosexuality in schools. So homophobia festered unchallenged for 15 years until its repeal in 2003. But the hangover remains. Recent YouGov research for Stonewall found that nine in 10 secondary school teachers say their pupils experience homophobic bullying, but nine in 10 have never received any training on how to tackle it. Ninety five per cent of teachers hear the phrases "you're so gay" or "that's so gay". Homophobia is so commonplace that "gay" has entered the school vernacular as a synonym for anything inadequate.
But I hardly recognised this school upon my return. Gay issues are very much on the agenda – and pupils are refreshingly honest about their prejudices. "We Googled you yesterday Ganda … I mean Sir Ian!" says a 12-year-old girl. "We were well surprised when we found out you were gay, because you're nothing like Alan Carr!" McKellen replies that gay people come in all shapes, sizes and personalities, just like straight people. He knows Alan and he is just like that off-screen, too. The most important thing is that he can be himself.
The class listens eagerly as the actor tells them he didn't come out publicly until 1988, at the age of 49, because section 28 was being debated in parliament. "Did you worry it might destroy your career?" a pupil asks. Yes, but that was a risk he was willing to take, McKellen says, as he explains why gay visibility was so important at that time.
How has he found the pupil reactions? "Until I visited secondary schools recently, I hadn't realised how much anti-gay bullying goes on," he says. "By talking frankly about my own life as a gay man and listening to the concerns of staff, students, parents and governors, I hope the visits may make a difference and also give confidence to gay students about their lives in the future."
Homophobic language
It's time for the all-school assembly, the grand finale of Gandalf's visit. "I'm not useless," McKellen asserts in my old school hall, "but when you use that word as an insulting adjective, that's what you're saying about me. So please, watch your language. Because if you don't, you mightn't watch your actions…" He goes on to tell how Ian Baynham was recently killed in a homophobic hate attack by teenagers. "The girl who stamped on his head might have used 'gay' to mean anything rubbish and useless. And that probably convinced her that gay people were rubbish and useless – and don't deserve to live."
This has a profound effect on two year 10 friends, who tell me: "We didn't realise calling things 'gay' could offend someone. It was touching when he talked about never being able to tell his mum he was gay. One of our best friends is gay and he gets abused for it. We hope it will stop now."
McKellen also visits lessons to promote Stonewall's curriculum guidance called "Oh no! Not the gay thing!", which advises teachers how to integrate gay issues into classes. In science lessons it can be a relief for gay pupils to learn about same-sex attraction as a natural fact in other species. And same-sex relationships can make pupils think carefully about grammar in modern languages.
Stonewall's new campaign in schools also includes Lance Corporal James Wharton, who, at 24, is the new poster boy for modern gay equality: he was the first openly gay soldier to appear on the cover of Soldier, the Armed Forces' magazine. Wharton will be touring schools with Stonewall over the next three months. There are also plans for a school intervention from a celebrated high-achieving lesbian or bisexual woman role model – who knows, she may be coming to a classroom near you soon.
The English bac and schools' response to it will create more anxiety and pressure for pupils and parents
When I was 18, I went to America for a gap year. It was the dark ages in terms of modern technology and I spent 10 months without speaking to my parents, corresponding intermittently by post. True, I had left school, but this followed teenage years punctuated by equally rare moments of parental involvement. The occasional school meeting maybe, but nothing like the intense engagement parents today have with their children's lives.
I pity today's parents. They seem to feel judged more than ever by their children's achievements. Sites like Mumsnet suggest this starts from birth, when subtle pressure over the "right" sleeping and feeding routines kicks in, followed by fretfulness over how many numbers or words their toddlers know, which primary reading scheme levels they are on, the range of extra-curricular activities they do, school, and even university choice. I can't think of a time when parents seemed so anxious and unconfident in their own instincts or their children's abilities.
Does the government understand this? Public statements invariably focus on supporting and informing parents, but these seem to mask a subliminal desire to pile on the pressure, in the secret knowledge that this will help smooth the path for more extreme reform.
Why else would ministers laud the educational success of other countries, then introduce the diametric opposite here? We must be like Finland, yet we devise ever more impenetrable league tables, when Finland has none, and phonics tests at an age when Finnish children have barely started formal education.
Singapore is held up as a beacon. Yet life skills lie at the heart of its broad curriculum, while our children are now judged on a handful of exam passes in a limited range of subjects. This is laughingly called a "baccalaureate" even though it has nothing in common with other international qualifications bearing the same name, most of which offer varied pathways and stimulate personal growth and civic engagement.
The English baccalaureate (Ebacc) and the response to it threaten to become the most deadly new development parents must wrestle with. Like so many proposals, it is superficially attractive, carrying in its wake the promise that schools will no longer play the league tables using GCSE-equivalent qualifications and that all children can be swept into high-status universities and academic degrees.
In fact, it is already encouraging a different sort of game; schools all over the country are changing GCSE options in the middle of key stage 4, which means forcing pupils into twilight sessions in subjects they hadn't chosen to study and downgrading subjects they may want to. One parent emailed me in despair to say his daughter was being forced to take English baccalaureate subjects as her year 9 options against her wishes. "We feel this is bullying on behalf of the school, using my daughter for their selfish ends to boost their statistics," he wrote.
Professional organisations and even grammar school heads are now predicting where this might end, with the diminution of RE, creative arts and music, a reduced offer at A-level and possible redundancies. Some schools, like the Archbishop Sentamu academy in Hull, are refusing to make precipitous changes and are developing a "suite" of different baccalaureates, backed by an excellent new campaign, the Better Bac, which is trying to define what a more inclusive baccalaureate might look like.
But others, like the government's flagship West London Free School, have headteachers who cheerfully boast that their curriculum may not be appropriate for all children. An honest appraisal, but unlikely to reassure parents choosing schools for 10-year-olds who may not have a clue about where their interests or aptitudes lie. And what about the children – should they have a say in what they might want to learn? Seemingly not.
It could all be different. We could offer a measure of school accountability that embraces the full range of what schools do well, and demands a breadth of high-quality options so that no parent or pupil feels bullied or disadvantaged. Changes in education over the last 30 years mean that most schools are good enough and most children, if they are well supported, can flourish. We should be worrying less, not more, but that needs to be led from the top, and the signs aren't good at the moment.
Catholic and Muslim pupils are getting to know each other through a government scheme to link schools in diverse communities
There is an air of nervous excitement inside the brightly lit main hall of Luton's Carnival Arts Centre. Thirty children, all year 5 pupils at William Austin junior school in Luton, sit in neat rows, wearing the regulation black tie with white, yellow and blue stripes. Apart from one boy, who is black, they are all Asian.
In an adjoining room are 30 more schoolchildren, all wearing red ties with silver stripes. These children are pupils at St Joseph's, a Catholic junior school located close to William Austin, but where the vast majority of the pupils are white.
This morning the children are meeting as part of a pioneering initiative aimed at linking up schools with diverse communities. The children have been building up to this moment since last September, sending letters and photographs to one another about themselves and their hobbies. Today, they will meet face-to-face for the first time.
According to Penny Lasham, a teacher from nearby Hillborough school, who is operation manager for the project, a neutral venue was vital "to avoid any territorial issues".
The project, funded by the Department for Education, first began in Bradford five years ago, but is new to Luton schools. And it is no accident that the initiative – known as the Schools Linking Network – is happening here.
Luton has become media shorthand for the failures of multiculturalism, having been both home to the Muslim extremists who jeered at British soldiers returning from Iraq and the birthplace for the extreme right English Defence League, which recently marched through the town. St Joseph's, a faith school that is 49% white British, and William Austin, which is only 2.4% white British, are one of 10 pairs of contrasting schools that have been linked up.
As their teachers look on, students from St Joseph's file in to the main hall and take their seats behind the boys and girls from William Austin. Lasham welcomes the children before asking them to form a circle. The children naturally huddle with friends, two large semi-circles loosely joined together. "Right, now we are going to swap you around," she says. There are audible gasps of surprise.
Lasham then asks the children to put up their hands if they had pizza for dinner and join others who had the same meal. The questions continue: "who was nervous about coming this morning?" "who likes football?" "who was born outside Britain, who was born in Britain?" With each question the group is re-ordered.
The children's next task is to find someone they do not know and ask each other questions about their similarities and differences. What is striking is that they pick up on eye colour, shoe colour and favourite football teams rather than headscarves or skin colour.
Hassan from William Austin admits he was a bit nervous at the start of the day because he has "never really met any Christians". He is surprised to learn the children from St Joseph's are more similar to him than he imagined. "I thought they'd be totally different – like a different kind of person, but actually they like the same football teams and the same food."
Jenna, who attends St Joseph's, says she has enjoyed having the opportunity to ask questions about other religions: "I've always wanted to ask a Muslim how often they go to mosque because I know I go to church every Sunday. I've looked in books but I never get the right answer, but today I could ask someone who was Muslim." There are some Muslims living near her home, she says, "but they are not very sociable".
Trying to bind neighbourhoods and schools together is central to the Schools Linking Network initiative, but Lasham dismisses the idea that Luton is a divided town as "rubbish". For her, the project is about helping Luton's schoolchildren grow up into confident young adults who feel comfortable in their own skin. "I want to teach my students that it doesn't matter where you are from. You are here now and you choose to live here so let's celebrate being part of this country."
But is there a danger that if children are attending a school that is overwhelmingly Muslim it may be harder to foster a collective British identity?
Not at all, says William Austin's head, Dominic Hughes, who is careful not to suggest that his pupils' worldview is reduced by attending a school that is in effect monocultural. "Any child who lives in a community can be sucked into a bubble, but I don't think the life experiences of, say, a Pakistani child at my school are any more restrictive than the life experiences of someone who has an Irish Catholic background."
The teachers and team behind the Schools Linking Network are nervous about any idea that attaches blame, and yet the very fact that Luton felt it needed this project suggests that the town has a real, and not only perceived, challenge on its hands.
The children spend the rest of the morning learning how to play drums, make carnival head dresses and dance in time to percussive carnival sounds.
When they return to school after lunch, the plan is to reflect on how the day has gone. There is already talk of further meetings, perhaps getting together at the Luton carnival or having a shared sports day.
With just £1,000 of funding, the Schools Linking Network is a relatively small scheme, but has life-altering potential, summed up by Hassan's thoughts on his new friend from St Joseph's. "The only difference is, we were born in different countries. He was born in Ireland. And I was born in England.'
Research, postgraduate training, medium-term economic growth and social impacts are all issues the white paper on HE must address, says Professor Paul Wellings
Tuition fees have become an all-consuming debate and there is a risk that it is taking place at the expense of almost all other aspects of higher education. To counteract this, those of us working in higher education need to come forward with a vision that sets out the national importance of universities.
UK undergraduates make up only a small part of the academic community. Any emerging policy framework needs to be wider in scope. It should secure the position of postgraduate students; enhance the UK's capacity to recruit international students; and support researchers of all disciplines.
The government has tentatively stepped towards this vision. Recent changes to the student visa system, which many feared would make it more difficult for universities to attract overseas students, were not as harsh as expected. It was an acknowledgment of the long-term value of international students as an income stream for universities, and the need to signal that UK universities are "open for business".
But the government is still aiming for a reduction of 25% in overseas students. And, while George Osborne's recent budget recognised the economic need to invest in innovation – with £100m pledged for leading research centres – there is still no system of support for postgraduates – the researchers of tomorrow.
The long-promised white paper that will set out the government's full plans for higher education has been delayed until May, at the earliest. The delay is an opportunity to consider the complexity of outputs of universities and push for a more balanced view of their activities.
The first challenge for the white paper will be to get the balance right on regulation. The government's almost complete replacement of the teaching grant with fees, paid by subsidised loans, was an attempt to establish a market, putting students in the driving seat.
But the Treasury seems to have underestimated the average levels the sector will need to set fees at. We are now seeing attempts to regulate by the back door, with the business secretary, Vince Cable, warning that universities that fail to fill places as a result of their higher fees might find those places re-allocated to other institutions. We need policies that avoid this heavy-handed approach – regulating on value rather than cost.
The second challenge is to examine how any proposed policies maintain a sustainable sector with the capacity to transform the UK's economy. They should also recognise that international activities are at the core of universities' work. Higher education institutions are a substantial export service sector generating significant revenue. And the work of postgraduate students is at the core of many science, technology, engineering and manufacturing departments and creates national capacity to explore emerging research themes. Much of this research is based on international collaboration.
Here's a radical thought: why not strip out all the sections relating to undergraduate fees and access? The white paper must be a confident statement on the importance of UK higher education at a time of great international change and global competition. We need to make sure that the chapters dealing with research; postgraduate training; medium-term economic growth; and social impacts are not afterthoughts.
The UK already has a strong higher education sector that many countries would like to replicate. Some of the changes being proposed by the coalition government have the capacity to strengthen research and teaching. We should use the delay in the white paper to press for a policy framework that enhances the role of universities over the next 20 years. Constructed in the right way, this could be a major legacy of the coalition government.
• Professor Paul Wellings is the chairman of the 1994 Group and vice-chancellor of Lancaster University
A new course is creating a generation of women youth workers who can guide Muslim teenagers through today's challenges
Shukri Hassan was 10 years old when she arrived in London from Somalia. Her father had died, and her mother stayed at home to look after her siblings: Shukri arrived in her new country, speaking no English, in the care of an older sister, who was 20.
London was a strange, complicated and very different world for her. And then – on top of having to learn English, master new subjects, make new friends and survive without her mum – she became a teenager, and had to cope with all that entails. "What I desperately needed," she says, "was a place where I could go and hang out, and talk to Muslim girls who were maybe a few years older than me, who understood something of what I was going through, and who could help me make sense of it all."
But there were few youth groups for young Muslims. Where they did exist, they catered mostly for boys – and sessions for girls tended to be run by much older women, who didn't have the same life experiences as her. "What I really needed was someone who'd had the experience I'd had, who'd been born here or moved here as a child – someone who was juggling both cultures in the way I felt I was."
Difficult issues
Today, Hassan is 26, and she's a youth worker at the Froud Community Centre in Manor Park in east London, providing today's female Muslim teenagers with exactly the sort of support that wasn't there for her. "And the thing is that it's a lot harder for them than it was in my day," she says. "There are so many issues for young people today – sex, abortion, drugs, alcohol. All issues it's very, very hard for Muslim teenagers to sort out, girls especially. So I think youth workers like me are more needed than they've ever been."
Hassan has worked at the Froud Centre for the last three years, but over the last year, her work has been enhanced by a level 2 certificate (equivalent to GCSE) in youth and community work. To get that, she took part in a course designed specifically for Muslim women, believed by its organisers, the east London social action charity Aston-Mansfield, to be the first of its kind in the UK.
The six-month course, which is partly funded by Barclays Capital and aimed at Muslim women over the age of 21, involves three hours' tuition a week, delivered at the YMCA George Williams College in Canning Town, east London, and a minimum of 80 hours at a placement in a youth setting, which students have to find for themselves. "By the end of the third course next year, we hope to have provided around 50 new youth workers, all Muslim women," says the course tutor, Firzana Khan. "Almost all of them will go into or remain in youth work – and for some, the qualification will lead them to go on to a degree, and to perhaps eventually train other youth workers."
Khan estimates that around a quarter of Newham's residents are Muslim, yet Islamic youth workers are seriously under-represented – women especially. "It's to do with social and cultural pressures, and it's a real tragedy that there aren't more Muslim women youth workers, because it means there aren't enough role models for Muslim teenage girls, and that's what we're hoping our course can change. Many teenagers in Newham have mothers who grew up in Asia, in very different cultures, and with very different aspirations. We want to help today's Muslim youngsters through a set of choices that's very different from the set of choices their parents had."
Sharifah Aliyah, 24, who did the youth and community work course last year, currently works for Redbridge Council in their highways and engineering service, but is committed to carrying on her voluntary youth work at a community centre, where she helps to run sessions during weekday evenings and on Saturday mornings. "The young people have music, they can play table-tennis, they can use the computer, there's a quiet area where they can work," she says. "And often, they just want to talk. And that's important, because they've got a lot to deal with, and it's very different for them from the way it was for their parents – just as growing up here was very different for me from the way growing up in Bangladesh was for my parents."
Radically different
By the time both Aliyah's and Hassan's mothers were their ages, they were married with children. "Many Muslim girls today are living such radically different lives from their mothers: even 10 or 15 years ago, Muslim women tended to get married very young, to have children, and to see their lives as centred on the domestic scene," says Hassan.
"When you do the sort of work we do, and you've had a different experience, you're showing young people that there are other ways forward. I get youngsters who say, how did you do it? And it's not just the girls either – it's important that the boys see that women can have different roles from the ones their mothers maybe have."
The course offers opportunities to discuss differences between one Muslim group and another – but on the whole, says Khan, Muslim people identify with their faith first and foremost, so the issues that arise in youth work tend to be across the board.
It's not only in east London where female Muslim youth workers are thin on the ground. "We've had interest from Bradford, from other parts of London, and from other parts of the UK," says Khan. "The course could be rolled out in many other areas – and the hope is that it will be pan-London, with other centres offering it in other areas of the city, by 2012.
"The feedback we're getting from the youth workers we've trained, and from the teenagers they're working with, is that they're much-needed," says Khan. "And while we're seeing lots of cuts in youth services, we're really hoping that we can convince people that our trainees are filling a vital role, and that more of them are urgently needed."
Free schools, broke schools and expensive subscriptions
The interview with Toby Young (How to lose friends, part 2, 5 April) not only reinforced my assessment of him as a thoroughly obnoxious individual, but, rather more worryingly, suggested that he had friends in the first place, or that there are parents in west London who think he is a fit and proper person to be at the helm of their so-called free school. I pity the poor students, who I suspect have no choice in where they are educated.
Gordon Vassell,
Hull
• Your article contains significant inaccuracies. Toby Young's free school will not have a formal partnership with The London Oratory school. As the headmaster told parents four weeks ago, a partner must be an existing school rather than a new school. And where did he get the idea that design and technology, which is absent from the West London Free School curriculum, would be provided by London Oratory school for "a period or two"?
Margaret Gooch,
Portsmouth
• Like all other schools, Toby Young's free school's chances of standing or falling will be down to the quality of the head or the teaching staff. Romantic notions of the traditional grammar school curriculum will not cut it.
marshy15 via EducationGuardian.co.uk
• How very bizarre it is that young children are expected to study pure academia including Latin, English etc because it is "traditional", as opposed to subjects such as DT.
Yet, as soon as you leave secondary school, you find it is subjects such as DT that have given you the basis for skills that are actually useful in employment.
Seatrotter via EducationGuardian.co.uk
Last week, Andrew Mourant reported on the row between lecturers and their professional body, the Institute for Learning, over the rise in annual fees.
Thank you for featuring the appalling business of the Institute for Learning's attempt to force its members to pay the annual subscription.
As a very part-time tutor for the Workers Educational Association (WEA), I was forced to join an organisation that has nothing to offer me; I ignore the endless bumph that is sent.
I earn a few hundred pounds a year after tax from the WEA. I don't teach to supplement my pension, but in the hope of staving off dementia. An annual sub of £68 is out of proportion to what I earn and to what IfL is worth. I would rather give up teaching than pay it.
Bernard Tucker,
Alresford, Hampshire
• We were dismayed by the selective reporting in Andrew Mourant's article about IfL membership.
It is disingenuous to say that the "fees suddenly went up from £30 to £68 annually". Transitional funding from the government is being used to extend the first membership period under self-funding to 18 months, and individuals who pay their own fee can claim tax relief, so that basic-rate taxpayers in effect pay £54.40 for 18 months ie less than 70p a week. Those below the tax threshold, and those who are unemployed or retired, pay a concessionary fee of £45, which in this 18-month period equates to £30 a year. IfL's elected non-executive board worked very hard to set the fee as low as possible, one of the lowest professional-body fees in the country.
Most teachers and trainers say that they want a professional body, and we believe that with the strength gained from full membership, IfL will flourish as the supporter of their status and professionalism.
Lord Tim Boswell of Aynho
Barry Sheerman MP (Patrons of IfL)
Last week Fran Abrams reported on a school struggling to cope with deficits due to a budget freeze and cuts to capital grants.
Your article (The writing is on the wall, 5 April) only gives a superficial account as to why this school [Dayncourt comprehensive in Radcliffe-on-Trent] is in such a financial mess. It has gone from being one of the best comprehensives in Nottinghamshire to what it is today. Numbers of nearly 1,000 pupils have slumped. Why?
Its decline started when it became a sports academy. Parents with academic ambitions for their children removed them. The sixth form became non-existent. Teachers left. A further decline occurred when pupils from a poor area in Nottingham were bussed in for three years while their school was rebuilt.
I don't need to tell you that all this happened under Labour administration, and while you might not agree with coalition policies entirely, it is the mess left behind that must be cleared up.
George Jamieson,
Radcliffe-on-Trent
Vocational training can lead to degree-standard qualifications, but young people and employers often ignore the benefits of apprenticeships. Could skills competitions be the answer? Janet Murray reports from a recent debate
GCSE and A-level results always attract column inches, as do university surveys and league tables, but vocational learning has never managed to attract the same level of interest. While arguably well-intentioned, the previous Labour government's preoccupation with getting more young people to university may be partly to blame. For some, vocational routes such as apprenticeships are still seen as "second best" to academic qualifications.
But the tide may be turning. The government is planning to open University Technical Colleges, where pupils can attend from the age of 14 to do work-based learning alongside core academic studies such as English, maths and science.
It has also pledged to create more than 100,000 additional apprenticeships over the next five years and introduce nationally recognised standards (known as the Apprenticeship Standards for England) for all new apprentices.
A recent debate on vocational skills, hosted by the Guardian in association with WorldSkills London 2011, discussed some of the key issues around vocational skills and apprenticeships in the UK and abroad. The discussion was held under Chatham House rules, which allow comments to be reported without attribution to encourage full and frank debate. The points raised included: the challenge of convincing employers, parents and young people to value apprenticeships and vocational learning; the importance of competitions in raising the profile of skills; the need to raise awareness of NVQ level 4 and level 5 (equivalent to degree level) awards; and the role of WorldSkills London 2011 in promoting vocational careers and qualifications.
While the mainstream media is keen to report on so-called academic qualifications, there is often little interest in vocational courses. "When you say things like BTec their [journalists'] eyes glaze over," said one participant. "They don't understand what these lists of qualifications are, so they think it's not something children do. It is part of the big social divide in this country, one that has held us back hugely."
"There are too many 'hidden secrets' in our colleges and in our training system and we have to do something about it," said another contributor.
A foundation for life
One of the biggest barriers is the stereotype that vocational courses are for those who aren't very bright or have failed at school. One participant, a former apprentice, said that his mother (a senior teacher) was disappointed when he announced he wanted to learn a trade after his A-levels. But an apprenticeship is only the beginning, said one participant. "It's actually the gateway, a foundation for the rest of your life. If you tell people that a third of the board at BT started as apprentices or that Terry Morgan, who chairs Crossrail, started off as a Land Rover apprentice, they start to see things differently."
The roundtable heard that many people are unaware of the career prospects and earning potential of apprentices, which can far outstrip that of graduates. According to a Department for Education and Skills study carried out in 2007, those with a level-2 apprenticeship (equivalent to GCSE) earn in excess of £73,000 more over their lifetime compared with those who have other level-2 qualifications or below.
Young people and their parents are often unaware that vocational courses go beyond level 3 and 4 (A-level equivalent) because that is primarily what is on offer in colleges. In fact, there are opportunities to progress to levels 4, 5 and 6 (degree equivalent and beyond) and participants shared the view that promoting these qualifications could help boost the image of vocational careers.
To encourage young people to consider vocational learning, it is necessary to reach out to parents and teachers, it was said. And to do that, they really need to see skilled people in action. "Instead of having their mum and dad or an employer telling them not to be a welder because they will get dirty, we need them to see [someone doing the work] and say 'hey, that's really cool'," said one participant.
The WorldSkills London 2011 competition, from 5-8 October, is an opportunity to do just that. The event, which is expected to attract up to 150,000 visitors, brings together young people from across the globe to compete in their chosen specialism, from plumbing and plastering to jewellery making and web design.
In the run-up to the competition, there will be opportunities to try out various skills at different locations in the UK, giving young people the chance to find out about vocational careers.
The concept of competition should be at the heart of vocational learning – and not just for one-off events – said one participant. "Skills competitions should not be an end in themselves, but part of the process. We need young people to be hooked on skills competitions, so colleges can use this to excite them about learning and raise aspirations."
But as another pointed out, only a relatively small number of colleges in England are regularly involved in competitions. This could be due to the UK's ambivalence about competition, which is embedded at an early age, the roundtable heard. One participant felt this was taking its toll. "There is no competitiveness in youngsters now; it has been knocked out of them."
As well as capturing the interest of teachers, young people and their families, the WorldSkills London 2011 competition also offers an opportunity to generate interest among employers, a group that are notoriously difficult to engage, particularly those in small and medium-sized businesses, many of whom worry they will not see a return on their investment in training. "So often the attitude is: 'I don't know anything about it, but I feel sure it's not right for me,'" said one participant.
Social responsibility
But this is changing, said another: "There is real momentum gathering now around getting employers to understand that apprenticeships are not about youth unemployment or corporate social responsibility. It is about hard-nosed business decisions, about skilling your workforce to build a competitive advantage for your business."
This is replicated in bluechip companies, where there has also been a big cultural shift, it was said: "It used to be that the guy who looked after apprentices was the guy who had been there for 20 years and who was going nowhere. That has changed. Now it's part of learning and development and you'll find the graduate and apprenticeship manager have equal status."
This shift in culture has been reflected in takeup. BT is said to be considering expanding its apprenticeship scheme after attracting almost 24,000 applicants for 221 positions last year. And both IBM and Nexus (the transport company that owns the Tyne and Wear Metro) have recently launched apprenticeship schemes.
But there is a lot to learn from the competition, from countries such as South Korea, Singapore and Finland, which have an excellent record on skills, the roundtable heard. Korea gets more than 10,000 students involved in its regional skills competitions. Medal winners are treated like the stars of TV talent shows.
Singapore has worked hard to challenge the idea that young people have to go to university to get on in life. "Now young people go and get a skill or a trade that ultimately might lead to university, because learning leads to learning," said one participant.
Another spoke about Finland, which tops the Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa) rankings, which measures the performance of 15-year-olds in reading and maths. It recently developed a programme where young people were given a free backpack with information about vocational careers, which came with a train ticket to Helsinki to see skills demonstrations in action. The result was a 70% increase in vocational training. As one participant put it: "It's all about going out there and telling the story; the dream, the struggle and the prize. Promote the prize and the struggle becomes less significant."
A lesson on space travel on the Guardian Teacher Network this week marks the 50th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin going into outer space
Space travel is one topic usually guaranteed to capture children's attention, especially as astronaut often tops their list of cool careers. Today marks the 50th anniversary of the journey of Yuri Gagarin, who made history as the first person to go into outer space. It is an ideal opportunity to talk to children about the science behind space travel and – for the very brave – get them making and testing their own rockets.
On the Guardian Teacher Network, our new resources site, you can now find a one-hour PowerPoint lesson that can be used both in the classroom and at home, to get children thinking about the impact of space travel.
As well as exploring the influence of Gagarin's flight on future space missions, the lesson also poses some ethical questions. Many animals were shot into space before Gagarin, few of which returned, and the lesson will encourage debate on the rights and wrongs of using animals in the quest for safe space travel.
Although this is a science lesson, there are links to design and technology and the lesson gives full instructions on how children can make, test and adapt their own celebratory model rocket.
As well as providing the answer to children's burning questions (how do astronauts go to the loo in space, for example) the lesson explains the nature of space and microgravity – in which there is no such direction as down. The PowerPoint gives children the information and vocabulary to devise their own challenging science questions, such as 'can a spider spin in space?'.
Find the lesson plan at: http://bit.ly/fTRSNt Plus there are Guardian Teacher Network lessons on the Earth, Sun and Moon: http://bit.ly/guAkTQ and animations of the planet and solar systems: http://bit.ly/fvCgFj.
• Graham Peacock is an author and senior lecturer in primary education at Sheffield Hallam University, specialising in science
The Guardian Teacher Network offers free access to 70,000 pages of lesson plans and interactive materials. This content is being added to every day by teachers and specialists; 20,000 teachers have signed up already. To see (and share) for yourself, go to teachers.guardian.co.uk
Stilton is associated with Christmas in the UK, but researchers hope to give all Britain's blue cheeses broader appeal
With just a crumb of stilton giving off a powerful whiff, not everyone could stomach the prospect of six months working in a laboratory filled with blue cheese. But Kostas Gkatzionis, a researcher at the University of Northampton who is midway through a project doing just that, says it's not as smelly as it sounds.
"Researching food in the academic environment is completely different to the way people imagine," explains Gkatzionis, who spent part of his career working on food microbiology and flavour chemistry for the dairy industry before returning to academia. "We often don't come into contact with any blue cheeses at all – we work with their DNA, so the only sign of the cheese can be just some of its DNA in a small amount of aqueous solution on a bench."
As universities struggle with austerity measures, cheese might not sound like the biggest problem for Britain's brightest brains to grapple with, but with the market for blue cheese in the UK alone worth £33m a year, Gkatzionis says his work could have a big impact. "British blue cheeses are very important to the economy of the Midlands, and the British food market in general, but varieties like roquefort from France, Danish blue from Denmark and gorgonzola from Italy dominate even in Britain," he explains.
"But British blue cheeses have attracted very little scientific attention compared to varieties in other countries. So it's important to support blue cheese-makers here with research and development to make them more competitive, take them outside the British borders and increase their share in the global market."
To that end, Gkatzionis is researching how the cheeses' microorganisms work. His focus is on the activity of "secondary flora" – microorganisms that are not added or controlled by dairies or farmers, but simply appear during production. These flora have a significant impact on the flavour of the final product, but can also give the cheese a bitter smell and damage the formation of blue veins.
"Until now, the general understanding has always been that blue cheese aroma is promoted by a starter mould put in by the farmer or dairy, which in the case of blue cheese is Penicillium roqueforti," Gkatzionis explains. "Producers focus on the starter mould and its role forming blue veins in the core of the cheese and creating the aroma. But our research shows secondary flora is as important in developing the flavour." Gkatzionis noticed that the crust of the cheese gave off aroma compounds in higher quantities than the blue veins in the cheese, despite the absence of that starter mould P. roqueforti in the crust. He then realised that yeasts have a big impact on blue-cheese flavour. "Different yeast species populate different sections of the cheese," Gkatzionis points out. "Some are likely to be found next to the blue veins, while others are only in sections where the mould is not present." The academic now intends to investigate that phenomenon to see if there is a natural compound produced by the mould-less parts of the cheese that be used in other varieties to prevent them going mouldy.
The project – which is being run in conjunction with the University of Nottingham as well as Northampton – is supported by Food and Drink iNet, a regional body that co-ordinates local businesses and universities working in the grocery sector. It includes input from local cheese businesses such as Stichelton Dairy, whose cheese is sold around the world via Neal's Yard Dairy, which Gkatzionis hopes will increase its potential impact. "We will make our results available to blue-cheese producers and hope that by better understanding blue cheese flavour development they will be able to control the production of quality cheese better," he says.
"If the production work helps Britain's blue cheese become more popular around the world, it would also make the industry less vulnerable in times of recession and decreased internal demand," he adds. "In the UK, for example, blue cheese is strongly associated with Christmas, but increased exporting could balance the demand for products throughout the year."
Whilst Gkatzionis's lab work involved more grappling with test tubes than bits of rind, his research did involve some experimental trips to the supermarket cheese aisle. "It is really important to understand the characteristics of a food product, such as the flavour, texture, colour, appearance, even the packaging that is used, before we conduct any research on it," he says. "Whatever we find has to be able to be linked back to the original product and must be able to be used for its further development and improvement."
Anyone listening to Gkatzionis could be excused for thinking he was a long-term, evangelical blue cheese fan. "It's impossible for anyone not to find a blue cheese they like," he says, before adding: "Anyone who thinks they do not like blue cheese just hasn't found a variety that suits their taste yet."
But in fact the Greek-born academic wasn't always such a fan. "Coming from Greece, a market where blue cheeses are not well known, I knew very little about them at first," he admits. "I used to think that blue cheeses stank. Because of my background, I was originally looking to study the flavour production of microorganisms in feta cheese for my PhD, but my supervisor told me about the complexity of the microbiology of stilton, and I realised blue cheeses were ideal for studying the interactions of microorganisms and their flavour production. Now," Gkatzionis proudly adds, "I can distinguish blue cheeses just by taste."
Sweet harmonies for the apicultural researcher who has analysed, and accompanied, the sounds of bees
Professor Norman E Gary is the rare academic who plays clarinet while he is covered with live bees, and often in public.
An emeritus professor of apiculture at the University of California (Davis), Gary also plays Dixieland music in a human ensemble called the Beez Kneez Jazz Band. He generally goes solo for the bee-encrusted gigs.
Hollywood has used Gary's bee-wrangling talents, though seldom his clarinet, in more than a dozen movies. Among them: The X Files; Fried Green Tomatoes; Invasion of the Bee Girls; and Candyman: Farewell to the Flesh.
Several of Gary's scientific activities involve vibration, a general physics phenomenon of which music is just a part. Gary has microwaved bees. He has also analysed one of the lesser-known (to most humans) sounds that bees produce. Details appear in a monograph published with colleague SS Schneider in 1984 in the Journal of Apicultural Research. They gave their article the title "Quacking": A Sound Produced By Worker Honeybees After Exposure To Carbon Dioxide.
Gary has published more than 100 academic papers, many of them about bees. In one of the earliest, called The Case of Utter vs Utter, he took a fond look back at a court case decided in 1901 in Goshen, New York, starring two brothers from the Utter family.
The brothers disagreed – Utterly, of course – about many things. The question here was: did the bees associated with one brother, a beekeeper, eat the peaches growing on trees owned by the other brother, a fruit grower? Perhaps the most enjoyable account appeared soon after the trial, in the Rocky Mountain bee journal. The anonymous writer says: "It was amusing to see the plaintiff try to mimic the bee, on the witness stand as he swayed his head from one side to the other, raised up on his legs and flopped his arms. His motions were so utterly ridiculous and so contrary to the real acts and achievements of the bees, that everyone in the courtroom, including the jury, laughed, and laughed heartily."
The court ruled against that Utter, and for the other. This established a legal precedent favorable to wandering bees. It also inspired, almost 60 years later, the young Gary as he began his more-than-60-year-long career of collaborating with and studying tiny, honey-making musicians.
Thanks to David Kessler for bringing this to my attention.
• Marc Abrahams is editor of the bimonthly Annals of Improbable Research and organiser of the Ig Nobel prize
Bursary scheme still entails a 60% cut in help for poorer students despite additional funding
The news that the education maintenance allowance was to be scrapped, announced in last year's spending review, left college principals feeling gloomy. The means-tested scheme, introduced in 2004, currently provides £10-£30 a week for 16- to 19-year-olds from low-income families to help them meet the costs of staying in education and training.
The replacement bursary scheme promised by the chancellor, George Osborne, offered little in the way of comfort; at just £78m it was a long way short of the £560m annual EMA fund. And without a guarantee of financial support, many in the sector feared young people would be discouraged from continuing their education.
So principals were surprised to learn that the government has suddenly managed to find some extra cash to support such students. In a partial u-turn, announced last week, the government said the replacement bursary fund would now be worth £180m annually, with the biggest amounts (£1,200 per person) given to young people with the greatest needs, such as those in care, leaving care, young parents and those with disabilities.
Under the new scheme, due to be launched in September, colleges will be able to use the remaining £165m to make discretionary payments to those from low-income families. Also promised is additional transitional funding of £194m, to ensure those already receiving EMA will still get help while they complete their course.
But while the additional funding is welcome, college principals point out that this is still a funding reduction of almost 60%, which means there will be substantially less to go round. As Stella Mbubaegbu, principal of Highbury College in Portsmouth, puts it: "While it is larger than expected, it is still considerably less than before, and essentially not enough to target all the disadvantaged young people who rely on its financial support to continue their education."
Many colleges are having to dig deep to subsidise students who would previously have qualified for EMA payments or, under the new funding arrangements, will be entitled to less.
Middlesbrough College
Around 67% of Middlesbrough College students are entitled to EMA, totalling about £2.2m annually. Although it is difficult to be precise until more detail about the bursary scheme is released (due after an eight-week consultation with young people, parents and learning providers, due to end in May), the principal, Mike Hopkins, estimates the college will now receive between £700,000 and £800,000.
Before the additional funding was announced last week, the college had pledged up to £400,000 of its own funds to buy students on low incomes a £10 discount card, which entitles them to half-price transport; to subsidise a free bus service across the Tees Valley; to provide free meals for those in need; and to offer cash rewards for good attendance, free gym membership and even free haircuts.
Hopkins is pleased colleges can now use their discretion to award the funding, but says he is concerned that he doesn't have access to the right data. "The EMA is currently handled by the outsourcing company Capita, which has access to data on benefits, the number of students entitled to free school meals, national insurance and other useful stuff. We're negotiating with the local authority to get access to data on students previously entitled to free school meals, but it is still a worry. We want to make sure our decisions are consistent, fair and transparent, but we can only do that if we have the right information to hand."
Central Sussex College
Prior to the announcement about the EMA replacement, the college was also planning measures to support its most disadvantaged learners, including travel subsidies and bursaries of up to £300 for students from families with a family income of below £21,000.
Now they will have to go back to the drawing board. But until some of the detail of the plans is fleshed out, it is difficult to predict how much will be left over to help fund their plans, says Adrian Dodwell, executive director for 14-19 and learner services at the college.
And the timing couldn't be worse, he says. "Students are now making decisions about whether to move on to the next year of their course or start a completely new one. Without reassurance that they will receive additional support, some may be put off applying at all."
He admits that finding extra cash in the budget will be tough, but says the college has no choice. "We can't afford not to. If we don't support students, we will not generate the level of income we need to stay afloat."
Warwickshire and Hinckley College
The college's principal, Marion Plant, is also worried about timing, pointing out that students entitled to help under the new scheme are unlikely to have their bursaries confirmed until September. This means they may be reluctant to commit themselves to courses. The college has already seen a drop in applications compared with this time last year, which Plant believes is due, at least in part, to the scrapping of the EMA.
But with little left in the college coffers to supplement the bursary scheme, Plant and her staff are having to think creatively to raise money. One idea is selling consultancy services in key areas of expertise within the college (human resources, site management, marketing and web design, for example).
The college is also trying to negotiate discounts with local bus companies, exploring the possibility of using transport services run by volunteers and thinking about offering a "pay by instalment" option for some courses.
"We want to be proactive, but we can't renege on any commitments to students, so at this point in time we have to be cautious," says Plant.
K College
The newly created K College (the product of a merger between West Kent and South Kent Colleges) is less than a year old and still finding its feet.
The principal, Bill Fearon, is currently exploring how the college might provide transport and meal subsidies and is considering reducing some courses down to a four-day week, which could reduce travel costs and give students more time to do part-time work to fund their studies.
But Fearon is worried about where the government has found the money to boost their bursary fund. "You can't help wondering if it's just robbing Peter to pay Paul and we'll end up having to weather cuts in some other area of our budget to fund this."
Ealing, Hammersmith and West London College
This college is setting up its own bursary scheme to help support students from low-income backgrounds. The West London Student Trust will raise money through the sale of land and other assets, and, it hopes, through philanthropic contributions and donations. While still in the early stages, it is hoped that the trust will be able to offer incentivised rewards for students that are linked to attendance and success.
But, despite their efforts, the vice-principal, Tim Hulme, fears there could still be difficult decisions to be made about which students receive support. "Do you support a few with a lot, or a lot of students with a little? It's a huge dilemma."
Headteachers around the country are facing serious budget cuts, despite 'new money' for schools
In Surrey, nine schools make job cuts to avoid plunging into the red. In Salford, three schools struggle with deficits of more than £1m. And at one comprehensive in Nottinghamshire, a headteacher breathes a huge sigh of relief as his school escapes closure by the skin of its teeth.
"It's always: 'Can we afford to do this?' Even stupid things, like how much paper we buy," says Tim Mitchell, head of Dayncourt comprehensive in Radcliffe-on-Trent. By the time the county council approved a business plan drawn up as a last-ditch attempt to avoid closure, the school's deficit had reached £1.16m.
So, what went wrong? Just a few months ago the Chancellor, George Osborne, announced to the House of Commons that amid swingeing cuts elsewhere, he had found new money for schools: "There will be a real increase in the money for schools … for each of the next four years," he told MPs as he revealed the results of his spending review last October.
Yet across the country, heads and governors are reporting a growing sense of anxiety as they wrestle with detailed budgets for the next year. Unions have warned that they expect widespread job losses, and heads say they are being forced to pare spending to the bone.
At Dayncourt, even on a sunny spring day, the problem is depressingly obvious. The school's timber-framed 1950s main block is, quite simply, rotting away, and its peeling paint, exposed pipework and general air of flat-roofed jerry-building shout of neglect and decline.
And, Mitchell admits, that has been the story of the school in recent years. When he came for an interview in March 2006, the situation looked manageable – there were 935 children on roll, not too far short of the full complement of 1,050, and a deficit of £140,000. When he came back in September that year to start work, both the rolls and the deficit had taken a dramatic turn for the worse. By 2008, the school's debts were heading for half a million, its pupil numbers had slumped to 750 and the local authority was moving in to close it down.
In an increasingly bleak financial climate, Mitchell says, there were few options left. The school has now entered a formal partnership with South Nottingham College, which since January has provided it with services such as computer support and building maintenance. It has lost 20 teaching and 15 non-teaching posts from a full complement of just over 100.
And from this September, the school will become an academy, with the college as its sponsor. The two institutions will review their estates – the school has a site of around 13 acres – to see if it may be possible to sell off land for development in order to fund the rebuilding programme that Dayncourt so desperately needs.
Mitchell says that while the process has been deeply painful, it may prove to be the way forward for many other cash-strapped schools. Even with pupil numbers projected to drop further to around 500, the school will survive.
"If schools are going to meet the challenges they now face, I think they are going to have to work more closely with other providers," he says. "But I don't think anybody should see it as a threat. While I or the staff or the governors might have been vehemently opposed to what the local authority was saying, one had to accept where they were – there wasn't a bottomless pit of money."
Dayncourt, he believes, is slightly ahead of an uncomfortable trend – where it has led, others are bound to follow. Despite the positive headlines that heralded last autumn's spending review, the government has now been forced to admit that schools' finances are far from rosy. In fact, budgets have been set at the same level as last year – but with inflation, a teachers' pay rise that was only part-funded and a cut in capital grants to take into account, most will be severely out of pocket, according to the Association of School and College Leaders.
"The vast majority of schools will be seeing a reduction in real terms of about 5%," its policy director, Malcolm Trobe, says. "It's going to mean larger classes, it's going to mean less curriculum choice, and it's going to mean less student support. That's the impact on young people."
The government's new pupil premium, which gives schools extra money based on the number of pupils taking free school meals, will help in some cases, he says. But even so, a large secondary school with a budget of about £6m is likely to find a hole of around £80,000 in its budget. With staffing accounting for 80% of a secondary school's costs, the only realistic course for many will be redundancies.
And, Trobe points out, the level of financial deficits in schools was running at a record high even before the latest blow – almost one in five secondaries and one in 10 primaries finished the 2009-10 financial year in the red, and figures for this year are likely to be much higher. The total deficit among those schools – the highest since records began a decade ago – was £161m. In secondaries, the average deficit was almost £200,000.
Earlier this year, the government quietly published figures showing the financial position of every school in the country – revealing that for some, the situation was already dire. Among them was Dayncourt – one of eight schools in the country with seven-figure deficits. All the signs are that many other schools will find themselves facing similar dilemmas – headteachers were advised last spring that if they ended the financial year with a deficit, they were likely to end up in trouble in the coming year.
Last week, the Audit Commission issued a series of briefing papers on how schools might save money. They might increase class sizes, cut back on classroom assistants or reduce the number of subjects on offer at GCSE, it suggested, or they might choose to cut non-teaching staff.
There are signs, too, that schools may be forced to step in to fill gaps left by cuts in local authority services such as libraries and transport.
In Hertfordshire, a row has broken out after the council suggested schools might use the pupil premium to pay the school bus fares of pupils from poorer families, prompting an angry response from the Liberal Democrats. Chris White, a St Albans councillor, said he had complained to Nick Clegg's parliamentary aide, Norman Lamb, about the move. "It's pure cynicism – to use something that was meant to be for improving teaching in this way is absolutely outrageous," he said.
Chris Keates, general secretary of the NASUWT teaching union, says the union is receiving reports from members around the country about staff cuts in schools.
"We've been facing issues coming from schools about restructuring taking place, and quite a lot of it is down to cost cutting," she says. She argues that schools with falling rolls should not be able to simply opt for academy status, as Dayncourt did: "We're seeing schools that have got themselves into difficulty with deficits and because they have falling rolls, going for academy status – the reason local authorities close these schools is because they're not financially viable."
The public sector union, Unison, which represents many non-teaching staff in schools, has been hearing bad news from its members, too. In Surrey, nine schools and three children's centres are cutting jobs, the union says, while in Rotherham school staff have been told they face a 5% cut in pay. Unison's general secretary, Dave Prentis, says 32,000 education workers have lost their jobs in the last year – among them a large number working in central council services such as special needs teams. And, he warns, there will be worse to come now the new financial year has started.
"Many of the cuts will now start to bite, and the toll will creep higher. This will be a disaster for schools, and for children's education," he says.
At Dayncourt, though, Mitchell is feeling positive about the future, despite the tough times ahead. "At this moment, our deficit is £60,000," he says. We will go into the black this year despite a reduction in funding, but that hasn't been without significant pain. I am acutely aware that we have lost colleagues – but at least the majority of jobs have been saved."
A Department for Education spokesman said the settlement was the best schools could possibly have hoped for: "Ministers are clear that the spending review saw the best possible settlement for schools considering the dire public finances. We've had to make tough decisions to reduce the unprecedented deficit, but the fact is we have protected the level of funding in the system so that, overall, it remains at the same cash level per pupil, with £2.5bn pupil premium by 2015 on top for those that need most support."
Over the coming months the Guardian will be tracking the full consequences of the government's spending cuts in schools, local authorities, universities and colleges – and we need your help. Please tell us about job cuts and cuts to services in your back yard by emailing us at cutswatch@guardian.co.uk. We hope to use the information to monitor and report how the cuts are affecting people across the country.
We are also seeking to establish a team of volunteer "cuts-watchers" who will collect information and keep us informed on a more regular basis. Ideally, cuts-watchers will be willing to do some research on the extent of the cuts in their area and send us updates.
If you're interested in getting involved please email us at cutswatch@guardian.co.uk In your mail please tell us if you have any area of expertise, which part of the country you are in, and how much time, on a monthly basis, you'd be willing to devote to helping us with this project. If you have written or blogged on any related subjects, please do send us links. We'll get back to you soon.