Councils are warning that the government's academy programme is draining resources away from maintained schools – and vulnerable children may be the ones who lose the most
It is the government's flagship education policy. But councils in England are warning that the academies scheme will drain resources from support services used by thousands of conventional state schools that have not left their local authorities.
Education Guardian has calculated that the huge expansion in the government's academies programme could cost councils up to £820m over two years.
Councils claim that money to meet these costs will inevitably have to come from other services provided by local authorities, including support for the most vulnerable pupils, at a time when education is facing its sharpest spending cuts for 50 years, according to analysis last week by the Institute for Fiscal Studies.
Analysis of submissions to the government's consultation on academy funding by the Local Government Association (LGA), which represents all English and Welsh local authorities, the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy (Cipfa) and the umbrella body London Councils, supplemented by information from six individual councils, shows that councils believe too much money has been given to individual academies by the government, and that ministers are now trying to take cash from local authorities to meet these costs. The claims come after this newspaper revealed in April how some schools appear to have received six-figure windfalls after becoming academies.
Peter Downes, a Liberal Democrat councillor in Cambridgeshire who opposes academies, says: "The whole academies policy has been carried out without any serious assessment of the financial implications. It risks creating extra costs for the education system, at a time when we can ill afford it."
Academies are funded directly from central government and operate largely without receiving local authority support services, including school improvement and behaviour support. The government says they receive the same amount of money for support services as they would have received had they been a conventional local authority "maintained" school. Academies can then buy in any support they need.
Since summer 2010, 1,525 schools have taken on academy status, or applied to do so. Ministers said last year that they expected only 400 new academies in 2010-12.
The government is therefore seeking to slash the funding for local authorities to provide support services since, ministers say, the growth in academies means there is now less demand for these services.
In January, the government proposed to cut local authority budgets by £148m in 2011-12 and by £265m in 2012-13. But following a legal challenge in May by 23 authorities, which argued that the reductions were calculated unfairly and flouted government guidelines on passing extra costs on to local councils, the government launched a new consultation on academy funding over the summer.
But the consultation proposed to cut local authority budgets even further to take account of the faster-than-anticipated growth in academy numbers. This would see councils lose between £940m and £1.06bn by 2012-13.
Although councils accept that there should be some reduction in funding for their services, they say the proposed cuts go far beyond any likely savings. Other budgets will therefore have to be raided to make up the shortfall.
The LGA surveyed 32 authorities and found them reporting average savings of £15 per pupil because of a falling demand for services as more schools in their areas became academies.
The LGA therefore says council budgets should be cut by a figure of £15-£70 for every academy pupil. But the government says this sum should be more than £200.
Calculations by this newspaper, based on the LGA's estimated per-pupil savings, suggest that council budgets should therefore be reduced by a maximum of £233m over two years to pay for the academies policy. As ministers are seeking to make cuts of £940m-£1.06bn, councils believe they face an unjustified bill for academies of £707m-£822m.
David Simmons, chairman of the LGA's children and young people board, says: "We are supportive of the academies policy, but we are concerned that at present the Department for Education [DfE] does not have sufficient funding in its budget to support the number of schools looking to convert, and therefore is looking for money from councils that are already hard-pressed. We need to find a new way to provide funding for schools when they convert."
The councils argue that individual academies have been overfunded because:
• The government's formula wrongly gives academies a share of some council budgets for functions which local authorities, rather than academies, have to perform, such as strategic planning and, in some authorities, children's social care;
• Academies are wrongly given an equal share of funding for school improvement support. Councils argue that, with most schools that have become academies now either rated good or outstanding this is unfair, since councils in the past have rightly focused such resources on weaker schools. The LGA says the government has breached equal opportunities law by not considering the effect of this on disadvantaged pupils in non-academy schools;
• Academies receive a share of what the local authority was spending on its school support services the previous year. With council budgets falling year-on-year, this also represents over-funding.
In their consultation responses, the LGA, London Councils and local authorities including Kent, Somerset and Cambridgeshire have castigated the proposals as unworkable. They describe the government's methodology variously as "irrational", "completely unreasonable" and "fundamentally flawed".
England's largest local authority, Conservative-controlled Kent, says that, while academies are receiving £230 per pupil in support service payments, the true figure, reflecting the cost of extra services academies must provide once they leave the local authority, should be £40 per pupil. This means a secondary school with 1,000 pupils would gain £190,000 simply by becoming an academy.
Kent also calculates that the overfunding of academies is so acute that, if 30% of its schools were to convert to academy status, payments to them would leave it with no budget at all for services to support the remaining 70%.
Somerset council, another Tory authority, says in its consultation response: "The current proposals would place an unacceptable burden on local authorities and the remaining maintained schools." John Osman, Somerset county council's cabinet member for children and young people, says: "We support the statement in the consultation document that academies and maintained schools should be funded fairly and equitably and strongly believe that the current proposals would not deliver this equity."
Cipfa believes the proposed cuts could be challenged in court. "The [government proposal] … would overstate the amount that should logically be transferred to academies. In that event, local authorities' remaining maintained schools – and therefore their pupils – would be financially disadvantaged," its consultation response said. "We believe that, if the methodology is not amended, it is possible that the size of this problem might be so significant as to trigger some further legal challenge."
Local authority sources say that, in the longer term, academy funding must be cut to come into line with that of maintained schools, in order for the policy to be financially sustainable.
Simon Pickard, a member of Cipfa's children's services panel, says: "If more and more schools convert to academy status, sooner or later the policy is going to become unaffordable, so academies will find their budgets will reduce over time."
A DfE spokesman says per-pupil funding is the same in academies as in maintained schools. He adds: "In the light of the greater numbers of academies converting nationally than initially anticipated, we need to ensure that they and local authorities are funded fairly.
"In July we published a consultation on the appropriate methodology for calculating the amount of funding relating to … relevant services that should transfer from local government to academies in 2011-12 and 2012-13. We are currently considering the responses in detail and will be making an announcement in due course."
Councils do not know when they are going to get an answer. With budgets so tight, ministers seem unlikely to want to respond positively to the authorities' claims. The reaction from local authorities, if their arguments are rejected, will be interesting to watch.
This is the full list of winners of the Pearson Teaching Awards for 2011
• Outstanding New Teacher of the Year:
Rachael Keeble, Severn Banks primary school, Lydney, Gloucestershire
• Headteacher of the Year:
Patricia Davies, Chingford Hall primary school, Waltham Forest. She is also consultant head at Whittingham primary in Walthamstow
• Teacher of the Year:
Christine Emmett, St Elizabeth's primary school, Eddlewood, Hamilton, South Lanarkshire
• Special Needs Teacher of the Year:
Simon Roberts, Selworthy school, Selworthy Road, Taunton, Somerset
• History Teacher of the Year:
Richard Rodd, Tendring Technology College, Frinton on Sea, Essex
• Teaching Assistant of the Year:
Mandy Theobald, Spring Meadow primary school, Dovercourt, Harwich, Essex
• Science Teacher of the Year:
Nicki Bovey, Saltash.net community school, Saltash, Cornwall
• Ted Wragg Award for Lifetime Achievement:
Jeff Stratton, Lipson Community College, Plymouth, Devon
• Outstanding Team of the Year:
The PE department at Dyffren Taf secondary school, Whitland, Dyfed, Carmarthenshire
• The Henry Winkler Teaching Award for Special Needs:
Wren Spinney community special school, Kettering, Northamptonshire
• Pearson Teaching Awards Film My School award:
The Lewis school Pengam, Gilfach, Bargoed, Caerphilly
The winner of this year's headteacher of the year Teaching Award reveals how she has turned her school around
Listen to headteacher Pat Davies talking about what her school was like when she arrived, and you'd be forgiven for thinking it was in a remote corner of a developing country. "It was filthy," she says, "and there was rubbish piled up all over the place. The whole school was infested with mice and cockroaches – it was a real mess. There were hardly any pens or books to be seen, either."
And it wasn't just the buildings and the classrooms that left a lot to be desired. "Morale was at rock bottom, too," she remembers. "There was nothing here, no ethos. When you go into a school, you should be able to feel a vibe – and there simply wasn't one."
The school she's describing is Chingford Hall primary in east London; and, she goes on, its results weren't much to crow about, either. In 2007, the year she arrived, only 38% of year 6 pupils achieved level 4 in literacy, while just 54% hit the target in maths.
But what a difference four years and Pat Davies have made. Today, Chingford Hall is thriving. It buzzes with energy, and it's festooned with imaginative artwork. For the last three years it has ranked in the top 1% of the most-improved schools nationally – and in its most recent Sats results, not only did 100% of year 6 pupils achieve level 4 in literacy and maths, 81% of them also hit grade 5 in maths, and 75% of them reached it in literacy.
This week, Davies was named headteacher of the year in the 2011 Pearson Teaching Awards – and it's an accolade that will come as no surprise to anyone at the school she has transformed. "She brought our school out of failing, to be the best," pupil Ellie Stevens told the judges, while a member of the senior leadership team told them that the changes at Chingford Hall should serve as a benchmark for schools in difficulty throughout the UK.
So what's the secret of Davies's success? In her early 50s, and the mother of four daughters aged between 14 and 30, her maxim, she says, has always been to create a school where she'd be happy to have her own children as pupils. "If I wouldn't want my own children in my school, I shouldn't expect others to want to have theirs in it," she says.
"Chingford is one of the poorest areas of London and there are a lot of problems here. But my feeling is, why should the children here have fewer advantages than those in, say Hampstead or Chelsea?" Setting high values, and striving to attain them, has always been at the root of what she does. "It's the most important thing you do as a head. And your values have to come through everything you do – you need everyone to role-model the values you are championing, so you have to make sure that you surround yourself with staff who give off the messages you want the children to get."
A "can-do" attitude shines out of Davies: she is one of those people who knows she can make things happen, but who also knows that her effectiveness is because of her willingness to work hard. Some days, she says, she arrives at work before the cleaner, and there have been times when she's still been in school at midnight. The first year she was appointed, she came in every day of the summer holidays.
"I knew I had to get things right, and I had to get them right fast." Her first priority was to order a skip; the second was to tackle the teaching shortcomings. "Some of the teachers here couldn't teach," she says. "I had to show them, and everyone, a new style of leadership. I had to show them how to plan lessons, how to mark books. And those who could step up to the mark did; and those who couldn't, left. I used to say: if you're not here for the children, just get on the bus and go somewhere else."
Getting things right for the pupils meant being firm with the parents, too. When she realised that many parents were themselves lacking in literacy, numeracy and IT skills, and that some of them didn't speak English, her solution was simple: she started classes for them.
Another innovation was the establishment of a children's centre. Earlier this year, both the centre and the school were judged by Ofsted to be "outstanding".
The next change on the horizon for Chingford Hall is that it's about to become an academy. Davies says she can see lots of positives in the academy model, but she worries about the wisdom of free schools. "Anyone can go and get a building and set up a school, and that sounds questionable to me. You need qualified people."
What's next for Davies? She admits she's never been one for an easy life: Chingford Hall, she says proudly, is the sixth "challenged" school she has worked in. So, now that she has turned it around, is she on the lookout for another school to help? "I love this school," she says. "So no, I'm not looking to move on. Since June I've been executive head of another school in the area – Whittingham primary in Waltham Forest – and that's another job I relish. I've also been put forward to be a national leader of education, and that means I'll be able to share my ideas and vision more widely. That matters to me, because this isn't about being some kind of "hero head". What it's about is looking at what works, and sharing ideas. We want other schools to turn around, too."
Could religion be playing a part in the relative success of Europe's economies? One academic thinks so
If maps were shaded like balance sheets, the bottom part of mainland Europe would be deepest red. Italy, Spain and Portugal are heavily in debt. They are also Catholic countries. Their predominantly Protestant neighbours to the north, including Germany and Scandinavia, are in comparatively good shape financially. Is that simply a coincidence, or is Max Weber's theory about the Protestant ethic being intertwined with the spirit of capitalism still valid, over 100 years on?
Dr Sascha Becker moved to Warwick University from Munich, where Weber finished his career as a sociologist. And his recent research leads him to suggest that religion is a factor in the budgetary discrepancies between the north and south of Europe. "There are plenty of other factors, too, and they're not easy to disentangle," concedes the deputy director of Warwick's Centre for Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy [Cage]. "But even data compiled as recently as 2000 suggests that Protestants generally are educated to a higher level than Catholics. They have a higher probability of going to university and finishing their course."
Cage is one of several centres at British universities supported by the Economic and Social Research Council and setting out to put economic performance in some kind of perspective. Becker believes that historical context can help to explain the difference between comparative success and failure.
Together with Ludger Woessmann, professor of economics at Munich, he started by looking at data from 19th-century Prussia, the society that Weber was born into. The region was split into 450 counties, around two thirds of them predominantly Protestant and the other third Catholic. "Religiosity was more pervasive at that time than it is today," he says, "and it seems that religion was the main driver behind education differences. Protestants were more likely to be encouraged to go to school. And this higher level of education translated into jobs in manufacturing and services rather than agriculture. Accordingly, they earned higher incomes than their Catholic neighbours."
In a paper written in 2009 for the Quarterly Journal of Economics, entitled Was Weber Wrong?, Becker and Woessmann argue that Protestants were more successful because they had the advantage of a better and longer education. Further research has led them to conclude that the educational advantage began soon after Martin Luther broke away from the established Church in the 16th century and has continued to play its part in creating economic success throughout Europe.
Luther wanted women as well as men to be able to read the Bible, he points out. Not only did his followers set out to establish church schools in every parish, but girls went there as well as boys, he says. "We looked into the records of school building in the German federal state of Brandenburg in the 16th century, and discovered that there were disproportionately more girls in school than boys. Protestantism, it seems, was an early driver of emancipation. At that time, remember, Catholic areas didn't even have any boys' schools.
"Those trends continued into the 20th century, when women were allowed to go to university. Comparatively few Catholic women went."
What about the 21st century?
"Well, we looked at the German equivalent of the British Household Panel Survey for the year 2000. It measures economic and social change and covers such areas as income, education …" And religion? "Obviously religion doesn't play as much of a role now as it did over 100 years ago, but it's still the case that Catholics tend to marry Catholics and Protestants tend to marry Protestants – or at least those from a Protestant background. Also, attitudes towards education tend to linger from one generation to another. So if your parents and grandparents went to university, then you are likely to go yourself. That's how these differences survive to this day." He goes on to caution that he is talking about general trends. "We all know Catholic professors and Protestants who are uneducated," he says.
I can't help wondering where France fits into this analysis. Considered an economic power in mainland Europe, it is predominantly Catholic and its southern regions are on the same latitude as northern Italy. "France is a good example of how political secularism affects performance," Becker ventures. "It came in much earlier there than in Italy, which still carries statements by the Pope on the front pages of its newspapers."
And what about Greece, whose economy is in danger of collapse? Becker prefers not to venture into Greek Orthodoxy. "I prefer to make statements when there are statistics to back them up," he says, before stressing once again that religion is only one factor in the balance-sheet shades on the map of mainland Europe.
Researchers have put breakfast cereals and milk through their paces
After generations of humans had been pouring cows' milk onto breakfast cereal flakes and then pouring that milk/flake mixture into themselves, a researcher named Luigi Degano fed breakfast cereal to 21 cows in Italy. Degano wanted to see how this might affect the milk that later issued from the cows.
Degano, based at the Istituto Sperimentale Lattiero Caseario in Milan, published the results of this feed-flakes-to-cows experiment in 1993, in the journal Tecnica Molitoria.
Degano called the study Cereal Flakes in Milk Cows Diet. Effects on Yield and Milk Quality. He reported that yes, mixing plenty of maize-and-barley flakes into the cows' usual, unflaked maize-and-barley fodder did result in different milk. Slightly different. Those cows gave about 2% more milk (by volume), with about 2% richer protein content and about 2% greater creaminess. All this as compared with the milk-making of 21 cows that munched only the usual mealy mush.
Degano's monograph seems to have attracted little attention, at least in print, from other dairy scientists. And it garnered just about no acclaim from the general public in Italy or abroad.
Scientists have, as a group, shown more interest in cereal's crispness, especially as it interacts with liquid, than in how the flakes interact with cows or with human innards.
The most famous report, A Study of the Effects of Water Content on the Compaction Behaviour of Breakfast Cereal Flakes, was published in 1994, in the journal Powder Technology. Three scientists at the Institute of Food Research in Norwich wrote it.
In 2001, a student named Kunchalee Luechapattanapom, at the Asian Institute of Technology in Bangkok, Thailand, submitted a master's thesis called Acoustic Testing for Evaluating the Crispness of Breakfast Cereals.
Others, too, tried their hand at the flake analysis game, generally using either the Norwich or the Bangkok approach.
But Lawrence Edward Bodkin, Sr, an inventor in Jacksonville, Florida, may have circumvented the traditional worries about milk and breakfast cereal flakes, by combining the two elements into one.
In 1998, Bodkin patented a foodstuff he calls Breakfast Cereal with Milk Pieces. Bodkin's odd patent describes a "commingling and packaging of milk nuggets with cereal pieces ... The milk pieces may be compact, or flattened and flake shaped and may generally be as variable as the shapes of the cereal". Any strangeness in the milk's flavour, he writes, "is unlikely to be noticed due to the typically more dominant flavors of the cereal".
(Thanks to Greg Kohs for indirectly bringing some of this research to my attention.)
• Marc Abrahams is editor of the bimonthly Annals of Improbable Research and organiser of the Ig Nobel prize
The General Regulations, which sit under the Royal Charter and Bye-laws, were approved by Council in July 2007 and have since undergone minor amendments.
The Appendices to the General Regulations contain the following:
Appendix A - Regulations for Qualification and Revalidation
Appendix B - Ethical Principles, Code of Professional Practice and CILIP Disciplinary Regulations
Appendix C - Regulations for the Retired Members Guild
Appendix D - Regulations for Affiliated Members
Appendix E - Regulations for the Interim Policy Forum
Appendix F - Branch Rules and SIG Rules.
Revised Branch Rules and Group Rules were approved by Council in September 2010 and can be downloaded via the link below.
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An online training course to help disseminate good practice in research data management developed at the University of Edinburgh is now free to use by PhD students, early career researchers and digital data users at all UK universities. Are you ready to release your resources openly? Find out in our new resource.
The non-credit, free online course has interactive units focused on key concepts of data management including video clips of senior academics talking about data management challenges.
There are also practical exercises in handling data in four software packages widely used by researchers in different fields, which learners can download and work through at their own pace.
Simon Hodson, programme manager at JISC, the technology consortium for UK further and higher education, said: "When we listened to the delegates at our recent conference on data management, it was obvious that many universities feel the need to embed good practice much earlier in the careers of their researchers than they do currently. The fact that this course is available through an open license for repurposing and rebranding will help other universities benefit from the good work that Edinburgh has already done."
The Data Library team at EDINA, a JISC-funded UK national academic data centre based at the University of Edinburgh, produced the materials over the course of the past year as part of the JISC Managing Research Data programme.
The team chose to deliver the course online so that learners could engage with it in their own time. This means it has the potential to reach a wider community, by releasing it as an open educational resource.
Use the Open Access week hashtag to search for more updates on open
#oaweek
Robin Rice, data librarian at the University of Edinburgh and EDINA, said: "The online course supports statements about good practice in research data management with real life stories and scenarios. It is designed to be fun, relevant, useful, interactive and timely (FRUIT!) for those pursuing a research project. The accompanying software modules for data handling skills give a deeper grounding within particular analysis environments."
They worked with the University of Edinburgh’s School of Social and Political Studies, the School of GeoSciences and the Doctorate in Clinical Psychology to target the resources towards their doctoral training programmes.
Access the course and tweak it to your requirements
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Jeremy Hunt, Secretary of State for Culture, appeared today before the Select Committee of Culture, Media and Sport to answer questions regarding the annual report and accounts of DCMS. This included an exchange with the Committee’s Chair, John Whittingdale MP, on the position of public libraries. In particular the Chair explored the meaning of “comprehensive and efficient” within the Public Libraries and Museums Act (1964) and the extent of library closures currently taking place.
In his response the Secretary of State referred to the Roberts Report (1959)* where he claimed “comprehensive” was about a “good selection of books” and efficiency about reducing the number of public library authorities. He favoured “modernisation” of the public library service rather than “vandalism”. Although unwilling to comment in detail specifically on individual authorities because of judicial action he suggested DCMS continued to monitor the situation closely. In response to the Chair's query as to whether a significant number of library closures in an authority would breach the Act he responded that a number of authorities were exploring community-led library options, whereas Brent was increasing opening hours.
Commenting on the Secretary of State’s performance CILIP’s Chief Executive, Annie Mauger, expressed surprise that the Minister referred back to a 1959 report to define “comprehensive and efficient”. “There have been many official documents since then” she said, “The original public library standards (2001) were specifically designed to help the Secretary of State determine whether an authority was providing a “comprehensive and efficient” service. In the Open Public Services White Paper I note that for national public services the Government proposes to focus on core entitlements, setting floor standards enforced by independent regulators or published data and ensuring fair access to services. Yes please that is what we want for public libraries too and the powers already exist to achieve it – Secretary of State please use them”.
Similarly Annie expressed concern that community-managed libraries run by volunteers might be regarded as meeting the requirements of the Act. “CILIP’s position is clear”, she states, “If community managed libraries are to be regarded as part of the statutory service they must have a core paid staff, be part of the professionally led public library service and operate within a service level agreement with that parent library service. Volunteers play a valuable role in enhancing the public library service but they are not a replacement for the skills and expertise of staff. All are entitled to a public library service of high quality”.
CILIP response to the Open Public Services White Paper consultation
For more information please contact:
Guy Daines
Head of Policy, CILIP
Email: Guy.Daines@cilip.org.uk
Tel: 020 7255 0632
* The structure of the public library service in England and Wales. [The Roberts report]. HMSO, 1959. (Cmnd. 660)
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The academic monograph is under threat. Increased costs and lower print runs are impacting on the principle means by which researchers share their knowledge and disseminate their findings. The gold standard for academic excellence in many disciplines, the effective dissemination of the monograph has major implications for the UK’s research base and its international standing.
Palgrave Macmillan, Taylor & Francis, Berg Publishers, Liverpool University Press and University Wales Press are also project partners. Each has submitted pairs of similar monographs for the project pilot. With one title in each pair randomly assigned to either the experimental group (available through open access) or the control group (available through the publishers’ standard routes to market) the pilot will, over the next three years, gather and compare sales and usage data for each group. The resulting data will provide an invaluable evidence base for the use of monographs under contrasting modes of access.
Further activities – such as annual benchmarking surveys, focus groups, interviews and surveys with research funders, authors, publishers, libraries and researchers - will allow investigation into whether an open access model for scholarly monographs could take hold in the minds of humanities and social sciences scholars, what funding policies and technical processes would need be developed to support an open access model and what the impacts of an open access model would be on key stakeholders.
David House, Chair of JISC Collections and the OAPEN-UK Steering Group, said: “It’s in all our interests to have a vibrant and innovative humanities and social science research environment. But for this we need to have scholarly communications models that match the rapidly-changing demands of the twenty-first century. This project is taking some bold and imaginative steps to look over the horizon and to explore a new publishing model. We hope OAPEN-UK will be a stepping stone towards informed decision making by a wide range of stakeholders.”
See OAPEN-UK for further information or contact Caren Milloy, Head of Projects.
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Open access week 2011 is full of inspiration on the benefits of free immediate access to the results of scholarly research. Now more than 30 compelling stories have been collected together from across Europe showcasing the transformative effects of open access.
They come from over 11 countries and are told by a wide variety of stakeholders, from individual researchers and journal editors to publishers and companies, and cover a multitude of disciplines.
Dr Malcolm Read, executive secretary at JISC, said: “It’s interesting to see that even though these stories represent a diverse range of initiatives, some recent, some historical, they all share a common thread. That thread is that they have all been collaborative exercises – with people looking to share the benefits of their work beyond their own institutions.”
One example is First Monday, a 15-year-old open access journal about the internet.. It was launched in May 1996 and is now one of the longest established, most respected peer reviewed journals of the internet. By August 2011 it had published 1,133 papers in 181 issues, written by 1,469 different authors representing institutions in over 30 different countries. It is read in 180 different countries.
Another story tells of how a repository can successfully build relationships with publishers. Pedocs is a German educational science archive that uses an innovative cooperation model with German publishing houses to make available freely and openly a wealth of high quality pedagogic literature. Set up in 2008, in the last three years it has developed cooperative relationships with more than 25 small and medium-sized German educational literature publishing houses.
The stories can be found on a dedicated, easy-to-use website and are open for comments and ready to share. They are not only free for all to read and refer to, but they are also licensed under a creative commons licence. To allow for easier re-use the stories will be available for download and use in other publications and websites.
The Knowledge Exchange consists of :
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Read more about the Knowledge Exchange
Be inspired by Open Access success stories
Find out how JISC is supporting open access week 2011
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CILIP's work is governed by its Council, set up under the Royal Charter. The President and Councillors of CILIP are elected by the membership via an annual election.
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Learners, educators and citizen scientists will benefit from an 18 month digitisation programme launching today which will bring back to life scientific medical archives, historical records and health reports.
JISC will be investing £5.6 million in 23 projects across 30 universities and cultural heritage organisations to bring selected archives out of the vaults and onto computer screens, specifically with the aim of creating resources for wide educational use. These archives will be publicly accessible too which means citizens scientists, school pupils and the general public will benefit as well as historians, medics and biologists in this growing UK collection of digital resources for research, teaching and learning.
Alastair Dunning JISC’s programme manager explains why this work is taking place and the reasons for continuing to unearth national archives to make them accessible for everyone.
“JISC believes that publicly-funded archives and collections should whenever possible be made openly available for people to be able to see, reuse and access.
“These new collections vary greatly. King’s College London are leading a project to digitise the entire 86 volume corpus of the Survey of English Place-Name, while the University of Bradford are running ‘Digitised Diseases’ which seeks to bridge the gap between modern clinical medicine and the use of historic medical collections by digitising pathological skeletal specimens from world renowned archaeological collections in Bradford and London. The new collections to be digitised also include over 150 years worth of annual reports summarising the health of Greater London’s population, held by the Wellcome Library.”
This programme of work supports the findings of the Seizing the opportunity for online learning for UK higher education report which recommended, the use of online learning to enhance student choice and meet learners’ expectations; realignment of training and development to support academics to play a leading role in online provision; and the development and sharing of open educational resources to enhance efficiency and quality.
To find out more about this latest phase of digitisation projects visit: http://bit.ly/sMFWnJ and to view existing online content already available visit: http://bit.ly/to2sds
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Don't stand by on the sidelines...
Six candidates are standing for election to fill four posts on CILIP Council. Council sets and oversees the CILIP’s overall strategic direction. To help decide who to vote for we are providing more opportunities than ever for you to learn about the candidates and make sure your vote is an informed choice.
Don't stand by on the sidelines. Get involved in your professional body and use your opportunity to ask the candidates the questions that matter most to you.
A free hustings event will take place in London on Thursday November 10. If you can’t make it in person you can watch the event live or on the CILIP website afterwards. We will be taking questions for the candidates in advance by email and during the event on Twitter. An open eHustings discussion forum is also now available, where you can interact with the candidates and ask them your questions.
This is your chance to meet some of the CILIP 2012 election candidates, listen to their manifestos, and ask them a question:
An open eHustings discussion forum is now available where you can ask the candidates your burning questions and hear their views.
The forum will close at 5pm on Wednesday 30 November, when voting closes. Anyone can view the forum, but you need to register on the website to post comments:
Find out more about the candidates by reading their manifestos and supporting statements:
For further information contact:
Mark Taylor
Director of External Relations, CILIP
Email: mark.taylor@cilip.org.uk
Tel: 020 7255 0654
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This week on the Guardian Teacher Network, you can find some exclusive cooking resources from Jamie Oliver
The Guardian Teacher Network has some exclusive cooking resources from Jamie Oliver, developed as part of his campaign for healthy eating. Children can learn how to whip up a salad or breakfast and there is even a recipe for home-made mince. They can discover the difference between good and bad fats and find out all about pasta and dairy. Oliver gives tips on tricky basics such as how to separate an egg or – the stickiest culinary test – to prepare a mango without turning it into a mushy mess.
You can download a set of PDFs on Guardian Teacher Network
• The Guardian Teacher Network offers more than 70,000 pages of lesson plans and interactive materials. There are hundreds of jobs on the site and schools can advertise free.
Parliament's interns are unlikely to get paid, and a free school gets help from a millionaire plumber
MPs love unpaid interns
Last month, we brought news that eight MPs had signed up for a programme offering young people a paid apprenticeship in parliament. But with the official launch just weeks away, it seems the scheme's poster girl, Diane Abbott – the only Labour MP to show an interest – has pulled out, along with Tory MPs Matthew Offord and John Stevenson.
Stevenson and Offord's offices both said there had been a misunderstanding and the MPs hadn't committed themselves to the scheme. Abbott, it has been suggested, pulled out because she hadn't realised she would have to pay her apprentice, but a researcher in her office told us: "It's just that we have all the resources we currently need."
There is an increasing polarisation of views in parliament about whether young people should be paid for their work, especially within the Tory party. While the skills minister, John Hayes, campaigns for apprenticeships, some of his colleagues are still placing adverts for unpaid roles. For example, Daniel Kawczynski, MP for Shrewsbury and Atcham, is looking for a free researcher "with strong interview, analytical and writing skills" to help with his new book.
Another Tory MP, Chris Heaton-Harris, is looking for an unpaid intern, as is the Liberal Democrat Don Foster, who is at least promising to cough up £260 a month for travel and food expenses.
It's not just backbenchers. The transport secretary, Phil Hammond, once said in an email: "I would regard it as an abuse of taxpayer funding to pay for something that is available for nothing." The culture secretary, Jeremy Hunt, meanwhile, is advertising for a number of three-month internships. He told the careers website Graduate Fog he was "extremely proud" of his use of unpaid interns.
The school plumber
Katharine Birbalsingh was among those given the go-ahead for her proposed free school, the Michaela community school in Lambeth, but the ex-deputy headteacher still has a big hurdle to overcome. The building she had her eye on – the old Lilian Baylis school – is being sold off to developers by Lambeth council.
So who has she turned to for support? Toby Young? Her pals in the Tory party? Nope – the millionaire plumber Charlie Mullins. He says Birbalsingh dropped by recently to talk things over. Mullins, who owns Pimlico Plumbers, says: "I think she approached me because we're a local company with a couple of hundred employees … and a commonsense approach. I was really impressed by her passion and how she would like to run the school."
Mullins is now backing Birbalsingh in her campaign to stop the sale of the Lilian Baylis school. He says he'll get involved in petitions and even "speak to the government" if necessary. "There were over 400 more applications in Lambeth than there are school places this year. We need this school to succeed."
Jamie Oliver has launched his new food manifesto, calling for more money to be spent on school food, and for nutritional standards to apply to all schools – even academies
School food is sorted, right? That nice Jamie Oliver fixed it all through his telly series, didn't he? Got those horrible UKTurkey Twizzlers banned, school lunches made healthy, dinner ladies trained to cook proper grub and squeezed £280m out of Tony Blair for a much-needed canteen and kitchen revolution.
All this was widely welcomed and schools introduced the ensuing changes without too much disruption. School meals now include the right combination of energy and nutrients, while pupils who eat them are consuming much less sugar, salt and saturated fat than before, and sweet treats, chips and high-sugar drinks have been banished. And take-up is increasing. So is all that enough? Well, no, it's not – far from it.
Who says so? Oliver himself. The campaigning celebrity chef has told Education Guardian he is "very worried" at what he sees as signs the coalition government is not as committed to school food as its Labour predecessor, and that the considerable progress in this area since his Jamie's School Dinners TV series in 2005 is under threat. So worried is he that he has drawn up an action plan – unveiled exclusively to the Guardian – to try to safeguard the many achievements of the last six years and get ministers to keep the faith food-wise.
Oliver is concerned by a number of decisions made about school food policy by the Department for Education (DfE) since Michael Gove became education secretary almost 18 months ago. The School Lunch Grant, a dedicated pot of funding to enable schools to cook food more easily and tempt pupils to swap packed lunches or a visit to the local shops for a hot midday meal on the premises, has been abolished as a separate entity. It still exists, the DfE says, but is now part of the overall Dedicated School Grant, which pays for the wide range of work undertaken by England's 20,194 state schools and is no longer ringfenced.
Gove also decided that the nutritional standards for school meals in England should not apply to academies or to his new free schools. That means the dinners being offered to almost 1.2 million children could be healthy – or not – and opens up a two-tier school lunch system. And local councils no longer have to monitor the take-up of free school meals – another coalition decision.
"I'm very worried. I've had a couple of very cordial, interesting meetings with the secretary of state for education and although I would love to believe that Mr Gove has school food high on his agenda, I've not heard anything so far worth celebrating," says Oliver. "I'm sure he realises that there are clear benefits to having good food in school: it improves a child's behaviour, willingness to learn and concentration at school, and that in turn helps children to achieve more and perform better. You would have to be an idiot to ignore all of the academic research that's been published to support these things, but still … I don't see him or his ministerial colleagues in health actually doing anything to ensure that the improvements we have made over the last six years remain in place, and are built upon. The opposite seems to be happening – and instead the progress we've made seems to be at risk."
Does he believe the coalition's lack of commitment to school food is simply due to the parlous state of the public sector, or to ideology, perhaps even a belief that this sort of work is evidence of the "nanny state"? "I think it's a bit of both," he replies," but as anyone working in this area knows, we have to invest now so that we don't cripple the NHS or destroy the health of our kids later on. Obesity, and its health-related problems, already costs the NHS nearly £4bn a year and the recent Lancet report said this cost will increase by another £1.9bn a year by 2030. We simply can't afford to cut costs in prevention work now because we will have an even bigger bill in the future."
So what exactly does he want to see? In his eight-point manifesto, he wants:
• More money for school food. Oliver wants the DfE to replace the School Lunch Grant with a new School Food Premium, sums that "would be paid to reward schools and headteachers who increase school meal take-up and are committed to improving their service because they recognise its importance in improving pupil attainment and behaviour. This type of funding model fits in with the government's ideals of local responsibility and school freedom in decision-making [and] promotes good practice in other schools."
• All schools should be covered by the nutritional standards, which should be mandatory for academies and free schools. "If the government wants all schools to become academies in the long-term, the reality is we risk losing the legislation that had made a difference as well as the benefits gained from raising nutritional standards," his manifesto says.
• Teach children about food. Cooking classes should be compulsory in all schools, with pupils doing a minimum of 24 hours of practical lessons during every key stage, and ideally "hands on, get your hands dirty cooking", he adds. "Cooking also needs to be seen as part of the curriculum and not as a separate subject, but as a tool to teach other subjects such as maths, science and art in a more fun and engaging way."
• Ensure teachers are properly trained so they can teach cooking if and when it became a curriculum subject. That's a job for the DfE, says Oliver, and would help to reduce childhood obesity.
• Every school should grow some food itself. "In a country where 96% of kids currently don't eat their recommended five-a-day when it comes to fruit and veg, getting them growing their own food at school is crucial to changing their diets and long-term health."
• Improve school kitchens and canteens using capital funding. The DfE should "recommend that schools use capital funding to create on-site school kitchens, improved dining areas, multi-purpose spaces that would be suitable to teach practical cooking, and food-growing spaces".
• Ofsted inspections should "assess the nutritional content of school food", while establishments that increase take-up and lay on inspirational cooking lessons should be praised in their Ofsted report.
• Use the pupil premium to give poorer pupils access to healthy food.
Judy Hargadon, chief executive of the School Food Trust – which has seen its Whitehall grant shrink from £7m to £4.3m – praises Oliver's commitment to school food. But, while sharing his ambition to extend children's relationship with food while at school, she does not endorse his entire plan, notably the School Food Premium idea. "Incentive schemes are quite blunt instruments. It could be unfair to some schools and could demotivate those where the task of increasing take-up is harder to achieve, and it's often in precisely those areas that we need to drive take-up," she says. She would prefer motivation through recognition schemes.
Charlie Powell, campaigns director of the Children's Food Campaign – an alliance of 150 education bodies, health groups and children's charities – says: "Jamie is right that we need phase two of the school food revolution." But he believes Oliver should go further. "Government should ensure that every school does grow at least some of its own, there should be a ringfenced pot of money to replace the School Lunch Grant and every primary school pupil, irrespective of family income, should get a free school meal. Yes, that would cost an estimated £1.1bn [in England] but would be a simple way of ensuring that young children get a healthy meal every day," he says.
Like Oliver, Hargadon is worried about the future. "My concern is that the economic pressure on everyone – local councils, schools and families – will mean that people slip back into poor eating habits and that take-up might drop," she says. She also worries that schools, under pressure to generate income, might resume selling the banned unhealthy foods in their vending machines and tuckshops.
Powell adds: "We're concerned Jamie's school food revolution has the potential to slip into reverse gear if the government doesn't get behind it and show that it is committed to children's food and health at school. They don't seem to appreciate … the huge benefits healthy lunches bring for children's health and educational attainment."
The chef's latest creation helps to show what more could be done. Will Gove accept Oliver's challenge?
You can read Jamie Oliver's full manifesto here
JISC welcomes the UK Open Access Implementation Group’s (OAIG) reports and new repositories resource pack released today.
The Benefits to the Private Sector of Open Access to Higher Education and Scholarly Research report (PDF) and the Open Access Fees Report show the outcomes of research into the benefits of open access to commercial companies and findings from a consultation on the practicalities of paying for open access publication.
Taken together, these present a major step towards releasing UK research to underpin the nation’s prospects for growth both now, via direct innovation, and into the future, via a more efficient and effective research infrastructure.
Professor Martin Hall vice-chancellor at the University of Salford and chair of the OAIG says, “The report ‘Benefits to the Private Sector of Open Access to Higher Education and Scholarly Research’ shows how commercial companies would benefit from reduced costs, less time wasting, and shortened development cycles by having greater access to UK research outputs.
“It shows how UK universities can make a direct impact, and much needed contribution to business growth and sustainability, by making their research outputs more easily discoverable and translated into the language recognised by businesses as relevant to them.”
The evidence suggests that these benefits would flow across a wide range of sectors of the UK knowledge economy, and supports previous research which estimated benefits in the order of £100m per year.
Neil Jacobs, JISC programme manager for JISC’s digital infrastructure says, “There is certainly work to do to translate academic research into innovation and growth, for example in promoting research expertise and providing trusted and skilled brokerage services. JISC through its business and community engagement programme is providing some of the tools and methods for this to happen, but without open access to the research findings themselves, this work cannot be fully effective.”
Open access requires action by universities, funders and publishers to work together to make this happen. The OAIG has commissioned JISC Collections to produce an ‘Open Access Fees Report’ which consulted with these groups and other organisations on the arrangements whereby payment is made for open access publication.
Professor Martin Hall, OAIG chair, notes that, “During this consultation process there was a lot of agreement that open access journal publishing is making an important contribution, both to widening access to UK research, and to the success of UK publishers. However, there is still practical work to do to smooth the way for researchers, universities, funders and publishers.
“The ways forward identified in this report are both practical and the product of consensus. The UK Open Access Implementation Group will continue to press for expanded access to UK research, to meet our nation's need for innovation and growth based on a strong public science base."
A new repositories resource pack is also being launched today to help universities take immediate action to support wider access to UK research, by ensuring that as much of their research output as possible is made openly available via their institutional repository. The resource pack brings together all the information and guidance that UK universities might need in taking the policy decisions and practical steps for this to happen.
Follow the discussion online #jisc #oaig
William Nixon, digital library development manager at the University of Glasgow and co-ordinator of the resource pack, explains, “The resource pack gives the solutions to barriers which the OAIG have identified in setting up, managing and maintaining a repository as well as an institutional publication policy. This resource can also give senior managers and leaders within universities enough detail to influence and engage the rest of their teams in making these decisions.”
Members of the OAIG have agreed a 2012 strategy to help implement the recommendations from these reports and build on the past 12 months of its work. This strategy includes:
via Jisc news
If you want to go into prison education, says Alan Smith, you have to be prepared to lose your moral compass
I've had a couple of phone calls recently from philosophers who are thinking of going into prison education, which is, of course, wonderful. They have been asking for a bit of advice and this has sent me into some uncharacteristic musing on what I do. How do you explain a career made of hoping for the best, self-indulgence, guile and uselessness? How do you warn them against losing their ordinary compass and assuming not just the harshness of prison sensibility, but a nodding acceptance of almost anything?
When we read An Irish Airman Foresees His Death, the response was, for me at least, shocking.
Keith opened his hands to me across the table. "See, he just doesn't care. Like when you're in a situation and you think, I'm gonna die, and then you think, fuck it." All around the room people were nodding quietly. "That's a terrible thing," I said (or something like that). "Nah mate. It's just the way it is." And even though it's not (and I do know that it's not), the seductive power of reading the poem in this way comes as a real blow. The admiration for Macbeth ("he's a right geezer"), contempt for Antony ("pussy whipped"), the delighted laughter at The Prince ("that's exactly what happens") has an accumulating effect and it might be a good idea to steer the pristine sensibilities of academic philosophers away from all this.
The Prison Service, quite rightly, makes great efforts to protect staff from my sort of susceptibility and I still have, like a moral editor, in the back of my head the course I did early on about "prison craft".
But it is so easy to see the other point of view. There you are with not very much and you're thinking about how you might change that. There you are with all those glamorous images pouring out of the television and the steady flow of corruption and scandal from the tarts and spivs who seem to be in charge. And then someone says to you: "mind this for me", "just drive this van to Manchester", "we're going to do this, that or the other, do you fancy some of it?" and away you go. You can see, can't you, how easy that might be, especially when you're young? Then, stir in ignorance, or isolation, or drugs, or abuse and away you go.
Not that it was all like that. For Eddy it was: "I have to bring something to the table, it's how I am"; for Liam: "I just didn't want to have a boring life"; for Kenny: "I like the money, Al, I like that rich life"; for Tony: "I cannot back down, not ever".
This sort of anarchic pride was just the thing to seduce me away from myself and it was made more seductive because everyone knew that it was doomed. It was what made Paradise Lost the most popular text we ever read together. When Satan picks himself up from the burning lake and says "I reck not", there would always be a bit of applause and the laughter that recognises something you thought was a secret. Of course I would point out the dreadfulness of a 12-year sentence, the doomed nature of these sorts of lives, and of course when they said "so fucking what?" the spell was only strengthened.
So, anyway, phone back if you still fancy the job and I'll do my best. It's only philosophy and I don't see how you can possibly do any harm. Or good. Depending, of course, on what you mean by good.
New shadow education secretary Stephen Twigg has enough experience to play the long game on free schools and academies and build a fair Labour policy, says Estelle Morris
I suspect that it isn't easy to find yourself a shadow minister in a department where you once held ministerial office. There is a temptation to look backwards rather than forwards and your new policies will inevitably be judged against your own past record.
Yet I don't think we will see Stephen Twigg struggling too much. The new shadow secretary of state for education gained valuable experience as a young education minister at a key point in the last government and following the misfortune of losing his parliamentary seat, five years' recent experience of life outside politics. Both will stand him in good stead.
Perhaps it was this combination of first-hand political knowledge and real world experience that led him to frame his views of free schools in the way that he did recently.
The Conservatives would love to portray the new shadow minister as anti-free schools – it's the old "dividing lines" approach to politics. But Twigg knows from experience that some of these schools will be successful and is wise enough to say so.
Yet experience also rightly leads him to be opposed to the government's role in establishing free schools. The building costs are top sliced from the budgets of other schools and the deliberate lack of strategic planning is likely to lead to a surplus of places and the eventual closure of some neighbouring schools.
Twigg's response was just right. He criticised the questionable political decisions that underpin the initiative and drew attention to the risks they pose to existing schools, at the same time acknowledging the quality of some of the teachers who will run them.
This early fracas between Twigg and the education secretary, Michael Gove, shows the weaknesses in the government's approach to education policy.
Gove is one of the most tribal of politicians. His announcements are as much designed to position and corner the opposition as they are to advance education policy. He has staked his reputation on the success of free schools and his new brand of academies and, rather like some sort of advertising executive, tirelessly seeks to associate his preferred brand with all things good. If you don't support him on free schools, then you must be against innovation and standards. But there are dangers arising from setting out your stall so uncompromisingly – both for Gove himself and for the country. It's not a good idea to defend your position even when the evidence tells you you're wrong.
Twigg has shown he won't play that game. He knows from his time in government that the best "big ideas" evolve as they develop. I fear that this current ministerial team have set themselves against learning from experience.
So, three lessons from government policy so far. First, the vision of tens of thousands of independent state schools each relating to the government through their funding agreement, is already looking frayed at the edges.
As the government cuts out the role of the traditional middle layer in education – local authorities – new organisations are emerging to take their place. Far from the government's policies creating an army of independent schools, the burgeoning chains that have been dominant in the academy market for some time are now expanding to run free schools as well. Ark, Harris, E-act and others are showing that the middle layer matters.
Second, it's the quality of teaching that will define success, not the category of the school. The government seems to have stopped noticing successful schools unless they are academies. What a tragedy. Whatever else, one thing is certain: success and failure, innovation and creativity will be found in both academies and non-academies. There is not a school structure yet invented by a politician – and we've tried a good number over the past decades – that by itself can guarantee success.
Third, committed sponsors, or partners, who develop a good relationship with schools, are worth their weight in gold. The diversity of skills now to be found on governing bodies has been a great innovation and a huge success. Rather than abolishing the role, which the government has done for its new academy programme, it should have done its utmost to expand it.
Spotting a successful school isn't difficult; knowing exactly what it is that has led to that success needs a bit more effort. One of Stephen Twigg's challenges will be to separate his opponent's rhetoric from educational fact and build Labour's policy around what is fair and what works.
Why are students being advised to file their Ucas application months before the deadline, if there is no real advantage? Is it simply for universities' convenience?
"If a competition had a closing date of 15 January, you wouldn't expect any of the winners to be picked beforehand. But that's exactly what happens with university applications," says Stuart Lesser, 18, a first-year zoology student at Liverpool John Moores University.
According to Ucas, every student who applies by 15 January (except for medicine, dentistry and Oxbridge courses) has an equal chance of winning a place. But a row has erupted among students and teachers who fear that is not the case – and say conflicting advice is penalising students from a non-traditional background.
Universities disagree. When Education Guardian contacted them, admissions tutors up and down the country said they offer places when applications are received. As a Wolverhampton University spokesman elaborated: "We work through applications as received … we have to even out the workload, as we would not be able to deal with the volume all at once after the January deadline."
The universities claim that this process has no impact on whether early-applicant students get in. They say the reason they offer places on receipt of applications is purely practical: spreading out academics' workload and organising interviews.
As Rob Evans, head of admissions at the University of Sussex, explains: "In general, applications are considered as they arrive, and we make offers or turn applicants down as soon as we start processing applications in October ... There is certainly no added advantage to applying early, in terms of whether you receive an offer or not." He believes the option of operating a "gathered field" – considering all applications in one batch – in January is "impossible".
So why do admissions tutors advise students to apply as early as October?
The situation, says Lesser, who sent off his Ucas form in November last year, "makes no sense. Universities have to be honest about this. They may want all the applications in early to make their lives easier. If so, then why not set a deadline before January?"
Teachers agree. "Student applicants are left feeling utterly confused," says Diane Henderson, director of post-16 studies at Marine Academy, Plymouth. "Historically, the October half-term used to be the time when they researched courses, but now that whole process has been truncated due to the pressure of early applications. Those who apply earlier absolutely have a better chance of getting in. Since they accept candidates as soon as they start applying, logically, by 15 January many will have no places available. Even students applying in mid- to late December are penalising themselves, because universities may already be full."
Henderson believes universities' mixed messages about application timing hinders sixth-formers from non-traditional backgrounds. "If your parents are graduates and you've been preparing for university all your life, by year 13 you have a good idea of what you want to apply for. If you've come to the idea later on, the university application process needs more thought and guidance. The pressure for an early application is very unhelpful."
Universities claim that not providing speedy offers means they could lose out on securing the best candidates. "If we wait until January, many students may have made alternative choices," says Nicola Rees, law lecturer and admissions tutor at Kingston University. But many institutions offer conflicting advice, telling students to apply as early as possible, while claiming that doing so doesn't affect their chances. Plymouth University's spokesman, for example, said tutors "respect the 15 January deadline for equal consideration of applicants", then added: "Early application is an indicator of an individual's strength of interest, but has no bearing on a candidate's likelihood of being made an offer."
This debate is long-running. Back in May, it erupted on the Guardian's website when an article about university applications included advice from Philip Davies, head of admissions at Bournemouth & Poole College. "Don't leave your application until the new year," he said. "The best places fill up quickly – make sure you are in the first tranche." That triggered rapid outrage. "As part of a university's contract with Ucas, it has to agree to give equal consideration to all applications received by the official closing date," wrote andyjack in the comments section. "If [admissions tutors] do not know this, then they should not be working in admissions, and Ucas should be policing this with greater vigour."
RatFinkaBooBoo, who said he worked as a university admissions tutor, disputed that. "I processed over 1,000 applications for my 65 places this year. It quite simply isn't possible to process them all together… This is an unavoidable fact of life in the contemporary climate."
It is possible for some, though. At University College Falmouth, for example, spokesman Chris Harrison says although tutors begin to process applications when they come in, final decisions are not made until after interviews, weeks after the 15 January deadline. Similarly, Anglia Ruskin and the University of Exeter also fill places for competitive courses via a gathered-field strategy.
Ian Blenkharn, Exeter's head of admissions, says it only releases offers after 15 January "to ensure we can be fair and equitable to all applicants". He adds: "We take our responsibility in this area very seriously and manage our processes carefully. If a student applies later in the cycle, they can be reassured that they will be assessed in exactly the same way." At Sheffield Hallam, academics assess applications on receipt, with those who don't meet the entry criteria immediately rejected, and those who exceed them by a previously agreed margin being made an offer, and those who fall in between being stored, then ranked all together after 15 January.
For current year 13s, these divergent processes are causing concern. Some are particularly worried about missing out to Oxbridge candidates, who submit applications much earlier. "My college encourages us to submit Ucas forms by the end of November, and I've just sent mine off," says Heather Gilchrist, 17, who is studying for A-levels in politics, history and law at Cardinal Newman College in Preston and applying to read politics at university. "But since Oxford and Cambridge applicants get their Ucas forms off early [the deadline was 15 October], I know people who have already secured interviews.
"It would be fairer if universities waited until all the forms had been received, after the deadline."
Henderson agrees. "So many parts of the process are already much more difficult for first-generation applicants," she says. "The confusion and pressure over early applications is just another exacerbating factor."
Private universities can charge about half the fees of competitors by cutting back on costs in areas that do not directly affect students, says Carl Lygo
We have a record population of students in higher education that all of the main parties tell us we can no longer fund entirely from the public purse. Yet the demand for graduates will increase as the world economy doubles in size over the next 20 years.
The Confederation of British Industry (CBI) recently predicted that by 2017 56% more jobs in the UK will require degree-level skills. The UK spends less as a percentage of GDP on tertiary education than the OECD average of developed countries, but produces a high number of world-class research-intensive universities. So, in constrained times, how do you get more private capital into the university sector so the UK can grow and remain competitive?
Universities minister David Willetts has said: "The idea of the public university still applies at the heart of our system, but the best features of competition should apply to the sector." He believes that introducing competition can improve quality, particularly in teaching.
At BPP University College, our aim is to challenge the status quo. Our 2012 undergraduate fees are £4,000 to £5,000 per year, less than half the average of the sector. BPP offers choice in career-focused degrees such as accountancy, business, finance, law and, soon, health. Perhaps our approach led the first "public" university, Coventry, to announce a "no frills" package last week at under £15,000 per degree, giving students more choice. Why are critics against providing choice for students?
BPP seeks to focus its costs on high-quality teaching, concentrating on business and professional careers. By doing this we are able to keep down costs for the student.
Our model uses mainly full-time faculty, most of whom have practised in the professional area they now teach about. Our learning centres are in office blocks refurbished for modern student learning, and the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) described our accommodation as being at the sector's premium end. Our many student societies are supported by BPP funding.
So how can we do all this and still charge only around half the fees the other charge? The answer is by cutting back on costs in areas that do not directly affect the student experience. Having underutilised real estate (classrooms, libraries, lecture theatres, breakout space) that students do not use is just a drain on cost. Recently DTZ and UPP estimated that a prudent business approach could save a typical university as much as 20%-25%. Those savings could be passed on to students in lower fees.
There are some who warn against allowing the private sector to offer degrees, arguing that in the US there have been problems associated with unlimited recruitment. We have to remember that even after the current reforms we will continue to have one of the most regulated higher education sectors in the world. Unlike the US, the UK will be controlled in terms of price and volume. In Britain we have a rigorous code of quality assurance policed by the QAA and external examiners.
BPP gained the power to award its own degrees under the Labour government's reforms in 2007, after a rigorous scrutiny process. In fact, more than 50 public universities have academics involved in the scrutiny and governance of BPP University College, something completely unheard of in the US. So the scaremongers are wrong, but we must of course make sure that new entrants to UK higher education abide by the high standards expected.
At BPP what we do could help to drive up the quality of teaching standards, provide competition on price, and offer students a genuine alternative. What have the good public universities to fear from healthy competition?
• Carl Lygo is principal of BPP University College
Punks grow out of it and ravers stop raving. Why do goths just carry on? Sociologists can explain
What happens when a teenage goth grows up? Gets a job, takes on a mortgage, has a couple of kids…? Can you combine elaborate Frankenstein make-up and a lace-up bustier with getting a toddler ready for nursery and yourself to work on time?
Dr Paul Hodkinson, deputy head of Surrey University's sociology department and an expert in youth music subcultures, has been re-interviewing a group of goths he first studied in the late 1990s to find out. "They were teenagers and in their early 20s then, and I thought it would be interesting to go back because a number of people do stay involved in the goth scene," he explains.
Though many people who belong to youth subcultures such as punk and rave tend to drift away in their 20s, Hodkinson says it's more likely that older goths will want to remain involved in the scene, even though it may become harder to combine with the responsibilities that come with age.
To outsiders, it's the visual markers of being a goth – long, dyed-black hair, black clothes, pale faces contrasted with dark, dramatic eye make-up –that stand out. Taken on their own, these characteristics might be reasonably easy to cast off. However, Hodkinson says that although the aesthetic and clothing are important, the primary tenets of involvement in this subculture mean being "thoroughly passionate about goth music and style, and some goths would tell you they have an interest in the dark side of life, and a natural tendency towards a degree of angst".
This means a level of commitment to the goth scene, and friendship groups and identity that develop around being a goth, which result in social lives that "are so intertwined that it would feel very odd to leave it," he says.
Continuing with education and getting a decent job while staying involved isn't as hard for goths as it may be for those involved in other youth subcultures, some of which promote disengagement with school to the point that academic failure is all but inevitable.
"It's a relatively middle-class subculture, so despite … all the going out and being into the music, goths have always had a fairly positive view of people who are also achieving academically."
It means goths may have better career options than an outsider might expect. Succeeding in their chosen career had, Hodkinson observes, become increasingly important to those he interviewed as they moved into their late 20s and 30s, and he was surprised by how much participants in his study were willing to adapt their look to fit in at work. "I even gave people scenarios where they couldn't wear certain things. I expected them to say that they'd have to leave [their job], but they said they'd have to seriously consider it."
Most of his sample said they still were recognised as goths at work, but had toned down their look. "They retained a residual element of the appearance, but felt, for example, that colourful dyed hair wasn't going to work, and they'd stopped painting their nails black."
Several of Hodkinson's interviewees now had children, and he says that another sign of the importance of remaining involved despite this enormous life change is the recent appearance of websites discussing the issues facing goth families.
More parents are bringing their babies to goth festivals, too, Hodkinson says, "so organisers have started to think about policies and whether to provide facilities". For what Hodkinson calls "a fairly hedonistic youth subculture" to consider offering kids' clubs and on-site childminding means that demand from more mature goths is definitely on the increase.
Hodkinson says these individuals have found a way of "growing up together and taking on various elements of adulthood later perhaps than others might, but doing it as a cohort of people who are passionate about the same thing, and who support each other."
I began my professional career working in public libraries in Dudley and during the time I was there, held the post of Reference and Local History Librarian. In 1965 I achieved Chartered Librarian status whilst working as a Librarian/Information Officer at the BBA Group in Cleckheaton, West Yorkshire. I then moved into teaching at City of Birmingham College of Commerce, later the University of Central England (now Birmingham City University) where I held various teaching posts from 1967 – 2003.
I taught a variety of subjects including Library and society, management and local studies. I retired from teaching in 2003 although I still retained an interest until 2009 as a University Orator researching, writing and delivering citations for Honorary Degrees.
I have chaired many validating panels within other Faculties in the University of Central England, including Masters Courses, in the Faculty of Health, Birmingham Institute of Art and Design and the Birmingham Conservatoire.
As Chair of the Library Campaign, I have spoken on behalf of the Campaign in Berlin, Southampton and Ely.
I have served on various professional committees such as the West Midlands Branch Committee, ISG, GLIG and the Local Studies Group and held various honorary positions within these groups.
My social interests include; my role as professional cricket umpire in various leagues in Warwickshire, Birmingham and Worcestershire and membership of the Evesham Operatic and Dramatic Society, where I have assisted in recent productions of “Hello Dolly” and “Annie”.
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Clown insurance exists: researchers calculate that enough bad things happen to enough clowns to reliably yield a profit
Clown insurance is for clowns, not for persons potentially afflicted by them. Insurance companies offer it to clowns because clowns – no matter what you may thoughtlessly think of them – are people, and bad things can happen to anyone.
Clown insurance exists, as a distinct product category, thanks to the mathematical discipline called risk assessment. Industry researchers calculate that every year enough bad things happen to enough clowns to reliably yield a profit. Clowns, as a group, perform a benefit/cost calculation; that's why, year after year, they spend money to defend against life's practical jokes.
The UK boasts several suppliers of insurance for clowns. Blackfriars Insurance Brokers, for one, offers public liability clown insurance of up to £5m cover. Their website boasts, not unkindly, of "products to meet the business and personal insurance needs of clowns".
(Be aware, though, that a website temptingly called www.clownsinsurance.co.uk appears to just an example of a marketing concept.)
Foreign clowns, too, can buy clown insurance. Pretty much any clown, anywhere, can join the World Clown Association. The association, based in the US, offers its members liability insurance "with coverage of $1,000,000 per occurrence/$2,000,000 aggregate per event".
Their insurance application form specifically excludes many of the activities that, one can infer, have proved troublesome.
They will not insure a clown for clowning that involves hypnosis, bouncy castles, hot air balloons, sky diving, or competition racing. The application form does not distinguish between the numerous forms of racing – foot, horse, camel, bicycle, ski, cigarette boat, dragster, Spitfire, what-have-you.
Other things too, are verboten for the clown who wants to be protected by the association's standard clown insurance.
No throwing objects in any manner other than juggling them.
No working with animals, other than "performing dogs, doves and rabbits".
No "pyrotechnics, explosives, fireworks or similar materials". But the association is not a killjoy. It explicitly makes an exception for "concussion effects", "flashpots" and "smokepots".
No copyright infringement (that's what they call it, though they may mean trademark infringement). The association specifically mentions Bugs Bunny and Mickey Mouse as examples. In any event, one would do well to seek professional advice before simultaneously wearing a Mickey Mouse costume and a clown suit.
The US is blessed with a large population of clowns. American clowns, unlike their counterparts in much of the world, are blessed with a wide variety of vendors eager to sell specialised, off-the-shelf clown insurance.
American insurers, in agreement with their British brethren, view clowns as an increasingly specialised species of customer.
Not long ago, hypnotists, fire-eaters and people who do face-painting of children at public events were welcome to purchase standard clown-insurance policies. Then came legal climate change. Now everyone, no matter how clownish they believe themselves to be or not to be, should check the details before binding themselves to any policy that's designed for clowns.
Thanks to Anna Wexler, who once had clown insurance, for alerting me to its existence.
• Marc Abrahams is editor of the bimonthly Annals of Improbable Research and organiser of the Ig Nobel prize
I am not by any stretch of the imagination a traditional librarian, but I view this as a definite positive, since it allows me to look at the profession in a slightly different way. I have always worked with librarians however, from my early days when I was an information officer for the British Council, through to providing technical support to libraries as UK and Europe Head, Technical Support SilverPlatter UK. Since 1995 I've been an internet consultant, training information professionals at home as well as around the world.
My main interest is Internet Search, and I've been involved with a number of different search engine companies looking at their product, most notably Microsoft, where I was one of their original 'search champs'. However, I'm also very interested in Web 2.0 and social media in all of its forms, and I enjoy spending time in libraries, and with librarians looking at how these resources can improve their value.
I have also spent much time writing about the internet and Facet Publishing have published several of my books. I also write columns for the professional press, including CILIP Update magazine, with my column running for over 10 years. When I'm not teaching or writing I speak at conferences on various aspects of the role played by the Internet in the development of library services.
When I'm not doing any of that - you'll generally find me playing on the internet - I have never lost my wonder for it, and to be able to link that with my love for libraries is perfection. I'm always keen to find out new information, to see examples of what libraries and information professionals are doing and to shout these out to the world at large, so please do let me know about anything that you're involved with which you find interesting and exciting.
Away from keyboards and the world of information I like taking photographs, reading science fiction, crime, American and military history. I also follow Everton Football Club for my sins.
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