Finland's education system is already praised worldwide. Now, as its population becomes more diverse, it is setting a great example when it comes to educating its immigrant children, too
In Finland, it is customary for children to line up their shoes outside the classroom and to learn in their stockinged feet. Outside classroom 3C at Laakavuori primary in Helsinki, there are only four pairs of shoes and they include the scuffed trainers of a 12-year-old boy and the sparkly pumps of a seven-year-old girl.
Inside, four children – Anastasia, Artur, Kevin and Arthur – are taking in the basics of the Finnish language. Their teacher points at a picture of a jacket and articulates the word slowly – "takki". The children mouth it back. A teaching assistant, sitting at the back, joins in.
Anastasia, Artur, Kevin and Arthur arrived in Finland with their families less than two months ago. Like most newcomers here, they come from Russia and Estonia. Fortunately for them, their parents have chosen a country that has much to teach other nations when it comes to educating young immigrants.
Finland is seen by many outsiders as monocultural – its foreign-born citizens make up just 5% of its population, compared to about 11.5% in the UK. But, over the last 15 years, Finland has diversified at a faster rate than any other European country. By 2020, a fifth of Helsinki's pupils are expected to have been born elsewhere – the majority in Russia, Estonia, Somalia and the former Yugoslavia.
At Laakavuori primary, in the poorer, eastern part of Helsinki, 45% of pupils have a language other than Finnish as their mother tongue. And yet they achieve as much as others in more affluent areas of the country, where there are few, if any, immigrants.
Politicians and policy-makers the world over have admired Finland's education system for the fact that, over the last decade, its 15-year-olds have consistently had the highest – or among the highest – standards in reading, maths and science when compared with most of the developed countries of the world. Every three years, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) administers a numeracy, literacy and science test to about 470,000 15-year-olds in 65 countries, known as the Programme for International Student Assessment. In the most recent Pisa study, in 2009, Finland came third out of 65 countries, while the UK was 25th. In the 2006 Pisa study, Finland came top and the UK 14th.
Much of Finland's success has been attributed to the high prestige associated with being a teacher and the fact that it is as hard for Finns to win a place on a teacher training course as it is for them to get into law or medical school.
But another aspect of Finland's success – getting children whose first language is not Finnish up to the high standards of their classmates – appears to have been overlooked by the education tourists.
Anastasia, Artur, Kevin and Arthur stay in their class of four with a teacher and teaching assistant for 25 hours a week – for every subject except sports and arts. It can be anything between six months and a year before they are judged to have mastered Finnish and are ready to be placed into their correct year group.
It's no surprise that with this kind of immersion, half of Laakavuori's pupils – including a high proportion of those who come not speaking a word of Finnish – go on to pass the aptitude test that admits them to prestigious academic high schools.
It says something, too, about Finland's attitude that since the 1980s, the state has paid for Somali teachers to help young Somalis living in Finland to expand their vocabulary in their native language, too.
Helsinki's education department estimates that just over 11,000 pupils – almost 2% – have state-funded tuition in a mother tongue that isn't Finnish, before or after their other classes.
In England, meanwhile, a grant for schools to employ and train teachers to help pupils whose first language is not English has been scrapped.
Finland, on the other hand, has had what it describes as a "positive discrimination" policy since the 1990s. It gives schools extra funds if they are situated in relatively poor areas or have a disproportionately high number of children with special needs. It tops up these funds with €1,000 (£875) a year for each child on the school's roll who has lived in Finland for less than four years.
"The government rightly recognises that it is more intensive to teach in an area like my school," says Janne-Pekka Nurmi, principal of Laakavuori.
This sounds just like a more generous version of our pupil premium – the £488 that schools in England receive annually for each pupil they enrol who is eligible for free school meals. But there's a crucial difference. From next September, our government will be publishing what schools spend this on and, in time, will publish its suggestions of how best the pupil premium can be spent. In Finland, they simply leave it to the teachers.
Laakavuori primary has used this premium to employ social workers and psychologists a few days a week. The principal says this helps to "detect early problems and deal with them quickly".
It's not just in primary schools that young immigrants are helped. Helsinki's education department is running a pilot project that puts 15- and 16-year-old immigrants in touch with "social instructors" to ensure they fit in with Finnish society and don't drop out of school. Extraordinarily, these instructors work to find the young people friends to socialise with as well as helping them to find the services and careers advice they need.
Naldic (National Association for Language Development in the Curriculum) represents teachers in UK schools who specialise in educating pupils whose first language is not English. Amy Thompson, its chair, says that in England, the needs of non-English-speaking young immigrants are "no longer recognised as distinct from the needs of all pupils in terms of policy and funding". "The English system of 'sink or swim' needs to be brought in line, not only with Finland, but with English-speaking countries across the world that provide dedicated funding, curriculum and support for learners for whom English is an additional language," she says.
To many, a comparison between Finland and the UK is unfair. Finland's entire pupil population amounts to just 600,000, while that of England and Wales tops 7 million. Finland wants to promote skilled immigrants to compensate for an emerging labour shortage due to its ageing population, while in England, the aim is to reduce net migration to under 100,000 by 2015.
In Finland, unlike in the UK, an influx of immigrants is still new to the country.
Not everyone in Finland is quite so friendly towards newcomers. In April, The Finns – a populist nationalist party that wants to limit humanitarian immigration to refugee quotas – won 19% of the vote in the parliamentary election, becoming the largest opposition party in Finland.
A growing number of Finns are said to be removing their children from ethnically diverse primary schools, and some are reported to be demanding a cap on the number of non-Finns in a classroom.
But Finland's teachers and educationists are adamant that they will fight this on all fronts. They say that what they provide for young immigrants works.
Meanwhile, says Thompson, England should look at Finland's impressive procedures for the education of bilingual pupils. A national survey carried out by Naldic and the National Union of Teachers in February found that over 60% of respondents believed that support for pupils for whom English was an additional language and for bilingual learners had significantly deteriorated over the last six months. In England, she says, "the situation is becoming worse by the day".
• Parents can send children aged between eight months and five years to free daycare. At age six, there is a year of pre-school
• All full-time pupils get free lunches
• Basic compulsory education starts at age seven and ends at age 16
• At 16, pupils either go to vocational school or an upper secondary school. Upper secondary schools tend to be for those who want to go on to university, although it is possible to study for degrees from vocational schools
• There are no league tables or inspections and the only national exam is at the age of 18 or 19
• Finland has no university fees for home or EU students
We ask education experts for their verdicts
Rob Appelby, art teacher, Herne Bay high school, Kent
It's not necessarily that teachers know less about IT – it's just that they don't know how to teach it. The curriculum always seems to be lagging behind. My students don't want to learn how to make Excel spreadsheets or PowerPoint presentations – they want something far more eclectic that really taps into their individual interests.
Karen Davies, head of learning resources, Science Museum
Kids are very experimental and really push boundaries, but adults tend to be more cautious. That's why students often seem to know more than their teachers – it's a confidence thing. Yes, there are lots of things we can learn from young people, but children need frameworks and structures to help them learn – and that's what teachers provide.
Sam Dutton, developer advocate for Chrome at Google
Kids are very knowledgable as consumers, but they don't necessarily know how the technologies work. There is this sense of computers being like a mysterious black box. It's quite a passive way of looking at technology, so this is where teachers come in. I'd love to see schools being a lot more proactive, teaching kids skills like computer programming.
Russell Hobby, general secretary, the National Association of Head Teachers
Nowadays the average teenager does know more about IT than their teacher but that has its plus points. When students have to help out their teacher, it can be a big boost to their self-esteem. But technology can't be taught as a standalone subject – it should be integrated in all lessons.
Julie Thorpe, head of school and youth programmes, Co-operative College, Manchester
My own sons spent three years learning about Word, Excel and PowerPoint. It seems a shame to invest so much time and energy in teaching students how to use applications they could probably work out for themselves. I'd like to see children involved in activities that would stretch both teachers and pupils, for example, taking PCs apart and rebuilding them with new components.
• Janet Murray was talking to delegates at the Guardian's Innovation in Education annual summit. See reports from the event at EducationGuardian.co.uk
3D is the hottest thing in cinema and television ... and fertile new ground for academic study
Steven Spielberg's 3D film The Adventures of Tintin took £25.5m in ticket sales around the world. And 3D is also entering Britain's homes, via expensive TV sets. Proponents of the format claim it is the future of media viewing.
But, according to Owen Weetch, of the University of Warwick, 3D isn't always worth the extra cash or spectacle-wearing and only some genres and films are improved by the format. "I started to investigate 3D cinema about six months before Avatar was released, when there was a great deal of advance publicity keen to tout 3D as the future of cinema, comparable to the introduction of sound or colour," says Weetch. "I was interested in whether this would be the case, or if it would simply be 'the emperor's new clothes'."
Watching films or researching other criticism and analysis of 3D, Weetch noticed a lot of condemnation of the format. "Critics such as Roger Ebert and Mark Kermode are opposed," he says, "and a recent study by L Mark Carrier of California State University suggests that the medium produces headaches, eyestrain and trouble with vision and 'there aren't any benefits in terms of understanding the movie better'."
Weetch disagrees. Some films are well worth the effort of 3D, he says. "In my research I investigate specific genres and how previous alterations to the cinematic image's width and depth – such as deep focus and wider screens – have impacted on those genres' representational strategies. Genres that in some way depend on the space or environment in which their stories take place certainly do benefit – exponentially – from the additional dimension."
Take Avatar, the 3D James Cameron-directed blockbuster that smashed all records to become the fastest movie ever to achieve $1bn in world ticket sales . "It's a science fiction spectacular about humans engaging with a new, alien space," says Weetch, "so a stereoscopic [3D] staging that emphasises deep space guides the audience into the story world. This aligns the viewer more forcefully with the protagonists, who are themselves exploring this space, and so heightens the immersive thrill of the story."
Horror films are another genre where it is worth paying for 3D, Weetch believes. "They have traditionally seized on the dark shadows at the edge of the frame to scare their audiences and 3D can use its extension of screen space to create unprecedented dark spaces, out of which threats might leap. The object of terror might have been hiding right in front of your nose while you've been scanning the distance."
Scary stuff – but not as terrifying as the academic's musings on Jackass 3D. "When a film's focus is on bodies moving through space, as in musicals, dance films and slapstick comedy, the impression of that movement becomes more palpable in 3D," Weetch says. "Jackass 3D and Pina 3D exploited this masterfully. For the person who finds one of the Jackass boys tying a remote-controlled helicopter to their penis amusing, surely that's going to be funnier if the helicopter flies out of the screen."
But not all 3D experiences are worthwhile. "It costs more to go to a 3D film, so you want it to at least try to earn its money," says Weetch. "The worst examples tend to be films converted to 3D in post-production, for example Alice in Wonderland 3D.
Like Avatar, it's about somebody entering a strange new world, but is filled with dull, flat compositions that display no real attempt to engage with the third dimension. "With conversion, you get a very artificial sense of flat objects being layered atop one another like cardboard cut-outs, rather than an honest sense of depth or curvature."
Some film-makers use 3D as an excuse to forego other, potentially more important parts of a viewer's experience, Weetch adds. He flags up the example of Sanctum, this year's 3D underwater adventure. "It made an honest attempt to engage with the aesthetic of depth, but was let down elsewhere, by rote storytelling or ineffectual direction. While 3D is one of many textual strategies that can contribute to thematic and narrative unity, it isn't necessarily effective on its own." Some filmmakers, Weetch adds, exploit viewers: "they think they can make money by foisting depth on to something shallow, and it simply doesn't work that way."
In the context of funding cuts to academia and questions over "Mickey Mouse degrees", Weetch admits he does face accusations that the films he studies are "not exactly serious or particularly highbrow." But that, he says, "presumes that 3D can't contribute to films that are concerned with characters and ideas, which I'd attribute to ignorance and snobbery. Tintin, The Hole in 3D, and Kung-Fu Panda 2 all contain psychoanalytic sequences where characters retreat mentally into their past, and 3D layering expressively portrays the inner workings of their minds."
Does success as an artist bring you more sexual conquests? Well, yes and no, say researchers
To deal with their realisation that some artists get a lot of sex while others get little or none, Helen Clegg, Daniel Nettle and Dorothy Miell made use of an ancient tool – a tool that mathematicians count among the sexiest of mankind's inventions. The logarithm.
The trio had joined forces, as they later described it, to "investigate the relationship between mating success and artistic success in a sample of 236 visual artists".
Clegg is a University of Northampton senior lecturer in psychology, Nettle a professor of behavioural science at Newcastle University and Miell the head of the College of Humanities and Social Science at the University of Edinburgh.
Their report, called Status and Mating Success Amongst Visual Artists, appears in the journal Frontiers in Psychology.
The study gives us barely any numerical detail. It says only this: "The distribution of number of sexual partners for these participants was highly skewed with a minimum of 0 and a maximum of 250 (M=10.67). Therefore, the data were converted to a log scale and [we performed our analysis] using this scale."
That "M=10.67" is the median. Half of the 236 artists had had, each of them, fewer than 10.67 lovers. The other artists each had had in excess of 10.67 bedmates. Or so they told the researchers.
Two lovers. Twenty lovers. Two hundred lovers. They seem almost to be from different universes, the collections of five or six lovers, versus the serial harems of 100 or 200. How to talk coherently about a hodgepodge of small and big numbers?
You do it with logarithms. Roughly speaking (I don't have room here to go into much detail), the logarithm of a particular number tells – measures, really – how many extra digits that number has.
The number 1 has no extra digits. Its logarithm is zero. The number 10 has one extra digit. Its logarithm is 1. The number 100 has two extra digits; its logarithm is 2. The logarithm of 101 is ever-so-slightly bigger than 2 (it's about 2.0043). The logarithm of 250 is bigger still (about 2.3979).
The logarithm is a concise, rough way to compare things across vast scales of bigness and smallness. That painter who's got a new girlfriend every few months? About log 2. That lonely graffiti gal whom everyone shuns? Log zero, it seems.
The researchers used logarithms also when they tried to understand a related set of numbers.
They had computed what they call the "mating strategy index" of the various artists. "Each one-night stand gained one point, each relationship up to a month two points, and soon up to each relationship 10 years or over, which gained eight points. The total number of points for each person was added up and divided by their total number of relationships."
After tiptoeing through all their data and computations, the artists-and-sex researchers decided that "more successful male artists had more sexual partners than less successful artists, but this did not hold for female artists".
• Marc Abrahams is editor of the bimonthly Annals of Improbable Research and organiser of the Ig Nobel prize
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Very few academies are sponsored by private schools - and there's little ministers can do
Private schools are in an assertive mood. They've claimed victory in a long-running dispute with the Charity Commission over what they do to justify charitable status. And they've shrugged off pressure from the government to get more involved in its academies' programme.
The latest independent school head to rebuke ministers is Dr Helen Wright, president of the Girls' Schools Association. In a speech today, she warns:
"The government must be careful, I believe, in drawing us in the independent sector in to bolster their new academies or to prop up other failing schools. This might curry favour in some political quarters but who will really benefit if we are forced to provide the teachers, classrooms and the expertise that should have been provided by successive governments?"
Dr Wright argues that while private schools may be capable of "succeeding where the state has failed", their prime duty is to their own fee-payers.
"Why should our parents – most of whom struggle hard to pay the fees to educate their children – prop up the state system and so effectively pay twice?"
The best riposte to this was made by Andrew Adonis, who pointed out in a lecture this summer that "by far the single largest source of new teachers in private schools is experienced teachers in state schools, whereas traffic the other way is minimal." The pupil-teacher ratio in private schools is close to half that of state schools (9.4 to 1, compared with 16.6 to 1).
Adonis' powerful lecture is worth reading. In it, he argues that every successful private school should sponsor an academy.
"And by sponsoring academies I don't just mean advice and assistance, the loan of playing fields and the odd teacher, etc. I mean the private school or foundation taking complete responsibility for the governance and leadership of an academy or academies, and staking their reputation on their success as they currently do on the success of their fee-paying schools."
Opening up a few more places to poorer children might be good for the social mix of independent schools. But it will do nothing to create more good schools - or build a "truly world class education system," Adonis argues.
Some private schools are already sponsoring academies. But it is a small proportion. Out of 319 sponsored academies which opened under Labour and the coalition, just 17 have private schools or private school foundations as the lead sponsor.
The majority of these schools are sponsored by City livery companies, such as the Mercers Company, which is also trustee of the foundation behind St Paul's School - the ancient public school attended by George Osborne.
None of the 45 which opened their doors in September are backed by private schools. David Cameron is critical of the segregation between private and state schools - rightly calling it "one of the biggest wasted opportunities in our country today". But aside from honourable exceptions like Wellington College, there's little support from the private sector for the government's reforms.
It matters. As Adonis put it in his lecture: "We do indeed have a coalition government – a coalition between Eton and Westminster. It is only a slightly broader coalition which funds, manages and entertains the country too." If we are ever to be one nation, we need the two sectors to work together, he argues.
Dr Wright accepts that private schools have "an undeniable moral imperative" to educate broader society. She suggests that the government's demands will "begin to be fair" if the pupil premium meant students could opt out of the state system and bring state funding with them.
Even at the best of times, it's unlikely that any government would divert money from state education to bolster private schools. In an era of austerity, offering a carrot like that is an extremely unlikely prospect. Dr Wright's words illustrate the extent to which the stick has been taken away.
The University for the Creative Arts (UCA) has been awarded funding from JISC to digitise the archive of celebrated British designer Zandra Rhodes CBE.
Zandra Rhodes, who was made UCA’s first Chancellor in 2010, has played a significant role in the development of British fashion, helping establish its reputation on the world stage. Her diverse client base has included Diana, Princess of Wales; Jackie Onassis, Freddie Mercury; Kylie Minogue and Sarah Jessica Parker.
A digital images of Zandra Rhodes’ innovative work produced as part of this project will be stored in a digital database. This will be publically accessible, providing an important new global resource for fashion students, designers and researchers world wide. An Open Education Resource will embed a selection of images of her garments within the wider cultural context and support learning and teaching in the field.
Zandra said, “I am thrilled that this project is happening and students will be able to appreciate my work.”
“I am thrilled that this project is happening and students will be able to appreciate my work.”
Professor Kerstin Mey, Director of Research and Enterprise at UCA, said, “We are delighted to be working with Zandra on this exciting project. This digital archive will track a vital dimension of the evolution of British fashion and capture some of its landmark moments.
“It will provide inspiration and learning for new and emerging generations of professional fashion designers, but will also complement research on the overarching cultural situation and zeitgeist of the later 20th Century and early 21st Century.”
This project is funded by JISC as part of its Content programme 2011-2013, Paola Marchionni JISC’s digitisation manager says, “JISC is pleased to support collaboration between the higher education sector and private archives such as Zandra Rhodes’ fashion collection. These partnerships are vital to open up access to resources which wouldn’t otherwise be available, not only for the benefit of students and researchers in the UK but for the enjoyment and use of the public at large as Open Educational Resources.”
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In this podcast JISC's Rebecca O'Brien chats to Kevin Ashley, director of the DCC, about the event and what delegates can hope to gain by taking part.
Listen to the podcast (Duration 6:58)
JISC EMBEDDED OBJECT
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JISC is supporting universities and colleges to create a business case for an integrated IT strategy to help them make better investment decisions.
The business benefit of strategic ICT is to be explored in a JISC webinar on 7 December for information service managers and practitioners, as well as senior leaders looking for a joined-up approach to technology.
The webinar will discuss how to conduct an audit of where your IT provision is now, establish your investment priorities and make decisions, using a new JISC toolkit.
The toolkit that the webinar will explore includes a range of checklists, case studies and good practice guidelines to help senior managers identify, analyse, assess and develop their current maturity level in IT.
Register for the webinar on Wednesday 7 December at 2pm – 3pm GMT
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This morning the outcome of the Gloucestershire and Somerset judicial review was announced. The High Court ruled that both councils had failed to take account of their equalities duties.
Commenting on the judgment CILIP’s Chief Executive, Annie Mauger, said, "The campaigners in Gloucestershire and Somerset have worked tirelessly to get recognition of the needs of local communities to be paramount in decisions about changes to library services and this is their day."
"Access to a comprehensive and efficient library service is what the 1964 Act is all about. This is a real call to local authorities to ensure that whatever changes have to be made, they must take the needs of all communities and vulnerable groups into account. People need libraries to support them in literacy and skills development, access to knowledge and finding the information that they need to live successful lives. This ruling recognises that communities need libraries."
CILIP acknowledges the difficult financial position Councils are in and that tough decisions are being made in regard to all public sector services. However it is concerned that public libraries are not expected to bear disproportionate cuts and that there is effective public consultation and engagement in regard to future public library provision. It supports genuine ways of saving costs through improved efficiency and the exploration of imaginative new ways of delivering services.
CILIP also believes that the national and local debates on library provision would be improved with a modern national vision for the library service underpinned by proper standards. We note that in its Open Public Services White Paper the Government proposes that, for the national services it procures, the Government should establish and enforce core entitlements, set floor standards enforced by independent regulators or published data and ensure fair access to services.
The full Judicial review judgement is available here.
Ends
Press contacts:
Kasey Butler, Communications & Campaigns Manager, CILIP
Email: kasey.butler@cilip.org.uk
Tel: 0207 255 0653
Notes to editors:
1. CILIP: the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals is the leading professional body for librarians, information specialists and knowledge managers. CILIP’s vision is a fair and economically prosperous society underpinned by literacy, access to information and the transfer of knowledge. CILIP is a registered charity, no. 313014. Visit www.cilip.org.uk for more information.
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On the Guardian Teacher Network this week you can find lesson plans, practical advice and more from the organisations that make up the Alliance Against Bullying
It's Anti-Bullying Week, and this year the 130-plus organisations that comprise the Anti-Bullying Alliance (ABA) are challenging the old "sticks and stones" adage and putting name-calling and all forms of belittling or insulting language in the spotlight. The impetus comes from the 2010 Anti Bullying Alliance youth summit, at which young people identified verbal abuse as especially damaging and which, if left unchallenged, can quickly turn schools into hostile environments.
There is a wealth of background data and research, plus practical advice, for school leaders and teachers in the ABW briefing pack.As well as containing the resources for supporting whole-school staff responses to the problem, there are four helpful teaching activities, which culminate in the development of a pupils' communications charter.
The almost casual use of terms that are at root homophobic, even if children are ignorant of their true implications, is of particular concern to the charity Stonewall, which has produced publications and reports offering advice and support for teachers. The Teachers' Report into Homophobic Bullying in Britain's Schools includes very helpful chapters of the kind of barriers that sometimes have to be overcome in order to tackle the issue in schools, and a host of examples of good practice plus "a recommendations template" upon which school policy might be built.
The School Champions Programme, meanwhile, is part of Stonewall's Education for All campaign and provides tailored support and guidance to primary and secondary schools in challenging homophobic bullying and celebrating difference.
Several Anti-Bullying Alliance organisations have created school assembly and lesson plans. For example, see the assembly and lesson plans from key stage 1 to 16-plus from the charity Beatbullying, including the secondary-aimed Words Can Hurt and associated slides.
Meanwhile, drama, with all its potential for encouraging empathy, also features strongly among the approaches encouraged by ABA members. For example, Spotlights Theatre Company, which provides anti-bullying workshops in schools, has made some strong drama workshop resources available encouraging all sorts of forum theatre approaches for exploring the issues. Think Tank is designed to encourage KS2 children to consider the effect of what they say and take responsibility for their language, and the KS2 The Good Friend Gallery was developed in line with last year's ABW theme: taking action together. Additionally, these helpful and highly interactive primary resources from Go-Givers address the harm that hurtful language can cause and the impact of online bullyingMany schools tackling bullying opt for the creation of mentoring schemes. One of the specialist organisations in this area is the Mentoring and Befriending Foundation. It administers an approved provider standard scheme. Free resources full of good practice include the report into the 2008-10 Anti-bullying National Pilot and the associated Dissemination Manual.
Bullying behaviour often results in punishment and exclusion, but there are, suggest organisations such as Transforming Conflict, more imaginative and productive restorative justice routes to bring changed behaviour. A start to such an approach is the short guide by its director, Belinda Hopkins, derived from her book The Restorative Classroom.
• This article was amended on 16 November to correct the name of the Anti-Bullying Alliance
A consultation on sex education ends this month, but the government has already ruled out the most essential change, say campaigners – and teenagers themselves
James says he has picked up most of what he knows about sex from the television; the only sex education he had at school was the biological basics at primary school and a few brief talks at the end of year 11.
He's at the Brook sexual health clinic in Brixton for a test, he explains. "I'm here because somebody I slept with had something. I'm 18 and I don't even know the symptoms of it, or what the cure is. It's that bad. All I know is the name." What is it? "Chlamydia."
At Odia's school there was a room where pupils could go and get advice and condoms, and practise putting them on a plastic penis. But there was no obligation to go, and many didn't. Boys were particularly rare attendees. The 17-year-old can't remember having any sex education lessons at secondary school. The pressure to have sex, and to do so without a condom, is intense, she says. "If you make the mistake and say 'yeah, I love you' they use that against you. They say 'if you love me we don't need to use a condom'."
Sexual cyberbullying is a very real concern. "On Facebook you see pictures of naked girls. They've sent it to their boyfriend in confidence and then it's out there," Odia says. She thinks girls need much better education and guidance if they are to avoid this kind of thing: "Remember, we're still young. If we've not got someone to explain what will happen if we do these things, we're not going to know."
Shenee, also 17, agrees. "There was a picture recently of a girl giving oral sex that went round the whole of south London. I think she was a year older than me. We don't ever learn any stuff about relationships. It's always about body parts."
The experiences recounted at the clinic one afternoon last week speak volumes about the lives of young people in a world where sex is everywhere, often in the form of pornography, and the pressures to conform are enormous. These experiences also, the sexual health charity Brook says, back up the demands of a number of leading campaigners, including the Family Planning Association (FPA), that sex and relationships education (SRE) is made a statutory part of the curriculum, ending parents' right to remove their children from lessons.
By law, pupils must learn the biology of reproduction as part of national curriculum science – the only part parents can't take them out of. But there is no statutory requirement to teach them about relationships, sexuality or choices in pregnancy.
The government is currently reviewing personal, social and health education (PSHE), which SRE falls under. Yet ministers have already ruled out making SRE statutory, or ending parents' right of withdrawal. A consultation on the review closes at the end of the month.
It's a missed opportunity, says Simon Blake, Brook's chief executive. "Not making SRE statutory is failing young people. It's failing to listen to them, and if we continue to mess around on this we're leaving them vulnerable to pregnancy, STIs [sexually transmitted infections] and sexual activity they don't want. It's irresponsible. The government has to be brave and grasp the nettle." The UK still has the highest rate of teenage pregnancies in western Europe, and although the figure has now begun to fall, there are fears that cuts to services will undo that progress.
Many schools do a good job, but evidence shows delivery is patchy, Blake says. In a recent survey of more than 2,000 secondary school pupils for Brook, almost half (47%) said SRE doesn't cover what they feel they need to know about sex. A quarter get no SRE in school at all, they said, and a quarter of those who do said the teacher doesn't do a good job of it. An Ofsted report last year found that SRE teaching was no more than satisfactory in a third of schools. "Making it statutory would mean providing a core entitlement for everyone, and would also mean teachers would be trained well enough to be able to deliver it. It's as much about getting people feeling confident about that as it is getting it into the timetable."
And it's relationships that young people want to know about as much as the nitty-gritty of sex, he says: dealing with emotions and real-life dilemmas.
The Labour government had been set to make SRE compulsory, but dropped the plan in order to get its schools bill through parliament before the 2010 election, after failing to win Conservative support for proposals to end parents' right to take their 15-year-olds out of SRE.
According to Ofsted figures, though, less than 0.04% of pupils are removed from lessons. Is parents' right to do so really such an issue? Yes, says Blake, because schools may deliberately water down their SRE offer in order to avoid the administrative problems of some children being taken out of classes. "We know that some schools self-censor because they don't want people to make a fuss," he says.
His assertion is backed by women's rights campaigners, who say allowing schools to determine their own SRE content and letting parents take children out of lessons leads to girls who could be at risk of practices such as female genital mutilation and forced marriage being denied crucial information.
"If you're working at school in an area that has lots of Kurdish people, for instance, and you decide to consult parents, a lot are going to say 'we don't want you to teach about forced marriage because that's a cultural issue'," says Fionnuala Ni Mhurchu, of the Iranian and Kurdish Women's Rights Organisation. "In our experience, a lot of schools will just go along with that. We also hear from organisations we work with about girls being taken out of SRE lessons; they're kept completely in the dark.
"The government uses the language 'parental rights' in the consultation. But while all the human rights instruments recognise the rights of girls not to be subjected to abuse and discrimination, none of them recognise any right by parents to prevent their children from receiving potentially life-saving information."
At Crompton House school, a Church of England secondary in Oldham, the decision was made seven years ago to transform PSHE and its SRE component from an hour-a-week lesson delivered to all pupils by their form tutor on a Monday morning to a standalone subject taught by a much smaller number of staff with specialist training.
"We used to have 40 PSHE tutors all teaching an hour a week," says the school's head of PSHE, Dave Leggett. "You're never going to get 40 skilled PSHE teachers."
Three teachers are now responsible for most of PSHE, and giving the subject a higher profile – including awarding pupils an attainment level for their work – has led to them taking it much more seriously.
In year 9, pupils get a 10-week SRE course that includes three visits from Brook staff. The school has a number of "virtual babies" – dolls that need feeding, burping and changing – that students take home at weekends to learn about the pressures of parenthood.
In Leggett's eight years at the school no one has ever taken a child out of a lesson, and parents are kept fully informed of what is being taught. "We have the babies screaming the place down on open evenings," says Leggett. "Whatever the government's curriculum review says, we will carry on doing it like this, because we think it's important."
In teacher Craig Owen's class, the enthusiasm is evident. Hands shoot up as he quizzes them about a recent session on contraception. What would cause a condom to split? "Didn't put it on right," one boy suggests. "It could have gone off," says a girl in the front row.
Tom, 14, has plenty of questions. "I'm just interested in how the body works and what I could do if I had a girlfriend and she was pregnant," he explains outside the classroom. "I want to know how I could help; I'd want her to feel comfortable with being pregnant."
Nadia Sica, Brook's coordinator for a health and wellbeing programme in Lambeth, south London, funded by the local primary care trust, understands the difficulties schools face in delivering good SRE, which is not part of basic teacher training. "Schools are under a lot of pressure and SRE tends to be at the bottom of the pile because it's not statutory," Sica says. "With all the other things you have to do [as a school], why would you do something you don't have to do?"
The government insists statutory provision is not necessary, saying its policy on dealing with the challenges young people face is not limited to SRE, citing also the Bailey review into the sexualisation of childhood.
"It is not government's role to run families' lives, but it's clear that many parents need more support to bring up their children," a spokesman for the Department for Education says. "We're working closely with industry to make sure that young people are better protected in a rapidly changing technological and commercial world." Plans include putting age restrictions on sexually explicit music videos, covering up sexualised images on the front of magazines and newspapers in shops and making it easier for parents to block adult material on the internet.
"We want to simplify the guidance on sex education to focus on relationships, positive parenting and … sexual consent," the DfE says.
But failing to make those lessons statutory means there's no guarantee schools will take any notice, says Julie Bentley, the chief executive of the FPA.
"We're not pushing for teaching young people lots more about sex. But what we need is good-quality relationships education: teaching them about respect, honesty, trust and self-esteem. Otherwise they'll be entering relationships that are unhealthy, harmful, have violence in them. It's critically important."
• Some young people's names have been changed
Academies are stuffed with senior staff on large salaries. Wouldn't taxpayers' money be better spent on class teachers?
Becoming a headteacher was once regarded as the pinnacle of an education career. No longer. Now young high-fliers can set their sights on becoming a school's executive principal, its executive director or even its chief executive.
The more modestly ambitious don't have to settle for a humble classroom job. Positions to consider include, for example, assistant executive head, associate senior leader and senior assistant vice-principal.
These grandiose roles, all in academy schools, highlight a trend that is alarming some teacher unions and experts. They warn of leadership teams mushrooming when schools become academies. Staffing costs increase and the gulf between those at the top and the bottom widens.
Senior positions advertised in the past few weeks include that of executive director of the 1,300-pupil New Charter academy in Tameside. In return for a six-figure salary, the successful applicant is to inspire an executive team of four, including an academy director and a leadership team of 16.
In Kent, the 1,600-pupil Business academy, Bexley, is offering to pay an assistant head up to £61,000 to bolster its leadership team of chief executive, executive principal (both earning in excess of £120k) and two headteachers plus assorted deputy and assistant heads. In Norfolk, the 1,300-pupil Thetford academy is advertising for two vice-principals on salaries of up to £74,000 to join its leadership team of 24.
Finally, anyone looking to become a head of PE might consider applying to London's Pimlico academy, rated outstanding by Ofsted. If successful, they would find themselves at a 1,300-pupil school with a principal, a senior vice-principal, two vice-principals and eight assistant principals – not to mention a finance director.
Chris Keates, general secretary of the Nasuwt teachers' union, says: "When schools become academies, there is a massive boost to the senior leadership team, which adds layers of bureaucracy not focused on teaching and learning. Schools are being stuffed with people who are simply busy monitoring other people."
Christine Blower, general secretary of the National Union of Teachers, agrees: "Academies vary tremendously, but do tend to be top-heavy in leaders. The salary bill rises as more is spent on senior staff who go on 'learning walks' round the school rather than actually teaching."
Academies have 50% more senior staff on salaries in excess of £80,000 than maintained secondaries, according to a 2010 National Audit Office report. The trend continues, with a new workforce analysis from the Department for Education confirming that academies pay their senior staff more and have a higher proportion on leadership grades.
While many academies have done wonders with challenging schools, more leaders do not automatically equal more A*-C grade GCSEs. The troubled Basildon academy endured two years of poor GCSE results, high staff turnover and strikes over job cuts – despite employing an executive principal as well as two principals.
A key influence on academy staffing has been the concept of "distributed" leadership. According to Toby Greany, director of research at the National College for School Leadership, the era of the heroic superhead is over – though superhead six-figure salaries are increasingly the norm – and the era of shared leadership is upon us.
Academies have been innovative in terms of leadership, says Greany. "They've had to establish strong teams of middle leaders with responsibility, accountability and clear targets. Middle leadership is the engine room of improvement. The scale of the leadership challenge is so much greater now, you need the whole staff team pulling together."
It's called building leadership "capacity" and while Greany insists it shouldn't mean simply employing more bosses, that is exactly what some academies have done, says John Howson, a recruitment expert and emeritus professor of education at Oxford Brookes University.
"The original purpose of distributed leadership was not to create new higher-level posts. It was to ensure that the head shared power with existing staff."
Academies are free of local authority oversight and not bound by the national pay framework. They no longer have to publish their accounts through the Charity Commission, and only 38% have ever filed a detailed financial return to the DfE. Such lax accountability, says Howson, adds up to "too much room for sharp practice".
Howson wants MPs on the public accounts committee to investigate the pay of senior staff. "We now have arrived at the almost unacceptable face of education capitalism. It demonstrates why you need clarity and regulation with regard to public money."
Howson is also concerned about the role of executive principal. This relatively new position demands strategic vision and inspiration leadership in return for a large salary. The Excelsior academy, Newcastle, paid its executive principal between £140k and £150k in 2009. Her salary is in addition to that of Excelsior's five principals and five vice-principals.
Similarly, the Leigh academy, Dartford, employs an executive principal – it calls him a chief executive – as well as four principals and four vice-principals. Leigh has been praised by Ofsted for its outstanding leadership, but it hasn't come cheap. In 2010, it shelled out in excess of £170k on its top earner, up by at least £10,000 on 2009.
These people do not appear to be suffering a pay freeze, says Howson. "It's all public money. If it reduces resources for front-line teaching, is that a good use of it?"
No, says Keates. "Millions of pounds of public money are pouring into private education companies and the inflated salaries of executive principals with no evidence this is leading to rising standards."
What parents want, she says, are more teachers and support staff in classrooms. They want a traditional pyramid structure of leadership, not an inverted pyramid. "We've seen restructuring where teachers' jobs have been cut while the leadership team has increased, with half or more of them no longer having to teach."
Fred Groom, former academy head and adviser to the E-Act academies, takes a different line. E-Act, whose director general, Sir Bruce Liddington, last week defended his £280k pay packet, is advertising for an executive principal of the rapidly improving Crest academies in north London. The post, additional to two existing academy principals, comes with a six-figure salary plus performance bonus: "Good leadership is critical to success and is an investment in the future of our pupils."
Some academies, such as Leigh academy and Excelsior in Newcastle, have restructured into a collegiate system of four or five mini-schools each requiring heads and deputies.
It is a structure praised by Ofsted, but it is not the only recipe for success. Just down the road from Excelsior is the 2,100-pupil Kenton school, rated outstanding and organised on opposite lines – as a single institution. Recently, after an acrimonious dispute, Kenton's governors voted for academy status.
The headteacher, David Pearmain, says he is no apologist for academies, but he felt it was in the long-term interests of Kenton to convert. He says he has no plans to expand the leadership team. "Our thoughts have not been about leadership but about raising standards and developing the curriculum." He has already told his governors that he doesn't want a rise as "the amount of actual extra responsibility is very little". National pay scales will not be undercut – and, unlike his neighbour Excelsior, he has no intention of employing a PR agency.
Pearmain is clearly sincere, but what of those who come after him? Heads just can't give those guarantees, says Blower: "It's become a dash for cash, with no one to check up on excesses any more."
The new tuition fee regime has spawned nothing but confusion, says Mike Baker – it's no wonder students are struggling to make their choices
Complex financial strategies, shifting goalposts, last-minute changes of strategy, competitive manoeuvring – no, it's not the eurozone crisis again, just preparation for the new tuition fee regime. In view of such confusion – the latest being the request by 27 universities and colleges to reduce their average net fees – how do applicants make sensible decisions about where to study? After all, by the end of this month, when the Office for Fair Access rules on these latest bids, many applicants will already have hit the "submit" button on their Ucas forms.
It is a strange market when the price changes after customers have placed their order. But, then again, it is a very odd situation when the government says it wants a free market in tuition fees, but keeps introducing new regulations to fix that market.
When universities set their tuition fees for 2012-13, the key question for most was where to set their so-called "sticker price". Incidentally, it's revealing that a phrase borrowed from the car sales industry has been so quickly adopted for higher education. Yet such language is consistent with a fee system that, initially at least, encouraged universities to signal whether or not they were in the £9,000 class. As a matter of prestige, few could afford to say they were not.
But alarmed by the lack of differential pricing in the market, the government changed the rules. They top-sliced 20,000 places from every university's "core" student number allocations and said they would instead offer these as additional "margin" places. The catch was that only institutions charging average fees of less than £7,500 (after fee waivers) could bid to regain some of the extra places they will have lost.
Hence the late change of mind by these 27 universities and colleges. Although we don't yet know who they all are, it's likely that most will be those currently charging average fees just above £7,500. The 63 universities with average fees between £7,500 and £8,500 will be nervously checking to see what their competitors are doing.
With a little bit of manipulation of their fee waivers, or of the anticipated numbers on their lower-priced courses, they can become eligible to bid for the extra 20,000 students which, if demand falls as expected, could prove to be a financial lifeline. Despite the headlines, though, students should not expect big cuts in fees. Some of the apparent reduction will be achieved just by shifting bursaries into fee waivers. Indeed, it remains perfectly possible for universities to continue to charge £9,000 on some of their courses while managing to reduce their "average" fee below £7,500. That way they can still combine the prestige of a £9k badge with the safety net of eligibility for the cut-price market.
It's like a car salesman who, once he has failed to sell you the sleek, new model from his showroom, takes you out the back to view the "nice little runners" recently arrived on the used-car lot.
Of course, university applications really should not be like car sales. Fortunately, anecdotal evidence suggests applicants are not acting like consumers and will not be swayed by a few hundred pounds being knocked off fees. At a recent university open day, not one of the potential students and their families whom I spoke to said they would be influenced by fee-price variation. Indeed, many did not even know the range of fees available at the universities they were sampling.
They argued that the fee variations across the range of universities they were considering varied only marginally. This did not mean that money was not a big factor in their decisions. Indeed, several said cost could yet persuade them to abandon university altogether or to choose a local university to save on living costs by staying at home.
Meanwhile, leading universities that are charging £9,000 across the board remain unaffected by this last-minute jockeying over price. They won't be cutting their prices to chase the "margin". So, curiously, in higher education the government is following a policy that is the very opposite of what it is doing with the pupil premium in schools. Instead of more public money going to institutions serving the most deprived students, the effect of these changes will be to squeeze the net spending per student at those universities and FE colleges that are more likely to recruit students from poorer backgrounds.
University fees – they almost make the euro bailout look simple.
• www.mikebakereducation.co.uk
Universities are giving students networking lessons to help them succeed in the competitive jobs market
If you turn up at a networking event to find yourself surrounded by groups of people already chatting intently, how do you break into a conversation? "Avoid groups of four," says David Radcliffe, a 22-year-old graduate in criminology and sociology from Liverpool University.
"Look for people standing in a V shape," Ayesha Salahuddin, also 22, who studied law, adds. "Their body language is implying they're being welcoming."
And how do you get away when the conversation has died? You can conveniently spot someone across the room and excuse yourself saying you need to speak to them, he says. Failing that, there's always the old fallback of saying you need to nip to the gents or ladies.
Radcliffe and Salahuddin learned their new networking skills at a "graduate bootcamp" run by Liverpool University's careers service, in partnership with the city's chamber of commerce.
With the latest figures showing graduate unemployment at a 15-year high, Liverpool, along with other universities, believes these "soft skills" are more important than ever. Recent Higher Education Statistics Agency figures revealed that more than a quarter of graduates are still without full-time work more than three years after leaving university.
Once, your degree alone would get you a job, says Paul Redmond, head of the careers and employability service. Today employers can afford to demand much more of prospective staff. "The competition for jobs is so intense, and often the differentiators are those so-called soft skills ," he says. "Small talk isn't small talk in a business setting."
So far, 185 graduates have been trained on the 10-day Gradvantage programme. Of those who have been through the course, only 32 had graduated this year. "Once the credit crunch happened we thought 'we've got to start doing different things for graduates'," Redmond says.
Research by the Sutton Trust in 2009 found that while only 7% of children in the UK are privately educated, the majority of those at the top of the leading professions went to independent fee-paying schools. Among the leading judges and barristers, seven in 10 benefited from a private education, as well as 55% of partners at top law firms and 54% of leading journalists and medics.
And as unpaid internships – often obtained through family contacts – become increasingly ubiquitous, experts on social mobility believe young people from less privileged backgrounds are being put at an even greater disadvantage.
Gradvantage is not specifically aimed at graduates from less well-off families – anyone based in Merseyside, with a degree from any university, can participate (another of its aims is to encourage graduates to stay in the area).
But Redmond hopes it will help to create a more level playing field for young people who don't necessarily have the ready-built networks of their more middle-class peers.
Paul Cullinan, who works for the service liaising with employers and also teaches the networking skills section, gets the groups to map the people they know as a diagram to get them thinking where fruitful links might be.
"You get some people saying they don't know anyone," says project co-ordinator Sharon Nicholson. "It's not always someone in your network who can help, but they might be able to put you in touch with someone else who can. Some people do struggle with that to begin with."
Graduates are taught the harsh reality that while they might be looking for jobs on websites and in newspapers, many employers only advertise vacancies once they've looked internally for candidates and then asked contacts if they know anyone suitable. This means that making themselves known to those potential employers is imperative.
"We encourage them to go to the sorts of places where the people they want to speak to hang out – going to recruitment fairs and not just picking up the leaflets, but talking to people and getting business cards," says Nicholson.
The course aims to be as hands-on as possible: Cullinan demonstrates his tips on getting the most out of networking events by telling half the group to start chatting amongst themselves, while the others observe their body language.
"If people are standing face to face, they're saying they don't want anyone else to join in, but slowly but surely they'll open out," he says. "That's when to introduce yourself."
Other elements include mock interviews and putting together group presentations to test public speaking skills. Graduates may also be able to secure a 14-hour-a-week (unpaid) work experience placement through the chamber of commerce, lasting 13 or 26 weeks.
Martin Pennington, the interim chief executive of the Association of Graduate Careers Advisory Services, says universities have been focusing increasingly on skills like networking since the recession. "It's not just about helping with their CV or job application, which careers services have always done, but help with selling yourself, getting out there and pushing yourself in front of employers.
It's possible the advice on how to work a room would sound obvious to a seasoned professional, but for recent students it has been an eye-opener.
Chris Kennedy, 22, who studied psychology at Liverpool, says he didn't realise the value of networking. "I honestly didn't even know what it really meant before the session. Now I've found out about all sorts of events and I feel a lot more confident I can get something out of them."
"While you're at university, you've been taught to do online applications, and everything is very computer-based," Salahuddin says.
"Paul's point was 'what's wrong with face-to-face interaction?'. That's something I've lost at university, just going out there and speaking to people."
Working for yourself is ever more appealing as jobs vanish. As a result, the content of online MBAs is shifting
The MBA used to be the preserve of the senior manager – the best way to clamber up the career ladder to a lucrative boardroom position. Then came the recession, and thousands more business men and women at every stage in their careers were adding the three letters after their name in a bid to boost their employability. A few years on, MBAs are more popular than ever.
But with corporate life now involving 12-hour-plus days and stressful job insecurity, today, for many, the motivation to do an MBA has changed. The growing lure of life as an entrepreneur means MBA courses are shifting to include modules on creating a start-up. The Tomorrow's MBA study, an annual report commissioned by the Association of Business Schools, which represents the UK's business schools and management colleges, reported on the trend for the first time this summer. "For years," it said, "the focus for many MBA students has been banking, finance and consulting. This is shifting; entrepreneurship may be the trend of the future."
The research found that more than 30% named entrepreneurship as one of the most important pieces of content in an MBA programme, the first time it featured in the top five student choices.
Academics confirm the shift. With many new start-up ideas involving the internet, where entrepreneurs need to move fast to avoid having their idea copied, it's little surprise that demand for distance-learning MBAs – which are easier to juggle alongside incubating a business idea – is soaring. For example, at the University of Liverpool, the largest provider of wholly online degrees in Europe, more than a third of its 7,500 internet students are enrolled on MBA courses and entrepreneurialism has become a growing component.
"Over the past two years, we've introduced modules in social enterprise, entrepreneurial work in emerging markets, and entrepreneurship because students have become increasingly keen on them," says Alan Southern, director of e-learning and senior lecturer in management.
Durham University's business school saw enrolment in its online global MBA rise by over 200% for the 2011 intake. Warwick University, which offers modules in entrepreneurial finance and new-venture creation, innovation and creativity, also confirms a strong growth in demand. On its course, students develop their own business plans through a final project, which could be further developed into a career. "Our enterprise stream benefits from links with Warwick Science Park and Warwick Ventures, responsible for commercialising the university's research," says Jon Lees, executive director of the MBA course.
That practical element is a key attraction, adds Southern at Liverpool. Nick Jenkins, for example, the founder of online greeting card business Moonpig, dreamed up his personalised card idea while studying for an MBA at Cranfield University. Other entrepreneurial MBAs include John Scully, former chief executive of Apple, and Meg Whitman, president of eBay.
Growing trend
And the enterprise trend is spreading to traditional MBAs: the London Business School's full-time MBA programme includes six entrepreneurship electives; Cass Business School offers Entrepreneurship: From Start-up to Success, and Innovation and New Product Development, among its MBA options.
Heather Short, who is in her 40s, is studying an MBA at the University of Portsmouth. "I was sure it would lead me to something exciting," she says. "And it has." Short was working in networking marketing when she saw a product being used overseas that she thought had "huge potential" in the UK and embarked on an MBA to find out how to be more entrepreneurial. "I now have the theory to back up my business experience," says Short. "There is definitely a shift from people doing MBAs to climb the corporate ladder to those keen to learn skills for a start-up. The MBA recognises this by having an entrepreneur's masterclass, but there could even be a course in its own right."
Likewise Shaun McCormick, 38, was working in senior management for a pharmaceutical giant when he enrolled on a distance learning MBA at the University of Leicester. "The course content challenges your thought process, and the strategic and creative thinking made me look at just about everything I was doing," he says. "I kept asking myself 'why not set up a business with the ideas you are generating?'"
At the beginning of the recession, when McCormick was made redundant, he did just that. He now runs three businesses, including consultancy Tacit Pharma, which advises firms on procurement strategy, sales, regulation and new business generation. "The MBA helped my understanding of all the factors that impact on a business and how best to navigate to grow. My MBA experiences helped me launch, finance and grow the companies, find new markets and customers and create jobs."
Developing economies
Much of the current demand for online MBAs stems from students living in developing economies. At Bradford University, MBA course organisers introduced a module in entrepreneurship in April, partly to appeal to an international audience. Some 40% of the university's distance students live in developing countries. "Traditional international business strategy-type modules have been augmented by more focused ones, such as Managing International Business in Emerging Economies," explains spokesman Jonathan Muir.
That's true, too, at Liverpool. "Nine in 10 of our online student population come from overseas, where there's also a strong demand for entrepreneurial education," says Southern. "But it's a different type of need, so we've responded with modules on starting up a business in emerging economies like Brazil and China. It means our online MBA is just as valid for someone thinking about becoming an entrepreneur in Germany, the UK or Nigeria."
A team of 90 university staff and colleagues have been driving 'green' cars for 18 months to see how it feels
Swapping a normal car for what could be a virtually emissions-free electric vehicle seems like an obvious choice. But there are some real hitches to overcome, even once you've taken out a second mortgage to buy your £25,000 Nissan Leaf.
Ever driven an electric car? If so, the concept of "range anxiety", for example, will be painfully familiar. Translated, it means that you drive in a permanent state of near panic that your car is about to run out of oomph with no easy way of "filling up" again.
Finding out all the issues facing people using low-carbon cars is the aim of a study now being run by Coventry and Birmingham universities as part of a wider UK programme trialling eco-friendly transport.
To work out what people love and hate about using greener wheels, how much it costs to charge them up and what modifications users make to their driving behaviour and journey planning, researchers in summer 2009 dished out low-carbon vehicles to 90 volunteer test drivers from the universities and their associates. Now, a year and a half on, they're scrutinising the resulting data, which details every last second that their motoring guinea pigs spent behind the wheel.
Volunteer driver Neil Butcher, associate director at Arup, one of the universities' study partners, had a Mitsubishi MiEV for 12 months. "It was fantastic, a small city car, looks like a normal car, but it's [built to be] electric," he says. "It's got a curly yellow cable." He plugged it into a 13-amp socket in his garage.
Butcher grew fond of his Mitsubishi. But he also swapped it for a standard car once every six weeks or so when he needed to make a longer journey – so it only worked because he had easy access to a second vehicle.
Not all the cars in the trial were electric – Peter White, professor of thermofluid dynamics at Coventry University, was assigned one of eight Microcabs, a vehicle that works off a hydrogen fuel cell and a lithium ion battery pack, and because it only exists as an "output" of a research project, is not commercially available. The electric cars included converted Citroens, Smart cars, Range Rovers and Indian–made Tatas.
Electricity partner E.ON installed 36 charging points across Coventry and Birmingham, and the volunteer drivers were required to switch over their household supply to the utility company in order that every last electron consumed by the test vehicles could be centrally monitored.
All the information about how, where and when each car was driven has since been transmitted to researchers via a data-logger built into each car. Participants completed questionnaires over the trial period detailing their reactions to their cars and individual behaviour patterns and choices associated with using them.
For instance, it's perfectly well known, Butcher explains, that how far an electric car will go depends partly on the weather. Batteries don't like the cold. Do drivers whack up the heating in the garage before going out to increase the ambient temperature, thus reducing the overall energy efficiency of using an electric vehicle? Do they factor in the car's poorer performance by limiting themselves to doing just short hops in winter? Or do they blithely head out into the snow and ice and find themselves stranded when the battery conks out?
The answers to this and other questions are still being processed, but, according to Nigel Berkeley, director of sustainable regeneration at Coventry University and the project leader, the drivers' range anxiety did dissipate as they became familiar with their vehicles, and it turned out that the cars were more than capable of meeting most people's requirements for urban driving.
Butcher says that he now prefers driving an electric car to a standard one. "It's a far nicer experience, much more relaxing, less noisy, with just one forward and one reverse gear," he says. "You don't worry when you're in traffic jams because when you're stationary you're not using any energy."
He has noticed, too, that he's become less aggressive on the road, "maybe because you feel you're doing a good thing. Also because it's got regenerative breaking, the earlier you start slowing down, the more energy you get back into the battery".
Part-way through the trial, Butcher's Mitsubishi was swapped for a Citroen converted from petrol to electric. Rather than plugging into an energy supply, this car is simply driven over an induction pad in his garage and the battery charges over a 20cm air gap.
Apart from the obvious convenience, researchers want to find out whether his charging habits altered with the induction-pad system.
"Although it is really easy to charge with a cable, you do have to make a conscious effort," he notes. "With a pad, it gets charged every time it's parked."
If we're going to cut our carbon emissions in a meaningful way, says White, the solution goes way beyond simply switching to electric cars en masse. To prevent climate change calamity, we must fundamentally alter the manner in which we "consume" transport. "We were all green once, but it was the Middle Ages and life wasn't terribly pleasant," he observes.
But, he says, there is another way, and what is discovered about human interaction with the cleaner technologies now being tested by the researchers could help to shape how this change comes about.
Instead of owning a £25K Nissan Leaf – an impossibility for most – White suggests that people could choose transport "packages" in the same way we buy mobile phone contracts: paying for what we think we'll use.
But White warns that until governments invest "a proportion of GDP" in clean energy generation and encourage companies to create a transport infrastructure that would see fleets of low-carbon vehicles available to hire in the same way we buy minutes for our phones, the potential offered by the technologies being tested in this trial will remain unrealised.
Governments have to get tough with manufacturers, too. "The thing with the automotive industry is that unless it gives a positive sales advantage, they won't do it unless it's legislated for," he says. "So the legislators have to be absolutely brutal."
• This article was amended on 15 November 2011. The original said there is a 2cm air gap between the induction pad and the battery of the Citroen car tested when charging. This has been corrected.
Scientists discover that the left side of the brain reacts more to immoral stimuli
When a person thinks about naughty things, does one side of the brain get more exercised than the other? Eight scientists studied that question. Their report, Hemispheric Asymmetries During Processing of Immoral Stimuli, appears in the journal Frontiers in Evolutionary Neuroscience. The stated goal is to describe "the neural organisation of moral processing".
Debra Lieberman, a professor of evolutionary psychology at the University of Miami, Florida, acts as spokesperson for the team. Other members are based at Miami, and at the University of New Mexico and at Stanford University in California. Another, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, is at Duke University in North Carolina.
They had to work with a few limitations – the same limitations that apply to anyone who tries to describe what's going on in the brain.
With the exception of a few crackpots or geniuses, scientists don't claim to understand how the 100,000,000,000 or so parts of the human brain manage to think thoughts. Many of those multitudinous parts are connected to each other in complex ways that are quirkily different in every person. Some of the connections change over the course of a life, or a day, or even a few minutes. Many tiny brain parts are clumped into big conglomerations, some quite distinct (hello, cerebellum!), but others have fuzzy locations and borders.
The study does not risk getting bogged down in those larger, complicated conundrums. It restricts itself to the simple question: how does immorality play out in the brain?
The scientists sought their answer by recruiting some test subjects. They confronted each volunteer with several levels of immorality, in the form of words and images.
The team used MRI machines to indirectly (via electromagnetic emissions) monitor where largish amounts of blood flowed in the brain as each volunteer confronted each example of immorality. In theory, anyway, blood flows most freely near whichever brain parts are actively thinking, or have just thought, or are just about to think, or are busily doing something else.
In one test, volunteers saw different kinds of printed statements. Some were about pathogens ("You eating your sister's spoiled hamburger, You sipping your sister's urine, You eating your sister's scab"); some about incest ("You giving your sister an orgasm, You watching your sister masturbate, You fondling your sister's nipples"), some about "nonsexual immoral acts" ("You burgling your sister's home, You killing your sister's child"); and others about "neutral acts" ("You reading to your sister, You holding your sister's groceries").
In other tests, volunteers saw other kinds of statements or pictures, each chosen for its evident moral content.
After all the immorality was seen, and the measurements made, the researchers calculated that the left side of the brain had been more involved than the right side. Thus, concludes the study: "There is a left-hemisphere bias for the processing of immoral stimuli across multiple domains."
• Marc Abrahams is editor of the bimonthly Annals of Improbable Research and organiser of the Ig Nobel prize
A list of courses in Newcastle accredited by CILIP
Division of Information and Communication Management, Northumbria University, Pandon Building, Newcastle City Campus, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE2 1XE
BSc (Hons) Librarianship.
Full-time & distance learning - Next accreditation August 2013
MSc/PG Dip Information and Records Management.
Distance learning - Next accreditation August 2013
MA/MSc/PG Dip Information & Library Management.
Distance learning - Next accreditation August 2013
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CILIP Onsite training courses focus on learning through interaction, discussion and participation. Our highly skilled trainers are chosen not just for their sector experience and expertise but also for their facilitative skills.
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CILIP Onsite training courses focus on learning through interaction, discussion and participation. Our highly skilled trainers are chosen not just for their sector experience and expertise but also for their facilitative skills.
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CILIP Onsite training courses focus on learning through interaction, discussion and participation. Our highly skilled trainers are chosen not just for their sector experience and expertise but also for their facilitative skills.
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