From gurus to history lessons, uniforms and English as a second language
Huw Kyffin
Canterbury
• I take issue with Dylan Wiliam on his assessment of the current government "not tying things down so tightly". The evidence – phonics and a new test for five- and six-year-olds, and the English bac – suggests otherwise despite the protestations of more freedom for schools from ministers.
Youcannotbeserious via EducationGuardian.co.uk
Before the election Michael Gove laid out his vision for history teaching: "Most parents would rather their children had a traditional education, with children sitting in rows, learning the kings and queens of England."
Among those Gove has recruited to review the curriculum is that apologist for the British empire, Niall Ferguson. So welcome to the great white, male, ruling-class view of history. Doubtless, schools will be receiving a map with all the former colonies coloured in pink. So why not go the whole hog and resurrect Empire Day? The girls can sew Union Jack flags and the boys can do some square-bashing with wooden rifles whilst singing a hearty version of the national anthem. Remember, you read it here first.
Richard Knights
Liverpool
• Mike Baker and the Better History Group have a point, up to a point. Yes, it is important that pupils are aware of history as a chronological thing. Without a sense of historical time and who did what roughly when, not much grasp of the subject is likely. But I really don't think that an emphasis on UK history alone works at all in 2011. There are clearly limits to what can be taught, but knowing when the French revolution, American civil war and Russian revolution were is more important than understanding that Henry VIII had a beard.
Dr Keith Flett
London Socialist Historians Group, London N17
Schools in many countries all over Europe do without uniform and many of those countries have better educational outcomes than the UK. Uniform is something governments and the educational establishment like to hide behind when they should really be looking at standards of teaching, the enormous differences between the haves and the have-nots in this country, and the pervasive remnants of the class system.
pointythings via EducationGuardian.co.uk
• Schools without uniform are more likely to be those where disorder rules and where ideology ensures poor outcomes. The Derbyshire and Totnes schools featured are likely to be successful because they serve communities that are still socially integrated – ie a low degree of deprivation and little middle-class flight to private education.
EGriff via EducationGuardian.co.uk
English with pastoral help
I had the pleasure of working closely with Elizabeth Knight and her Esol team at another college (Unable to talk the talk, 18 January). What your excellent article does not mention is the value, as opposed to the cost, of Esol classes. I have hardly ever met such a committed group of staff. Teaching was only the half of it – the pastoral support, help filling in forms and support with family issues are just a few areas where Esol staff help to change lives. Saving money on Esol will increase costs in health and social services.
Paul Craven London E5
At universities around the UK, Muslim and Jewish students are finding common ground, with the help of the Coexistence Trust charity
Sara Amin-Nejad, an Iranian-born Muslim studying pharmacy at Manchester University, has never experienced any hostility from a Jewish student. But she has never met one either.
That was why she signed up to be part of a new team, being launched tomorrow at the House of Lords, of 18 Muslim and Jewish students working as "campus ambassadors" at 10 universities around the UK to bring people from the two faiths together.
"I thought it would be a really good opportunity to meet new people," she says. "I've never had the chance to speak to a Jewish student before."
The idea is that the team of students will act as role models for good inter-faith relations. They will receive monthly training sessions in leadership, strategy and conflict resolution and be expected to organise activities on their campuses, such as art and drama projects, and volunteering in the community, that involve Muslims and Jews working together.
The scheme is being run by the Coexistence Trust, a London-based charity dedicated to improving relationships between Muslim and Jewish students. Set up in 2005 as a parliamentary network to combat Islamophobia and anti-semitism, its focus changed three years ago to concentrate on universities.
"We thought that while the parliamentary side was important, we should focus on the next generation, and universities were where we could find the new generation of leaders," says Shahnaz Ahsan, manager of the trust.
The charity also runs Campus FaithHub, which encourages Muslim and Jewish students to leave their university bubble and volunteer together in the local community, as well as a scheme in which they get together to discuss religious texts.
Universities have recently come under the spotlight as potential hotbeds of extremist activity. Three years ago, they were issued with government guidance advising them to address Islamic extremism. Last year, after the arrest of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a former student at University College London who was accused of attempting to blow up a plane destined for the US, a working group was set up to look at how universities can prevent violent extremism while protecting academic freedom.
But the Coexistence Trust stresses that this is not its focus. Instead, it is about promoting constructive dialogue between students who are open to learning more about each other, but do not have the opportunity.
"We have found there are pockets of students who want to be working together and are quite excited when they see there is an external organisation supportive of what they are doing," says Ahsan. She hopes it will "set a new tone of respectful debate on campus and avoid the polarisation we have seen in recent years".
That is not to say that the students involved in the scheme wear their faiths – or cultures – lightly. The ambassadors include Abid Khan, a part-time Imam, and Yuval Jacob, who last year completed a 10-month pre-army leadership course living in a kibbutz in southern Israel.
Jacob, who is now in his first year of a chemical engineering degree at Imperial College, says the leadership course gave him a chance to find out more about his roots. He has spent most of his life in Germany, but his grandfather had left Germany for Israel in order to escape the Nazis shortly before the second world war.
As part of an Israeli family, he says he always feels connected to the news, but it was not until he spent time in Israel, and saw the sites of conflicts, the crater left by a suicide bomber, that he understood fully what it means for two communities to be at war with one another.
"What makes me interested in the ambassador programme is that I also know the other side," he says. "The side of friendship."
While in Israel, coming across someone who is Muslim would present a point of conflict, he says, having been brought up in Europe, he takes it for granted that he will have Muslim friends – and he does. Here, he argues, the two communities can be easier in each other's company because they are more detached from the political issues that have historically divided them.
Ibrahim Khan, a first-year politics, philosophy and economics student at Oxford – and standup comedian – also makes the distinction between political and social divisions.
While he argues that it is important for Jewish and Muslim students not to shy away from discussions about the Israeli/Palestinian situation, he says it is important for them not to conflate it with their own relationships.
Khan, who was part of a young Muslim advisory group set up under the last government to help guard against extremism, is one of two campus ambassadors who are hafiz, a term used for people who have memorised the Qur'an.
He took the view that if you have a set of values you want to live your life by then the best way to do that is to know those principles by heart. In the process, he says, he learned how far the scriptures supported interfaith co-operation.
Now he wants to have a chance to study the Jewish scriptures. "It would be nice to have more knowledge of Judaism as a religion and separate that from the political situation," he says.
Underlying this, and the other projects run by Coexistence, is an understanding that Muslim and Jewish cultures have much in common.
Rebecca Usden, another ambassador who is studying politics at Cambridge, says: "If you look at the two religions, they look quite similar in many ways and have a lot of common ground. There are definitely ways to counter conflict by looking at these similarities."
She became involved in interfaith work as a student because having been to a school where Jewish and Muslim students mixed easily, university was a bit of a culture shock. "There was so little dialogue between the two communities," she says. "It isn't that there is hostility, it's just that they are not that good at communication."
Amin-Nejad agrees. "The Muslim students I know tend to mostly hang out with groups of other Muslim students," she says. "Most don't know anything about Jewish religion or culture and what they do know is from their parents. A lot of it isn't even true and they don't make the effort to change that."
Yet she argues that the best place to start changing attitudes is at university, when people can be brought together and prejudices challenged, and that can have a knock-on effect for wider change.
"At the moment there is a lot of misunderstanding and miscommunication and a lot of prejudice, and often it is between people who have never met," she says. "Once you show people you can be friends – not just co-exist but be friends – then others will follow."
Research shows that Russell Brain admired Henry Head in Brain, the journal
Nowadays, not many people read Brain on Head in Brain. That could change, because this year is the 50th anniversary of the publication of Russell Brain's mostly admiring six-page essay called Henry Head: A Man and His Ideas, which celebrated the 100th anniversary of Dr Head's birth. Which means that this year we are, all of us, entitled to celebrate the 150th anniversary of that blessed event.
Dr Brain – who was also Lord Brain, Baron Brain of Eynsham – was editor of the journal Brain.
It would have been surprising had he not written that essay about Dr Head. That's because Head preceded Brain (the man) as head (which is to say, editor) of the journal (the name of which, I repeat for clarity, is Brain).
Head headed Brain from 1905-1923. Brain became head in 1954, dying in office in 1967. No other editors in the journal's long history (it was founded in 1879) could or did boast surnames that so stunningly announced their obsession, profession and place of employ. One of Dr Brain's final articles, in 1963, is called Some reflections on brain and mind.
Dr Head wrote many monographs, some quite lengthy, for Brain. The first, a 135-page behemoth, appeared in 1893, long before he became editor. In it, Dr Head gives special thanks to a Dr Buzzard, citing Dr Buzzard's generosity, the nature of which is not specified.
Reading Dr Brain's Brain tribute and other material about Dr Head, one gets the strong impression that Head had a big head, and that it was stuffed full of knowledge, which Dr Head was not shy about sharing. Brain writes that "Some men ... feel impelled to impart information to others. Head was one of those."
Brain then quotes Professor HM Turnbull as saying: "I had the good fortune when first going to the hospital to meet daily in the mornings on the steam engine underground railway Dr Henry Head. He ... kindly taught me throughout our journeys about physical signs, much to the annoyance of our fellow travellers; indeed, in his characteristic keenness, he spoke so loudly that as we walked to the hospital from St Mary's station people on the other side of the wide Whitechapel Road would turn to look at us."
Brain says that Head "would illustrate his lectures by himself reproducing the involuntary movements or postures produced by nervous disease, and 'Henry Head doing gaits' was a perennial attraction."
In 1904, at the age of 42, Head married a headmistress – Ruth Mayhew of Brighton high school for girls. Brain assures us that she was "a fit companion for him in intelligence".
Brain, though respectful of Head, suggests that his predecessor was over-brainy: "He had many ideas: he bubbled over with them, and perhaps he was sometimes too ready to convince himself of their truth."
• Marc Abrahams is editor of the bimonthly Annals of Improbable Research and organiser of the Ig Nobel prize
Dylan Wiliam is known as a teaching guru with some 'gimmicky' methods. So how does he rate this government's chances of improving educational standards, asks Peter Wilby
Dylan Wiliam once had only one ambition: to become a famous and successful jazz musician. He turned to teaching only so he could raise enough money to buy amplification equipment. He could hardly have imagined then that fame would eventually come his way in the form of two one-hour, peak-time BBC2 documentaries on teaching techniques. Called The Classroom Experiment, they were broadcast last September and featured Wiliam, black-browed, bald and slightly menacing (he looks a bit like one of those Doctor Who characters who's about to dynamite the universe), chivvying Hertfordshire teachers into using lollipop sticks, coloured cups and mini-whiteboards, and the pupils into doing 15 minutes of exercise in the gym each day before lessons.
It was entertaining enough, and the Times TV reviewer called it "utterly gripping", but it all seemed a bit gimmicky. As another reviewer observed, Wiliam came over as a man with a box of unrelated tricks. Wiliam agrees that the programme failed to convey a coherent message, but says that, embedded within it, you will find the main elements of his educational thinking, the product of 25 years' research. That thinking challenges almost every attempt, by governments of any political party, to raise educational standards.
To the fury of the teachers' unions, Wiliam, until recently deputy director at the London University Institute of Education, argues that cutting class sizes and putting up new buildings don't deliver value for money. "The evidence from research," he says, "is that adequate lighting and decent acoustics are very important in schools. But for new buildings in themselves, very few studies show any effect at all. Yes, they improve attendance, but there are cheaper ways of doing that. Building Schools for the Future was quite extraordinary: £40bn investment without any cost-benefit analysis at all."
As for class sizes, if they were cut from 30 to 20, the average pupil would gain four months' learning a year. But classes of 20 would mean recruiting an extra 150,000 teachers to English schools and, assuming they were all weaker than those we now have, pupil progress would fall by five months a year. Wiliam regularly trots out statements like that, and you wonder how he can possibly be so sure, but he's a mathematician with a PhD in psychometrics and he's looked through hundreds of pieces of research, so I suppose we have to take his word for it.
Instead of relying on grandiose policy initiatives, Wiliam argues, we should be raising teachers' skill levels. By that, he doesn't mean recruiting better-qualified teachers, since the correlation between qualifications and effectiveness is close to zero. Nor does he mean weeding out a small minority of "incompetent teachers", which wouldn't affect most children's education. The trick is to raise everybody's game. So the most cost-effective improvements, he argues, are cheap, low-tech changes that will improve teachers' lessons – and this was the main message of the TV programme, which reported that, after a term of Wiliam's interventions, results were up in English and maths.
Take that most common of all classroom scenes: the teacher asks a question and children put their hands up. The answers, Wiliam points out, always come from the same pupils, and the teacher has no idea whether the others understand anything. "Hands up" should be banned. Instead, advises Wiliam, use lollipop sticks; write a child's name on each and pick at random the one to answer the question. Or tell all pupils to hold up answers on mini-whiteboards, which will give you a snapshot of how the whole class is doing. Or hand out green, amber and red paper cups, which children can hold up to show that they understand what you're telling them, find it difficult or haven't a clue what you're on about. As for the morning exercise, US research shows it improves attention and learning throughout the day.
Above all, teachers should stop awarding grades each time children hand in work. Instead, they should make constructive comments and ensure children read and act on them. "We're addicted to grades," Wiliam says. "I've nothing against grades at the end of the school year. But telling students, after every piece of work, that they're at levels 5, 6 or whatever is bizarre, perverse. The national curriculum levels were meant to be descriptions of the totality of achievement over an entire key stage, not judgments on individual pieces of work." Assessment, he explains, should be part of a conversation with pupils that helps teachers to decide where lessons should go next. It should be "assessment for learning" (AFL), not "assessment of learning".
This view was first set out in 1998 in Inside the Black Box, co-authored by Wiliam with Professor Paul Black of King's College, London. (The black box is the classroom, into which policymakers feed inputs in the vague hope that a desirable output will emerge.) It declared that "formative assessment" (a term Wiliam prefers to the more commonly used AFL) would, at the minimum, raise pupils' GCSE scores by between one and two grades. Acclaimed in some quarters as the most important educational research report of the last 20 years, the self-published volume was an extraordinary bestseller, shifting 100,000 copies. It was really, as Wiliam puts it, "a polemic with footnotes" written, by the standards of educational research, in lucid and accessible language, almost like a political manifesto. After publication, Wiliam and Black addressed, between them, an estimated 50,000 teachers.
They later produced a pack of AFL materials bought by a third of English secondary schools. But given the report's initial impact, the results were disappointing. What the authors envisaged was a transformation of teacher-pupil relations, in which the two would move towards being partners in learning. "We were naive about how hard it is to change things in classrooms," admits Wiliam. "The Labour government couldn't get their heads round it. We tried to get them to build these ideas into the numeracy and literacy strategies, but they just weren't interested. When they eventually picked it up, their take was simply that teachers should keep more records and track children's progress more carefully. So grading became part of everyday classroom life. It was nothing like what we intended." So Inside the Black Box led to something worse than before? "Yes, yes."
Wiliam, now 55, was born in north Wales and brought up as a monoglot Welsh-speaker. His father was a University of Wales lexicographer who coined new Welsh words for modern developments such as nuclear power stations, and also a BBC Wales newsreader. Only when Wiliam went to grammar school in Cardiff and later Manchester did he speak much English. His conversations with his father, who died two years ago, were always in Welsh, but today the accent is hardly noticeable.
For most of his schooling, "I was very average, badly behaved, a stammerer, incapable of writing legibly, and physically unco-ordinated, the sort who was always last when other boys chose teams". Only in his later teens did a talent for maths emerge – he won the school maths prize for the best A-level results – and, after two years of weight-training, sufficient co-ordination to play rugby so well that he became house captain and carried on with the game until he was 42. His academic performance, however, did not greatly improve at Durham University, where he just scraped a pass degree. He spent far too much of his time, he admits, on his bass guitar.
Like many graduates with mediocre degrees and few ambitions, he fell (his word) into teaching, first at a private school in Worcestershire and then in inner-London comprehensives. Meanwhile, his band, playing what it called "jazz-folk", gave occasional gigs in pubs. "I hadn't realised how hard it is to make any kind of a living as a musician. If you get enough money to cover your petrol, you're lucky."
So he gave up semi-professional music, dedicated himself to teaching ("I was enjoying it more") and, partly because he taught a "shortage subject", enjoyed a rapid rise. At his second London school, he became deputy head of maths and, when the head refused him a further promotion, he walked off to work on a research project at Chelsea College (later merged with King's) in London. It involved a scheme called Graded Assessment in Mathematics, an early version of formative assessment. A lectureship in mathematics education at King's followed, and Wiliam eventually became dean of the school of education and the college's assistant principal.
In 2003, he moved to Princeton, New Jersey, to join the Educational Testing Service (ETS), the main producer of the multiple-choice tests which, Americans like to believe, eliminate the effects of social privilege and private coaching and guarantee purely meritocratic entry to higher education and many sought-after careers. ETS is an enormous, unimaginably rich corporation with a 376-acre campus and a staff of 2,700, administering 20 million exams a year worldwide.
For an assessment specialist, it seemed a natural home. But the appointment, as senior research director, was not an unqualified success. He describes ETS as "dysfunctional and bureaucratic" and his work on developing a formative assessment package for American teachers ended "somewhere in the bowels of the organisation". He told his bosses that, if he was to make more impact, they would have to appoint him a vice-president. They demurred, and in 2006 Wiliam moved back to London and the Institute of Education. He stepped down from the deputy directorship last summer and now inhabits a small, cold, untidy office, full of unsorted files. He saw me between trips to Sweden and Norway and says cheerfully "I've been far too busy to sort it out". A colleague observed that he didn't care much for the minutiae of administration and "he's probably happiest with his numbers and structures and figures".
Wiliam envisages a future as a freelance, self-financing academic. "I can match my present salary on just 40 days' consultancy a year. Then I'll buy video equipment to shoot things in classrooms. I want to train students to do videos from the learner's point of view. I envisage students and teachers working collaboratively on school improvement, rather than treating it as something teachers do to students." He also hopes to do more work on "teacher-based learning communities", meeting monthly to discuss the development of formative assessment and related ideas.
"We're beginning to put together the right combinations of ideas and support for teachers. You can't do this kind of thing in initial teacher training; it involves high-level pedagogical skills, which you can develop only if you're controlling a classroom. I was talking to a teacher recently who, instead of putting comments on students' essays, wrote them on strips of paper, got the students in groups and then asked them to match the comments to the essays. A delightful twist, which re-engages students in their learning. I'm constantly surprised by teachers' ingenuity."
I ask Wiliam if the advent of a Conservative-led government makes him more hopeful. After some hesitation, he replies: "Yes. I've almost given up on policy because, for the past 20 years, policy has been relatively ineffective. But the difference between Labour and Conservatives is beautifully encapsulated in the 1988 Education Reform Act, where there is a self-denying ordinance: a statement that nothing in the Act should be construed as telling teachers how to teach. As soon as Labour got into power, you had Excellence in Schools saying setting should be the norm in secondary, and the literacy and numeracy strategies telling primary teachers how many bits their lessons should be divided into. It cost half a billion pounds for just one extra student to reach level 4 per primary school per year.
"I don't think this government will tie things down so tightly. There will be potential for better things to happen below the radar. That's why I'm optimistic."
As work begins on a new national curriculum, Mike Baker argues that although analytical skills are valuable, some knowledge of the chronology of our history is essential first
Should children leave school with a memory bank of historical facts – names, dates, battles and treaties –or is it more valuable to develop skills of historical analysis and interpretation?
This is one of the key questions that the new national curriculum panel must decide as it gets to work on Michael Gove's promise to produce a slimmer, more flexible compulsory curriculum. We know the education secretary thinks history should be part of that slimmed-down core and that it should consist of the key chronological facts of "our island story".
Although I start out more in the skills than drills camp, I have been persuaded that the foundation of historical studies has to be a firm grasp of facts and chronology. Although skills of historical analysis are immensely valuable, we need to walk before we can run.
My own experience of school history was so patchy that there are still great swathes of the history of my own country that remain a haze, including the Wars of the Roses, the English Civil War and the Restoration. Even now, after a postgraduate history degree, I am ashamed to say I lack a good grasp of the narrative history of the British Isles.
Of course, my schooling occurred before the national curriculum, which was supposed to deal with the very lack of coherence and breadth I experienced. But my children fared no better under the national curriculum, having studied a number of narrow and unrelated periods and topics, with a lot of Hitler and Henry VIII, but no overview of British history.
The historian Simon Schama, now advising the government on the history curriculum, has argued that "a return to coherent, gripping history is not a step backwards to dry-as-dust instruction". But others argue that if pupils develop skills such as source analysis, they will have gained something valuable that will last long after they have forgotten the dates of kings and queens. This is the Albert Einstein school of thought, which believes that "education is what remains after you've forgotten everything learned in school".
But it is not that simple. The history curriculum should teach both facts and skills. The real question is where to put the balance. And, in an invaluable contribution to the debate, the Better History Group has argued that we need a radical shift away from skills and back to knowledge. The group, which represents teachers and historians, has produced a cogent set of recommendations that would improve that balance.
In a persuasive submission to the curriculum review, the Better History Group argues that while some of the alarming decline in school history is attributable to external factors, such as league tables, the growth of skills-based teaching is also to blame. They argue that "the current orthodoxy" is based on a "fundamental misconception" that the aim is to develop skills at the expense of historical knowledge. Indeed, they say "students cannot exercise skills such as analysis of source material in any meaningful sense without much more extensive knowledge than is currently the norm in our classrooms".
The group says the solution is to make history compulsory from primary school to age 16, with an "outline history of Britain" as the heart of the curriculum. They say analysis of sources should no longer be required for examination purposes and that exam marking should reward, rather than penalise, wider reading and original thinking.
They propose a chronological structure starting with Roman Britain, the Angles and Saxons, and the Vikings in year 7, and moving steadily through to the Civil Wars, the Restoration and Victorian Britain in year 9. In years 10 and 11 students could opt for either a full or half GCSE, in which they would choose from a selection of key themes in British history as well as topics from modern world history.
Some criticise the focus on national history as a "little England" approach. But a recent survey of the history curricula across a range of European countries by the Eurydice network shows it is common for countries to focus heavily on their national history, setting out key events that shaped the national story as compulsory knowledge. For example, France, Finland, Greece and Sweden all regard studying their own country's history as a way of fostering an awareness of national cultural identity.
Providing it is not jingoistic or uncritical, a school history curriculum that provides a firm chronology of the development of the British Isles should be a cornerstone of the national curriculum.
Now that lectures are being published on the web, could lecturing styles change – for the worse – asks Jonathan Wolff
You might remember the first time you heard a recording of your own voice. You probably thought someone was playing a trick; it didn't sound like you at all. In your head, you sound like a BBC newsreader. On the tape, it was just like the way your friends spoke, but with more ums, ahs and y'knows. Quite possibly a rather nasty shock.
Well, the next stage is to read a transcript of your own, impromptu, speech. I once gave evidence to a parliamentary scrutiny committee, on behalf of a charity of which I was a trustee. I accompanied the chair of the charity, who had been a very senior public official. We faced a barrage of questions, and the chair replied in what seemed to me a very flat, tedious and pedantic style. I tried to liven things up a bit.
When the transcript arrived, the chair's contribution was measured, acute, direct and, above all, grammatical. Mine read like the random gibberings of a partially trained chimp. That day, I learned that spoken language has inflection, use of body language, and a visual context. Written language has none of these things, and there is a special skill in speaking to look good on the page; not one I have mastered.
But beyond the transcript, there is a further level of agonising self-scrutiny. The era of video-recording live lectures has arrived, and a couple of my lectures are now up on the web. I managed to watch about 30 seconds before having to stop and take a stiff drink.
The problem is that I just didn't like the lecturer very much. My lectures seem to go down well enough with a live audience, but on video I am insufferably smug and irritating. I grin at my own jokes. I grin when there isn't even a joke. I seem to get excited about even the most mundane point. And I jerk my head around like a frightened little bird watching out for the neighbour's cat.
But, I'm hoping, in real life it isn't as bad as it looks. Preparing yourself for the small screen and for the lecture hall are quite different disciplines. I had a session of media training once. It was mostly about head movement. Next time you watch a special correspondent, check to see if he or she had the same lesson as me. Head movement is good, so I was told, as long as it is up and down. On the small screen, nodding your head up and down makes you look sincere and encourages people to agree with you. Moving your head from side to side looks shifty.
By contrast, in a lecture theatre, moving your head up and down makes you look like you keep forgetting where you are in your notes and have to keep taking a sneaky glance. Moving your head from side to side is a way of connecting with the audience, by making eye contact with as many people as possible (thereby also warning them that you might notice if they drop off).
But then there is hand movement, too. In the one class I ever had on lecturing technique, I was told that I didn't move my hands around enough. On a video screen, my instructor claimed, unless your name is Andrew Marr, hand movement is a really bad idea.
Using new and cheap forms of information technology to enhance the '"learning experience" sounds an excellent idea. "Web-casting" lectures provides students who failed to get out of bed with another chance. But there might be hidden costs. Video and live performances differ, not unlike spoken and written language. The video is on your permanent record, the lecture is here only for today. Might we see lecturing styles change to look better on the video, possibly to the detriment of the live performance? Or should I find something else to worry about?
• Jonathan Wolff is professor of philosophy at University College London. His column appears monthly
School uniform does not make pupils learn more, statistics show – so why is it still so popular?
There's an unusual school hidden away in rural Derbyshire. It's a small comprehensive with a talent for supporting its students and involving the community. According to Ofsted, it's already good, recording its best-ever GCSE results last summer, and it's getting better.
All of which is excellent news for any prospective parent, but is not what makes Anthony Gell school in Wirksworth stand out. No, what makes it distinctive is the fact that students do not wear uniform.
The education secretary, Michael Gove, is a firm believer in the power of clothes that match. The recently published white paper urged all schools to introduce not just uniform, but blazers and ties.
The Conservatives have been linking high standards, strict discipline and what children wear for years now. "The best-performing schools tend to have similar, if not the same, best practices," said a 2007 policy paper. "Strict school uniform policies, with blazer, shirt and tie, and with a zero-tolerance of incorrect or untidy dress."
Sartorial strictness appealed to Labour as well. Charles Clarke insisted that "uniforms are good for discipline and school ethos, giving pupils a real sense of identity with their school". And Ed Balls suggested that local authorities encourage schools to adopt "smart" uniforms and strengthen ties with "uniformed" organisations such as scouts and guides.
Headteachers and governors have found it hard to resist such pressure. More than 90% of all secondary schools in England are now thought to insist on uniform, while the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust reckons all 347 academies enforce a strict dress code. Many local authorities say they have no non-uniform schools at all.
The few remaining secondary schools without uniform are elusive – and some are wary of even discussing the issue. One Oxford headteacher of a school with no uniform, despite leading an outstanding and oversubscribed school, would only say that the matter was "very complex and highly political".
David Baker, head of Anthony Gell, is more confident. When he took over five years ago, the school was already non-uniform. He surveyed parents, staff, governors and pupils on the subject, aware of how contentious it can be. "It's an issue that divides people. There are very strong views on both sides."
However, he decided Anthony Gell should remain non-uniform. "As long as students come appropriately dressed, clothing isn't a major factor in their learning. I believe in treating children as individuals with rights and responsibilities."
A similar ethos holds sway at King Edward VI community college in Totnes, Devon, where seven years ago the governors "did a brave thing", says the principal, Kate Mason, and abolished uniform.
"It was unusual even then to be a state school without a uniform, but we felt we were spending far too much time addressing issues of non-compliance," says Mason. "Too many conversations with students were about tucking shirts in. We were desperate to focus on the important issues of teaching and learning."
In an age when politicians preach diversity and choice, she finds the insistence on uniform contradictory. "We believe all students are different and we believe in celebrating that. Our school is oversubscribed, our results are better than ever, our students are confident and comfortable. Even if there was something I wanted to fix, I wouldn't do it with uniform."
Supporters of uniform insist that it improves behaviour and builds community spirit. Pupils "enjoy the sense of pride they get from wearing a smart uniform, and the smarter the better," according to research by Oxford Brookes University. The findings were well publicised; the fact that the research was sponsored by the Schoolwear Association was less so.
Yet neither Mason nor Baker appear to have problems in these areas. Ofsted commented on the Derbyshire pupils' generally good and responsible behaviour as well as their pride in and "tremendous loyalty" to their school.
Paradoxically, proof of Anthony Gell's good relations with its pupils is revealed by their willingness to buy its optional branded clothing. Baker frequently sees his pupils wearing hoodies and sweatshirts adorned with the school logo around town at the weekend.
Another claim often made for uniform is that it papers over divides between rich and poor children, making bullying less likely. But in the five years Baker has been head, he has never dealt with a bullying issue sparked by clothing. "I know children want branded trainers and so on, but that spreads across their whole lives. It isn't specific to school. Also, it's obvious even with a uniform which children come from poorer homes. It's difficult to hide the fact that you only have one shirt and have to wear it all the time."
And what of the alleged connection between results and uniform? Back in 2007, the Conservatives pointed out that only one of the top-performing 100 state schools was non-uniform. Yet such statistics work the other way round, too. Despite dressing their pupils in blazers and ties, more than 40 academies last year failed to reach the government's "floor target" of 30% of pupils with five A*-C GCSEs including maths and English.
One man who has spent years studying such statistics is American academic David Brunsma. A sociology professor at Missouri-Colombia University, he became entangled with uniform following Bill Clinton's 1996 suggestion that schools consider uniforms as a way of controlling youth gang culture. Brunsma, who says he was "utterly flabbergasted" at such "superficial glossing over of complex social, democratic, cultural, material and political issues", embarked on some serious research.
After eight years, Brunsma concluded that: "The results, although surprising to many, simply cannot be ignored. Uniforms do not make our schools better."
So why the seemingly unstoppable rise of the blazer and tie? "My conclusions over the years are that this is an issue of children's rights, of social control, and one related to increasing racial, class and gender inequalities in our schools," says Brunsma.
Such ideas are rarely debated in the UK. In the US, where uniform is spreading, its introduction is often fought on freedom of expression grounds.
In Europe, uniform is relatively rare. Yet here in the UK, it goes largely unremarked that the increasing popularity of blazer and tie uniforms over the last 30 years has coincided with increasing social inequality. The most serious recent investigation into what children wear to school was by the Office of Fair Trading – and that was into price. State-school children can now dress smartly and cheaply for learning (Tesco uniforms were £3.75 in the summer), but the divide between them and the pupils of Eton (three-piece tailsuit, £170) or Harrow (monitor's black top hat, £158) is wider than ever.
For Mason and Baker the absence of uniform brings a daily benefit, liberating them from having to nit-pick about pupils' clothing. "It's just a non-issue here," says Mason. "There are other things we want to concentrate on in our conversations with students," says Baker.
As if to prove his point, another secondary head – also called Dave Baker – has been drawn into some unfortunate conversations about uniform recently, specifically about Miss Sexy trousers. The tight-fitting trousers had become popular with girls at Bradley Stoke community school, Bristol.
Baker is reported to have spent £400 on 80 pairs of tailored trousers. Girls who turned up in the Miss Sexy brand were told to change into them, a policy which some objected to as unhygienic. He is also reported as saying that the Miss Sexy trousers revealed "too much flesh" and that it is "hideously embarrassing" to see "flesh and thong hanging out".
To spare his blushes in future, Bradley Stoke governors might consider adopting the dress code of Mason's college. It is simply "3Cs – clean, comfortable and covered up".
Coalition rules on English courses for speakers of other languages will cut eligibility, harming the life chances of poor women and refugees
Lumnije Bajrami was stunned when told she may have to abandon her dreams of a better job and of a university place because of new coalition government funding rules for adult education.
The single mother of an autistic child arrived in the UK from Kosovo in 2005, speaking no English, but determined to make a new life. After three years' struggle, she joined City and Islington College, north London, for the most basic course in English for speakers of other languages (Esol).
She excelled: "It was the turning point in my life and I soon saw real possibilities." The course offered much more than English; it was a focal point for the community and offered work training. By this year, Bajrami was at pre-GCSE level and, while still struggling with English, had become a British citizen with eyes on a pre-access course for her distant goal of university.
But new regulations for Esol courses threaten all that. Under the government strategy on skills, the only people eligible for full funding are those on "active benefits" – jobseeker's allowance (JSA) or employment support allowance (ESA). Those on support described as "non-active benefits" such as income support or on low incomes, including spouses, will not be eligible, nor will asylum seekers, migrant workers and refugees. Even where there is other support, individuals must pay at least half the full cost of the course under a system of co-funding to share the costs between government, employers and individuals.
Bajrami is one of 1,400 students at City and Islington in the same boat, which has left Elizabeth Knight, deputy director of the centre for lifelong learning at the college, fuming. "In terms of Esol, 60-70% of our 2,000 learners will become ineligible," she says. "These people are still on low pay and are here trying to benefit the country, and improve their education and employment skills."
Border Agency
The irony, says Knight, is that the college was chosen, as were many, as the route to British citizenship by the UK Border Agency, which gave it the mandate through Esol for low-level English tests. "That will have gone unless students are on jobseeker's allowance or pay themselves."
Of the 195,000 people on college and community group Esol courses in England, an estimated 100,000 will lose out, initial findings of an Association of Colleges survey suggests. Most are women in domestic isolation, caring for children, or in low-paid jobs and seeking to improve themselves. The government insists that a required impact assessment was completed before the skills strategy was published. But Joy Mercer, director of education at the AoC, doubts this: "If they had done a detailed assessment, these policies would never have got through, given the impact on women."
Roushon Choudhury, a mother of three from Bangladesh who is now at Tower Hamlets College, summed up the feelings of desperation of many on the breadline. "I went for a job interview last year. But they said my English wasn't good enough. They advised me to improve it. My husband gets very little money. How can I study if I have to pay for it? And if I can't improve my English, how can I get a job?"
Mercer sees a deeper issue here that could cost the country far more than it saves: a fragmented approach to benefits reform and support for Esol and wider post-19 adult education funding. "There is a lack of joined-up thinking and funding here that won't help the 'big society'. There is strong evidence that people doing Esol want to volunteer, to join governing bodies, participate in their children's education – a lack of language is a big barrier to all these. But the loss of opportunities can be seen in every college we turn to."
Contradictory policies
So, too, are contradictory policies, says Selina Stewart, assistant principal at Joseph Chamberlain sixth-form college in in Birmingham, where only 10 to 20 out of 700 students qualify under new regulations. She points to "a failure of policies to connect up". "A learner on JSA told me she was called up for the three months' mandatory training and couldn't attend Esol. When I appealed, they refused to listen. So she is going on a course she cannot understand instead of staying with Esol, which is preparing her for work."
Several courses, such as the Workers' Education Association community health education project in the West Midlands, which were praised by John Hayes, minister for FE and skills, for their Esol provision, are in doubt as local businesses and charities are forced to make cuts. Peter Caldwell, WEA regional director, says: "It will take some quick thinking to stop provision just withering on the vine."
A campaign for the restoration of key areas of publicly funded Esol was launched last week, led by the National Association for Teaching English and Community Languages to Adults and drawing in the Refugee Council, University and College Union and other professional associations.
The new government measures are based on two closely related notions: that those who benefit must pay (unless need under new criteria is proven) and that employers should not expect state handouts for workers they choose to recruit. The latter point stems in part from abuse by gangmasters who recruited eastern Europeans as cheap farm labour with the promise of free English lessons on the state.
At one level, organisations such as Niace, the national organisation for adult learning, do not argue with this. Alan Tuckett, director of Niace, says: "It is difficult to argue for employer subsidies when low-paid people in local communities are being refused free or subsidised language classes at their local college."
It is an issue argued by John Hayes, who has tackled gangmasters in his Lincolnshire constituency: "The employer subsidy does not seem to be ethical and we aren't going to fund it any longer." Initially, he recommended directing funds at "settled communities" and narrowing eligibility. But the word "settled" proved too vague. It appears nowhere in the government's final technical guidance report, where the stress is on "eligibility".
But Nick Linford, author of the Hands-on Guide to Post-16 Funding, who has monitored Esol developments closely, says: "They have done it the lazy way and not thought through the consequences, so targeting those courses that attract some of the most vulnerable adult learners."
A £4.3m Learner Support Fund that gave colleges discretion to help pay fees has been scrapped, as has the funding "uplift" that gave Esol courses 20% extra compared with other subjects. The cuts being introduced through co-funding will erode things further from around £3,000 to £1,300 per student, which, they argue, will not cover the costs of courses, room hire and teaching.
A spokesperson for the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills said the government was prioritising funding where it is "most needed". "FE colleges and training organisations are responsible for identifying and meeting the learning needs of their local communities and retain the flexibility to set their fees policies accordingly."
Researchers hope that a 'smart' prosthesis could transform the lives of amputees – and help soldiers get back to active duty
The seaside setting of Bournemouth University might seem a world away from Afghanistan and the improvised explosive devices (IEDs) that the Taliban are using there to injure British troops. But a group of Bournemouth academics hope that the work they are carrying out at the university's Design Simulation Research Centre might one day transform the lives of the rising number of amputee soldiers injured in Iraq and Afghanistan, and potentially return them to active service.
It's not war theory that Professor Siamak Noroozi, 54, and his team are working on, but practical design and engineering work. Using artificial intelligence and new technology, they are developing a "smart" prosthetic socket that is able to measure the individual interactions between the socket and the stump of a limb and, they hope, will transform the lives of amputees.
"We came across this project because we know that a lot of people are very dissatisfied with current prosthetic sockets," Noroozi, a mechanical engineer, explains. "Currently, prosthetic limbs are made of two components: the leg – the mechanical part, which connects the person to the ground – and the socket, which connects the mechanical part to the body. But that interface can be very comfortable or very painful and can definitely generate pain if not designed properly.
"You cannot create the perfect prosthetic socket that has the same feeling as your normal leg, but you should be able to get a socket with a profile that can be modified to create an optimum comfort level, and then maintain that whether the person is walking, sitting and so on." At the moment, since sockets are not "intelligent", they can't account for changes in the residual limb due to sweat or fluid build-up, for example, and can become uncomfortable or painful.
Noroozi learned that prosthetists rely on their own experience to fit a patient with a prosthetic limb, but "there was no tool available to quantify that fit by giving data or feedback to ensure that the wearer does not experience pain or discomfort from the artificial limb." As a result, he and his team decided to try to create one.
"For many years, research has been carried out to try to improve the fitting process for prosthetic limbs, but from what we know, none of this research resulted in a clinical tool that can inform processes about the quality of the fit, or the changes made during the fitting process, or what happens as a result of those changes," Noroozi explains. "So, if you modify the socket – making it better or worse – there's no qualitative tool that can tell you the variation of the resultant pressure after the changes you make to it."
In a bid to create that tool, Noroozi and his team at the Design Simulation Research Centre are using their knowledge of engineering and artificial intelligence to create a "virtual" socket, which can record data to see how it reacts to different loads, and react to the incoming information to ensure the socket maintains a state of comfort for the user at all times.
"The socket can be used to monitor the progress of the person, telling us what is happening when they are static, or walking, or running, or going up stairs, to create a load profile and then judge whether those load profiles result in a comfortable or painful socket," says Noroozi. "That would mean we could transform every individual socket so it suits the person specifically and any required adjustments can be done very quickly. This should reduce the time it takes to fit each individual socket and possibly extend the life of sockets from six to nine months, as at the moment, to several years." As a result, the academics expect the socket to save the NHS significant amounts of money. "One of the reasons that the cost of fitting is so high at the moment is that you are paying for the experience of the prosthetist," says Noroozi. "With our new tool, that experience can be encapsulated, which means we'll be able to better visualise the effect of any corrections to the socket and, we hope, get things right the first time."
The engineers on the project, which has received funding from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council and the medical charity Remedi, are now working with Blatchford, a private company that works with the Ministry of Defence Medical Rehabilitation Centre at Headley Court, Surrey, where soldiers are sent following injury in the Afghanistan and Iraq conflicts.
"When we started work on this project, we had all of the population in mind," says Noroozi. "But more recently there are, sadly, larger numbers of younger people with amputations who want to be more active once they've had their limb amputated. Many of these are soldiers returning from conflicts like Afghanistan whom Blatchford are working with to improve the quality of their lives."
Noroozi and his team hope that better-fitting limbs could help thousands of amputees around the world to enjoy a fuller life. "It is our hope that we will be able to help many people – including soldiers – with our smart socket to give them as much of a return to normal life as possible," he says.
"Comfortable sockets allow amputees to return to an active life, and, in the case of soldiers, to return to active duties. One of our colleagues is specifically working on research related to prosthetic limbs for people who wish to be more engaged in Paralympic activities." For now, the academics are focusing on "miniaturising" their work, as well as making it wireless and optimising the number of points for collecting data. Blatchford is currently manufacturing a socket that integrates the smart technology, which will then be tested by amputees. That hope – that the new socket could make a difference to the lives of soldiers and other amputees – inspires his work, says Noroozi. He adds: "If I can improve the quality of life for one person with an outcome that is beneficial and sustainable, that is where the passion for my job comes from."
The English baccalaureate, claim your free school meals and youth smoking
The so-called English baccalaureate (Bacc pain, 11 January) is no more an "integrated" qualification than a basket of flour, butter, eggs and sugar constitutes a sponge cake. At best, Gove has re-introduced a version of the old national curriculum. At worst, he has lumped together a bunch of his favoured subjects, arbitrarily changed the qualifications system and destroyed parity of subjects at GCSE level without a coherent plan for vocational subjects outside of the "EBacc". Sorting out the ensuing mess will take years.
Derrick Cameron, Stoke-on-Trent
• Our school is a high performing school that is being actively touted by Mr Gove to become an academy. One of the attractions of becoming an academy is the freedom to develop curriculum models at variance with standard national curriculum models. This measure seems to be cutting that very freedom from academies. Are we to be trusted to manage our own school but not to be trusted to set up a Key Stage 4 options structure to suit the needs of pupils and to allow them to succeed?
What is the rationale for geography over economics? Why, at a time when religious tolerance needs promoting, would RE be deemed unfit for inclusion when Latin and Ancient Greek are accepted? The future engineers will often come from studying some form of D+T at school – but this is not included.
JonBandit via EducationGuardian.co.uk
• This is a brilliant innovation. Schools which previously played the system by replacing rigorous subjects with vacuous vocational qualifications simply to climb the league tables now have nowhere to hide.
cunningfox via EducationGuardian.co.uk
I wholly commend this strategy. Claiming free school meals has become the new passport – not just to the "pupil premium" con but, much more significantly, to winning free university tuition for your first (and possibly third) year's study. While the new free school meal proposals are yet to be detailed, we wait to see if one term's claim at age 5, or 11, will validate FSM for life, a pupil premium for each year of primary schooling and fee-free entry for part of one's university life. I think we should be told. Meanwhile, claim instantly ... and often.
MikeReddin via EducationGuardian.co.uk
John McClurey, Gateshead
• The National Federation of Retail Newsagents has demonstrated that tobacco display bans do not work and have failed to reduce smoking in every country that has introduced them. Your report concedes that smoking rates among young people have increased in Ireland since the ban. In the UK, more than 70 Lib Dem and Tory MPs have called on the government to abandon the ban. The government should delay implementation, as businesses cannot linger in uncertainty.
Parminder Singh
National Federation of Retail Newsagents, London EC1
The needless use of long words, and other problems that obscure scientific writing
Some sociologists looooooooooove long words. And some love to poke sharp sticks at their serpentine-tongued fellows. Harvard sociologist Talcott Parsons (1902-1979) was one of the profession's biggest, most favourite, piñatas.
Three years after Parsons composed his final few hundred thousand words, Hugh P Whitt and James C Creech, sociologists at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, wrote a shortish monograph paying tribute to their late colleague. It begins with three quietly gleeful statements:
"Sociologists have often been criticised for their inability to make themselves understood. Talcott Parsons, in particular, has been singled out for his alleged incomprehensibility. As a consequence, his name has achieved legendary stature for more than his theoretical contributions."
Whitt and Creech quote other sociologists: Stanislav Andreski "cites Parsons as the 'prime example of obscurity', maintaining that 'he can make the simplest truth appear unfathomably obscure'."
Whitt and Creech published their paper in the Mid-American Review of Sociology with the title Gunning Down the Fog – A Test of the Unintelligibility and Illiteracy Hypotheses and summarised it: "The present inquiry examines Parsons' writing style using the Gunning fog index of readability, finding that Parsons was indeed unintelligible as a writer."
The Gunning fog index is a recipe devised by a reading consultant, Robert Gunning, and introduced in his 1952 book The Technique of Clear Writing. For any passage of text, the formula tallies the words in each sentence, and the syllables in each word, then roughly estimates how offputting it is to read that text.
In 1969, Gunning wrote a triumphal essay with the dry, yet damp title The Fog Index After Twenty Years. Whitt and Creech, after applying the Gunning fog index to several of Parsons's books, concluded that "with [only] one exception, Parsons became more unintelligible with each new book".
Many people, not all of them sociologists, write dense, foggy prose. Daniel Oppenheimer, a psychology professor at Princeton University, wondered whether this helps or hampers them.
Oppenheimer published a study in the journal Applied Cognitive Psychology, giving it the title Consequences of Erudite Vernacular Utilized Irrespective of Necessity: Problems with Using Long Words Needlessly.
For this he was awarded the 2006 Ig Nobel Prize in literature. At the Ig Nobel ceremony Oppenheimer gave what may be a perfect acceptance speech. Here it is in its entirety: "My research shows that conciseness is interpreted as intelligence. So, thank you".
• Marc Abrahams is editor of the bimonthly Annals of Improbable Research and organiser of the Ig Nobel prize
Funding costs may hit postgraduates next, as course costs rise with no support for students
With all eyes on rising undergraduate tuition fees and the protests against them, little attention has been paid to postgraduate funding. But the sector is fearful of the damage that may be caused by looming cuts to teaching money and the prospect of universities having to raise postgraduate course fees to cover any shortfall.
"Postgraduate students have so far been missing from the funding debate," says Paul Marshall, executive director at the 1994 Group of smaller research-intensive universities. "While undergraduate students will be able to pay for tuition out of subsidised loans and a host of support measures, no such mechanisms are in place for those looking to study at a more advanced level.
"However, postgraduate courses are not going to be spared the impact of cuts to the teaching grant. Put bluntly, course funds are going to be chopped without any support for students whose contributions will have to replace them."
Roughly £100m provided by the government to part-fund master's programmes is due to be wiped out because classroom-based (band D) students will not receive any funding. Marshall wants to see the government either give postgraduate students the same benefits as those enjoyed by undergraduates, or exempt postgraduate funding entirely from any cuts.
Postgraduate funding is an issue for all universities, since most have taught – or master's – courses, if not big research programmes. According to Les Ebdon, vice-chancellor of Bedfordshire University and chair of the thinktank Million+, all universities are concerned about what will happen. "The removal of over 80% of teaching funding by the government in the comprehensive spending review will hit postgraduates particularly hard as they are not eligible for fee loans," he says.
Ebdon suggests universities may be forced to charge the full cost - fees of £9,000 or more - of running postgraduate programmes such as masters degrees. Without fee loans for postgraduate students, their wallets will be hit doubly hard as they have to pay for courses up front rather than after completion, as with undergraduate degrees. "Coupled with the greatly increased debts of future graduates, it looks bleaker than the Arctic in winter," he says.
But according to Ebdon, modern universities may fare better than most as they offer the majority of part-time programmes (recent Million+ research found that 37% of all postgraduates study in modern universities) and continuing professional development, which can be incorporated into postgraduate awards. The future for home postgraduates may well be in greater financial support from employers, Ebdon suggests.
What is to happen to public funding of postgraduate research is equally unclear. It is widely believed that a quality threshold for any university financial support is to be reintroduced. This could mean, for instance, that universities with departments rated less than a 3* in the last research assessment exercise would lose out on postgraduate supervision funding.
Ministers' grant letter to the Higher Education Funding Council for England (Hefce) in December clearly stated the need to support the "next generation of researchers" – an encouraging sign –but it said Hefce should be "selectively funding on the basis of only internationally excellent research", which many fear will mean a tighter concentration of funding on a limited number of universities.
The Russell Group of research-intensive universities has argued in favour of this focus on excellence, favouring – as it would – its universities and agrees that postgraduate teaching and research are underfunded. Its vice-chancellors are also awaiting further clarity from both Hefce and ministers.
Last year's Browne Report, which recommended removing the cap on tuition fees, suggested that higher fees would have no real impact on the numbers of postgraduates. But the National Union of Students believes postgraduates will be deterred. "For those graduating with upwards of £30,000 of debt as undergraduate fees are raised, the prospect of ... finding funds for postgraduate study or taking even more debt at commercial rates will put a great many off furthering their study," says Aaron Porter, NUS president.
"The inconsistency with which the government's support for those in higher education is being applied is shocking. As the government decimates university teaching budgets, universities will look to areas where they can raise extra capital, and postgraduate courses will be one such area. We could see some astronomical upfront fees being levied on those who wish to continue their studies beyond undergraduate level, with virtually no financial support from government."
Browne has recommended monitoring the effect of higher undergraduate fees on the postgraduate system. Research done after the introduction of tuition fees found little impact on postgraduate numbers, but this was partly down to mistaken accounting of international students taking master's degrees, numbers of which have gone up year on year.
Dr Martin Gough, convenor of the Society for Research into Higher Education postgraduate issues network, agrees that higher undergraduate fees will almost certainly deter students from pursuing postgraduate education. "It will be a problem for postgraduates who are not supported by their employer and those wanting to develop a research career," he says. "There's a good argument for compensation for those graduates who do go into postgraduate education to offset the additional debt – call it a bronze handshake, because it wouldn't be much money."
Postgraduate education is big business for universities. There are roughly 180,000 full-time master's students and many more studying part-time who are ineligible for government support. According to last year's postgraduate review by Adrian Smith, the government's director-general, knowledge and innovation, taught postgraduate provision alone brought in income of over £1.5bn for universities in 2008-09. Postgraduate numbers have grown by 36% over the last 12 years – faster than undergraduate growth. Nearly a quarter of students in UK universities are studying at postgraduate level and half of international students in the UK are taking a postgraduate qualification.
The government has refused to comment on any of the issues, but a spokesperson said a response on postgraduate funding – and the recommendations made by both the Smith and Browne reviews – will form a key part of the white paper on higher education expected in March.
As funding falls away, the arts and humanities risk becoming the playground of the wealthy
Anyone visiting a university library at 9am might wonder where all the students have gone. The science doctorates will be in their labs, most undergrads will still be in bed, but arts PhD students could once have been relied upon to be toiling amid the tomes. No longer. Demand for arts doctorates so enormously outstrips funding that PhD students are more likely to be earning their keep during the 9-5 period, with research to follow after hours.
"I don't know any doctorate students who don't have another job," says Duncan White, 31, who has just handed in his PhD in English literature at Oxford University. "People teach, design websites, work in cafes and bars – anything to earn money in a way that hopefully leaves time for study. I applied for funding from the AHRC [the government funding body, the Arts and Humanities Research Council] but didn't get it. That meant in my first year I had to pay fees of about £5,000 plus more than that on living costs," he says. "Although I then won a faculty scholarship, which paid my fees, my rent and living costs were still very expensive. I had hoped to finish my PhD in three years, but soon realised the expense meant it would be impossible."
White worked as a sports journalist for two or three days each week, and taught undergraduates for another five hours. "But that took far longer once I'd done all my marking and preparation. I ended up worrying about when I'd be able to fit in my research. There's no question the quality of my PhD work was affected."
He is not alone in that predicament. Demand for non-science PhDs has rocketed – last year, 32,735 students were working on arts and humanities doctorates in the UK, according to the Higher Education Statistics Agency, 23% more than in 2002. But funding has not kept up. The AHRC says it is currently paying for the studies and living costs of around 2,100 PhD students, who receive about £15,000 a year. Some of those are through collaborative awards with organisations such as the British Museum, National Trust and city councils. Whilst other educational trusts and funding bodies are also helping some students, the vast majority are paying their own way. And some postgraduates are worried that arts PhDs are becoming the preserve of the wealthy.
"It's definitely a concern that it's infinitely easier – and increasingly common – for the better-off to do arts and humanities doctorates," says Jonathan Theodore, 25, who is doing a PhD in history and film at King's College London. "It's a real shame – not just because so many able people are missing out, but also because we're in real danger of our academic and intellectual horizons becoming the preserve and playground of the wealthy."
Having unsuccessfully applied for AHRC funding at the start of his course, Theodore says: "The process is a lottery. I've known brilliantly gifted students who haven't had a penny of it for years. It appears to be much easier to obtain for scientists, but then it's arguably easier to justify the immediate practical value of their work." He now earns most of his living costs through tutoring work, and says his fellow PhDs do everything from cashier work to online poker. But he adds: "The balance between work and study is tough to strike – particularly as a doctorate really requires intense focus and concentration – and I don't always succeed at it.
"The double threat of rising fees and further planned cuts to funding are only going to exacerbate this trend. Ironically, it's quite common for unfunded students to have to take an extra year or two to complete their course because of their employment commitments – which further adds to the final cost of the degree, and creates something of a vicious cycle."
After a shake-up to the system in 2009, the majority of the AHRC's £32m in funding is now distributed to students from university departments. Most is paid out via the Block Grant Partnership scheme, where universities submit proposals for five years' worth of award allocations, and then academics themselves decide which students should receive them. "We do not have exact figures in place yet for the next four years, but funding is likely to be comparable to the current level of £32m per annum to support PhD researchers," its spokesman says.
Yet even sticking to existing levels leaves a significant discrepancy between supply and demand. White worries that the quality of PhDs themselves is being hit by the shortfall. "Your doctorate work shouldn't be just about an exam you're passing to become an academic, but should itself be worthwhile," he says. "But as money becomes more pressurised, more people just aren't able to put in the time and do as much research as they want to."
That's the situation faced by Cathy Riggle (not her real name), who is doing an arts PhD at the University of Hull, and subsidises her studies through part-time jobs as a bookseller, market researcher, library assistant and IT helper. "It's tough," she says. "You need money, so when shifts are offered it can be very difficult to say no, but you also need time to work, and picking up unexpected shifts tends to be bad for the dissertation. Every PhD student I know has a job, and I think they have all gone part-time. I don't know any full-time PhD students any more.
"I was quite resigned to funding it myself the entire time, but hoped for some bits and pieces of funding," she says. "But what surprised me was the hoops through which one had to jump for funding that wasn't in any way certain, or for very little gain. After a time I realised that my time filling out forms would be better spent on the dissertation or working."
Tim Simpson, 25, is also at Hull, working towards a PhD in modern British drama. He, too, is self-funded and says only his passion for the subject meant he was prepared to pay his way. "I was surprised by the lack of funding – the arts can offer so much for society and yet the government find it easier to cut funding from the arts and not science," he says.
Others are worried that another side-effect of funding cuts – the dearth of jobs in academia – may also deter potential arts postgraduates. "Because you're not in any way guaranteed a job at the end, the huge cost of paying for three or four years of study can be a real barrier to entry," says Theodore. His hope is that enthusiasm for education will be enough to sustain the arts in higher education. "The people I've known, who were really passionate about arts and humanities but lacked private money or funding, have been working for a few years to save up enough to pay for it themselves ," he adds. "That isn't ideal, but at least they haven't given up yet."
Just as The King's Speech puts a spotlight on children who stammer, services to help them are being cut
"Brilliant", said my son at the end of The King's Speech. "People might feel what it's like having gremlins in your mouth that stop words coming out." Max is 19 and has stammered since he was five.
Thanks to Colin Firth's searingly accurate portrayal of stammering, people are beginning to understand that this isn't just an annoying inconvenience. It can stifle a child's personality and crush his confidence.
"It's unseen and unheard", says Norbert Lieckfeldt, chief executive of the British Stammering Association. "Stammering masks your ability and your intellect. It's a layer between you and the world through which everything gets filtered. It's a serious disability."
In the film, speech therapist Lionel Logue sees King George VI as deeply damaged by his unhappy childhood. Nowadays, stammering is believed to be multi-factorial – partly genetic, partly physiological and compounded by negative experiences.
It's a bitter irony that just when The King's Speech has raised awareness about stammering, frontline services that help children with stammers or other speech difficulties are being slashed.
The Communication Trust says more than one million children and young people – two to three in every classroom – have some form of long-term, persistent speech, language and communication difficulty. In an ideal world, children with speech disorders would be picked up early and get support from trained teaching staff, and those with persistent problems would be referred to speech therapists.
The real picture is quite different. Many parents and teachers don't recognise when a child's speech is delayed or impaired. When they do, they have to fight for access to speech and language services, where they exist. We were lucky. Max was referred to the Michael Palin Centre for stammering children by our GP and benefited hugely from the therapy and support there.
Jean Gross was appointed government communications champion following an independent review of speech and language services for children and young people published in 2008. Since then, she has visited 70 local authorities and says: "Provision is uneven and inconsistent. There's a postcode lottery. Some services are provided by the NHS, some by local authorities and some by schools. Children are falling through the cracks. We need community-wide strategies and we need health and education to work together."
She cites examples of good practice: a multi-agency initiative in Sheffield that has early intervention and intensive support for children with speech impairments; a joined-up approach to tackle the high incidence of speech and language difficulties identified in Stoke-on-Trent.
But the general trend is that services are being cut. In a UK survey carried out by the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists in November 2010, of the 159 respondents, 84% had been asked to reduce their services, with cuts of up to 30%. In Nottinghamshire, all speech and language therapy for children over six with autism has stopped. Gross's warning to local authorities is: "Don't cut these services. If you do, the bill will come later when these children are unemployed or if they develop mental-health problems.'"
When they finish primary school, only 25% of children with speech, language and communication needs reach the expected level in English, compared with 80% of children generally.
The college has launched a campaign, Giving Voice, to persuade decision-makers to safeguard early screening and guarantee access to therapy for all children who need it. The chief executive, Kamini Gadhok, says: "There is inaccurate messaging from the government that it is protecting the NHS budget. Shifting the budgets to schools will make things more fragmented and services could disappear. Communication is not a luxury that we can do without'.
Specific stammering services are also being axed. Of the 15 primary care trusts contacted by the British Stammering Association in December, four had no adult services, two had a very limited service. Newham PCT has cut its service altogether for children over six who stammer.
So why are these services considered dispensible? Lieckfeldt says: "If they cut A&E or cancer services, people are up in arms. Speech and language therapists can change lives, but they don't have a powerful lobby. Many people aren't aware they exist."
To increase understanding in schools of stammering, the British Stammering Association has produced a new online resource for all teachers and school support staff in England and Scotland. It includes guidance on how to identify children who stammer and short, clear strategies on how to support them in both primary and secondary schools.
The Michael Palin Centre has also produced a resource for teaching staff, the Stammering Information Programme. The centre, currently the only one of its kind, receives referrals from throughout the UK. Gross says: "Outside London there is a gap in expertise. We need more Michael Palin centres, more experts in stammering in every area." Michael Palin, whose own experience of his father's stammer inspired him to support the centre's work, says: "Every child in the country should be able to get specialist help, to ensure that, unlike my father, they are spared the agony of a lifelong stammer."
There are plans to open a specialist centre in Leeds that will provide therapy to children throughout Yorkshire. The Michael Palin Centre also hopes to double its capacity to train speech therapists working with children in the south-east. Its director, Frances Cook, says: "We want specialist therapy to be very accessible because these children need therapy as early and as quickly as possible."
While speech and language services are being cut, the government has announced 2011 as the National Year of Communication. At the end of this month, Gross will launch a government-backed campaign, Hello, which aims to make children's communication development a national priority. It will be run by the Communication Trust, a coalition of 40 speech and language organisations. It will also provide materials for school staff, including information on speech development, advice about warning signs and where to go for help.
The future for children with stammers and other speech difficulties looks mixed. Lieckfeldt hopes The King's Speech will create a debate. "This film gives us a once-in-a-generation chance to create a step change in the public's perception of people who stammer. We're just the same as everyone else, sometimes we just can't get our mouths to do what we want them to do."
Headteachers are angry about the sudden introduction of the English baccalaureate and the way it will affect secondary school league tables
Headteachers across England, it seems, are furious. And Ron Munson, head of Taverham high school, in Norwich, is among them. "I really do not understand what the government is doing. And why is it doing it retrospectively, without having carried out any consultation, and without having published detailed plans beforehand?" he says.
The object of his ire is the "English baccalaureate" (Ebac), a new GCSE performance measure, being introduced in school league tables to be published tomorrow.
Announced formally only seven weeks ago in the government's schools white paper, this will rank schools on the proportion of their pupils achieving A*-C passes in five subject areas specified by ministers: English; maths; two sciences; ancient or modern history or geography; and a modern or ancient language. In future, pupils will achieve certificates rewarding their performance on this measure, the government says.
This might seem innocuous. But the plans are already provoking serious disquiet in many schools, and not just because tomorrow's rankings will show low proportions of pupils achieving the new benchmark in most institutions.
The national results will show around 15% of pupils hitting the new benchmark, with fewer than 10% in many schools. Many of Labour's academy schools, in disadvantaged areas, are likely to be near the bottom of the rankings.
Hundreds of schools will see drops of at least 40 percentage points in the proportion of their pupils achieving the government benchmark under the new measure, an analysis of last year's results suggests: this lists performance in the individual subjects of languages and science but not on the combined new English bac measure. Last year, more than one in five state secondaries – including 57 of the 123 academies – had fewer than 10% of their pupils passing a modern language at C or better, meaning that achievement on the English bac last year would have been at least as low as this for these schools.
One school spoken to by Education Guardian had more than 70% of its pupils achieving five GCSE A*-Cs, including English and maths, in 2010. This drops to 3% achieving the English bac, caused largely by small numbers of pupils there passing humanities subjects.
Inquiries by Education Guardian have uncovered not only widespread unhappiness among school leaders, but also predictions that the new measure is already leading to radical, and often controversial, changes in the curriculum offered by at least some schools.
The new move seems driven by a concern that pupils have been pushed towards non-traditional academic subjects in recent years because of the way league tables have worked.
With the rankings hitherto centring on the proportions of pupils achieving five A*-C grades, in GCSEs or vocational equivalents, including English and maths, the incentive has been for schools to focus on English and maths and, it is claimed by teachers of these subjects, avoid "harder" GCSEs such as history or languages.
When he first spoke about the English baccalaureate last September, Michael Gove, the education secretary, said it would "dramatically strengthen the position of core academic subjects in our schools, and stop the shift to less challenging courses driven by the current perverse accountability system".
The white paper then set out the government's expectation that "every pupil should have a broad education (the English baccalaureate)".
The coalition government is particularly concerned about the position of languages, the white paper pointing out that the proportion of pupils studying a language dropped from 79% in 2000 to 44% in 2009, Labour having allowed pupils to drop the subject at the age of 14 in 2004.
However, many heads argue that the move conflicts with a drive, promoted by Labour, to offer as broad a range of options to pupils as possible.
In effect, some argue, they are being penalised for following that aspiration under these new league tables, which will show, in many schools, that relatively few pupils now take all English bac subjects. Instead, pupils have opted for subjects such as religious studies, information technology and vocational courses, and even "short-course" language GCSEs, which do not count towards the new measure. Yet the results will suggest that institutions where few pupils achieve the English bac are underperforming.
Heads feel particularly aggrieved that the league tables are being reformed retrospectively, ranking schools on exams taken before the new measure was announced.
Munson says: "The fact that they've done it retrospectively is just crazy. We are talking about a qualification that we knew nothing about, and yet we are being measured against it."
Munson says his current curriculum, praised by Ofsted, offers pupils a "huge amount of choice", with many youngsters opting for vocational qualifications that do not feature in the English bac. Around 99% of pupils are allowed to follow subjects they have chosen, he says.
He says he will resist pressure for this to change now the English bac has been introduced. But many schools would not. He says: "Schools will force pupils to take certain subjects."
There are already signs that this is happening. John Pout, head of Rainhill high school media arts college in Prescot, Merseyside, says that, because of the new measure, as of September, the school plans that the "top half of the year group" starting GCSEs will all take a curriculum designed to give them the English bac.
He predicts that, as a result, a host of subjects, including business studies, ICT, sociology, product design, construction, health and social care and catering, will decline in pupil numbers.
The school currently has some students who have specialised in curriculum areas – by studying more than one language GCSE, or both history and geography. But this will now become very difficult, says Pout, given the time the English bac takes up.
"It will constrain the ability of pupils to specialise in areas of the curriculum they enjoy," he says.
Asked why any school should force pupils to take subjects because of a league table measure, Pout responds: "There is significant pressure on schools to perform through league tables."
The effect on subjects not included in the new measure could be serious.
A senior teacher at a comprehensive in east London, who has extensive contacts with other professionals, says that her school is still undecided over whether to continue to offer citizenship as a subject for 14- to 16-year-olds, given that it will not feature in the new qualification.
The teacher says the school is also unsure about offering the diploma qualification, introduced under Labour, which pupils will find almost impossible to take alongside the English bac. "What do we do? Pull out of all our diploma partnerships even though these have benefited students?" she asks.
More widely, she predicts that many schools will require pupils to take either history or geography. But because most humanities departments are no longer staffed exclusively by teachers trained in these subjects – employing many religious studies and citizenship teachers – many pupils will end up taught by less well-qualified teachers.
Not all schools are unhappy. Carolyn Roberts, head of Durham Johnston comprehensive, in Durham, is quoted on the website of the Association of School and College Leaders saying that, "infuriatingly", she agrees with Gove because league tables have encouraged schools to discourage pupils from taking "harder" GCSEs.
Brian Lightman, general secretary of ASCL, says: "We have had a massive amount of correspondence about this from our members. Some people in quite challenging areas have said that more emphasis on [the English baccalaureate] subjects will be helpful, particularly for pupils who may not have had access to the best universities in the past.
"The rest of the correspondence is very negative about the whole thing.
"The white paper says that tweaking things around the edges is not an option. And yet, here we are, with a curriculum review about to start and with no detailed overarching philosophy having been set out, tweaking things in performance tables. Schools are already changing their curriculums and taking reactive decisions, because of league table pressures rather than through a holistic view of their needs.
"This feels rushed. It's not the way to implement curricular change."
Munson says he is confused as to whether the government wants to force pupils to take certain subjects or not, while he also believes the selection of subjects for the English bac is backward-looking.
He says: "If the government believes modern languages should be compulsory, it should make them compulsory, instead of trying to introduce change by the back door like this.
"And, under the English baccalaureate, someone doing subjects such as Latin and ancient history is going to get recognition for it, while another doing ICT and engineering will not. That's a fine example of a modern, forward-thinking government, isn't it?"
Concerns have also been raised by the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust, which wrote to Gove before Christmas asking him to postpone the new measure's introduction until 2013.
Even some associations representing subjects included within the English bac have voiced reservations. Linda Parker, director of the Association of Language Learning, says there are worries about pupils who did well in many subjects but narrowly missed achieving the benchmark, and also that pupils unlikely to gain a C grade would still miss out on the chance to study languages.
An education department spokeswoman says: "The EBac represents a core that we think all schools should be making available to their pupils. We do, however, recognise that the full range of EBacc will not be suitable for all pupils and that is why we have not made it compulsory. We recognise the wider benefits that studying other subjects and qualifications can bring and we will encourage all pupils to study non-English baccalaureate subjects alongside the core English baccalaureate in order to get a well-rounded education."
League table changes would appear to be easy for ministers to put into effect. But their detailed implications, as Gove is now being reminded, are often complicated and highly contentious.
Financial incentives to schools to convert to academies are beginning to look less enticing, says Fiona Millar
There wasn't much that was positive about being struck down with the recent flu bug apart from missing several weeks of news, then subsequently trying to work out what had been going on. Were the school sports partnerships really saved? Was the money for Book Start reinstated or not, and will schools be better or worse off with a flat cash settlement, rising inflation and a very modest pupil premium?
The answers to all these questions are still unclear. Michael Gove seems to specialise in sowing dismay, relief, then confusion, which has a political cost, but also a plus side. Nothing is ever quite as it seems and the fuss over relatively small U-turns provides a distracting smokescreen behind which bigger changes can be slipped through.
Take the funding of academies and free schools. High-profile campaigns on other issues have pushed this one to the sidelines and the rush to convert has not been as dramatic as originally predicted. In spite of the hyperbole last week about academy numbers, more than half of the 407 now open are still Labour academies and a far cry from the 2,000 that were being predicted last summer.
Some governing bodies are still agonising over whether to jump, and trying to persuade often sceptical local communities that the financial benefits mean they have no alternative but to swallow their principles and take the money.
But is that right? The government's public claim that converting schools should not gain or lose financially, compared to maintained schools, is undermined by the fact that it is simultaneously doling out huge sums of money, which can only be described as hefty bribes, to converters. I know of one London school where governors were informed by the DfE academy "ready reckoner" that they would receive over £1m extra a year, around twice the amount to which they estimated they were entitled in lieu of council services.
Peter Downes, former president of the Secondary Heads Association and a county councillor from Cambridgeshire, whose call to arms at the Liberal Democrat conference last year led to an overwhelming vote against academies and free schools, has calculated that in his area converting schools are being promised £337 per primary pupil and £318 per secondary pupil annually, yet the amounts being recouped from the local authority are around £65 and £24 respectively.
That such large financial inducements are being offered at a time of cutbacks is shocking and raises other urgent questions. Where is the extra money coming from? Which services are losing as a result, and is it sustainable?
New guidance slipped out before Christmas, and, lost in an avalanche of other public spending announcements, suggested that extra cash guaranteed to academies and free schools until the end of the next financial year will come from a "top slicing" of all local authority general grants.
This means that the early converters, outstanding schools that are already serving children from largely privileged backgrounds, make a net profit, and receive protection from cuts that should otherwise be reflected in their budgets, at the expense of other council services such as libraries and youth services that may have benefited less advantaged young people.
To add insult to injury, local authorities with few or no academies and free schools will be subject to the same top slice, with no visible method for reclaiming money they shouldn't have lost in the first place. And we are all in this together!
No doubt there will be heads and governors who will think they should grab any money while they can and stash it away, regardless of the effect on the less-privileged neighbours. The government must be gambling that these bribes will lead to a tipping point in conversions. However, the conversion process is taking longer than anticipated. At the current rate it would take 150 years to convert every school into an academy and, in less than 18 months' time, some form of national funding will almost certainly be introduced, possibly wiping out the cash advantages currently being (mis)used to sell the benefits of academy status.
As time ticks by, the long-term benefits, set against liabilities schools must assume, are not as clear as they once were. Six months ago, the rush to convert may have seemed an enticing prospect. Now it looks almost reckless, while sitting tight with the local authority, watching the true picture emerge, may be the sensible, as well as the principled, thing to do.
Researcher wants the government to ban point-of-sale displays – but the tobacco companies are lobbying hard
In the last series of Mad Men, the directors of Sterling Cooper stopped just short of hurling themselves from the 23rd floor down on to Madison Avenue in a collective suicide pact after hearing that they had lost the contract to advertise Lucky Strike cigarettes. Some 45 years on in the real world, and tobacco advertising is banned on this side of the Atlantic and severely restricted in the US. Canada has gone further by banning attractive, back-lit displays of cigarette packets near the tills of shops and supermarkets. So, too, have Iceland, Norway, some Australian states and the Republic of Ireland. Not the UK, however. Not yet anyway.
"The legislation was passed by the last government with the intention that supermarkets would have had to remove these displays in 2011, and small retailers two years later," says Professor Ann McNeill, deputy director of the UK Centre for Tobacco Control Studies. "However, the coalition hasn't yet committed itself to implementing that legislation."
She is surprised by that. "They said in their health white paper: 'Reducing smoking will continue to be a focus for public health'. Also, they claim they're committed to reducing health inequalities. Given that tobacco accounts for half the differences in life expectancies between social groups one and five, you'd think ministers would want to do everything they can to nudge the public towards healthier choices."
McNeill is a psychologist based at Nottingham University, the lead in a consortium of nine universities that make up the UK Centre. For 25 years she has worked with experts in other fields, including toxicology, pharmacology and marketing, to find ways of countering the harmful effects of what she calls "the only consumer product, apart from guns, that kills if used as the manufacturer intends".
She wants to ensure that there is plenty of evidence to counter the intense lobbying of the tobacco industry as it seeks to preserve point-of-sales displays as one of its few remaining marketing gambits. Accordingly, she was only too glad to accept a commission from the Office of Tobacco Control in Ireland to evaluate the effects on adults, retailers and, particularly, children since the ban on displays was introduced there in July 2009. "The budget was too small to commission primary research," she admits. "So we used existing data sets and augmented them with some questions of our own."
Over 180 teenagers, aged between 13 and 15, were interviewed a month before the Irish legislation came into effect and a month afterwards. "We found that there was a significant drop in their recall levels when it came to tobacco displays," McNeill goes on. "Over 80% of them were aware of the displays before the legislation was passed. Afterwards, only 22% thought they'd seen something to do with cigarettes when they went to the shop."
But why did they think they'd seen anything at all if the displays had been removed?
"They could have been thinking about a vending machine, or it might have been the leather-bound menu of brands that Irish retailers now produce if anyone asks for cigarettes and they're not sure of the brand they want."
Further questioning revealed that the majority of youngsters thought it was more difficult for anyone under age to buy cigarettes since the new law came in. "Our survey of Irish retailers backed that up," says McNeill. "Children could no longer come in, point to a pack in a display and say 'I'll have 20 of those'. There was an extra step involved that could undermine their confidence when it came to persuading the person behind the counter that they were over 16."
Between 30 and 40 retailers were interviewed. The researchers also wanted to find out how they felt about the removal of displays affecting sales and reducing their income. "There are three answers to that," McNeill says. "One is that profit margins are not great on cigarettes. Another is that tobacco sales have been declining markedly over the past few decades and retailers have been adapting. They know that if customers aren't spending on cigarettes, they'll have more to spend on other items. And finally, small retailers in particular are at the heart of their communities and increasingly they don't want to make profits from a product that they know is killing some of their customers."
So what did the adults surveyed feel about the removal of tobacco displays?
"We used a survey of 1,000 adults carried out by the Office of Tobacco Control and added a couple of questions of our own. Had they noticed any difference since the displays were removed? And did they support the legislation?"
Support rose from 58% before the legislation came into force to 66% afterwards – not least because of the removal of temptation. "Those who were trying to give up found themselves wavering if they'd gone down to the shop to buy, say, a bottle of milk," the professor explains. "They'd be in a queue, look at the display and think 'I might as well get 20 Marlborough while I'm here'. And those who'd already given up felt that they could have been triggered into a relapse by those tempting displays."
Much to her frustration, that temptation looks set to remain for the foreseeable future – on this side of the Irish Sea, at least.
Free school meals bring with them extra funding – so heads want all eligible pupils to start applying
Parents who fail to claim for free school meals for their children, despite being eligible for them, are being urged by a secondary head to apply in order to boost school funding under the new pupil premium scheme announced last month.
Dr Christine Carpenter, head of Sacred Heart high school in Hammersmith, London – an 11-16 girls' Catholic comprehensive that boasts Tony Blair's daughter, Kathryn, among its former pupils – has told parents that the school budget is likely to be cut by up to £500,000 this year. But, she says, that could be reduced if more pupils took up their entitlement to free school meals – and while only 6% of the school's 820 pupils are registered for them, she believes the true figure of those eligible could be as high as 35%.
"It is more likely than not that many families who could claim free school meals have chosen not to ...[but] whatever the reason, I urge you to apply for free school meals anyway ... if we can increase the numbers eligible for free school meals to 35%, then the school will receive approximately £123,560, which will go some way to reducing the likely deficit we will otherwise experience," Dr Carpenter writes in a letter to parents.
Some families, she says, don't apply for free school meals because of the stigma attached to it. "You should know that I, too, had free school meals because of my family circumstances," she writes. "I don't believe this made me less successful or less socially adept – indeed, quite the contrary."
Carpenter tells parents: "You need to know that such a cut [ie, the budget cut] will have an impact on your daughters. The need to make such savings will inevitably affect provision and staffing."
But a "huge factor" in funding for schools now, she says, is the percentage of children who are claiming free school meals, and she is concerned that the figure at Sacred Heart is in all probability much lower than it should be. Getting a child who is eligible registered for free meals "will help the school in terms of the additional funding it brings," she writes.
A spokesperson at the Department for Education said the government encouraged people to claim benefits they were entitled to. "Children shouldn't be missing out – that's our position," he said.
Under the pupil premium scheme announced in December, schools in England will get an extra £430 a year for each pupil from a poorer background, and heads will be encouraged to spend it on reducing class sizes or on more one-to-one tuition.
It's unlikely ministers had foreseen that headteachers might start to appeal to parents to apply for free meals as a way of upping their funding – but several heads contacted by Education Guardian say they are thinking of following Carpenter's lead. And if more schools tell potential applicants that they are "doing something for the school", it could even help to end the stigmatisation that has long dogged attempts to encourage more pupils to take up the meal that is provided free of charge for them.
Brian Dow, of the School Food Trust, says there has always been a gap between the number of pupils entitled to free school meals and the number who actually register for them. "We reckon that nationally the number who register is about 80% of the total number who could do so," he says. "That might sound quite good, but it still means that 20% of our most vulnerable children are not receiving something they're entitled to. And what it will mean now, given the pupil premium, is that as well as not receiving the meals they're entitled to, the money that the school is entitled to won't follow them into that school."
What makes things particularly difficult in the current economic climate, says Dow, is that many parents would be going in and out of work, or maybe having to settle for part-time instead of full-time work, and that might mean that those who haven't claimed before now become eligible for free school meals. "People often don't realise what they're entitled to," he says.
"Our raison d'etre is that more children should eat healthy school meals – we want children to get what they're entitled to get, and for some vulnerable children the meal they get at school might be the only proper meal they get in a day."
Dow was slightly surprised to hear that Dr Carpenter's letter advises parents to register for free school meals "even if your daughter never intends to eat a school lunch (though they are much better than they were)".
"It's not exactly a ringing endorsement for school meals, and what I'd say is that she should be doing all she can to ensure that the whole school meal experience is as positive as it could be, so that more pupils actually want to eat a meal in school," says Dow.
"Our research shows that what turns children away from school meals isn't the food, it's the atmosphere. Schools have to reduce the queuing, the noise, the rush of school meals, and more pupils want to have their lunch there.
"I'd be a bit concerned if I thought lots of heads were going to try to encourage families to register for free school meals without addressing how to improve the school meal experience. I think the best outcome here is for schools to do all they can to make school meals more attractive, so that more pupils register to get them free if they're entitled to that, and so that the money the school is entitled to then follows."
Tim Nichols, at the Child Poverty Action Group, says he welcomes anything that will improve the take-up rate for free school meals without leading to more stigmatisation. "It's good that schools seem to be getting more interested in the take-up of free meals," he says. "Although it does make you ask why they perhaps weren't so interested in the past.
"But we expect more families are going to become eligible for free meals with the new rounds of redundancies and pay cuts, so it's certainly a good time for heads to be making families more aware of their entitlements."
A market-driven regime will not help higher education quality, argues Roger Brown
One of the fascinating aspects of the Browne report and the subsequent government pronouncements has been the way in which the justifications for the new, market-driven funding regime have been gradually whittled away. Independent analyses by such respected bodies as the Higher Education Policy Institute (Hepi) and the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) have cast considerable doubt on claims that there will be savings for the taxpayer, that the new regime will be more progressive, and that it will widen participation. Defenders of the proposals have therefore been driven to give increasing emphasis to the argument that a market-based regime will improve quality by forcing institutions to "raise their game" (to quote Lord Browne) or face loss of custom. But what if this claim, too, is suspect?
There are several reasons for doubting it. To begin with, one of the very few things on which economists of all persuasions agree is that markets cannot function without proper information, in particular about the price, quality and availability of competing products. A market in student education would require the availability of information about the comparative quality of different courses, subjects and/or institutions. Yet the Browne report itself accepts that this does not exist. It states: "One option is to link funding to a measure of quality. However, there is no measure that we have seen that could function effectively across the whole range of institutions and courses ... Looking at student outcomes by institution can be misleading, as these reflect which students the institution selected as much as the value added by the institution."
If this is true, how can enhanced student choice drive up quality? If Lord Browne and his distinguished committee couldn't find a means of distinguishing between institutions or courses, how can students do so? The whole case is blown out of the water.
What we do know about markets is that where direct information about product quality is absent, customers and suppliers turn to proxies: indirect or symbolic indicators. In student education, it is prestige that is usually chosen, which has little or nothing to do with quality. In short, so far from being an indicator of quality, price in higher education is a substitute for it. Reports already suggest that universities aiming to charge the maximum £9,000 under the new regime would be requiring A* A-levels from all applicants from next year – high selectivity to justify high prices, without any educational justification.
Moving on, it seems clear that both the committee and the government believe that the main obstacle to raising quality is the lack of incentives. What is in effect a voucher system of funding is meant to remedy this. Yet nearly everyone who has studied it agrees that the main threat to the quality of UK higher education has been the prolonged underfunding of the system, and especially the unfunded expansion of the mid-80s to early 90s. This began to be corrected after 2001 and especially after 2006. Yet neither the Browne report nor the spending review contained any projections for the share of GDP that student education will represent in future years, or the future planned unit of funding.
At the moment, the issue is shortage of places, and last week's Ucas figures confirm a surge in applications for 2011. This may lead more universities to charge £9,000. However, the government asserts that this will be a minority, and that most will charge the "threshold" £6,000 (all these figures are not based on any research, by the way). Just as in 2004, the government would like to see real price competition, since otherwise the projected market "benefits" will not occur. Yet if institutions do charge different amounts, and especially if these differences are significant, this will be bound to lead to a two-tier system.
Finally, the new regime poses a clear threat to quality assurance. Hitherto the UK, like most other countries, has relied on self-regulation as the main means of protecting quality, with subsidiary roles for the state and the government. Although this has come under increasing pressure from market forces, in general it has served us well. But we now face an increase in both state and market regulation, which will almost certainly increase compliance costs without any corresponding gains in quality.
A market-based regime, anyone?
The Manchester College faces investigation after whistleblower allegations over prison education at Reading Young Offenders Institution
The country's biggest FE college and main provider of prison education is facing an investigation by the Skills Funding Agency (SFA) over a whistleblower's allegations into the way it runs its contract with Reading Young Offenders Institution, with claims that overpayments of public money are regularly being made.
The skills minister, John Hayes, passed on the information to the SFA, which will now look into the allegations.
Concerns about how The Manchester College (TMC) manages offender learning were first brought to Rob Wilson, Conservative MP for Reading East. Wilson says he was so disturbed by these that he sought meetings with Hayes and with the prisons minister, Crispin Blunt.
The SFA investigation, revealed by Hayes's office last week, follows a report by the Independent Monitoring Board in June 2010 in which it described the standards of education offered at Reading YOI by TMC as "unacceptable".
Wilson's source alleges that inaccurate paperwork may have led to overpayment by the SFA, through which government money is channelled into further education. For instance, it is alleged that classes described as not running because of "prison restrictions" in fact did not take place because TMC had not provided a tutor.
TMC denies any wrong-doing. It says that "all claims for payment have only been made for hours delivered on an actual basis".
"When the college undertook a recent internal audit, a 12-hour under-claim was identified," a spokeswoman said.
The whistleblower also alleges that of 14 "diagnostic topics" such as punctuation and spelling that TMC is paid to complete with inmates, "in many cases only a few are attempted". The whistleblower told Wilson that "[claims] sheets were signed off with only one topic attempted" and that a prison filing cabinet "was full of uncompleted sheets".
But TMC insists nothing improper has occurred and that its diagnostic testing "is funded on an actual delivery hours basis".
Shortly before Christmas, Wilson showed Hayes documents relating to the allegations. Wilson told Education Guardian he considered the papers to contain "strong and informed intelligence". "The reliability of the whistleblower and the documentation that person had access to make me believe it is probably very sound information," he says.
Among other matters raised by Wilson with Hayes was an instance where a prisoner meant to be receiving instruction was instead found in a room playing draughts alone, and the teacher reading a book.
TMC was "not aware of this". "Inherited historical practice allowed games in classes and the college has addressed this," the spokeswoman said.
TMC was awarded the Reading YOI contract by the Offender Learning and Skills Service (Olass) in August 2009. But, said the Independent Monitoring Board, "it appears no proper consideration was given ... to the capability and management span of control of TMC. Despite being awarded further substantial additional funds … TMC still failed ... to deliver an acceptable level of educational services."
The college says it inherited too few teaching staff to deliver everything expected of it, but by November last year was meeting its obligations in full. It adds that a meeting is due this month with IMB "to explore the factual accuracy of its report".
On acquiring new Olass contracts in August 2009, says the college, "it quickly became clear that there were unforeseen hidden costs that could not have reasonably been anticipated at the time of tendering, and that there was a need to save £5m from the budget, of which £2.467m related to the south-east". The former Learning and Skills Council, which used to fund further education, confirmed that there was evidence to support the college's claim.
Additional pressures had influenced the current changes, the TMC spokeswoman said. "Funding levels have remained frozen for four years whilst service requirements have increased. The college undertook a restructuring exercise, during which staff recruitment could not reasonably take place."
An Ofsted inspection into provision at Reading YOI in June 2009, two months before TMC took over, rated overall provision as grade 3 – satisfactory – describing achievement and standards as good. According to the IMB report, data showed that during July 2009, the last full month in which prison education was run by Milton Keynes College, 1,312 inmates attended classes. By March 2010, this had fallen to 641. TMC told Education Guardian: "This data is unfamiliar to the college as it does not correlate to any delivery hours, learner numbers or learner hours."
The IMB also reported "poor levels of support by TMC to … local management"; and actual manning at approximately 50% of that of the previous provider. Minimal focus on retention led to "low morale and high sickness levels within the staff" and the curriculum was in "a state of flux irrespective of manning levels".
The Manchester College says it has conducted a curriculum review resulting in "changes … essential to meet requirements of the Olass agenda … a focus on skills training … thereby contributing to the government's strategy of reducing re-offending".
"We now have an appropriate needs/employer-based curriculum with a suitably developed workforce," says the spokeswoman. "During this structural change, staffing levels were maintained and, more recently, a recruitment campaign for appropriately skilled staff has been implemented."
In November last year Hayes agreed that significant improvements had been made. In a letter to Wilson, he wrote: "I am assured that more effective partnership working with the governor and his team has led to an improved service at the prison (TMC delivered almost 96% of its profiled learning activity in October, for example)."
Meanwhile, Gavin Williamson, Conservative MP for South Staffordshire, has raised concerns with Hayes about prison education standards at HMP and YOI Brinsford, near Wolverhampton, also run by The Manchester College.
John Bunyard, a former part-time maths lecturer at Brinsford, told Williamson that his class time had suddenly been increased from one-and-a-half to three hours under TMC management. "I refused to teach under these conditions," he says. "To have prisoners in a numeracy class for three hours was likely to harm relationships with them and was potentially dangerous. On the one occasion when I had been given a three-hour session, students became very disruptive and there was a possibility of violence."
TMC's spokeswoman said the college had "inherited activity with no risk assessments or safe systems of work", but since taking over in August 2009 had implemented these. Some three-hour sessions were inherited from the previous provider, but TMC had introduced a new timetable with sessions of 1.5 hours.
Bunyard says he was told his numeracy class could swap mid-session with the literacy class. "On several occasions when staff were not available to teach the literacy classes, I was faced with teaching for three hours with one group and, after talking to the education managers on duty at the time, I went home. As a consequence, I was dismissed. After attending a disciplinary hearing … I was judged to have broken my contract – although I had not seen a written contract."
Education Guardian has seen comments from another former Brinsford lecturer written last summer, who confirmed Bunyard's claim that teachers were expected to remain with student prisoners for three hours if another teacher was absent.
Williamson has told Education Guardian that he hopes to secure a House of Commons adjournment debate to air his concerns. He also questions whether TMC "has delivered to the contract they signed up to" and said he felt that staff had been treated "incredibly shoddily".
The TMC spokeswoman says: "The college inherited a poor, underperforming service. It has implemented significant structural change to drive the service forward." New arrangements on pay, hours and leave were designed "to meet learner needs, improve quality of provision and minimise potential redundancies".
Forget the debate about whether charitable funds should replace government – there are college students in need of cash now, says Iain Mackinnon
I must admit to being in two minds about the green paper on "giving", which Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude published between Christmas and New Year. It was very clear to me even under the last government that public funds would never be sufficient to do everything our college could and should do, and I am just as clear that colleges should be doing everything we can to fill the gap in other ways – including from philanthropic giving. It's just that I'm not entirely comfortable having the government on my side – because giving its support to philanthropy at a time of public sector cuts might accidentally damage the cause.
The debate about where government action ends and charity begins goes back at least to the advent of the welfare state, and many readers will want to remind Francis Maude that charitable giving is no substitute for sufficient state funding of vital public services. Though Maude says clearly "this is not about providing public services on the cheap", to quote Mandy Rice Davies many years ago, "he would say that, wouldn't he?".
I don't want a promising initiative to get sucked into a routine argument about government cuts. My interest as a college governor is to help students who will not otherwise get helped. No one should be in any doubt that for all the earnest commitment to education from all three parties, there are people today who are missing out on a college education who would benefit from one. We could, for example, teach many more people English who want to learn, and there are far more unemployed adults keen to re-train than get the funds to do so. Money is by no means the answer to every problem, but it is important in addressing many of them. And it must be additional to what we get from the state, not a substitute for it.
What we need is a careful alliance between modest government incentive and a serious commitment by colleges to attracting philanthropic funds. Our universities benefit from a matched funding initiative for philanthropic giving: let's have the same for colleges.
When he was Labour's Secretary of State for Innovation, Universities and Skills, John Denham said: "I strongly believe that private individuals who have benefited from a university education, and who want to give something back later in life, should be encouraged to do so." The three-year matched funding scheme, which he launched in August 2008, was designed to help universities to make the most of this private philanthropy, with a total of £200m available to match donations.
It is clearly working and most universities have enthusiastically taken up the opportunity. Private giving to universities, from alumni and from business, raised no less than £532m in 2008-09: a hugely valuable contribution when funds are tight. It's a figure certain to grow.
We're a long way behind in further education colleges: I estimate that the equivalent figure for colleges is currently less than £1m a year, and very few make much effort to keep in touch with their alumni. But, most importantly, we are not starting from scratch: there are some great examples to inspire us.
Plumpton College in Sussex, for example, which has an international reputation for its wine-related training, was recently given £70,000 for research. Bournemouth and Poole College has raised over £1m in the last 15 years, from a wide range of supporters. The City Lit, London's most illustrious adult education college, raises tens of thousands every year, mostly from alumni, which it uses to help students with their fees. There must be many more examples to be dug out and shared.
Others may want to debate whether it is right for charitable funds to do what government will not, but college governors and managers should allow ourselves no such indulgence. There are people hurting now and we have a duty to do what we can to help them. Though fundraising is, today, a tiny part of the income of colleges, I am certain that it not only can, but should, become a major source of income for us, as it has for most universities in the UK.
• Iain Mackinnon is a governor of Ealing, Hammersmith and West London College and former chair of the governing body
Schools system, teenage girls and higher education
Your article sums it up. In many schools, underachievement is the norm for the poorest. Disadvantaged students have been, and continue to be, screwed. Harsh decisions are necessary. The private sector, selection and streaming, which may work for the few, cannot be at the expense of the many. We owe it to all our young people to provide an education that endorses equality.
Ann Moore
Stocksfield, Northumberland
• Rhonda Evans's article is salutary. In England, over the last 20 years, governments have pursued a highly eccentric policy approach. It is based on a search for the presumed Holy Grail of a free-for-all, stand-alone model of schooling similar to that of the elite private school sector and it attempts to destroy any vestiges of a co-ordinated system. This is inappropriate to publicly funded provision and has not brought success in international comparisons. Instead of abandoning this failed approach, the government is reinforcing it.
Ron Glatter
Emeritus professor, the Open University
Boxmoor, Hemel Hempstead, Herts
• While Alberta is pleased with its performance in international tests, we are not stuck on innovations made decades ago. Alberta is introducing a new school act this spring and has initiated an "informed transformation" of its education system because we are convinced that we cannot stand still. What is important is not to park one's brain and hold on to cherished management practices, but to carefully listen to parents and communities, consider the needs of children and to continuously improve.
Edmontonparent via EducationGuardian.co.uk
• Make state schools so good that private schools go out of business, or become part of the state system? That is definitely a good role model for England. Shame that Gove wants to do the opposite: privatise schools in the name of "freedom".
Decimal via EducationGuardian.co.uk
The only rule when raising teenagers is to pick fights with them only about things that will keep them safe. Piercings are temporary, no more important than how a girl wears her hair. As for searching their bags ... Er, just "no".
JClaire via EducationGuardian.co.uk
• If your child is under 18 they aren't allowed a tattoo by law, and if they're over 18 they can do what they want. And the "imagine what you'll look like at 40" argument is just not effective. When I was 17, I didn't expect to live that long.
Toadjuggler via EducationGuardian.co.uk
• By the time I left home my mum had more piercings than me plus two tattoos. Somehow I don't think the advice given would have been helpful for us.
gembird via EducationGuardian.co.uk
Jol Miskin, Sheffield
Worried about the crush for a place at university? As UK degrees become more expensive and places hard to get, more students are applying abroad as a back-up
Universities minister David Willetts admitted he wasn't surprised by official Ucas figures showing that thousands more students have applied to start university this autumn. Applications are up as students try to avoid the tuition fee rise that will see some courses cost £27,000 from 2012, and because thousands missed out on places last year. But the government might be more concerned about another growing trend in higher education: early signs indicate that thousands of sixth-formers are considering opting out of the UK system completely, and applying for what they see as a cheaper, better-funded degree from universities in the rest of Europe and the US.
Take Tom King, 17, an A-level student at Stourport sixth-form centre in Worcester. Until this summer, he had planned to apply to study politics at UK universities including the London School of Economics, York and City University London. But as news of tuition fee increases and funding cuts was released, he broadened his horizons. "I read about Dutch universities appealing to British students," King explains, "and found that universities in Holland have fees of ... a third of those here [even before the fees rise to a maximum £9,000 a year].
"I am willing to pay to go to university, but the fact that tuition fees are much lower makes universities overseas very attractive. And I think the fact that the government is making cuts to universities next year will cause severe difficulties and probably leave some of our universities less well funded than those abroad."
Now, as well as applying to UK universities, King is applying to read international relations at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. He believes recruiters will be just as impressed by a Dutch qualification. "I think employers will see the value of me having studied abroad and the different experiences and skills I would bring to a job," he says. "I think that learning Dutch, as I would hope to do, would make me a desirable employee."
King is not alone. As students in the UK press the "send" button on their Ucas forms ahead of Saturday's deadline, many are remembering the 209,000 wannabe undergraduates who missed out entirely on a university place last year, and are applying to overseas institutions as a back-up. European and US universities report soaring levels of interest from British students. According to the Fulbright Commission, which helps to co-ordinate transatlantic study, more than 4,000 students and parents attended its US college information day in September – 50% more than the same time last year. Traffic from the UK on the Fulbrightwebsite on how to apply to US campuses is 30% higher than it was last year.
It's tougher to obtain figures for study in European universities as applications tend to go in later. But individual institutions are reporting far more interest from the UK. At Maastricht University in Holland, for example, where fees are €1,672 a year (£1,500) for under-30s, admissions tutors report double the number of applications from UK students this year. Although applications for its earliest courses don't close until May, more than 100 British students have already applied for its English-language degrees in subjects including European law, IT, life sciences and econometrics. The umbrella body for Denmark's universities said it had also noted a "slight increase" in the number of degree students from the UK.
"British students and parents are feeling the squeeze between rising tuition and budget cuts at UK universities," says Lauren Welch, of the Fulbright Commission. "Students are going to study where they can get the most bang for their buck. More students are throwing their hats into the ring in other countries to increase their chances of having at least one offer come next summer."
Polina Borisova, 18, who is in year 13 studying five A-levels at Presdales school, a comprehensive in Hertfordshire, is doing just that. She is applying to study physics at Yale, Harvard, Columbia and MIT in the US as well as UK universities because, she says, she is worried about the impact of cost-cutting on universities here. "I always wanted to study physics, and last summer arranged work experience on a research project at the University of Hertfordshire," says Borisova. "I knew the science budget was being cut by as much as £600m, and the professors and PhD students I worked with supported my plans to go to the US to study science. Science seems to be one of President Obama's top priorities – a lot of research institutions are enjoying funding increases."
Borisova believes the cost difference may not be significant. "Whilst a US education is expensive, the UK is catching up," she says. "There's no point in staying here, paying as much money as in the US, but getting poor facilities and fewer opportunities. The tuition fees rise in the UK removed any doubts I had about applying abroad. I'm asking for financial aid at all the US universities, and at, say, Harvard the financial aid I could expect to receive is about $40,000 (£25,500) a year. The fees are about $50,000 so I'd still end up having to pay $10,000 (£6,400), but I think that would work out cheaper than paying the new rates in the UK."
The students all point out that the financial benefits may go beyond cheaper fees. When King visited Netherlands universities' open days, English students already studying there told him about state grants paid to students needing paid jobs for more than a certain number of hours per week. "I may also qualify for very generous international student grants," he adds, "including a monthly allowance of €1,000."
Many employers approve of students' flight overseas, says Carl Gilleard, chief executive of the Association of Graduate Recruiters. "It takes plenty of self-confidence, determination and motivation to pursue your higher education overseas. I can't see it doing anything but good to career prospects."
Applying to foreign universities usually means extra leg work, including multiple applications as well as Ucas for European institutions (although deadlines tend to be spread out later in the year). For US universities, applications are even more demanding, often requiring several essays as well as admissions exams generally taken in year 13. King says he felt the disadvantage is "not having the expert guidance on the application system the school is able to provide with Ucas."
But it's not just undergraduates considering study overseas. Cai Weaver, 24, is in his final year of a politics degree at Aberystwyth University. "I was searching for master's courses in the UK, and was shocked by the prices," he says. "For master's courses the only funding available is a career development loan (CDL) of up to £10,000." Weaver's top-choice degree in the UK, diplomacy studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, charges fees of £12,810.
"Postgraduate education here seems to be for the privileged," he says. "I don't see the point of applying to UK institutions when they are underfunded, and the fees are too high for the amount of contact time and the standards of education." Instead, Weaver is applying for master's courses at universities in Finland and Sweden. "There are no tuition fees at all, which means I could use the CDL for money to live on," he says. "The future for higher education in the UK is bleak. Most of my friends are in the same boat with their postgraduate education – looking at foreign universities because they are cheaper and better funded."
The experience of being a novice boxer in a gym in Chicago encouraged a French sociologist to punch out a book
Loic Wacquant, perhaps the only French sociologist who spent at least three years in the Woodlawn Gym in Chicago, Illinois, boxing with both amateurs and professionals, emerged from the experience strong, spry and of a mind to punch out some books and papers.
Wacquant is now a researcher at the Centre de Sociologie Européenne in Paris, and a professor of sociology at the University of California at Berkeley.
His book, Body Soul: Notebooks of an Apprentice Boxer, published in 2003 by Oxford University Press, serves up more than 200 pages of detail. Wacquant writes that, prior to entering "a boxing gym in a neighbourhood of Chicago's black ghetto, I had never practised that sport or even considered trying it. I thus found myself in the situation of the perfect novice". That was in 1988.
Three to six sessions a week he trained – shadowboxing, working the speed bag, sparring – and eventually fought in a Golden Gloves tournament. "I even thought for a while of aborting my academic career to 'turn pro'," he writes, "and thereby remain with my friends from the gym and its coach, DeeDee Armour, who had become a second father for me."
The book grew in part from a paper Wacquant scribbled during his first summer there, "when getting my nose broken during a sparring session had forced me into a period of inactivity propicious to a reflexive return on my novitiate in progress".
We get analysis, but best of all we get a fist/hand account of the action: "Jabs from me, blocked by his fists, versus jabs from him, blocked by my nose. I'm better able to see his punches coming, but I still don't move fast enough. He lands another punch on my face, a right that makes my headgear turn sideways. DeeDee growls 'Move yo' head, Louie!' I'm trying!"
A second book, to be called The Passion of the Pugilist, will, Wacquant says, address "the dialectic of desire and domination in the social genesis of the boxer's vocation", "the work of the trainer as virile mothering", "confrontation in the ring as a homoerotic ritual of masculinisation", and other topics that did not fit or had not matured in time to go into Body Soul.
But one needn't entirely wait. Waquant has published monographs galore. The titles, like the text, are sweaty admixtures of sociologicalese and pulp non-fiction. Among his more hard-hitting papers one finds A Fleshpeddler at Work: Power, Pain, and Profit in the Prizefighting Economy and Pugs at Work: Bodily Capital and Bodily Labour Among Professional Boxers.
A paper called Whores, Slaves, And Stallions – Languages Of Exploitation And Accommodation Among Prizefighters, in the journal Body and Society, hard-boils down to this:
"The boxer's experience of corporeal exploitation is expressed in three kindred idioms ... The first likens the fighter-manager combo to the prostitute-pimp duet; the second depicts the ring as a plantation and promoters as latter-day slave masters; the third intimates that boxers are used in the manner of livestock".
• Marc Abrahams is editor of the bimonthly Annals of Improbable Research and organiser of the Ig Nobel prize
• The original picture used to illustrate this article was removed on 12 January as it had been captioned wrongly and was not relevant.
Funding cuts in state schools mean pupils will miss out on the best IT equipment
At an age when most children are learning how to hold a pencil, a class of five-year-olds at a school in Scotland are practising writing the numbers one to 10 on their iPads. The Cedar school of excellence in Greenock, an independent school, is thought to be the first in the world where all lessons are taught using iPads.
It is one of a growing number of independent schools and academies that are spending many thousands of pounds kitting their pupils out with mobile technology such as iPads and iPod Touches.
But as teachers eye up all the latest gadgets at the Bett technology show at Olympia in London this week, those in state schools may feel like the poor relations. Technology, one of the most expensive areas in schools, has been among the first affected by coalition austerity. One of Michael Gove's first acts as education secretary was to abolish Becta, the government's IT advisory body, and cut by £100m the Harnessing Technology grant, designed to help schools to pay for broadband connectivity and computer hardware.
In addition, schools are losing out through the scrapping of the Building Schools for the Future programme, which as well as investing in school buildings, also funded IT equipment.
Last month, the e-Learning Foundation, a charity, warned that two million children in Britain have no internet connection at home and said it feared the gap between rich and poor pupils' performance at school would widen.
The specialist schools programme is being abolished and, from April, dedicated funding for specialist technology schools will end and the funding will go into a central pot for all state secondary schools. Under Labour, specialist schools got around £130 extra per pupil per year.
Davison CE high school for girls in Worthing, Sussex, is one of these. As a specialist technology school, it had planned to run an e-learning programme in September, where all its year 9 pupils would use iPads across the curriculum. However, due to the cuts, it has had to abandon the project. "We wanted all our year 9 pupils to use iPads in their lessons and were researching how to create a network platform to support this device. It has been a difficult decision, but with some of our funding clawed back, we have had to mothball the project," says Andrew McDonald-Bowyer, deputy headteacher at the school.
McDonald-Bowyer believes using the iPad across the curriculum would have been extremely beneficial. "You only have to be in a classroom when you ask pupils to do a creative task. If they are doing it on a computer or laptop, they are far more engaged. Having a device like this, which you have to admit is quite cool, would really get them engaged. I am saddened that we are not going to be able to get the iPads," he says.
McDonald-Bowyer calls it "sad that we have technology constantly changing and evolving and yet the opportunities to take risks with IT are diminishing. I can see us going backwards and not even having the resources to do what we did in the past."
The school had been hoping to pay for the iPads with money from its budget and with parental contributions, after three-quarters of parents said they would be willing to take part in a two-year payment scheme.
As funding is cut, a growing number of schools are going down this route and asking parents to subsidise IT equipment. But this is an issue that polarises schools.
Pete Spencer, headteacher of Coedcae school in Llanelli, Wales, flatly opposes it. "It is not an avenue that would work for us. Things like that are OK in affluent areas, but what would we do about those children whose parents couldn't afford £10 a month? It would create a two-tier system in the school," he says.
Russell Hobby, general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, also feels uneasy about it and sees it widening the gulf between the haves and the have nots. "Not every parent can afford it. The people who already have a lot will be able to afford it and their children will benefit and the people from disadvantaged backgrounds will go without," he says.
However, for Valerie Thompson, chief executive of the e-Learning Foundation, this is the only way forward.
Her charity helps schools in deprived areas to set up e-learning programmes to ensure all children have access to a computer and the internet at home as well as at school. To make it sustainable, parents are asked to make small donations.
She says: "I accept a lot of families can't afford £10 a month, but a lot can and do. Fifteen per cent of children in the UK are eligible for free schools meals, which means their parents are on less than £16,190.
"So, 85% of children have parents who are on more and can afford to pay. We are scrupulous in making sure that children whose parents can't afford to contribute can still take part in the programme."
She admits there are schools that do not do this and where there is a two-tier system in operation, but says for the most part this does not happen.
Her charity has also not been immune to the cuts, losing three quarters of a million pounds in government funding in August, which would have helped to provide computers for around 7,000 children.
One of the problems is that it is very difficult to show how positive the impact of IT is on a school.
Some schools point to improved GCSE results. Fraser Speirs, head of computing and IT at the 105-pupil Cedar school, where every child has an iPad, has found "iPad-based teaching is producing increased levels of engagement both in class and with homework and study at home".
The iPads are working particularly well with the youngest pupils in the school. "They pick it up and very quickly learn how to use it. They use it for things like phonics and it helps them with focusing and concentration. They spend more time doing tasks on an iPad than if they are using pencil and paper," says Speirs.
At Coedcae school, Spencer has bought two iPads for the school library and has been using them mainly as electronic books to encourage boys to read more.
"It is good to have something that they haven't got at home. But only two iPads among 1,100 pupils is not a very good ratio," he says.
He worries that with the funding cuts, children at "ordinary" state schools could miss out and says: "Sadly, I think the best we can achieve in a time when technology is becoming more impressive is to stand still. That is quite depressing."
Having new technology in schools is crucial, according to Brian Lightman, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL), "as that is what they are going to be using in life".
He is increasingly concerned about the coalition government's commitment to IT and says: "Keeping up with technology is so important, and it is one of the areas where the coalition government has had very little to say."
Hobby voices similar concerns and says: "We have made great gains in technology in state schools over the last decade, but this government just doesn't seem to see the importance of technology.
"At the moment, mobile phones are seen by the government as a discipline problem, but for some schools they can be a learning opportunity. The government seems to be seeing technology as a problem, not a solution."