Students will be more selective and demanding while universities will have to retain fair access despite option to charge higher fees
Students were a rare sighting at the Guardian Higher Education Summit, but that did not stop their needs dominating discussions. Delegates' main concerns were how to attract more of them, how to attract different kinds of them, and how to work out what they would want out of university once they got there.
Most speakers were relaxed about the number of people likely to aspire to a higher education in future, in spite of rising fees. Much more of a concern was how best to respond to pressure from the government to attract a broader range of students.
"Widening participation has been a great success in this country," said Martin Harris, director of the Office for Fair Access. "Our universities have done exceptionally well ... But fair access has been less of a success."
The main reason students from non-traditional backgrounds did not have the same access as others to the top universities, he said, was attainment. The real work on access, therefore, had to be done in schools. "Curricula choice at 14, independent advice at that stage, and choice at 16 can have decisive effects on young people and their capacity to be candidates at 18," he said.
Simon Hughes, deputy leader of the Liberal Democrats and the government's advocate for access, said he measured HE policies against how they would go down among young people on the Old Kent Road, part of his London constituency. A bursary to help with living costs may not affect their choice of where to study but it would certainly help them. He was working on a way of getting the kind of career advice Harris advocates into every school. Mentors had an important part to play, while universities needed to be collectively responsible for students in their region. The HE bill offered a chance to slip in measures that would improve fair access further, he said. "We shouldn't preclude having additional requirements on universities to do more."
So, universities are not to be let off the hook. Nor will they get an easy time from those students who do make it to university under the new marketised system, warned Aaron Porter, president of the NUS. He said increased fees meant students were already demanding more information about what they could expect from university.
But for all their hi-tech savvy, said Peter Slee, deputy vice-chancellor of the University of Huddersfield, what most counted for students was contact with people. By far the biggest influence on choice of university, according to the Student Barometer online survey of 6,000 students, was a university visit. Like buying a house, said Slee, decisions about where to go to university are made "with the heart first and the head second". Or, as Wellings put it: "The student experience is a body-contact sport."
Students are choosing the careers that pay because this government has put financial considerations at the heart of students' decisions about higher education, says Jonathan Black
David Willetts's speech to the summit echoed the point that I and others made last year that employability skills, however they are learned, are more important for securing a job than academic qualifications alone. He and this government have put financial considerations at the heart of students' decisions on HE; he should not be surprised when students select their careers on the same financial basis.
At a recent conference in Oxford, a senior manager of a blue-chip European engineering company stated that his organisation has a "huge and dire need for skilled people" and "could not recruit the talent it needed from the developed world". The students are voting with their feet: engineering companies pay about £25,000 starting salaries, whereas City firms pay £35,000 to £45,000. Having set the rules and acknowledged that poorer students are more debt averse than others, the government really cannot be surprised if the consequence is that students select the fastest career option to pay off their unwelcome debt. The primary solution for engineering companies is simple: if they offer market rates they will probably attract more talent. It appears that the industry has learned little; I recall similar arguments among engineers 30 years ago.
The minister appeared frustrated that certain groups, notably those studying Stem (science, technology, engineering, maths) subjects, are not advancing to Stem careers. He could plug what he called the "leaky Stem pipe" by taking specific financial action to help relevant organisations to compete for those otherwise destined for the City. The familiar argument applied to top management in banks about having to "pay the best to get the brightest" could be applied to scientists and mathematicians. One could argue that government investment in companies working on climate change, transport, energy and healthcare is at least as important for this country's economy and wellbeing as its recent investment in financial services.
The minister praised the idea of "transparent systems", which include Hefce's proposals for universities to publish a key information set, including initial salaries by subject. Not only does this underline the government's reduction of HE to a financial transaction, it is founded on unreliable and unusable data that is irrelevant to anyone in a decision-making position. The salary data will have come from the destination census of all leavers, six months after leaving university, and is unreliable not only because it is unaudited but also because it is incomplete. It is unusable because the average salary represented (even with quartile figures) can mask huge variations: students who studied history could be working for a museum on £12,000 or for a bank on £42,000. The data is irrelevant because the only people who might change their behaviour are those selecting their A-levels. Is Hefce seriously suggesting that year 9 pupils study the salaries of people eight years older and somehow decide to become good at physics as it pays better than those who read history?
The minister pleaded that "Stem undergraduates do need an opportunity to consider Stem jobs"; any university careers service will confirm the wealth of opportunity and guidance available for all students to explore the entire job market, including Stem jobs. The conclusion we are left with is that students are choosing something else, in all likelihood because it pays better.
It is both telling and unfortunate that he chose to champion the example of KPMG sponsoring more students to do an accountancy qualification – from his speech, one would have inferred that diverting Stem students to the City was precisely what he wanted to avoid.
For a student, university is for self-development and a love of further study in a subject that fascinates them. It is a place to develop transferable skills to last a lifetime. Tutors do not want students focused solely on what salary they are going to get – those students, though playing to the government's new set of rules, will probably miss the point.
• Jonathan Black is director of the careers service at Oxford University
David Robinson explains how the Guardian's Teacher Network could raise the awareness of children and improve their understanding of global events
The earthquake and tsunami in Japan have heightened awareness of the power and unpredictable nature of tectonic processes. Natural disasters have long been part of the curriculum, but, for pupils living in a remarkably safe country, the topics can lack immediacy and relevance.
As teachers and parents, we want our children to understand major global events – they help raise awareness of other places, cultures and lifestyles, and introduce the concepts of empathy and global communities. Events such as those unfolding in Japan provide specific, topical examples of how the planet influences our lives.
Reacting to world events and incorporating them into lessons while they are still "hot topics" has always been a challenge, and that is one of the factors behind the Guardian's new Teacher Network, which provides teachers with reliable, original resource materials that are simple to use.
Twenty-two years ago, I had to deliver a lesson on earthquakes and tsunamis. The grainy images of the 1923 Kanto quake in my class textbooks were not going to grab my year 9s' attention. The Loma Prieta quake had just struck California, and that provided the opportunity for an update. A weekend searching the fledgling internet resulted in a newsroom simulation I could run alongside a videotape of the BBC news and a pile of newspapers. My class loved it, but the time and effort involved in research made it a one-off project.
The new Teacher Network aims to collate the sort of resources I spent an entire weekend finding, and to deliver them to teachers, parents and students. I set about searching its 70,000 pages of selected resources to create a lesson based on tectonic terror – earthquakes, volcanoes and tsunamis. How long would it take me?
My lesson theme was: if disaster struck, where would you rather be – caught in an earthquake coping with a volcanic eruption, or facing a tsunami? In less than a minute, I was logged in and ready to go.
Selecting "Find resources" from the menu bar presented a range of materials, a search box and a list of subject titles. I started with a search for a tectonic map of Japan and was rewarded with exactly what I wanted: a full-colour map showing Japan, the recent earthquake epicentre and the sea floor, complete with fault lines. A quick click on "Add to my resources", and the first resource was safely stored away for later use. The physical and human geography of Japan proved equally easy to resource by selecting a lesson package.
A closer look at a lesson on earthquakes for 11- to 14-year-olds yielded some great photographs and even animations. A click of the "Download lesson components" button, and these individual elements were easily viewed and saved into my files for later use. A lesson on building volcanoes for primary schools provided animations on tectonic plates and earthquake zones, and major volcano sites. Users are asked to add their tag to the element they are downloading to help others.
Two hot-off-the-presses resources from learnnewsdesk (the Guardian's subscription-based news service for 9‑ to 14-year-olds, which feeds into the Guardian Teacher Network) addressing Japan's earthquake, complete with video stills, suggested classroom activities, and the essential facts rounded off my research for Japan – and I was barely a third of the way through my first mug of coffee.
I also found Guardian video resources that will really get students thinking: "We lost everything in a split second", and a more uplifting rescue story about a couple who were saved after being trapped for four days.
I wanted to cover NGOs' response to disasters, and found a useful resource by the Red Cross education team looking at the loss of life, damage and personal suffering, and the dignity of those who survived the earthquake. NGOs are putting up their own resources on the network, which makes it easier to see what is out there quickly.
Thinking back to my original lesson on the Loma Prieta earthquake, I felt inspired to share a few resources of my own. The "Create resources" tab makes it easy for teachers to add their own material in a variety of formats. Or they can download one of the range of templates or upload a weblink to existing material.
The Teacher Network benefits from contemporary news items as well as educational materials. Resourcing a contemporary news story is one thing, but would locating older and less newsworthy events prove to be another?
A teacher-submitted webpage covering the Mount St Helens eruption of 1980 quickly joined the collection, and, thanks to the Guardian's archive, two newspaper articles describing the aftermath of the 1977 and 2002 eruptions of Mount Nyiragongo followed shortly afterwards.
While reviewing my resources, a hitherto unappreciated bonus came to mind: I knew the origins, factual reliability and copyright status of every resource I'd selected. There was no need to spend the next two hours checking everything. Here is a free, reliable and safe resource where pupils can research homework, augment revision and develop case studies.
• David Robinson runs geography projects in schools and is a resources writer. See David Robinson's finished material on the Guardian Teacher Network
Reform the tax system to ensure employers provide work-related training and state funds are used for improving workers' skills, says Tom Wilson
Companies received more than £5bn last year from the exchequer in tax relief for work-related training. That is equivalent to the turnover of more than 250 FE colleges. It vastly overshadows the £50m growth and innovation fund set up to support employers' initiatives to improve skills and boost jobs. But, as a forthcoming research paper by Howard Reed of Landman Economics, commissioned by unionlearn, shows, there is little to indicate that this vast sum is focused on the most effective training courses, or that it is reaching those who most need it. It is an area the TUC's learning and skills organisation hopes will be addressed in the forthcoming budget.
The £5bn also vastly overshadows the £800m annual budget of Train to Gain, the scheme that provided businesses with training subsidies, until it was abolished in the October 2010 spending review. Train to Gain had its faults, but it did make a substantial contribution to work-related training. Apart from commitments (without detail) in the spending review to "explore mechanisms to increase employer contributions such as training levies", we still need a strategy for growth that tackles the two main problems with the UK's provision of work-related training: that a third of employers provide no training at all and that those who receive the most training are those who are already the best qualified.
Unionlearn's paper concludes that there are very strong grounds for reforming the tax relief system by making it more progressive – targeting the low-paid and low skilled – and more focused on high returns (by restricting training to that which leads to qualifications or accreditation).
Tax relief on training is available only to companies that pay corporation tax (just over 900,000 businesses with 8.3 million staff). However, the tax relief is not targeted on particular kinds of training, or particular types of trainee. This makes it a relatively expensive way of encouraging the types of training policymakers might see as the most beneficial.
Statistics from the labour force survey show that while lower skilled workers are less likely to be offered training, when they are, it often leads to a qualification. Therefore, one option could be to offer tax relief only on training that leads to accreditation. This would be very popular with the chancellor as it would mean a saving of about £4.5bn. This saving could be used to allow businesses to claim tax relief on national insurance contributions for employees who undertake training, providing financial support for training to all employers, including public, voluntary, and private sector organisations that do not make enough net profit to pay corporation tax.
One of the main difficulties for Reed's investigation was the paucity of government statistics on the value of tax relief. He says: "If tax returns were amended so businesses had to provide an estimate for the total training undertaken by their employees over the tax year, it would be possible to produce a very accurate aggregate measure of the value of tax relief."
In these financially straitened times it is vital that sums such as £5bn can be used to make a real difference to the training of employees and the productivity of businesses. It should also be a requirement of employers to publish details of their training investment in their annual report so that shareholders can see to what extent the company is investing in its future human capital.
We at unionlearn want to work with ministers to make this money work.
• Tom Wilson is director of unionlearn
A 21st-century education must surely look different from that of 30 years ago, says Estelle Morris
The political dividing lines in education have never been entirely consistent. Attitudes to public investment and to selection have remained cornerstones of party differences, but, as Labour championed the academies programme with its private sector partnerships and the Conservatives talk about closing the social class achievement gap, each party encroaches on the other's traditional territory.
As the government moves from words to actions and the Labour policy review concludes, I've no doubt that the direction of each party will become clearer and the differences between them sharper. There are some early signs of at least part of the upcoming battle ground.
Given the importance the parties place on teaching quality and school leadership, the political debate surprisingly centres on what we teach not how we teach. Even before its curriculum review reports, the government has abandoned vocational diplomas and vocational equivalence qualifications; launched the English baccalaureate and dropped subject specialisms. In response, the shadow education secretary, Andy Burnham, has firmly positioned Labour against the English bac and in favour of a broader curriculum.
Three questions seem to shape this debate. First, which subjects are relevant – should science and design be favoured over Latin and ancient history? Second, which subjects are more likely to engage a generation used to multimedia and personalised communication? Third, which subjects will give young people progression to top universities or good quality employment?
Relevance, engagement and progression are good questions to ask, but the political interpretation of them has created a rather old fashioned "traditionalist"/"progressive" divide.
Michael Gove's analysis seems to push him to a curriculum of yesteryear. He is passionate about history and Greek; he would go to the wall in favour of team games over individual sports but is not likely to defend sociology or drama – and I can't imagine the phrase, "cross curricular theme", passing his lips.
He defends an important principal of the original national curriculum. Every child is entitled to be taught the "traditional" subjects; a curriculum of high expectations; the key to future success.
Yet Burnham asks himself the same questions and comes to quite different conclusions. He makes a powerful case for the study of technology and for valuing the arts, business and economics. He warns against a return to selection through the curriculum. He embraces those subjects and disciplines that Gove seems to turn his back on.
Over 20 years of a national curriculum, we have juggled the need to limit the size of the compulsory curriculum with the ever growing demand on pupils to master more areas of knowledge and skills.
Yet for good or ill, we are still wedded to the traditional hierarchy of subjects, and it colours all our debates. Economists may tell us that the creative industries are the fastest growing sector; employers may talk about needing graduates with "soft" skills; we all like to support the importance of vocational subjects or work experience, but how much do we really rate the subjects that stand the best chance of teaching these skills? Sometimes we value a subject, but doubt its currency.
I'm not pretending all subjects are equally difficult; neither would I want to see "traditional" subjects lose their place in the curriculum. Yet our society has had to adapt to a period of enormous change and come to terms with new areas of knowledge such as technology and digital media, new social challenges such as globalisation and community fragmentation and new threats such as climate change and terrorism.
It would be bizarre if our children didn't learn about these things in school. Sometimes a "modern" curriculum has lacked the rigour of its "traditional" counterpart and there is no excuse for that; but any 21st- century education that stakes a claim to be relevant, engaging and leading to good-quality progression would surely look different to the one that served us so well some 30 years ago.
• The following correction was printed in the Guardian's corrections and clarifications column on 23 March 2011: Homophone corner: "He defends an important principal of the original national curriculum."
Academic status - a good offer from a charitable trust, can private schools train state school teachers and the review of primary education
Warwick Mansell's article on CfBT Education Trust's invitation to schools in Lincolnshire to consider membership of the CfBT Schools Trust requires further comment (Backdoor privatisation? 15 March).
For some years CfBT has not sought to pursue the possibility of academies in Lincolnshire because of our role running the School Improvement Service for the county. However, with the government encouraging schools to convert into academies we reconsidered our position. Lincolnshire schools were receiving regular approaches from academy groups of which they had little knowledge. It seemed unhelpful to deny them the possibility of working with an organisation that they and the local authority know well.
CfBT is not a private firm attempting to push its own agenda. We are a charitable enterprise dedicated to improving school performance. We are proud to be able to offer schools the opportunity to explore CfBT's approach. The choice, however, remains with them. Schools that choose to stay within local authority control will receive the same high-quality service that they have received from CfBT for the past nine years.
Neil McIntosh
CfBT Education Trust, Reading
• As one of the parents, it is just awful to feel as though we have no options. I am glad that this country has newspapers such as the Guardian to express the views of the people.
enigma77 via EducationGuardian.co.uk
Last week Liz Lightfoot reported on private schools that are lining up to become training schools
Both my children are at a private school. The teachers there are good but not outstanding - frankly, they don't have to be. Teaching a class of 12 with masses of support staff is not a stretch. A number of my friends teach in the state sector and I would guess they would be much better placed to train the next generation of teachers.
suffolkswede via EducationGuardian.co.uk
Robin Alexander's enthusiasm (Give all the children the riches they deserve, 15 March) for a comprehensive primary curricular entitlement is admirable, but may come to be seen as politically naive and professionally reactionary. He fails adequately to distinguish between the national curriculum, to be prescribed in statute, and the wider school curriculum, developed by teachers. He runs the risk of encouraging state prescription.
Michael Gove, to his credit, seems to want to limit state prescription, offering the potential for schools and teachers to create for themselves and their pupils a broad, rich curriculum. The key issue is not the nature of the curriculum but who invents most of it – the state or the teaching profession. Given the history of primary curriculum "reform" by the state over the past 20 years, with its constant changes to rectify its own mistakes and its doubtful contribution to improving the quality of learning, it's time for more localism and professional innovation.
Professor Jim Campbell
University of Warwick
• I fear Robin Alexander may have been misled. He states that the "curriculum review is being undertaken at the Department for Education by an advisory committee supported by an "expert panel" of senior academics." The letter setting up the review explictly states that its work "will be managed by the Department" and that the advisory committee is to "guide the review and help to frame recommendations". Make no mistake. This review is being undertaken by civil servants with the help of academics and others. It is not a review by an advisory committee. This is not the independent fundamental review the English national curriculum needs.
Professor Colin Richards
Spark Bridge, Cumbria
A professor researching the minefield of girls' friendships is shocked by teachers' lack of awareness
Naomi and Emily are 11 and quick to define a good friend as someone who is honest. Then the conversation becomes complicated. "If I had an argument with Emily, I might say something I don't really mean and she might not like me, but we'd still want to be friends. It could be hard," says Naomi. "Sometimes you feel like you're going to break," says Emily.
She pauses and Cindy joins in. She is 10. "Some friends are hard to keep – the ones that don't really talk to you, and talk about you to other people."
We are at Cobourg primary school, a Victorian building just off London's Old Kent Road, and these are year 6 children. These little girls, soon to face the crucial rite of passage to big school, seem bewildered by the reality of having friends. Asked about the positives of friendship, they have talked instead about the unhappiness it can bring. "Friends can be bullies to your other friends because they don't want you to be with them," says Naomi.
Professor Rosalyn George was nine when a girl in her class announced, "I don't like Rosalyn today." Rosalyn was duly ostracised by all her friends. "None of them would talk to me, it was painful," George says. "Then you go into school the next week and the girl who excluded you would say that she doesn't like Lorraine today, and you're so relieved it's not you that you don't talk to Lorraine. It was my way of staying in the group."
Now professor of education and director of the centre for identities and social justice at Goldsmiths, University of London, George has researched the precariousness of young girls' friendships in a rare study of girls aged 10-14 as they transferred to secondary school. She watched them in the playground, and spoke to their teachers and parents, and the girls kept diaries.
"Primary school girls tend to be regarded as compliant, getting along," George says. "I thought this wasn't right, and what I found is that young girls will hang on to the leader of a friendship group even if the relationship is destructive. The leaders are invariably bright, socially skilled and charismatic and they have an unquestioning following because for the girls on the periphery the alternative is being isolated, having no one to talk to, no one to play with. No one challenges the leader, who controls the group and sets a moral code based on loyalty. If you break that, you're out. You'd rather stay in the group than risk being lonely."
The dynamics change with greater maturity at secondary school, George notes. "One of the girls said that when she got to her new school she looked around and saw who the noisy group were, and kept away. Girls are better able to assess what's going on as they get older, they can see the potential for destructive situations, so they develop skills to make sure the painful things don't happen. They're more careful about who they make friends with.
"The leader may find that she gradually loses popularity and power, and is marginalised. At primary school you're in one class so you can control events. At secondary school, when you're in different classes for different subjects, you have less control."
What shocked George was her observation that some teachers don't recognise the damage created by manipulative friendships. "The girls who are leaders can dupe teachers too," she says. "Teachers want to share these girls' popularity so they acclaim their excellent work to the head, and they don't see that the leader has marginalised her peers and that as a teacher they're reinforcing that. Often a leader will make girls look bad – perhaps by saying another girl wants all her attention and she wants to be friends with everybody – so that she looks good. That's when you get talking behind backs, note passing, cyber bullying.
"Yet I found that some schools are more concerned with girls understanding the layout of the school than social arrangements. Teachers need to be aware that if girls are unhappy, this can stop them learning."
Dr Anne Hudson is headteacher at Langley Park school for girls in Beckenham, Kent, one of the schools where George did her research. Well aware of George's point, she expects her staff to recognise and deal with friendship problems, and the school makes counselling available to girls with serious emotional difficulties. "Women are carers and this means that girls' sense of identity and self worth is partly dependent on the feedback they get from their peers," Hudson says. "They don't learn well when they're unhappy so an emotional issue can mean they start underachieving."
Maria, a calm and shy girl of 12, is a pupil there and is now able to protect herself from bullying, she says. "At primary school, people said things that weren't true. I wouldn't stand up for myself and I didn't feel there was anyone else I could be friends with – I don't know why. There's one girl who blanks me even though I haven't done anything. I've moved away from her and her friends now."
Another pupil, Beth, almost 14, is composed and confident. "It's easier to recognise the nicer people because everyone is growing as a person," she says. "I think more about what I say. One girl told the teacher my friend had hit her, and she hadn't. I had to step in and say the truth."
At Cobourg primary, Naomi, Emily and Cindy have been counselled about friendship by Sue Burgess, who works in a brightly coloured eyrie at the top of the school. She is a project manager for The Place2Be, a charity that provides emotional help in 172 British schools located in areas where children need extra support to thrive. In 2009-10, 43% of the charity's group counselling involved friendship, and 77% of the 20,000 children involved were girls.
"When girls fall out they shut down," says Burgess. "Their lives here are dominated by friendships, and teaching them how to negotiate them is giving them survival skills. If there's stress at home and they see arguing as a way of communicating, that is played out in their friendships. I get them to think about their feelings and then they can learn about respecting each other and feeling safe. I can usually persuade the stronger voices to quieten down and the quieter girls to start speaking up. Then they start to get it."
Children's names have been changed
• Professor George will be giving a lecture on her work at Goldsmiths, University of London. For details about Professor George's lecture contact inaugurals@gold.ac.uk or 020 7919 7033 for free entry
A new proposal to allow college lecturers to teach in schools is highlighting the inequality in pay and conditions between schools and FE
The suggestion delighted the FE sector: according to the government, college lecturers are as qualified as schoolteachers and should no longer be barred from teaching in schools.
The education secretary, Michael Gove, wasted no time in backing Professor Alison Wolf's proposal that staff with qualified teacher learning and skills (QTLS) should be able to work in schools.
The recommendation, part of Wolf's review into the future of vocational education, is mainly designed to make it easier for 14- to 16-year-olds to study extra subjects without having to be bussed to colleges.
But unions representing schoolteachers are not so happy, claiming any change in workforce regulations will drive down pay and disregard training that staff undertake to gain qualified teacher status (QTS).
Chris Keates, general secretary of the NASUWT, says the government is aiming for a "freefall", where school heads and governors could employ anyone they wish. "We would be bringing in people to do the same job on extremely different pay and conditions with different professional standards," she says.
Amanda Brown, assistant secretary for employment conditions at the National Union of Teachers, says: "To teach in a school, you would expect people to have different training. It's a different age group with different pedagogical issues."
An estimated 63,000 teenagers study part-time in colleges, often for half or one day a week. Classes are generally held in colleges because their workshops and other facilities are more suited for vocational courses.
As the law stands, lecturers with QTLS cannot run classes in a school, although staff with QTS may teach in colleges. In her report, Wolf says greater teacher mobility will increase collaboration between schools and colleges. Institutions would set mutually agreed prices for teaching that is outsourced, or bought in, so that funding follows the student or, in some cases, the student's teacher.
It is the prospect of a competitive market for post-14 teachers that horrifies some unions. "There is a danger that people with QTLS could be exploited," says Keates. "The long game is to create a market where people with QTLS come in [to schools] and are paid lower rates."
But the University and College Union, which represents FE lecturers, says it has no intention of undercutting school teachers by accepting lower pay. Instead, Wolf's proposal demonstrates the need for lecturers to be paid in line with school staff at pre-16 and post-16 level.
According to UCU figures, lecturers are generally paid at least 5% less than schoolteachers, although rates vary in colleges. If anything, the gap is widening, with teachers receiving a 2.3% rise in each of the past two years, while lecturers were awarded 1.5% in 2009-10 and just 0.2% this year.
While it is a long-standing UCU policy to see QTLS recognised by schools, Barry Lovejoy, its national head of FE, accepts the other unions' concerns. "We will have further discussions with our sister organisations and hopefully develop a united approach that avoids what we agree is a government strategy to drive down pay and conditions," he says.
The Association of Colleges (AoC) sees the tension over lecturers working in schools as further proof that the funding gap at post-16 level must be closed. Colleges currently receive an average of £280 less per student than school sixth forms.
The government is committed to closing this gap by 2015 by basing post-16 funding on student numbers rather than the qualifications studied. While this would bring post-16 into line with funding for pre-16 students, it would generally mean schools receive less money.
Under Wolf's proposal, 14- to 16-year-olds would only be able to spend 20% of time on non-core subjects, suggesting the maximum a lecturer with vocational expertise would be employed by a school is one day per week.
But Joy Mercer, director of policy at the AoC, doubts that this will happen much, as it normally suits staff and students for lessons to take place in colleges, which draw students from a number of schools. "It's unusual to have enough students in one school taking the same vocational subject," she says.
Regardless of where classes are held, the Institute for Learning (the professional body for post-16 teachers) says QTLS must gain parity with QTS as a point of principle. Depending on the course, theory classes might be held in a school and more practical lessons in a college. "The real winners will be young people," says its chief executive, Toni Fazaeli. "Flexible movement is in the interest of young people, who will have the chance to learn in both settings."
The government says it has no intention to merge QTS and QTLS and that any changes to teaching regulations would require legislation following consultations. The Department for Education is expected to publish its full response to the Wolf report in the next couple of weeks.
The Association for Teachers and Lecturers, which represents staff in schools and FE, is happy for schools to employ staff with QTS or QTLS providing they are paid the same. As many lecturers work part-time, there would be nothing to stop them from having separate contracts with a college and a school. "They would be doing a particular sort of teaching in a school and be paid for it," says Martin Freedman, the ATL's head of pay and conditions.
The introduction of lecturers into schools also has the backing of the Association of School and College Leaders. Martin Ward, the ASCL's deputy general secretary, says it might be necessary for college staff to do a bridging course, as staff with QTS sometimes do before working in colleges.
But he dismisses the idea that heads will use FE lecturers to cut pay in schools. "If there are going to be vocational courses taught in schools, they should be taught by people with vocational expertise," says Ward. "Our members will act as gatekeepers. They won't appoint people who are incapable of doing the job."
Results also indicate young people are finding it difficult to combine their religion with their sexuality
Sex and religion are subjects traditionally avoided at dinner parties, especially in the same sentence. But the supposedly conflicting pulls of sexuality and religion have fascinated writers from the Book of Genesis onwards.
So it is perhaps surprising that there has been little in the way of academic research on the subject until now, says Dr Andrew Yip, lead author of a new report, Religion, Youth and Sexuality, a multi-faith exploration, by sociologists from Nottingham and Nottingham Trent universities.
Aware of what Yip calls "the increasingly sexualised culture in British society today", the researchers set out to look at the challenges faced by young adults of religious faith. "We wanted to explore how they understand their sexuality and their faith, and the significant factors that inform such understandings," Yip says. "Also the strategies they have developed to manage their sexual, religious, youth and gender identities."
What they found was that, although most of the young people felt their religion was a positive force in their lives, there was a strong feeling that religious leaders are out of touch with issues of sexuality.
Nearly 700 people were interviewed, aged between 18 and 25. More than 72% were students, from further and higher education, and they came from six different traditions: Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, Judaism and Sikhism as well as those of mixed faith. "There were, for instance, a few Christians that we interviewed who are now exploring Buddhism," Yip says before confirming that, yes, Buddhists are more liberal on issues of homosexuality and sexual diversity. "Broadly speaking, our Muslim and Christian respondents tended to hold more conservative views."
Those who took part initially filled in an online questionnaire. Later, there were face-to-face interviews and, in some cases, week-long video diaries were recorded. Extracts from the diaries are printed in the report, revealing considerable inner torment in some cases. "There are young people finding it enormously difficult to combine their religion with their sexuality, especially if they are lesbian or gay," says Dr Sarah-Jane Page, a colleague of Yip's at Nottingham's school of sociology and social policy.
A bisexual woman who is an Orthodox Jew says: "I can't see myself living in a long-term relationship with another woman because of my community and my religion. I had a relationship with a girl," she goes on, "and, at some point, I realised that I was gay. But I didn't feel comfortable being Orthodox Jewish and gay, in that I don't want to live in a fringe community ... I couldn't leave Orthodox Judaism. That's my home, my people, where I feel comfortable."
A bisexual Muslim man is quoted as saying: "Telling my parents ... maybe I will feel very relieved, but if it did get out into the community, it will just hurt my parents, and I know it will be hard for me to face the community again. Maybe I'll be thrown from the mosque ... It's quite scary."
Despite these painful dilemmas, Dr Michael Keenan from Nottingham Trent University says: "The majority of religious young adults felt their religion was a positive force in their lives, and many felt that their faith was the most important influence on their sexual values and practices."
However, there is strong feedback from the survey suggesting that religious leaders don't know enough about sexuality. According to Yip, "Other respondents consider institutional religion a social control mechanism that excessively regulates gender and sexual behaviour, without sufficient engagement with young people themselves."
He goes on: "We'd like to see the creation of more safe places in religious communities for young people to engage with religious professionals so they can talk with honesty in the full recognition that they are not being judged. What we're trying to encourage is more dialogue with young people as equal partners rather than a top-down approach. Young people need to be listened to. They have experiences and opinions that are sometimes in contrast with what religious professionals have in mind."
Nearly a third of the 693 young people interviewed believe that celibacy is fulfilling, and more than 83% support the idea of monogamous relationships. Surprisingly, perhaps, more men than women felt that celibacy would be fulfilling, though whether they had themselves or their sisters in mind is not clear.
And which sex most values monogamy? "More women than men, but not considerably more," says Yip. "And it doesn't mean that they think marriage is the only context for monogamy, particularly those who are in same-sex relationships. Even among a significant number of heterosexual respondents there was a firm belief that sex should be allowed within a strong, loving relationship between a couple committed to each other although they may not be in a position to get married."
Yip hopes that the survey, backed by nearly £250,000 from the Arts and Humanities and the Economic and Social research councils, will be of use to professionals involved in youth work and sexual health. "Often, religious sensibilities are not at the forefront of their consciousness," he says, "and we'd like them to take the issue of religious faith seriously."
As it is, sexuality and religion will continue to be considered "uncomfortable bedfellows" in an increasingly secular society, as the researchers put it in their introduction to the report before going on to show that the issue is a lot more complicated than that.
Surgeons reveal their ingenious techniques for retrieving objects from patients' rectums
There's practical advice in Rectal Foreign Bodies: Case Reports and a Comprehensive Review of the World's Literature, a medical study I mentioned here last week. It's full of handy, workaday hints ... if your work involves doing surgery to recover objects that have strayed, as a variety of objects seem to do, from their more usual locations.
The authors, American surgeons David Busch and James Starling, also manage to tell good stories. They do it tersely:
"Light bulbs have been safely removed by padding the glass bulb with fine mesh gauze or cheesecloth followed by deliberate shattering of the object. Other ingenious mechanisms to remove light bulbs include a threaded broom handle and two large kitchen spoons."
"In one instance a drinking glass was removed by packing the rectum with plaster of Paris to include an anchoring rope after the plaster of Paris had set."
The problem goes way back, it seems. "One particularly celebrated 16th-century case involved a woman with a pig's tail inserted high in her rectum with the bristles directed caudad [ie pointing towards the rear]. In this case a hollow reed was cleverly inserted over the tail, which allowed easy removal of both objects together."
The Busch-Starling report of course concerned only objects that had been discovered prior to 1986, its date of publication.
In subsequent years, as consumer confidence soared, so, too, did the purchasing of goods that would find their way into people's rectums. Here are a few highlights from later years.
1987: The American Journal of Forensic Medicine and Pathology published a report entitled Rectal Impaction Following Enema With Concrete Mix.
1991: The Japanese medical journal Nippon Hoigaku Zasshi detailed an unhappy case of Homicide by Rectal Insertion of a Walking Stick.
1994: The American Journal of Gastroenterology reported a case of Toothpick in Ano.
1999: The Journal of Emergency Medicine reported the case of an oven mitt discovered inside a 20-year-old man.
The 21st century has already been delivering up new wonders. In 2001, the medical journal Rozhledy v Chirurgii reported that a porcelain cup was found in a gentleman in the Czech Republic. That same year the British Dental Journal, in an article called "Don't forget your toothbrush!" chronicled the case of a patient who did.
Then, last year, the Arab Journal of Gastroenterology published a study called Foreign Bodies in the Rectum: A Report on Three Cases Including a Bullhorn in the Rectum. You might think that by "bullhorn" they mean "portable loudspeaker". You would be wrong. The report's authors, based at hospitals in Indore and Navi Mumbai, India, write: "Only three cases of cattlehorn in rectum have been described so far; we report herewith on a fourth one." They supply helpful context: A "12cm long bullhorn, which was painted by the patient (he used to worship the horn before and after each act of insertion)."
• Marc Abrahams is editor of the bimonthly Annals of Improbable Research and organiser of the Ig Nobel prize
If universities all charge much higher fees, the government will have to find another way to reduce demand for places, suggests Bahram Bekhradnia, and potential students will lose out
Last week, the Office for Fair Access (Offa) produced guidance about what it would require in the access agreements that universities must negotiate. In doing so, it was responding to the government's repeated demands that Offa should use these access agreements to control the fees that universities charge. The reality will be that universities will do whatever they need to do to satisfy Offa, and this is unlikely to provide an effective way of controlling fees.
The government is in a bind, and universities are potentially in trouble as well. The maximum fee has been set at £9,000. But in calculating the cost of the subsidies it would have to provide for student loans, the government assumed that the average fee would be just £7,500. The Browne committee, on which the government' s proposals have been based, anticipated the creation of a market in fees as the mechanism for controlling price – something that was always extremely dubious, but looks less likely by the day.
Unless student demand can be constrained in some way that is not yet apparent, demand will outstrip supply substantially, and unless it can find other mechanisms for controlling fees, they are likely to be well above the government's expectation. At present, the access agreements that universities are required to enter into with Offa are the only mechanism available. The reality is that Offa's powers are extremely limited, and the guidance it published last week largely sets out expectations about the amount universities should spend on widening participation, requiring greater investment from those that have been least successful in the past.
There is something ironic and somewhat disturbing about Offa's approach. Because universities will no longer receive grants directly from the government for teaching-related activity, all of this expenditure will in effect be borne by students through fees. How will students react when they understand that not only are the fees they pay to be trebled, but that up to one third of those fees will not be used on their education, but on widening participation activity?
It is ironic that when in opposition David Willetts, who is generally a wise and humane man, said repeatedly that he would only countenance an increase in fee levels if universities could show that additional fees would be used to benefit those who paid them. Here we have a requirement that a substantial part of the increased fee should explicitly not be used for their benefit.
Offa's approach attempts to provide a disincentive to universities to charge higher fees by increasing the cost if they do so. But the irony of this is that the more universities are told they will have to spend on widening participation, the higher the fee they are likely to feel they need to charge in order to provide the income they need for teaching and learning. This approach is unlikely to have the effect of dampening fees.
But let us be in no doubt, the government has a budget, and it will do whatever it feels is needed in order to stay within that budget, however unpalatable or damaging in the long-term.
What else can it do? Well, it can either reduce its expenditure in other parts of the HE budget – and that means either the residual amount left for investment in teaching, or research funding; or it can raise the cost to students even more – and there is a separate issue here, because its calculations about the cost of loan subsidies are almost certainly an underestimate, so rises in the interest rate or in the length of time payments have been made are very likely anyway.
But even worse, the most likely outcome is that it will renew its attempts to create a rigged market by reducing demand – or if not reducing demand, then choking it off in one way or another – deeming to be ineligible students who might previously have gone to university, or controlling the extent to which universities might enrol such students.
Such an outcome would directly damage participation. These are not happy times either for universities or the government, but the real losers will be future generations of young people.
• Bahram Bekhradnia is director of the Higher Education Policy Institute. He will be among the speakers on Wednesday at the third Guardian higher education summit: guardian.co.uk/higher-education-network For live tweeting from the event follow #HE2011
Parents in Lincolnshire fear that their local schools are being railroaded into applying for academy status by a service provider
It makes an unlikely setting for a passionate outburst of frustration at the "big society", the alleged privatisation of state education and claims of a deficit in democratic accountability. But the front room of a terraced house in Louth, Lincolnshire, seems central to that argument now, as members of a "Save our Schools" group discuss proposals – some of them not yet public – that raise the possibility of the bulk of the county's schools leaving the local authority to become academies.
The four members of the group discussing the plans, who are all parents with children aged between three and 14, are incensed about the possibility of this happening at both primary and secondary level. It is the primary element that seems the more intensely contentious.
The controversy raises questions about public and private interests in state education, and the extent to which communities have the right to influence decisions being made about the future of state schools, as institutions across England are encouraged to consider academy status.
The group has discussed a letter, which has been seen by Education Guardian, sent last month to all primary heads and chairs of governors in Lincolnshire, setting out proposals for their schools to leave the authority and become academies. This is proposed to happen under an organisation with an aim, its annual accounts for 2010 say, to become "a significant provider of state-funded schooling" by 2012.
The letter was sent by Andy Breckon, a director of not-for-profit body CfBT, which has been running outsourced school improvement services for Lincolnshire since 2002. Breckon is therefore also head of school improvement for Lincolnshire.
Under the headings "Lincolnshire School Improvement Services" and "CfBT Education Trust", the letter invited recipients to a meeting on 3 March to discuss an "emerging proposal for Lincolnshire schools to join the CfBT Schools' Trust".
The letter says the plan would enable schools to become academies as part of the trust, thus achieving higher levels of funding "within a supportive collegiate structure".
Schools, it says, would pay a membership fee to CfBT, which would not be "anywhere near the funding levels currently top-sliced by local authorities, and therefore all schools will be in a stronger financial position than at present". The letter adds: "This proposal has the support of senior councillors at Lincolnshire County Council."
The parents' group was astounded, as the county council had not said anything officially about whether schools should move to academy status since last June, when a letter to schools from Peter Duxbury, director of children's services, set out a string of risks.
Sarah Dodds, the founder of Louth Save our Schools, says the letter suggests a private organisation using its close links to the county council to push its own agenda, without any general public discussion.
Dodds, a mother of four and part-time primary school supply teacher, says: "Mr Breckon claims that the proposal has the support of 'senior councillors' within the council. However, my source at the council is 100% sure it has not been sanctioned in a council meeting.
"The fact that a firm can offer school improvement services to a local authority while simultaneously touting them to become academies must be a moral conflict of interest at best.
"And how could CfBT seriously provide future impartial school improvement services to schools who resist the temptation and stay within the local authority?"
To academy critics, such as the Anti Academies Alliance, the case illustrates the problems that could develop across the country as England's tradition of local authority organisation of schools could give way to a future in which private bodies, each with their own objectives, can have greater influence.
The Save our Schools group, which has accrued 150 members since Dodds set it up six weeks ago, believes the move amounts to a potential backdoor privatisation of primary schools in the county.
Although it is up to individual school governing bodies to decide whether to go with the plan, the group says that institutions, worried about tight budgets, are being influenced towards it by CfBT.
Charlotte Hopkinson, another Louth parent, says: "What is being proposed for primary schools is just terrifying. Not many people know that this meeting [for the heads and chairs of governors, attended by around 100 people, according to the council] even happened."
The lack of public discussion of the plans angers the parents most. Under last year's Academies Act, governors have to consult on their plans, following a concession by ministers to opponents. However, governing bodies are still allowed to leave community consultation until after an application for academy status – and decision by ministers – has been made. Academies are only required to have one parent on their governing bodies.
Hopkinson says: "Everything is hidden. You get the impression the attitude is: 'we are not going to tell you till we have made our decision'."
Zoe Bunting, who has a daughter in year 5 at a Louth primary, says: "How can anyone talk about the big society when schools are being taken out of community hands in order to privatise them?"
The primary schools themselves seem reluctant to discuss the letter or any academy plans. Education Guardian approached 10 Lincolnshire primary heads at random last week. Two offered a message of "no comment" without coming to the telephone. The other eight did not return messages.
John Hough, a Labour county councillor within this Conservative-led authority and vice-chairman of the council's children and young people's scrutiny committee, says: "What is the county council's position? It is not clear.
"CfBT are effectively suggesting that if schools do not sign up, they are almost not going to be able to continue. That's the way heads are interpreting it. This should be subject to proper process and go through proper public scrutiny."
Although the group has only 150 members, there is a tradition of standing up to large organisations in this market town in the Lincolnshire Wolds, with a "Keep Louth Special" campaign having resisted large superstores in the town centre.
CfBT, formerly the Centre for British Teachers, is based in Reading, and had an income in the year to April 2010 of £151m, employing 2,400 people worldwide, according to its Charity Commission accounts. It lists its principal objective as to "advance education for the public benefit".
It used to run the national literacy and primary strategies for the Labour government. It runs seven private schools, and academies in Merton, south London, and Oxford. Among its other work is school improvement in Lambeth, south London, Ofsted inspections, school support in Abu Dhabi, Singapore and Brunei and running a for-profit firm running English language and teacher training in India.
CfBT's annual accounts for the year to March 2010 say that the UK environment in which it operates is "currently very difficult", in the light of government cuts.
It adds: "Our aims are to be a significant provider of state-funded schools, and consolidate our position in fee-funded independent schooling," among others, while also "responding to opportunities to participate in the management of US charter schools and UK free schools".
The plans for secondaries in the Louth area, which prompted the group's formation, are unusual. In January, four schools and a further education college announced proposals to consider options including merging to become one academy.
There is no suggestion, as yet, of private sponsorship and no link with CfBT. Among the reasons for the discussions are falling rolls and worries among secondaries, in this county of grammar schools, that the government could force them to become academies anyway because of poor results.
Figures from Hough suggest that 25 secondaries in Lincolnshire are either already academies or considering conversion, while 43 have yet to declare any plan to move towards academy status.
So far, nationally, 467 academies were open at the start of March. Numbers will grow dramatically. A poll published on Saturday said nearly half of England's secondaries were now either planning to become academies, or already had the status.
Sally Lockren, the National Union of Teachers representative at one of the secondary schools considering the academy move, says: "I always thought the [traditional] state system would keep going in the county because primary schools are not going to leave the authority.
"Now it looks like we are looking at the end of state education in Lincolnshire."
Lincolnshire County Council responds to a request for comment with a document on notepaper headed "Lincolnshire School Improvement Services/CfBT Education Trust". It will not say whether the CfBT proposal has been formally discussed in council.
It adds that it is for school governors, rather than the council, to decide on academy status. Two senior councillors – the leader, Martin Hill, and the portfolio-holder for children's services, Patricia Bradwell – support the CfBT proposals, it says, but the council's position has not changed since Duxbury's letter last year.
It adds: "Over the last few years, a number of proposals have been made that CfBT should sponsor an academy, and CfBT and the county council considered that this was a conflict of interest.
"However, after the Academies Act 2010 came into existence, where schools themselves were able to choose to become an academy, a number of schools approached CfBT and asked if they could join the CfBT Trust. CfBT does not believe there is a conflict of interest as it is school governors making the decisions, and CfBT is just one of a range of options."
The council added that no primary school had yet decided to join the trust. CfBT itself is not allowed to comment, under the terms of its school improvement contract, it says.
Students in further education have not been known for their activism. Until now
Shane Chowen could be about to make history. After two years as vice-president (FE) of the NUS, he is standing for the top job, with strong backing from senior officers. If he wins, he will be the first NUS president who hasn't been a student in higher education, giving a voice to learners at further education colleges, who until recently, were often on the sideline of student politics.
Despite having twice as many students as universities, FE colleges have not traditionally been known for their political activism. Around 50 of the 419 colleges in the UK have full-time sabbatical officers in their student unions (compared to all of the 115 UK universities). Some don't even have student unions at all. Chowen's role, as NUS vice-president with a specific responsibility for FE, was introduced just a few years ago.
But FE students have never been apathetic, he says. "FE offers such a wide range of courses and training routes, it can be difficult to engage learners in student politics – particularly those involved in work-based learning. They simply may not be around very much."
Now things are changing, he says. More than 100,000 NUS members have taken part in protests, at both national and regional level, against the abolition of Education Maintenance Allowance (EMA) in recent months. At some colleges, learners have turned out in hard hats, overalls and chefs' whites to make their point.
The campaign has given FE students something they hadn't had before – a common vision. As well as organising and taking part in protests, the NUS encouraged students to email their MPs and education ministers with their concerns about proposals to scrap the EMA.
Toni Pearce, student union president at Cornwall College, says FE students have always had strong opinions but didn't always know how to articulate them. "There were all these assumptions, like if you want to protest, you have to go to London, or that MPs' surgeries are just for the middle aged. Now students know it is their right to organise a protest or raise concerns with their MP."
Shane Mann has also noticed the change. Having spent two years as student union president at City College Norwich, he recently helped to lead a successful campaign against Norfolk county council's plans to withdraw its £2.5m annual travel subsidy for FE students. "For some, this was the difference between being able to afford to go to college or not. Young people have always cared, but now they are increasingly fighting their corner and stand up for local services."
Chowen believes that one of the biggest successes of the EMA campaign has been getting the support of the trade union representatives from many of the big unions like UCU, GMB and Unite who have helped student unions to organise protests.
James Mills, head of the Save EMA campaign, says he has been swamped with emails from young people asking how they can get into politics. "These are not just some young politicos who want to impress their mums, but young energised campaigners with a cause."
The growth of social networking is also a big factor, with students organising and publicising protests and petitions through Facebook pages, Twitter feeds and other social media. "Not only has this allowed students to speak to a wider audience, it has also made politics more accessible in general," says Chowen, who is himself an avid tweeter and "Facebooker". "I was meeting a Tory MP recently and students were tweeting me with questions to ask him beforehand. I'm not sure students have ever been able to engage politicians – or senior NUS officers – that directly before. It opens up lots of possibilities."
The NUS says it is expecting record numbers of FE delegates at its national conference at Gateshead's Sage centre next month. And in the last six months alone, four more colleges – Amersham and Wycombe, Walsall, Hull and Tresham – have announced they are to appoint a full-time paid sabbatical officer in their student union.
The principal of Middlesborough College, Mike Hopkins, says he won't be far behind. Despite recently having to make cuts to senior jobs at the college, he is hoping to have a full-time, paid sabbatical officer in place by July, on a salary of around £11,500. "At a time when we are all expected to make savings, people might ask why we're investing in this. But I truly believe in democracy and that students should be at the heart of any decision-making that goes on at the college. To show that you're taking it seriously, you have to be prepared to pay for it."
Lynne Sedgemore, executive director of the 157 group of colleges, agrees: "I welcome college learners stepping up to form a more powerful student voice in FE. At such a pivotal time in the skills agenda we need vocal and experienced students to fight for what is right and important."
But there is still work to do to make sure the voices of FE students are heard, says Pearce (also a prolific tweeter) who has thrown her hat into the ring to follow Chowen as a NUS vice-president (FE). She was disappointed by some of the media coverage of the EMA protests, and felt it gave out the wrong impression of FE. "A lot of the coverage focused on A-level students in schools, which is just not an accurate representation of the sector."
Harlow College student Simone Webb thinks there is also a tendency to focus on students in higher education and that this completely ignores the wide range of courses on offer at FE colleges, including the fact that many offer HE courses. " There is tendency to assume that when we're talking about students we just mean those studying at university. So, as an FE student, it's is easy to feel you are disconnected from the student movement."
Says Chowen: "Having a president who hasn't been through higher education would be a real step change for the student movement. If I do become president, I'd be keen to redefine commonly held perceptions of what a student is."
Independent schools are lining up to express an interest in training teachers
Private school headteacher Anthony Seldon has scrapped "last century" GCSEs and introduced lessons in happiness and large oval desks. A-level results have shot up, and now he is turning his attention to the state sector.
His school, Wellington College, one of the most expensive in the country, wants to become one of the government's new teaching schools and train teachers for the state sector. The £29,000 college in Crowthorne, Berkshire, is one of 18 independent schools that have registered an interest in attaining a similar status to teaching hospitals, responsible for both initial and postgraduate teacher training.
Independent schools do not require their staff to have qualified teacher status, a fact that makes their enthusiasm to become trainers surprising. They have also had to overcome opposition from some local authorities and teachers to closer relations through Labour's independent/state-school partnership scheme. So, will trainee teachers heading for jobs in the state sector risk signing up with an independent teaching school?
Barriers between state and private education have broken down over the last five years, says Seldon. "I think the class war warriors that have dominated for 30 years or more with their apartheid, 'no surrender or compromise' mentality are now voices of the past," he says.
Consultation on the proposal in the white paper, The Importance of Teaching, published last November, was promised for the new year, but has been delayed amid the furious opposition from universities to the loss of funding, which will switch from their education departments to schools. The government is expected to produce its consultation paper within the next few weeks.
Universities will continue to have a role to validate the degrees and support the students, but the white paper says only "the best HE providers of initial teacher training" will be invited by the government to open new University Training Schools.
Million+, which represents new universities, says the proposal flies in the face of inspection evidence that university-based training is much more likely to be deemed excellent than existing school-based routes into the profession.
The National Union of Teachers has also condemned the plan, saying the loss of in-depth, theoretical training will undermine the status of the profession and jeopardise the education of young people.
But around 900 schools have registered an interest in training status and will attend a conference later this month organised by the National College – formerly the National College for Leadership of Schools. Around 500 schools will be designated by 2015.
To be successful, independent schools will need to have been deemed "excellent" by the Independent Schools Inspectorate, have strong leadership and extensive and successful links with state schools.
Seldon says he wants to be at the cutting edge of teaching and learning. "We are enormously keen on links between state and independents, and we have here a large number of innovations which we think could be tried out in state schools, such as the middle years programme of the international baccalaureate and the eight aptitudes approach to learning," he says.
"I think the independent sector has more to learn from the state sector, particularly about professionalism in teaching and learning." Equally, as state schools are given more control over their affairs, they can learn things from schools in the independent sector that have been going it alone for much longer, he says.
Babington House, a very different school in Chislehurst, Kent, has also registered an interest. The small, mixed-ability private day school for pupils aged 3-16 has extensive links with local state schools and sees training status as a natural progression.
Deborah Odysseas-Bailey, its headteacher, says people may be surprised at an independent school wanting to be involved so directly with a government initiative. "But if you are interested in continual professional development and continually striving to improve teaching and learning for your pupils, why wouldn't you want to be a teaching school?" she says.
Her staff discuss lesson plans and educational visits with teachers in local state schools. "We are professionals who can learn from each other. I have taught in state schools, as have many of our teachers, and pupils swap between the sectors as well."
One of the barriers to effective state and independent school partnerships in the past has been local education authorities and politicians, she says. "Now local education authorities are having to devolve more responsibility to schools, headteachers are in a better position to initiate partnerships."
One objection to involving independent schools is the fear that students will get a one-dimensional view of teaching. But, she says, "through their partners in both the independent and state sector, teaching schools will be able to provide a range of teaching experiences for their trainees".
"There is no reason why independent schools should not be able to provide initial teacher training in collaboration with state schools," says Tony Ashmore, the policy adviser to the National Education Trust, who has recently evaluated the partnership schemes between Eton College and state schools in Slough, Berkshire.
"At the start, there was perhaps a feeling that the partnerships were altruistic and one-sided, but talking to staff at Eton, they found educational practices in the state sector, such as the importance of assessment for learning, could be more fully addressed in the independent sector," he says. "The focus in independent schools has tended to be on the wellbeing of youngsters and subject expertise. Tearchers have not had to address the classroom challenges faced by some of their colleagues in the state sector and there is a feeling they have some catching up to do," he says.
Judith Fenn, head of schools services for the Independent Schools Council, points out that the council has been running teacher induction programmes since 1999 and over the last six years more than 5,000 newly qualified teachers have done their induction year at an independent school.
Chris Keates, general secretary of the NASUWT, says her union is: "extremely concerned that this proposal and the use of independent schools could result in the privatisation of teacher training, resulting in an emphasis on ensuring that profits are made rather than that quality is ensured."
education.letters@guardian.co.uk
Vocational education could be a better route for up to half of students and the goverment should recognise that, says Mike Baker
Yet another review of vocational education has brought on that sinking feeling again. The promise of a government response to the Wolf review should alert us to another plunging swoop down the big-dipper of vocational education policy.
The problem of what to do about non-academic pupils has beset policy-makers in England for at least 50 years. There has been a bewildering alphabet-soup of new initiatives, courses and qualifications. But nothing has emerged as a gold standard.
And the losers are, of course, the young people themselves, many of whom have been left with qualifications that, within a few years, no one recognises any more.
Concern about our system's failure of non-academic pupils goes back at least to the Newsom report of 1963, which coined the phrase "half our future". As Newsom put it: they represent "half the pupils of our secondary schools; they will eventually become half the citizens of this country, half the workers, half the mothers and fathers, and half the consumers".
In one sense, we have moved on from the 1960s. The great majority now stay on in education not just to 16 (as Newsom had urged) but to 18. There are practical courses, vocational courses and even those that have tried to bridge academic and vocational education.
But still the most highly valued qualifications are A-levels, which are aimed at only about a third of the cohort and were originally designed purely as a university-entrance filter.
The Wolf review makes some sound, no-nonsense points, noting that a large proportion of 16- to 19-year-olds are on courses that fail to promote progression into either employment or further education. This is a scandal, particularly as funding and accountability systems have, as Wolf says, created "perverse incentives" to steer some 16-year-olds into "inferior" qualifications.
Professor Alison Wolf notes that vocational education has been "bedevilled by well-meaning attempts to pretend that everything is worth the same as everything else". However, while the diagnosis is powerful, I am not convinced by all of the proposed remedies.
In particular, Wolf seems to pin too much faith on academic qualifications. She wants all students under 19 to continue trying to get GCSEs in maths and English, however often they have failed. She also recommends that students aged 14 to 16 should spend no more than 20% of their time on a vocational specialism.
This would appear to rule out Lord Baker's new university technical colleges, where students will spend 40% of the timetable on practical skills. It also seems to drive another nail into the coffin of the diplomas at key stage 4.
Sadly, diplomas now seem like yesterday's discarded toys; the policy-makers have got bored with them. Yet tens of thousands of students have chosen to study them. While they have their problems (not least their complexity), they have been praised by Ofsted and by the schools as motivating for students.
And motivation is the key. Just telling 16- to 19-year-olds that they must keep flogging what must seem to them a dead horse will not encourage them to study. The better-designed diplomas – with their mix of work-related principal learning plus functional skills – should equip young people with both practical skills and essential numeracy and literacy.
And remember that functional skills, while they may not be perfect, were developed because GCSEs in maths and English were not considered to be any guarantee of the sort of functional literacy and numeracy employers wanted.
And finally, while on the issue of perverse incentives, isn't that precisely what the government's new English bac will prove? With a nervous eye on league tables, some schools may push pupils down an inappropriate academic route.
The strongest message from the Wolf review is that successive governments have repeatedly failed to develop a workable system of vocational education. The best thing future governments can do is to just stop interfering and let schools, colleges, employers and awarding bodies work out what is best for students not aiming for university.
The education secretary, Michael Gove, has accepted that the inclusion of vocational qualifications in league tables has a perverse effect and will remove them. He should now take the next logical step and remove the Ebac performance indicator, too, rather than trying to rig the qualifications market in a different direction.
• www.mikebakereducation.co.uk
Robin Alexander headed the biggest review of primary education for decades. Now he pleads for schools to teach a richly rounded curriculum
How capacious yet capricious is the dustbin of history. Just over a year ago, the 600-page final report of the Cambridge Primary Review (CPR), product of the most comprehensive inquiry into English primary education for half a century, was dismissed by Labour, misrepresented and unread. For many, this underscored the report's significance. Meanwhile, the "independent" Rose curriculum framework was imposed on England's primary schools. According to Mick Waters, then head of curriculum at the Qualifications and Curriculum Development Agency (QCDA), this, too, was a pre-emptive strike against the inconvenient truths emerging from Cambridge.
It was reckless, too: Labour knew that Rose's implementation depended on legislation for which parliament had almost run out of time, and the Conservatives in opposition had made it clear that they would drop Rose if elected. Which they did.
Now we have a new national curriculum review for England's schools. It promises "rigour, fairness and freedom", an end to exhaustive prescription and bloated documentation, and a return to the national curriculum's initial purpose: a statement of children's minimum entitlement to core knowledge in a few essential subjects, which leaves teachers free to decide how these should be taught and what else should be included. With QCDA consigned to Cameron's quango tumbril, the review is being undertaken at the Department for Education by an advisory committee supported by an "expert panel" of senior academics who are charged with ensuring that what emerges "is based on evidence and informed by international best practice". Two of the panel's four members, as it happens, were on the implementation team of the Cambridge Primary Review.
In direct response to a key recommendation in the CPR final report, the government has also agreed to undertake a review of primary schools' capacity to teach a broad, balanced and coherent curriculum to the highest possible standard. For, as the CPR insists, "entitlement" must be about the quality of teaching, not merely the number of subjects taught; and Ofsted evidence shows that our best primary schools achieve high standards in literacy and numeracy by celebrating, not neglecting, everything else. Politically counter-intuitive perhaps, but true.
Yet Ofsted has also reported that many children encounter a two-tier curriculum in which the undeniably crucial "basics" are protected while the rest takes its chances in terms of the quality of teaching as well as allocated time; and research shows how this qualitative hierarchy has been reinforced by the relative neglect of the non-core subjects in primary teachers' training and by an ill-conceived "standards" regime that has eroded the wider curriculum while using test scores in literacy and numeracy as proxies for children's attainment across the board – as if, beyond the "basics", standards don't matter. It is encouraging, then, that the government acknowledges the need for liaison between its reviews of curriculum, assessment and primary schools' curriculum capacity.
Yet those who want to make a grounding in basic skills part of a rounded education should remain vigilant. The national curriculum review's consultation asks what should be included in just four subjects whose pre-eminence is presumed but barely argued. In less than even-handed contrast, we are invited to say whether the remaining eight subjects in the current national curriculum should be compulsory or left to chance, though not whether anything not on the current list should be there or whether this is the best way to frame a curriculum. Like most official curriculum reviews, this one also bypasses that discussion of the purposes and priorities of public education without which decisions about a curriculum's scope, balance and content are meaningless. True, educational aims and assumptions are implicit in the choices that the consultation invites and forecloses, but these are not up for debate.
So, at the start of the latest national curriculum review, two versions of "minimal entitlement" appear to be on offer. Minimalism 1 reduces entitlement to a handful of subjects deemed uniquely essential on the grounds of utility and international competitiveness. The first criterion is too narrowly defined and the second falls foul of the hazards of international comparison.
Minimalism 2, which the review's remit makes possible but doesn't overtly encourage, foregrounds the educational imperative of breadth by making a wider range of subjects statutory. Minimalism 2 strives to balance the different ways of knowing, understanding, investigating and making sense that are central to the needs of young children and to our culture – and hence, surely, to an entitlement curriculum – and achieves the required parsimony by stripping back the specified content of each subject to its essential core. This is a very different core curriculum to the winner-takes-all version with which we are more familiar. Rather than a small number of core subjects, we have core learnings across a broad curriculum, every subject or domain of which, by reference to a well argued set of aims, is deemed essential to a basic education.
And what price the new freedoms? During the 1970s and 1980s, inspection evidence showed that many primary schools exercised their pre-national curriculum autonomy by pursuing, de facto, minimalism 1. Literacy and numeracy were always taught, but the fate of the rest of the curriculum depended on the inclinations and subject expertise of a school's largely generalist teaching staff. In our best primary schools, this autonomy yielded a curriculum of vision, vitality and rigour. At worst, it meant that during their seven critical years of primary education many children encountered little or no science, history, music or drama, and when they did, those encounters were fleeting and undemanding. In these primary schools, teachers' freedom to choose what subjects to teach, and with what degree of conviction, in effect denied their pupils the later freedom of choice for which a balanced and well taught foundational curriculum, grounded in much more than functional literacy, is the minimum prerequisite. Especially hard hit, as always, were those children whose families lacked the resources to make good the deficit out of school.
This is the warning from recent educational history that the government's national curriculum review must not ignore. Freedom for teachers – a necessary corrective to 13 years of obsessive and patronising government micro-management – cannot be pursued at the expense of young children's need for a proper foundation for later learning and choice. But breadth alone is not enough, and that's why the government's other review, prompted by the CPR, of primary schools' capacity to advance high standards across the entire curriculum, is such a vital part of the reform effort.
And what of the free schools and academies? In gaining the freedom not to teach the national curriculum, are they exempted from these imperatives? The principle of entitlement, surely, is indivisible.
• Professor Robin Alexander is director of the Cambridge Primary Review, now in its dissemination and networking phase: www.primaryreview.org.uk
Heroic teachers, embarrassing funding sources and profit-making universities
Last week, teachers gave their responses to Jamie's Dream School, on Channel 4,in which Rolf Harris taught art, Mary Beard taught Latin and David Starkey told a student he was fat
When I was 11 and making heavy weather of algebra, my maths teacher called me a "decomposed lump of muck". It wasn't encouraging, but no one found her methods unnacceptable or took her to task.
Victoria Owens
Bristol
• I'd like to know if Jamie Oliver would even consider letting celebrities work in his restaurants, or would prefer people who know what they are doing.
LarrydelaCrois via EducationGuardian.co.uk
• Rolf Harris was better at teaching than the others. There is a reason for this. He and I graduated from the same teachers' college in Perth, Australia. He is an experienced classroom teacher.
einsteinsdaughter via EducationGuardian.co.uk
• I think this programme will show that real teachers are real heroes. My first lesson was well prepared, well planned, had aims and objectives, but I wasn't used to teaching of this kind; I got better pretty quick, I think. Hope you'll stay tuned long enough to see the improvement!
MaryBeard via EducationGuardian.co.uk
Matthew Partridge asked whether it is possible for universities to make sure they do not accept funds from sources that could later turn out to be embarrassing, such as the Libyan regime
The London School of Economics has lost a great director as a result of a witchhunt by newspapers. LSE's ties with the regime have been in the public domain for years and nobody cared until Libya became a trending topic.
Ruledfeint via EducationGuardian.co.uk
• Matthew Partridge goes straight to the crux of the matter. Because we cannot predict the future, the entrepreneurial model of funding we are increasingly moving towards inevitably gives rise to the public discomfort being experienced by the LSE and other universities.
However, insufficient emphasis is being given in the current debate to the impact on students. Now, they also have to worry about who might be bank-rolling their education. This in addition to which subject to choose, whether they'll get a place (if they opt for university education at all) and how to repay the state through taxation. Can it really only be as recently as 1997 that students' main worries were stretching themselves academically and stretching their grant to last the full term?
Gareth Dent,
Open College of the Arts, Barnsley
Roger Brown asked whether opening the door to for-profit providers would be good for UK higher education
The US seems to manage: no one in their right mind thinks the standing or educational rigour of Stanford or Penn are jeopardised by the existence of profit-making institutions elsewhere.
MrBendy via EducationGuardian.co.uk
• I've worked in both the not-for-profit and for-profit sectors, on both sides of the Atlantic. For-profit providers are more focused on student support, and on providing a good learning experience (no students, no salaries). Nor should one think that not-for-profits are not concerned with making a "profit". They are, but it's simply called a surplus.
GeoffreyAlderman via EducationGuardian.co.uk
Forensics students fear uncertain jobs market as government service prepares to close
More than 30 white-coated criminologists, biologists, lawyers and psychologists are bustling around a crime scene. A rape has taken place in a park, and the suspect has fled to a nearby squat. Criminologists are busy safeguarding the remnants of a sexual assault from contamination, and recording the footprint impressions, soil and clothing samples. Biologists are carefully removing it for analysis, as psychologists and lawyers prepare to interview the distraught victim.
Luckily, however, this isn't a real crime scene: it's a mock rape case set up by the University of Portsmouth, investigated by its criminology and forensics students, and acted out by drama undergraduates. The two-day event allowed students to use forensic skills to secure a "conviction" to a tough test case, and follow it through from the discovery of the crime and evidence analysis to the presentation of findings in a replica of a Crown Court, complete with dock, witness box, public gallery, jury rooms and interview rooms.
The popularity of forensic studies has rocketed over the last decade. TV shows such as CSI, Bones and Silent Witness helped demand for Portsmouth's criminology and forensic studies course rise 13% this year alone. Nationwide, interest has soared, with 8,685 undergraduates and postgraduates studying on more than 100 forensic and archaeological science courses last year, according to the Higher Education Statistics Agency (Hesa). That was up 12% from 2005, when 7,710 students were studying the subject.
But now many of these students are facing career turmoil. The government-owned Forensic Science Service – where many had hoped to eventually work – is to be axed, the cost-slashing coalition government announced in December. And undergraduates have been left anxious about the impact on their careers.
"When I heard the FSS was being axed, I was worried," says Jade Morgan, 22, a student on Portsmouth's criminology and forensic studies degree. "It's due to shut down in 2012 – the year I graduate." The news has not put Morgan off the degree – "there will still be many crime scenes to process, with or without the FSS," she says.
"I aspire to become a scenes-of-crime officer – I've been told that no two days at work are the same, which is exactly what I'm looking for in a career." But she adds: "I'm sure it will be a challenge to find work. It's tough in general to find a job in the current economic climate, but one of my concerns is that when I'm applying for jobs, I'll be facing competition from people who have worked at the FSS."
Even before the FSS was earmarked for closure, there was already a mismatch in supply and demand. The FSS employed 1,600 people – not all of them scientists – while LGC Forensics, Britain's largest private provider, employs 500 people. But with more than 8,500 forensics students in the UK, it's little surprise that the FSS website warns applicants that its advertised jobs see responses from 1,000 applicants.
Some of the FSS's jobs will transfer from the public to the private sector but, experts say, not as many.
"It's too early in the current discussions within the industry and academia to know exactly what the long-term outcomes will be," admits John Cassella, professor at Staffordshire University's forensics department. He says academics – who have mainly previously worked within the forensic, policing, or scientific industries – "have all seen major changes and worked within the parameters available to ensure that standards are maintained, jobs are secured and the industry develops and prospers." This current situation, he adds, "is no different".
But students on the popular course feel differently. Matthew Perryman, 21, is a third-year forensics science student at Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge. "I've always wanted to work in forensics, my first choice is to work in ballistics recovering evidence from shootings or explosions and working with police and counter-terrorism squads," says Perryman. "If the FSS hadn't closed down and the recession hadn't happened, I'd feel quite confident about my job prospects. Over 90% of graduates on my course at AR have a job in forensics or science a year after graduation – that's one of the reasons I chose it.
"But as things stand, I'm more worried. I'll probably have to study further, do a master's and get more lab-based experience before I get a job. The FSS was obviously most people's first choice for a job after graduating in forensics. I'm hopeful that some of the private companies will fill the recruitment gap, but I'm also considering going abroad, to Europe, America or even Australia. I'll go where the work is."
For now, current forensics science undergraduates should focus on learning general science skills, in case there aren't enough industry jobs on graduation, says Paul Smith, a senior lecturer at Portsmouth's Institute of Criminal Justice Studies. "It's important to teach transferable skills that give students more employment opportunities across a range of careers." He explains: "The focus may be on scientific methodology, enhancing problem-solving skills, research skills, instilling an investigative mindset and a range of other skills to augment the students' employability potential."
However, academics are hoping that there may be a silver lining to the FSS closure: the austerity measures engulfing the policing sector could leave universities the best equipped to step in. "The provision of forensic science services is as prevalent now as it ever has been," says Smith. "I'm sure there will be some business opportunities for some universities, and more importantly I think there will be a greater requirement to collaborate in research and consolidate services with the local authority and police."
Portsmouth has begun working with local police forces to set up the Science and Technology Information Network (Satin), sharing new research, technologies and techniques between academics and practitioners. Students have also been involved in the work, and have secured work experience through it. "The crime scene sector, researchers and undergraduates are all going to have to work more collaboratively in future," says Smith.
For many CSI-loving students, even the tough job prospects haven't taken the shine off a degree in forensics. Amy Foroozandeh, 24, is in her second year of a degree in criminology and forensic studies at Portsmouth. It was, she says, the "thought of being able to link an offender to a crime scene" that inspired her degree selection. "My career goal is to become a scenes-of-crime officer and process all different types of crime scenes," she adds. "The FSS being axed has not disheartened me in my attempt to get the job I'd love to do.
Surgeons compile review of the literature on foreign bodies recovered from patients' rectums
In 1995, the Ig Nobel Prize in literature was awarded to two surgeons who painstakingly assembled a study called Rectal Foreign Bodies: Case Reports and a Comprehensive Review of the World's Literature. Those case reports involve, among other items: seven light bulbs; a knife sharpener; two flashlights; a wire spring; a snuff box; an oil can with potato stopper; 11 different forms of fruits, vegetables and other foodstuffs; a jeweller's saw; a frozen pig's tail; a tin cup; a beer glass; and one patient's remarkable ensemble collection consisting of spectacles, a suitcase key, a tobacco pouch and a magazine.
The doctors, David B Busch and James R Starling of Madison, Wisconsin, were inspired by one of their own patients: "A 39-year-old married white male lawyer presented with a self-inserted perfume bottle in his rectum that he was unable to remove using various objects, including a back scratcher."
Starling and Busch explored medical archives. They found accounts of "approximately 700 identified objects recovered from approximately 200 patients".
They took note of a 1937 Kentucky Medical Journal report that described the "insertion of a light bulb into a 52-year-old grandfather by several inebriated 'friends'".
Their attention was caught by a "case of suspected misreporting of an assault" described in a 1934 New York State Journal of Medicine article: "A 54-year-old married man admitted to self-insertion of two apples, having previously complained of assault by several men involving forced insertion of a vegetable (one cucumber and one parsnip)."
Busch and Starling explain that in many cases, patients will misreport certain aspects. "This appears to be a means of coping with the embarrassment," they write. "Such patients should be treated with the utmost concern and tact, keeping in mind the great embarrassment they feel."
A 1928 American Journal of Surgery article described a "patient who admitted to self-insertion of a lemon and a cold cream jar and stated that a drug clerk had advised him to use lemon juice and cold cream for relief of haemorrhoids, which were not found on examination". A 1935 report in the same journal concerned a patient who "presented with a broken broom handle, stating that he was using the object to massage his own prostate, a service allegedly rendered twice a week by his physician when the patient had more money". In 1932, The Illinois Medical Journal described a patient who "reported self-insertion of two drinking glasses for relief of itching".
Drs Busch and Starling extracted not just information, but also practical advice, some of which I will describe here next week.
• Marc Abrahams is editor of the bimonthly Annals of Improbable Research and organiser of the Ig Nobel prize. The Ig Nobels show is currently touring the UK. For dates and information go to http://improbable.com/improbable-research-shows/ig-uk-tour
Academics have been working on the technology that could end the agony of goal-line injustices
• Great goals that were disallowed
Ever since Frank Lampard's should-have-been-a-goal shot bounced behind the line before being disallowed at the England v Germany World Cup tie last summer, fans have condemned the organising body, Fifa, for its technophobia. Some 45 years earlier, England benefited from a linesman's decision to allow Geoff Hurst's dubious goal against Germany at Wembley and won the tournament. But the difference was that by 2010 Fifa could have invested in various types of goal-line technology.
Whether or not the football body takes action before the next World Cup, technology experts are feverishly working on new-generation devices . But much of that research does not happen in media powerhouses or big sport clubs – it is done by academics. And some of the leading experts are based on British campuses.
The University of Surrey's visual media research group is headed up by Professor Adrian Hilton. His team works on video analysis, computer graphics and animation techniques, and regularly works with broadcasters such as the BBC, as well as big film studios, to develop 3D techniques and graphics. One of Surrey's big areas of recent research was its collaboration with the BBC for its "iview" project, which allows sports pundits to analyse matches from a huge array of angles to get the best view.
"It works by using the footage streaming in from the usual 8-12 cameras around a stadium," Hilton explains. "From that, we use our scanning technology to reconstruct a 3D model of the scene, like a computer graphic, which commentators can use to render any viewpoint.
"So when they're talking about a particular instant in, say, a football game, they can view it from the sideline, or the referee's perspective, or the goalie's – even if there wasn't a camera there."
The technology is currently being trialled by the BBC, but, with Lampard's shot in mind, Hilton adds: "In principle the iview system can also solve specific goal-line issues, but the main reason it wasn't used in the World Cup was the approval of the governing bodies rather than the technology itself."
It's not all about football, however. The Surrey team is working with the BBC on technology for athletics fans, finessing a way to measure athletes' movements using footage from just one broadcast camera. "The aim is to allow overlay of 3D skeletal motion on the video footage and provide analysis of actor movement," says Hilton. "There's a big push for 3D broadcasting, but it normally needs a lot of extra cameras in order to create that all-round experience. Using our 3D resconstruction technology it's possible to make footage from a single camera into 3D afterwards. It's much cheaper."
Hilton's interest in 3D imaging began with his PhD in mechanical engineering. "I became interested in artificial intelligence and how people understand and navigate the real world through seeing and hearing," he says. He took up a research post in the computer vision group at Surrey, where he first created "hand-held" 3D capture technology, allowing users to measure 3D objects by running laser light across their surfaces. "The technology was commercialised, and used for automotive design and in entertainment industries," he says.
Animators, including those behind the BBC series Walking with Dinosaurs, paid the University of Surrey a license fee to use the technology. On Walking with Dinosaurs, artists made models of dinosaurs, with the 3D capture technology then used to create realistic animated models.
Next, Hilton worked on a way to capture 3D models of people from photos, eventually developing another spin-off company, AvatarMe. That was inovlved in making 3D avatars of real people to "walk into" popular video games. It was also used to create 3D avatars for over 250,000 visitors to the Millennium Dome exhibition.
Many of the blockbuster effects on films and TV are also a product of universities. "Most special effects in films probably have their origins in academic research," says Hilton.
The number of steps between academic research and its use in production makes it tough to identify the films that use Hilton's technology, but film production companies that use it had a hand in Avatar, Harry Potter and the recent Batman films.
Hilton is now working on ways to support the creation of digital "doubles" of actors in film production. "In films like Avatar, there was a requirement for visual effects that change the appearance of an actor after they have been filmed," he says. "We're investigating how to integrate 3D capture technologies into the established film production pipeline. But it's extremely challenging – the visual-effects have to be "photo-realistic" on the big screen, and the technologies have to work with existing production tools."
The university's work with film and TV firms echoes partnerships around the world. "Several US universities, including MIT, Stanford, Washington and Carnegie Mellon are involved in collaborations with the film industry, and the Max-Plank Institute in Germany and ETH Zurich are also active in reconstruction from video," says Hilton. "But our research has contributed advances at the leading edge of this field over the past decade, pioneering a number of new technologies."
However there may be obstacles ahead. The research is mainly paid for by UK or EU research agencies. "Support for academic research even in collaboration with industry is much more difficult to obtain in the current environment," Hilton admits. "Funding agencies are directing money towards strategic priorities. Support for the adventurous research, which has led to many of the advances we've made over the last ten to 15 years, has become relatively difficult to obtain."
Still, Hilton predicts more applications for his 3D model-making technology will emerge, perhaps including better-fitting jeans. "We're working with the London College of Fashion to make a low-cost recognition of 3D body shape to improve clothing shape design," he says. The Surrey academics are also in talks with big players in the UK games industry, looking at a way to create ever-more realistic animated interactive characters. The UK's "very strong creative industries ensure we are collaborating on challenging problems that make a real difference in industry."
In Guatemala, up to 1.5 million children are missing school to try to scrape a living on the streets. What can be done to get them back into classrooms?
Bearing more than a kilo of mangos, oranges and apples on his shoulders, 13-year-old José slips through the queue and jumps on the bus. Here, he walks along the aisle offering his goods for sale. But in an instant, he's back down on the road and on his way to the next bus, squinting from the mixture of midday Guatemalan sun and diesel clouds.
José knows how to spot a potential customer and when it's not worth sticking around. Instead of being in school, he has spent nearly every day earning money this way since the age of six.
The proportion of seven- to 12-year-olds enrolled in Guatemala's schools is rising, according to the United Nations, and has increased from 85% to 89% in the last 20 years. The Guatemalan government puts the figure at 95% – a jump, it says, from 89% eight years ago.
But, despite the improvement, a growing underclass of children is emerging, of which José is a part.
Very little – if any – of their "education" will be spent in classrooms. Most of what they learn will have been picked up on their country's increasingly dangerous streets.
At La Terminal, the bus station in Guatemala City where José plies his trade, shootings, thefts and gang violence are commonplace. Even the fried chicken joint now employs an armed security guard. José has had his daily earnings of about 75 Quetzales – £6 – stolen more than once.
In Guatemala, there are 52 murders per 100,000 inhabitants, compared to one murder per 100,000 in the UK and five per 100,000 in the US. Many predict this to increase this year, as tensions rise with the election of a new Guatemalan president in the autumn.
Guatemalans say more people are dying now than during the country's bitter 36-year civil war, which ended in 1996.
As José walks to the next bus, half a dozen vehicles sound their horns. He takes a side-step to avoid a man who is unstable on his feet, and holds out gold-coloured bracelets in his palm to passers-by.
It's nearly impossible to judge how many children in Guatemala are missing out on a formal education to work the streets as José does. Viva, an umbrella organisation for charities that help street children, says up to 1.5 million are consistently out of school – about a fifth of what the country's pupil population should be. Unesco's Education for All Global Monitoring Report, published this month, reckons one in 28 Guatemalan children are missing out on school.
José says he wants to be a teacher, but the closest he has come to entering a school is the informal one set up by Guatemalan charity Pennat. The school takes a few hundred children for a couple of hours of lessons each day above a shop in the capital's main marketplace. Classes start at 7.30am and end by 11am so the children can catch the mid-morning swell of customers.
A UK-based charity, Toybox, is providing the funds for another informal school to be set up. It will be run by El Castillo, Toybox's partner in Guatemala. El Castillo's 40 workers visit parents whose children work on the streets and try to convince them of the long-term value of sending the children to school. They encourage street children to start – or re-start – their studies, and buy them uniform and equipment. Children found living on the streets without adults are offered shelter in El Castillo's residential home, if there is space.
Jomara Pineda, head of El Castillo's rescue and prevention team, doesn't hold out much hope of José or his 11-year-old sister, Rosalita, going to a proper school any time soon. In fact, she thinks they are likely to stop going to the informal school before long.
"It's a lot to do with the parents," she says. "They have the opportunity to change the fate of their children, but they often don't seem to want to let the children stop earning. The children get used to earning, too."
José's mother, Laura, and grandmother, Rosa, sold fruit on the streets at José's age and see this as normal, although they admit that today the streets are more dangerous.
Guatemala already has one of the worst poverty gaps in the world. Here there are more private helicopters per capita than anywhere else in central America, according to the US Department of Commerce. Meanwhile, Guatemala has the fourth highest rate of chronic malnutrition in the world. And according to a study conducted last year by The Fund for Peace, a US-based research institute, the inequality is becoming worse.
José's family is among the 58% of Guatemalans who, according to the United Nations World Food Programme and the World Bank, live in extreme poverty, without even the means to afford to buy a basket of basic food. Five of them sleep on two beds in a damp shack that is much more like a cellar than a home. It has a corrugated iron roof, no windows and no running water. Plastic buckets are stacked on the stone floor and the only possessions visible are some clothes hanging over string and a couple of blankets folded in the corner.
Not far away, chickens nod their way into a space roughly three metres by five occupied by a family of seven – including two children. Dirty nappies lie in yellow puddles outside the door. Amid this acute poverty and overcrowding, family breakdown is common, as are violence and sexual abuse.
Miguel Angel Franco, a deputy minister in the Guatemalan government's education department, says he is well aware that some children can't continue their studies because of a lack of funds. But he points at the considerable success of a scheme started in 2008 called Mi Familia Progresa (my family progresses). It gives poor families cash if they regularly send their children to school. The government has spent 2.04bn Quetzales (£162m) on the initiative and claims it has helped an extra 800,000 parents – 6% of the population – send their children to school.
Franco also highlights the rising aspirations of many poor families – something Flora Suarez, a headteacher, has also noticed.
In Suarez's primary school, in a deprived neighbourhood in the north of Guatemala City, working-class parents are now daring to hope that their children will have middle-class jobs when they are in their twenties. The bricklayers are encouraging their children to become architects and engineers, she says.
"They think their children will be able to get these jobs if they have an education and they support everything the school tries to do – they have understood the value of going to school."
The parents who have stalls in the market haven't reached this stage yet, she says.
In 2000, world leaders vowed to ensure that, by 2015, every child would stay in school long enough to complete their primary education. There are 40 million more children who have been given this opportunity than when the promise was made, but 60 million are still missing out. José is one of them. He can barely write his own name. A future as a teacher is out of his grasp until he comes off the streets and goes to school.
Two teenagers from the UK are planning to tell thousands of their peers about the plight of street children over the next few months following a fact-finding trip to Guatemala.
Navdeep Bual, 15, and Yasir Yeahia, 14, spent a week meeting street children, politicians, teachers and charity workers in Guatemala City. The pair, from Seven Kings high school in Ilford, Essex, visited a primary school in a deprived part of the city and met the British ambassador to Guatemala. They travelled to the shanty towns where some of the street children live and were invited into their homes. The teenagers were introduced to young people their age who gave them an idea of some of the country's education problems.
Navdeep and Yasir were winners of the Steve Sinnott award for Young Global Education Campaigners. The competition was launched by a group of overseas aid agencies that believe education is the key to escaping poverty. Sinnott, who died in 2008, was general secretary of the National Union of Teachers and a passionate advocate of the Global Campaign for Education, an umbrella group of charities and teaching unions. The two students were accompanied on their trip by the charity Toybox and Education Guardian.
Yasir says he was shocked at Jose's life and living conditions. "He had to go to the bus station, which was filled with drug addicts. He worked tirelessly and went from bus to bus trying to sell. We then visited his home ... The flies, the smell and the black bags filled with rubbish, the chaos ... You had to go through narrow alleyways to even get there."
He says he has been struck by the responsibility young children have to earn money for their families. "It seems so much pressure to put on someone that young," he says. "I want to make people in the UK know that we've a lot to be grateful for. People our age may think they can't make a difference, when in fact they can."
Navdeep says she was upset at the response Jose's sister, Rosalita, gave her when she asked what she wanted to do when she was older. "She told me she wanted to work on the street and sell fruit, like her mum. It was heartbreaking to hear her because she had no real ambition, purely because she didn't know there was a world outside the one her family was trapped in."
Guatemalan teenagers told Navdeep and Yasir that being raped on the way to school is a major worry for girls their age. "It seems so inhumane that while that is happening, in other parts of the world, people live in mansions," Navdeep says.
"The sheer poverty was a shock to our system and definitely opened our eyes to the problems other children face purely because of where they were born. In the short term, education can't completely solve the problems that street children face. What it can do is afford girls like Rosalita an opportunity to see a life free of danger, poverty and injustice. Without education, countries like Guatemala can not develop and move forward."
Now the pupils plan to hold a peaceful protest in central London to remind the British government that international aid must be a high priority. They also hope to spark a viral online campaign to raise awareness of the poverty of children in Guatemala and the barriers they face to receiving an education.
For free school resources and details on the Global Campaign for Education visit www.sendmyfriend.org
Vocational course results will be opened up to public scrutiny in July when Edexcel publishes students' achievements
It looks like a bold decision. An exam board affected by controversy over the use of vocational courses to help schools rise up league tables is about to open up its data for full media scrutiny.
Edexcel is to hold a national results day in July, Education Guardian can reveal, when detailed statistics on hundreds of thousands of pupils' achievements in its increasingly popular BTec courses, which under Labour were controversially given equivalence to GCSE and A-levels in the rankings, will be published.
The publication plans aim to mirror the format of GCSE and A-level results days in August, which have become a staple of the annual news cycle and provoke now ritualised debates over rising and falling standards.
The board's decision, which may raise the profile of BTecs, represents an attempt by Edexcel to take the initiative in the ongoing and often bitterly contested publicity battle over vocational courses.
Last week's report on the subject for the government by Professor Alison Wolf, of King's College, London, said that league table pressures were pushing schools to encourage pupils to take non-GCSE courses that were of questionable worth to their futures, because of the qualifications' value to the school's statistics. This, she said, was "immoral".
Michael Gove, the education secretary, in the forward to the Wolf report said league tables incentivised schools to offer "inadequate" qualifications to 14- to 16-year-olds, although he did not name such qualifications and Edexcel can point to research suggesting that BTecs increase people's long-term earnings.
BTecs, coursework-only qualifications, which are offered at four levels in subjects ranging from applied science to health and social care, have been one of the fastest growing syllabuses in their GCSE-equivalent form. BTec Firsts, taken by 562,086 students, mainly aged 14 to 16, last year, have more than doubled in popularity over the past three years. This has been triggered, it is widely claimed, by a system that deems them to be worth up to four GCSEs for league table purposes.
Statistics published in the Wolf report showed that the contribution of BTec Firsts to national results figures for 16-year-olds, which incorporate both GCSE grades and results achieved in vocational qualifications, has been surging.
National figures for 2010 showed that 75% of 16-year-olds gained five or more A*-C grades at GCSE or vocational equivalent. Without BTecs, the figure would have been 65%, meaning these non-GCSE courses contributed 10 percentage points to this overall figure, compared to only 0.1 percentage points in 2005. BTec Firsts were the largest contributor to the national figures after GCSE.
The more advanced BTec Nationals, for 16- to 18-year-olds, which have a more established following in colleges and sixth forms, had 216,875 entries last year.
Edexcel's move is an attempt to redress another long-standing criticism around non-mainstream academic qualifications: that while GCSE and A-level grade data is available and scrutinised by the media every year, it has been impossible to gain similar information on other qualifications taken in schools and colleges.
There have been anecdotal claims that very high percentages of students pass GCSE-equivalent BTecs and another set of non-GCSE courses, OCR Nationals, run by the Oxford, Cambridge and Royal Society of Arts board.
Data revealed to the Times Educational Supplement last summer showed BTec First pass rates running at around 80%, although the same data was not made available for OCR Nationals.
In July, Edexcel will not only make information on BTec pass rates available in individual subjects, but also the proportion of entries awarded a merit or distinction grade; the relative popularity and success rates of individual subjects among boys, and among girls; and a breakdown of statistics by regions across the UK.
The data is to be released on the same day as the board announces the winners of a new awards scheme recognising outstanding BTec students, teachers and schools/colleges. Entries for these awards open today.
In recent years, the education charity Edge has run a national "VQ" (vocational qualifications) day in June, which celebrates successful non-academic learning. However, sceptics have said the fact that VQ day does not release detailed results data diminishes its impact on national reporting.
Rod Bristow, president of Pearson UK, which runs Edexcel, says: "We think it's high time that learners who are doing really valuable vocational qualifications like BTec are recognised for the excellence they achieve.
"We need an evidence-based debate, to try to discourage some of the snobbery that there is around vocational learning and vocational qualifications, and it's really important that we provide transparency."
The board acknowledges that the publicity the results day will generate may well be double-edged. GCSE and A-level results are certainly high profile, but the debate over "dumbing down" that ensues every summer is dispiriting for many young people.
However, sources at Edexcel say the board can no longer stand by a lack of transparency over BTec results, especially given the coalition's stated commitment to being open with data.
Anastasia de Waal, head of family and education at the Civitas thinktank, who has criticised schools' use of vocational qualifications, says: "This is welcome, not least because it is transparency that really is desperately needed when it comes to particular vocational qualifications taken in schools.
"The way the statistics have worked in the past, different qualifications have got bundled up in one measure so that it's been very difficult to find out what it means."
Alan Smithers, director of Buckingham University's centre for education and employment research, says he has struggled in the past to obtain BTec data from Edexcel. He says: "People are not aware of these qualifications in the way they should be. So anything that puts data in the public domain has to be a good thing."
The OCR board awarded 250,000 grades at GCSE equivalent last year through its OCR National vocational courses. But it appears to have no plans for a similar day, and pass/merit/distinction figures for these courses still seem not to be available to the public.
"OCR celebrates the achievement of all its students when they receive an award rather than picking out a few at a random point in the calendar. We congratulate Pearson/Edexcel on raising the profile of all vocational qualifications during the academic exam season."
Whether Edexcel's move towards transparency will be followed by other awarding bodies, then, remains to be seen. But, given reporters' general enthusiasm for statistics, it seems likely to generate media interest.
A new review of vocational education misses an opportunity to encourage the promotion of entrepreneurial skills so vital for our future, says Tom Bewick
Alison Wolf's review of vocational education is potentially a retrograde step in terms of making real progress; and not because her central desire to elevate the quality of vocational learning is wrong.
Her report, commissioned by the education secretary, Michael Gove, makes many laudable recommendations. But what is perhaps misguided is the perspective from which many of the assumptions in the report are made.
Wolf, a senior academic from Kings College, provides an academic perspective, and reaches broadly academic conclusions about what is going wrong.
Most would agree that Britain is historically weak in vocational education. We also struggle in the state system to really stretch some of our most able pupils, including ensuring more than 50% of them achieve the basics in both English and maths.
But it is a mistake to believe that the answer is a 1950s style of education. Gove welcomed this report so emphatically because it provides the intellectual fire power for his more traditionalist view of education: academic excellence for an elite few, better quality vocational training for everyone else.
The reality is that in today's world young people do not need an either-or approach – academic or vocational – they need both.
Wolf is a fan of the Enlightenment model and laments the fact that in recent years Britain has begun to leave this system behind. Her report highlights the countries that do better, but she omits the fact that they spend on average between 1% and 2% more of their GDP on high-quality vocational training and apprenticeships.
Disappointingly, the report is completely silent on how we develop more entrepreneurial mindsets and skills among our young people.
Worrying statistics released last week show that enterprise education is a task in which we, as a nation, are failing.
Make Money, Make a Difference: Backing Britain's Future, a new report from Enterprise UK with research commissioned from YouGovStone, reveals that 53% of young people do not feel they are encouraged at school to be entrepreneurial. One in four admit they get most of their knowledge about business from popular television programmes such as Dragons' Den.
Educators need to face up to the fact that our current model is broken. The common belief that a single pathway from school to university is the only way to get a good job no longer holds true.
We must challenge and inspire young people with the idea that they can make it happen for themselves, by nurturing a new culture of enterprise education, embedding the key ingredients of entrepreneurship in the curriculum.
Initiatives like Tenner Tycoon, which runs throughout March and loans 40,000 school children a £10 note, are vital to motivating the next generation of entrepreneurs. Over the next few years, the scheme will expand to over 1 million pupils.
In addition, we need to address how we invest in young talent, and this means ending the monopoly universities have over student loans provision.
George Osborne's budget at the end of the month should announce a new Youth Investment Trust to replace the Student Loans Company. This would provide young people with access to state-subsidised loans for purposes other than access to higher education, including capital for new start-ups.
Developing a network of truly inspiring entrepreneurial colleges should be our major priority.
• Tom Bewick is chief executive, Enterprise UK
David Willetts, the universities minister, has confirmed the government wants to open UK higher education to private, for-profit providers. But what will the educational costs be?
The universities minister, David Willetts, has confirmed the government's intention to make it easier for new, including private "for profit", providers to enter UK higher education. A white paper giving the details will be published in May.
If the government succeeds, what might be the consequences? Of course there are fundamental differences between "for-profit" and "not-for-profit" institutions. Whereas the basic purpose of "for-profit" institutions is to make money for their owners, the basic purpose of "not-for-profit" institutions is to provide the best teaching and research they can with the resources available.
But what contribution could each type of institution make to the structure and functioning of higher education? We must look at the benefits and costs, both public and private, both direct and indirect, of each type of institution to see how far they balance. What does overseas, especially US, experience tell us?
There is little doubt that many commercial courses meet needs that conventional ones do not. In particular, there is unfulfilled demand for post-experience courses for working adults in many applied professional areas. The typical private college student is a nursing manager in suburban Milwaukee, who is combining her career with bringing up a family, and who wants to improve her qualifications in a way that suits her living pattern. She prizes flexibility and cost over residence and institutional status. It is also claimed that, as well as flexibility and a relentless focus on customer needs, commercial providers are innovators, which is beneficial to the system. They may also be contributing to equity, because many of their students are from less favoured backgrounds.
It is this point that critics of commercial provision have picked up. There is a current Congressional investigation into the private providers' recruitment practices. Evidence has been presented that some organisations have put too much effort into enrolling students and too little into their subsequent progression and achievement. This has led to low retention and (since the students usually have to borrow to finance their studies) high loan default rates. Because a high proportion of this aid – and, indirectly, the colleges' revenue – comes from federal sources, this is producing a haemorrhaging of public funds, as well as offering poor value for taxpayer money.
This is not the only issue. Public or "not-for-profit" providers use the income from their more popular subjects and courses to support less popular ones. But, by definition, private "for-profit" companies will focus on those subjects and modes of study where they are most likely to make a good return. To the extent that they are competing with public or "not-for-profit" colleges, this may affect the ability of those institutions to maintain a wider range of subjects or modes through cross-subsidy. As a result, public subsidies may have to be introduced or increased to maintain those subjects or modes. In this respect, the paradoxical result of greater competition may be less, rather than more, consumer choice. We already see cutbacks in the provision of subjects like chemistry and physics, and this is even before we have truly variable fees.
All this suggests that we should be very cautious before we lower the entry barriers to admitting for-profit providers to a system that has served us well.
There are two particular areas of concern. The first is the government's proposal to allow organisations that do not teach to award their own degrees. It has long been accepted that the ultimate safeguard of quality is the existence of a "well found, cohesive and self-critical academic community that demonstrates firm guardianship of its standards" (to quote from the current criteria for degree-awarding powers). How will quality and standards be protected if this principle is abandoned or diluted?
The second is access to public finance, and especially the access of students at private institutions to state loans and grants. By the government's choice, public resourcing for higher education is heavily constrained. This may mean that the subsidies needed to tempt private providers into the market can come only at the expense of the public institutions.
Together, these considerations prompt the thought that we may be paying too high a price for the potential benefits of lowering the barriers to entry into the student education market.
• Roger Brown is professor of higher education at Liverpool Hope University and former chief executive of the Higher Education Quality Council
Is it possible for universities to avoid donations - like Gaddafi's to the London School of Economics - that embarrass them later?
The London School of Economics rarely finds itself in the same company as Nelly Furtado. However, like the Canadian singer, its relationship with Libya has given rise to controversy.
The LSE quickly moved to suspend its links with the Gaddafi International Charity and Development Foundation, run by Saif Gaddafi, son of Muammar Gaddafi. But this swift action failed to protect it from a torrent of criticism, including from David Cameron, and, last week, its director, Howard Davies, resigned. "I advised the council that it was reasonable to accept the money and that has turned out to be a mistake," he said. He had previously said: "I don't accept that the decision was taken without due consideration at the time," pointing out that the British government had encouraged him to engage with the Libyans on financial reform.
An independent inquiry led by Lord Woolf will now examine the LSE's links with Libya and will establish guidelines for international donations to the university.
But the LSE is not the only university to face criticism over links with Tripoli. Liverpool John Moores is facing questions from, among others, Robert Halfon MP, who tabled an early day motion criticising both institutions. The Liverpool Echo reported claims that the university signed research contracts amounting to just under £1.3m, but Professor Michael Brown, its vice-chancellor, told the paper that the partnership with Libya never got off the ground. "We've nothing to be embarrassed of whatsoever and our work in Libya was about improving medical facilities, which are woeful," he said. "You have to differentiate between a government you don't approve of and helping the people."
It's not the first time donations have stirred up controversy. Professor Anthony Glees of the University of Buckingham claimed three years ago in a report for the Centre for Social Cohesion that the Saudi government and other private sources had been systematically focusing funding on Islamic and Middle Eastern studies departments that were most critical of western foreign policy, distorting scholarship.
In the US, the foundation of a chair in economics by the former Enron boss Ken Lay at his alma mater turned into a nightmare for the University of Missouri. It was unable to find an appropriate candidate to fill the chair for several years, during which time it became a standing joke: the head of the economics department at the time said "It's not like it's the Osama bin Laden chair." In fact, other members of the Bin Laden family donated substantial sums to Harvard and Tufts University in the 1990s.
So how can universities avoid embarrassment? One answer is of course to be extremely cautious about whom they deal with. But that is easier said than done when global politics changes fast and when austerity requires ever more fundraising from external sources.
The LSE student union has called for "changes in the transparency" of future dealings and suggests establishing "a set of standards and a process of democratic decision-making, with student representation, that determines whether the school accepts money from controversial donors".
Dr Sally Hunt, general secretary of the University and College Union, says all universities should sign up to institutional codes on ethics and accountability. "A committee with student and staff representation could then be tasked with vetting substantial donations".
Nicola Dandridge, chief executive of Universities UK, says: "Of course universities will take into account political and ethical implications when they make decisions." However, she warns: "There are established academic, cultural and business links between the UK and countries overseas and it is essential we continue to engage with them."
Retired fundraiser Mike Smithson points out that many institutions have already developed effective mechanisms to examine donations. In the 1990s, Oxford established a committee, which included Lord Butler, the former head of the home civil service, to scrutinise donors. Smithson points out that this group consulted with external bodies, including the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. "Oxford decided to turn down several gifts, based on their advice," he says.
However, refusing donations can be difficult. First, donors' reputations are constantly changing in ways impossible to predict. When Lay endowed the chair that bears his name, Enron was voted America's most admired company in a Fortune magazine survey. Gaddafi's decision to end Tripoli's isolation meant that he was no longer viewed as a pariah by the international community, with his son, Saif, seen as a potential moderating influence. Fundraising consultant Adrian Beney, of Iain More Associates, contends that "most of those now complaining about the LSE have been happy to drive around with Libyan oil in their cars".
There is also the argument that engaging with donors in countries governed by authoritarian regimes may encourage political reform in those countries. John Sexton, the president of New York University, has defended his institution's decision to establish a satellite campus in Abu Dhabi with $50m (£31m) in funding from the United Arab Emirates on the grounds that NYU will be a "positive change agent".
In a recent statement the LSE wryly noted that in 2009 the student union welcomed the donation from Gaddafi's son's charity, stating that: "This is exactly the kind of organisation the school should be associated with – a group struggling for justice under what continues to be, despite reforms, a repressive and brutal regime."
Smithson believes that effective fundraising relies on development teams having an entrepreneurial outlook. Consequently, the more conditions imposed on those involved, the less effective any efforts will be. But he says: "The promise of funding can be extremely tempting for cash-strapped university departments. For example, there has been a long and acrimonious debate over whether those involved in cancer research should accept donations from the tobacco industry."
Many worry that cuts in university funding are forcing institutions to fundraise more aggressively, and to play down ethical concerns. Glees suggests that any money raised from sources the government considers unacceptable should be deducted from state funding. "I'm thinking in terms of the government saying 'if you accept money from despots, that money will be removed from what the state pays you, ie there will be no financial advantage in accepting money from tainted sources'." He says: "The cuts will make the problem even worse unless the government steps in and stops sharp fundraising practices."
It is clear that recent events will lead to soul searching in universities. However, many will say this should not be confined to academia, and that although the LSE's decision to accept Libyan money was a mistake, Whitehall must share some responsibility.
• Matthew Partridge is a PhD student at the LSE