Liam Burns, the new president of the NUS, explains why he admires the tactics of UK Uncut
Over the past few months, Liam Burns has watched with admiration – and possibly a little jealousy – the stellar growth of the protest group UK Uncut.
The group, thought up by 10 friends in a north London pub last year, has gained notoriety by staging sit-ins at high street stores, whose owners it accuses of tax avoidance. Babies and pensioners – not to mention students – have taken part in UK Uncut's activities, making it the fastest-growing protest group in the country. Demonstrations by the group have forced several high street bank branches to close temporarily.
But it has also attracted controversy. In March, the Metropolitan Police bailed 138 of its activists – practically its entire leadership – on charges of aggravated trespass after a peaceful occupation of Fortnum and Mason in central London. More than 100 of the charges were later dropped. Most, if not all, of the remaining defendants are expected to plead not guilty.
It is, then, somewhat radical that Burns, the new president of the National Union of Students (NUS), hopes to copy some of UK Uncut's tactics as a way to engage his union's seven million members.
The 26-year-old Scot says he admires the way UK Uncut has "identified legitimate targets for occupation, bringing attention and support to its cause".
"It has done that in a way that is not aggressive, and is only intimidating to its target," he says. "No member of the public has felt threatened by actions that have closed down Top Shop, but I can't imagine Philip Green [Top Shop's owner] enjoys watching the footage."
Burns describes UK Uncut's form of protesting as "civil disobedience" and "non-violent direct action". He argues that this is reasonable in the face of the government's "savage" cuts to education and ministers' "disregard" for young people.
Violence and destruction, on the other hand, are disproportionate reactions, he says. "Disruption to the system is one thing, expecting those who have nothing to do with the decisions being taken to clean up after you is quite another."
He is alluding to demonstrations last November and December that resulted in students – not under the direction of the NUS – smashing windows at the campaign headquarters of the Conservative party in Millbank, central London; violent clashes between students and police and an attack on a car carrying the Prince of Wales and his wife, the Duchess of Cornwall.
In contrast, this May, UK Uncut activists occupied high-street banks dressed in scrubs and armed with fake blood and bandages. They set up "operating theatres" to protest against NHS cuts and the public subsidy of banks.
But as creative and visible as this sort of protest is, are there enough students willing to take part – and risk arrest? After all, Burns admits his own active involvement in civil disobedience is limited to a 10-minute sit-in against cuts to Swansea University's modern languages department.
Times are changing, he insists. In the past, it was possible to assume the political leanings of students from the campaign tactics they used. That's no longer the case. "What we've seen since November is a willingness of students who might not traditionally have engaged with direct action and civil disobedience to do so," he says. "What changed during Millbank was that we were shown that you can't just call [those protesting] 'hard left'. They are just students who are really bloody angry."
Burns is a card-carrying member of the Labour party, but says he has lots of friends who see it as "mainstream" to set up a pretend hospital in a bank, and have become involved in UK Uncut.
Burns is calling for a "national manifestation of people's anger", and warns that it won't just be about waving placards or a one-day photo shoot for the media. Over the coming months, he'll be talking to students to see how NUS members "can continue to demonstrate our anger in innovative and exciting ways". "I'll be looking for dialogue with organisations who have been effective in recent months, like UK Uncut and People & Planet [a student network campaigning to end world poverty, defend human rights and protect the environment]."
The NUS has been good at lobbying and at influencing, he says. "Are we good at mass mobilisation? Probably not," he admits. He wants to encourage more grassroots activity. It's perhaps another nod to UK Uncut, which has no leader and no signed-up members. Those who want to organise "actions" publicise them on its website.
The established structure of the NUS gives the union "huge wins", but also holds it back from being "organic", he says.
"I think the actions of the coalition, the repeated betrayals and the rushed policy initiatives that are making access to education harder mean that young people feel increasingly angry and frustrated," says Burns. "A lot of the battle is going to take place at the local level to protect courses, ensure bursaries work to help vulnerable students and campaign on local issues like libraries, transport and accommodation."
Burns is passionate, intelligent, relaxed and articulate. You can see why he was offered a place on the Teach First scheme, which takes bright graduates for a crash course in how to be a successful teacher in a challenging school. He turned it down to become NUS president. His dream job, he says, would be as policy and public affairs officer for a charity like Amnesty International, where he could use his strong sense of justice to good effect.
Burns's biggest concern as NUS president is that students will just accept a market-driven higher education system. "We have to reject the notion that the market is the answer to improving education," he says. "If students move towards accepting that if they pay more they get more, our education system will become increasingly elitist with the best education available only to the richest, who have the cultural capital and can afford the risk."
A particular bugbear is the privatisation of halls of residence. "When you look at the private companies brought in to provide accommodation ... you can clearly see the profit-motive driving up prices. It restricts, rather than opens up choice and puts quality at risk," he says. "A situation where institutions determine provision and standards according to the will of shareholders, rather than students and teachers, poses huge risks to the teaching and learning experience."
Burns was born in Fife – his father was a salesman and his mother a nursery nurse. He studied physics at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh. But he bats down suggestions that he has little experience south of the border. He says studying and campaigning in Scotland have insulated him from the "consumerisation of students" and will give him a "fresh eye, a bit more of a challenging outlook" when it comes to standing up for students in England.
Burns's predecessor, Aaron Porter, angered the more militant wing of the student movement after referring to the occupation of Millbank as "violence by a tiny minority". He was subjected to personal attacks and was heckled at a rally in January this year. He said on stepping down that he had developed a thick skin and that his successor would also require one.
I ask Burns whether he thinks he's tough enough. "I am going to make myself there to be shouted at," he says. You might almost think he would enjoy it.
The OU will still be cheaper than many other universities, but will it price older or casual learners out of the market?
The Open University may long ago have shaken off the image of kipper-tied lecturers presenting physics primers on late-night BBC2, but it has retained a warmly regarded reputation with the public as being the place for later-in-life education – whether it's for a change of career, or correcting the educational omissions of a misspent youth.
But that reputation may be set to change, following the OU's announcement of its new fees structure for students in England from September 2012. The price of a full-time degree (120 credits) will rise from about £1,400 to an average of £5,000 a year, with a part-time degree (60 credits) coming in at £2,500, where previously it had been around £700. Fees for those in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are still being discussed.
The £5,000 may be a bargain when compared with the new fees of many other universities, but will it be a step too far for those who want to learn for fun or gently dip a toe back into education? Self-confessed hobby learner Kash Farooq, a software developer, is pursuing a BSc in natural sciences, having started his learning casually with a course on fossils and natural history. Farooq already had a maths degree, but he wanted to broaden his reading and, simply, to learn. "A few years ago, someone at work was doing an Open University degree," he says. "I tried a module and got hooked; that was in 2007. I did an astronomy module and since then I have been concentrating on astronomy."
Farooq, along with other English OU students, will pay fees at the current rate as long as his study is unbroken and he finishes his qualification by 2017. But he believes young undergraduates taking advantage of the low fees, and thus lower student debt, will make up a significant proportion of the intake in the near future.
"I wouldn't have started if these prices were active five years ago," he says. "If another university popped up doing distance learning at distance prices I would look at that."
The average age of the OU's students has been sliding slowly downwards over the years, currently standing at 31 for new undergraduates. That trend looks set to continue as students seek out bargains and their parents fret over living costs. But the OU's vice-chancellor, Martin Bean, is adamant that the new fees structure need not change either the reputation or the balance of the student body.
"We have about 6,000 full-time students with us now, but we will stay true to our aim, which is to remain open to as many people as we can," says Bean. "The vast majority of Open University students will continue to be part-time and working, with the average age being what it is now."
Bean acknowledges that the new fees may put off a few "hobby" learners, but he is confident that those wishing to learn for fun and those not willing to consider a loan will not be left out. He believes the OU's mission to deliver quality university-standard education to all will not be compromised, even after the 84% cut to aggregate teaching grants that he says forced the price hike.
"One of the things we make clear is that at the higher price point we have to be able to justify the value to the students, whether they are part of the loan programme or not," he says. "If those students see it as a higher price point than they are willing to pay, then obviously they will not invest. But we also have a lot of other options for those people to engage with higher education."
Those options include the online OU resources OpenLearn and iTunes U, which offer free course materials, although they lack the affirmation of marking or the chance to gain credit as part of a qualification. The casual learner, initially put off by fees but enthused enough by their studies to continue, will start from scratch when applying for a degree course.
Full-time carer Barbara Yates started her OU degree in 2008, when switching from employment to looking after her mother. Returning from a trip to Indochina, she wanted to learn more about the socioeconomic problems that the area faces.
"I thought I would see how I got on and just got really into it," she says. "I made the decision to do the degree, but the advice was to start with a level-one course, which was Introduction to Social Sciences, and that really whetted my appetite."
The International Studies degree is Yates's first. She is unsure whether she would have undertaken the course had the new fees been in place, even with the chance to get a student loan. "I don't know if I would do it at £15,000; that is a huge amount of money," she says. "I am a full-time carer, so I am using savings as an investment for myself so I have not stopped completely and am still moving on. The sad thing is that in future a lot of people like me will decide not to take a course, I think."
Next year's intake will show whether OU staff are to be overwhelmed by applications from young undergraduates in search of a bargain; disappointed by a fall-off in the 9% of students aged over 50; or simply enjoy business as usual.
Martin Bean will be keeping a keen eye on the numbers. "The entire sector of learning is going through an incredible period of uncertainty," he says. "We have always charged fees and have always marketed ourselves on that basis. So we have very good systems in place and will absolutely be monitoring what happens and making sure we remain a quality institution, so respected in British society."
Research shows students from mixed-ability schools perform better academically and achieve more social mobility, says Melissa Benn
Long ago, when I started at my shiny new comprehensive, our year group was divided into 12 classes, comprising four ability streams. Most of the white, middle-class children were placed in the top bands while the poor, black or transient pupils were largely put in the bottom streams. By our third year in secondary school, streaming had been abolished in favour of a mixed-ability approach. But the damaging labels endured, throughout our school lives and beyond.
Several decades on, and the wheel has apparently turned full circle. Streaming, the wholesale allocation of children to groups on the basis of a fixed, single ability label, is making a big comeback, part of the retro traditionalism sweeping our education system. According to a recent study from the Institute of Education, one in six primary-age children within the UK is now streamed by the age of seven.
In some schools, the practice is so extreme as to amount to a return of the grammar-school principle. Crown Woods school in south London has caused a furore for its decision to house children in "schools within schools", according to ability, each with its own colour-coded uniform. Fighting has already been reported between students located in different blocks.
But there's a twisted logic behind the Crown Woods scenario. Surrounded by selective or partially selective schools, and struggling to stay atop the league tables, the school is merely responding to the market. In today's competitive climate, more and more schools are caught up in local turf wars, trying to win their share of high-achieving pupils.
Educationally speaking, however, this is pure disaster. Researching the recent history of UK schooling, I was fascinated to discover how much of the 1944 Education Act was based on the IQ work of educational psychologist Sir Cyril Burt, whose research was later discredited.
In the words of one sceptical civil servant of the time, Burt believed "that children were divided into three kinds. It was sort of Platonic. There were golden children, silver children and iron children." Each was to be assigned to different institutions – grammar, secondary modern or the technical schools – according to these rigidly, unimaginative descriptors.
We've come a long way since then – or have we? Certainly, all the current international evidence points powerfully in the opposite direction. The highest-performing and fairest school systems in the world delay specialisation and setting – the grouping of children into different classes for different subjects – until much later in adolescence.
Academic Jo Boaler followed two groups of young adolescents in the mid-90s, one separated into rigid ability groups, the other taught in mixed-ability groupings. Not only did the mixed-ability students outperform those who had been put into separate groups in national examinations, but when Boaler tracked down a representative sample from both schools, she found the mixed-ability group had achieved more social mobility, in relation to their parents, than their streamed peers.
Escaping early labelling had clearly expanded their sense of confidence into young adult life while those who had been streamed talked, famously, of "psychological prisons" from which they never escaped.
Wroxham primary school in Hertfordshire has outlawed all ability labelling, including reference to the all-pervasive national curriculum levels. The headteacher, Alison Peacock, has taken the school from special measures to outstanding status in a few years, and produced cohorts of confident, inquiring learners.
Wroxham is part of an exciting project called Learning Without Limits, which promotes a more open-ended and progressive view of human potential. Such work is particularly vital in the current climate, with so many siren voices declaring "mixed-ability teaching" a complete failure.
The irony, as Learning Without Limits understands, is that even to talk of "mixed ability" is to constrain and categorise, in unimaginative fashion, what we believe the child is capable of learning.
Something vital is at stake in all these arguments, not just about the quality of learning in our schools, but the kind of school system, and society, we ultimately want to foster.
For all its rhetoric about improving the education of poorer children, many of the coalition government's reforms risk returning us to rigid, know-your-place, limiting hierarchies. Now, more than ever, we need to keep alive the theory and practice of rich, alternative visions.
• Melissa Benn's latest book, School Wars: the Battle for Britain's Education, will be published by Verso on 5 September
Six new museums and galleries offer plenty of fun for families this summer, and a bit of learning, too
The last few months have seen a flurry of museum openings and new galleries. With the coalition cuts programme now in full swing, we're unlikely to see such a bumper crop again for some time. We've toured the country to find the best educational and family programmes on offer at the new museums and galleries – here's our selection.
The Cardiff Story Until earlier this year, Cardiff was the only capital in Europe not to have a museum dedicated to its history. That changes this summer with the opening of the Cardiff Story museum, which charts the history of the Welsh city from its origins as a small market town in the 14th century to its place today as the seat of the National Assembly for Wales. Its education programme is especially exciting for key stage 2 children – one area of the museum is called City Lab and is designed to show youngsters how to go about making historical einquiries. Children can look at different areas of Cardiff's history – the second world war, shopping and migration – and can search historical documents (census records, photographs and other archive documents) to work out the narrative. They can also listen to eyewitness accounts of history as it happened. Another simple, but fascinating, exhibit is a large-scale model of a house in Cardiff's Cathedral Road, which compares the way it looked at four different periods of its history (the 1890s, 1930s, 1970s and 2010).
Riverside Museum, Glasgow Housed in architect Zaha Hadid's flagship UK building, this newly opened museum of transport and travel is especially strong, unsurprisingly, on the story of shipbuilding – it's even located on the site of a former shipyard. Visitors can learn about how some of the Clyde's most famous boats – the Queen Mary and QE2 among them – fared on the ocean waves. Other exhibits – a colourful Pakistani truck, for example – bring to life how humans have customised their transport over the years. The education programme workshops will be piloted from the autumn and gets properly underway from January, but will feature workshops including one in which KS2 pupils can build their own working steam boats and race them against one another, while at the same time learning about how steam revolutionised transport in the 19th century.
Roman Frontier Gallery, Tullie House Museum and Art Gallery, Carlisle: This £1.4m gallery tells the story of the 400-year period of Roman occupation, in what was the northernmost frontier of its empire. Highlights include a Roman writing tablet to help today's youngsters get to grips with how they managed without texts 2,000 years ago; and the schools' programme explores the realities, opportunities and problems for the local community of life under Roman rule. But this gallery isn't stuck in the past: through the experience of the Roman frontier, children are encouraged to think about today's boundaries – the border between Mexico and the US, the Gaza strip, and the India/Pakistan border are among those explored in an exhibit called Living Wall.
Museum of Liverpool Another new museum tracing the history of one city – and this is also the biggest national museum to open in the UK for a century, boasting more than 8,000 sq metres of public space and featuring exhibits including the very stage on which John Lennon and Paul McCartney were introduced in 1957, cycling legend Chris Boardman's Lotus sports bike, and an 18ft (6.3m) Liver Bird. The museum opened last month, and they're still working on the education programme, which will launch properly in January 2012, but expect it to feature events about the way Liverpool's history has been woven into novels and short stories: in one area of the museum they've recreated scenes from Liverpool life, such as a school room and a chip shop, that inspired writers like Helen Forrester.
Turner Contemporary, Margate JMW Turner, Britain's best-known landscape artist, lived in Margate, for a time as a child and, later, returned there to live in a rented house on the very site where the new Turner Contemporary gallery is situated. "What's great about the Turner connection is that he had a huge curiosity, and it extended into all areas of life – among other things he wrote poetry, designed houses and was fascinated by science, as well as painting pictures, of course," says Karen Eslea, head of learning at the gallery. Thinking ahead to next term, she says the gallery has a team of navigators to steer groups on pupil-led explorations of exhibits. September's art show, Nothing In The World But Youth, features more than 200 works examining what it means to be a young person – exhibits will include David Bowie's jacket, and two Andy Warhol artworks.
Hepworth, Wakefield Housed in a £35m David Chipperfield-designed, concrete building, the Hepworth celebrates the work of one of Yorkshire's two most famous 20th-century sculptors (the other is Henry Moore). It's based around a gift from Barbara Hepworth's family that includes 40 prototypes for her famous bronzes, made of plaster, aluminium and wood – and, says head of learning Natalie Walton, that means that a particular strength of the museum for school groups is that pupils can learn about the process an artist follows in order to create a piece of work.
"What these pieces show is how an idea progresses through its various stages to a finished object," she says. "Pupils can learn about the process of creating art, and can make connections between one stage and another." Workshops through the summer include artist-led opportunities for children to create mixed-media collages inspired by the landscapes featured in the collection, and the chance to take inspiration from the current Eva Rothschild exhibition, Hot Touch, to create individual mini-sculptures, or to participate in the creation of a large piece of art.
Researchers tested whether consumers could tell the difference between bottled water and tap water, and guess what? Most people can't
Can people perceive the difference between bottled water and tap water? Two studies suggest that – at least in France and in Northern Ireland – water tastes like water.
A French research team ran a taste test of six different bottled mineral waters and six municipal tap waters. This was a collaboration between two scientific institutes (CNRS, the French National Centre for Scientific Research, and INRA, the National Institute of Agronomic Research) and Lyonnaise des Eaux, a company that manages many public water supplies.
The tasters were "389 persons from all over France". The bottled waters were "chosen among the French bottled water available". The tap waters were "from various regions of France, supplied by Lyonnaise des Eaux".
The team published their study in the Journal of Sensory Studies in 2010.
The researchers identified what they call the "three main tastes of water" that can be found if one swigs a great variety of bottled and tap waters. These are "the bitterness of poor mineralised water, the neutral taste (associated with coolness) of water with medium mineralisation and the saltiness and astringency of highly mineralised water."
The report concludes that "most consumers cannot distinguish between bottled water and tap water when the latter is chlorine-free". (But most is not all. The report goes on to say: "However, 36% of the subjects were found able to distinguish between tap water and bottled water.")
Five years earlier, in Belfast, Deborah Wells had run a similar test, with slightly more than 1,000 people tasting water from several sources. These included "one of the UK's most popular brands of still bottled mineral water (Evian, Danone Waters), distilled water (supplied by Queen's University Belfast), and tap water (supplied to Belfast by the Water Service from the Silent Valley, Co. Down)".
Wells, a senior lecturer in psychology at Queen's University, then wrote a report called The Identification and Perception of Bottled Water, which appeared in the journal Perception.
"The findings from this study indicate that people cannot correctly identify bottled water on the basis of its flavour," she declares. This "suggests that the currently high consumer demand for this beverage must be based on factors other than taste or olfactory perception".
That thought was not entirely new.
The previous year, we awarded an Ig Nobel prize in chemistry to the Coca-Cola Company of Great Britain. The company has long publicised the existence of a "secret formula" for its signature cola beverage. The key ingredient is water.
But that's not what won them the prize.
They were honoured for using advanced technology (mostly pumps) to convert ordinary tap water (obtained from Thames Water, in Sidcup) into Dasani, a pricey, water-filled bottle. It sold briskly – until news broke that Dasani was just bottled tap water.
But ... it wasn't "just" bottled tap water. As the Guardian reported on 20 March 2004: "The entire UK supply of Dasani was pulled off the shelves because it has been contaminated with bromate, a cancer-causing chemical."
• Marc Abrahams is editor of the bimonthly Annals of Improbable Research and organiser of the Ig Nobel prize
Copyright: A Success Story in the Making
Read the latest blog post from CILIP's Head of Policy Guy Daines
via RSS Feed
Invite a member of CILIP staff to shadow you at work and help make sure that CILIP is a member driven organisation.
During the autumn CILIP staff are going ‘back to the floor’ and shadowing members at work. This will help CILIP staff better understand the jobs you do, the environments you work in and the challenges you face. Staff at CILIP come from a wide range of backgrounds and for some this will be their first experience of work in a library or information setting.
As CILIP CEO Annie Mauger says:
“The new look CILIP is all about putting members and customers at the heart of everything we do. I want CILIP to be the best professional body it can be: to be a member-driven organisation that is relevant to people’s needs in the library, information and knowledge sector. I want as many people as possible to become members of CILIP.”
You can invite a member of CILIP staff to shadow you at work and help make sure that CILIP is a member driven organisation. We are looking for staff to spend a day or two shadowing members during September and October. If you are interested email info@cilip.org.uk with the following details:
For further information contact:
Mark Taylor
Director of External Relations, CILIP
Email: mark.taylor@cilip.org.uk
Tel: 020 7255 0654
via RSS Feed
Follow #jiscres11
Find out more about JISC’s research integrity conference – the importance of good data management.
Listen to the podcast (Duration 10:00)
JISC EMBEDDED OBJECT
via Jisc news
JISC is delighted that the Government has decided to endorse all the recommendations made by Professor Ian Hargreaves outlined within his independent review of Intellectual Property (IP) and Growth.
The fundamental aim of the consultation was to identify barriers to growth within the IP framework, which consists of the rules and regulations covering how IP is created, used and protected in this country. Using evidence based responses, its aim was to create a picture of how well the current IP system serves to help promote entrepreneurialism, economic growth, social and commercial innovation.
Dr Malcolm Read, executive secretary at JISC says, “We submitted an evidence-based response to the consultation and are encouraged that crucial recommendations have been included. Such as the need for exceptions for data/text mining, library archiving and parody to support research, teaching, learning. We also highlighted the need to prevent contracts from over-riding the exceptions to copyright, possible solutions for orphan works as well as the streamlining of the processes to clear rights - which have been supported by the Government.”
Copyright law risks becoming a law that is ignored, or viewed with contempt by users in the near future if policy measures and legal reform are not put in place to reflect education’s and research’s bona fide use of digital media and technologies. Ultimately, copyright law needs to be re-cast in order to reset the balance between the public and private sector, creators, educators, researchers, the creative industries and end-users.
Ultimately, the UK needs a modern copyright system that puts economic growth, competitive markets and commercial and social innovation at its heart. It should ensure creators, innovators, researchers and consumers can all capture the full range of benefits offered by the Internet and digital technologies. UK copyright law needs to be modernized and simplified to recognize and enable British entrepreneurs and creators to make the most of the opportunities provided by the digital age.
Dr Read added, “We believe that the implementation of the recommendations such as including the commitment to furthering easy, widespread access to information and resources, will ensure that technology and information management are placed at the heart of research and education.
“JISC supports the swift implementation of these recommendations to help create a robust IP framework which can optimise the impact of UK research and enable our world class universities to fully contribute towards the UK’s innovation and growth.”
| Read JISC’s previous statements on the Hargreaves report. See the Government’s response. |
via Jisc news
This page has information to help school librarians advocate their value
School Libraries - A Right
A statement by CILIP issued in February 2011
Designed for Learning: School Libraries DVD
DVD resource on designing libraries, plus PDF with useful information sheets.
School libraries resource list
Compiled for the 2008 School Libraries Summit, and updated in August 2011, this document lists research reports, papers and articles that demonstrate the value of school librarians.
CILIP Statement - Schools need school librarians December 2007
All-Party Parliamentary Group for Education, 2011 Report of the inquiry into overcoming the barriers to literacy
OFSTED, 2006 Good School Libraries: Making a difference to learning
Quality People equals Quality Service CILIP Employer's Pack covering the benefits of employing qualified information professionals.
School Libraries: Making a diference campaign DfES, CILIP, SLA, 2001 (This website has useful information but has not been updated since 2001)
CILIP salary guide for school librarians
Job description School Librarian
Job description School library assistant
Workforce remodelling (Job evaluation - member only page)
CILIP guidelines for Secondary School Libaries (Available from Facet) edited by Lynn Barrett and Jonathan Douglas, Facet, 2004. (Members can view a copy in the Information Centre).
Information about school libraries in the UK Book Trust research, 2007 & 2008
CILIP members can search additional resources from LISA, JIS, JOLIS and Emerald
Primary School Guidelines CILIP, 2002
A Safe Place for Children CILIP, 2005
Start with the Child Resource, October 2002
Survey of Secondary School Libraries CILIP, October 2002
via RSS Feed
Update on the School Libraries Summit 
Read the Summit update report for an update on the key action lines including:
School Libraries Summit
CILIP organised the School Libraries Summit on 26 March 2008. Activists from across the school library community met in London to identify issues, exchange ideas and agree an Action Plan. The Summit follows concerns about the impact of the Single Status Review on school librarians and the need to actively promote professionalism as part of CILIP's advocacy strategy.
Also agreed was the need to:
The Summit focused on the situation in England. The context and agenda are different in Scotland and Northern Ireland but there are similarities in Wales.
See also School Libraries Summit - resource list (updated Aug 2011)
For further advocacy information go to the school librarian and advocacy page.
via RSS Feed
Principal Vicky Tuck tells Peter Wilby she wants girls to learn to lead
It needed a prolonged courtship to woo the principal of Cheltenham Ladies' College into an interview with Education Guardian. There was an obvious clash, "in public perception at least", Vicky Tuck told me, between what the college and the newspaper stood for. She was worried, not only about my article, but about readers' online comments beneath. It took me two months to convince her I wouldn't do a hatchet job and Guardian readers – of whom, oddly, she is one – were open-minded folk who would never hold base prejudices against someone who happened to teach the (mostly) rich and privileged.
All the same, it's hard to approach the school, which charges nearly £28,000 for boarders and nearly £19,000 for day girls and is sometimes called "the girls' Eton", without a few prejudices. Founded in 1853, it has ivy-clad buildings, a 95-metre marble corridor and more stained-glass windows than most cathedrals. Its best-known principal, Dorothea Beale (1858-1906), was immortalised (along with the first head of North London Collegiate) in the rhyme "Miss Buss and Miss Beale, /Cupid's darts do not feel./ How different from us,/ Miss Beale and Miss Buss." Before Tuck, Cheltenham had never had a married principal.
"It has a reputation for developing English roses," said a male headteacher. "Not exotic ones, just the sort you'd find in country gardens." It hardly ever has a scandal – the biggest was when a group of 12-year-olds got drunk on vodka – and it is reputed, probably wrongly, to have originated "chav" as a snooty term for the less eligible young men of the town ("Cheltenham average"). Its quaint name makes you wonder if pupils practise deportment and learn the correct way to address younger sons of dukes. Why don't they change it? "It's a problem," sighs Tuck. "The girls don't like to say where they're from. But you don't change a good brand-name, do you?"
Tuck has been head here for 15 years and tells me at least a dozen times how happy she has been. Now she's off to run the International School in Geneva, which has nearly 4,000 pupils of both sexes aged three to 19. It is a surprising move for someone who has spent almost her whole career in girls' independent schools and went to one herself, but she is confident she will cope and, if necessary, make changes.
Tuck's public profile is lower than that of many male heads in the fee-charging sector, but she made a few controversial speeches in her year as Girls' School Association (GSA) president, saying, for example, that she found the economic downturn "bracing" and hoped it would "spell the end of ... conspicuous and ultimately unfulfilling materialism". She is probably the most successful girls' school head of her generation, strengthening the college's reputation and keeping up the numbers when neither single-sex education nor boarding is in fashion. The Independent Schools Inspectorate isn't noted for putting the boot in – its teams are mostly heads and deputies of other fee-charging schools – but, even by its standards, a report in 2008 was effusive. Nearly 20% of the higher education applicants get into Oxford or Cambridge.
"In this school," says Tuck, "girls have this great sense that everything is what girls do. We have really strong chemistry, physics, economics and maths. We have girls playing wind and brass instruments. We can't justify our existence if girls aren't learning to be adventurous and intellectual risk-takers. I get annoyed when parents say: I want to send her to a single-sex school because it'll be nice and safe. Of course, it'll be safe in some ways, delaying all the stuff teenagers deal with. But this isn't a pink, frilly school."
She once suggested single-sex education would make a comeback because it was "obvious to us" that "girls learn in a different way to boys". When I ask her to elaborate, she becomes agitated and says: "I was GSA president that year. You have to bang the drum. Some of our mathematicians say it's easier in single-sex schools because girls need reassurance in that subject and they benefit without the boys being vocal and quick. And in English, boys might benefit because girls are better at talking about feelings and deeper things."
Would Tuck describe herself as a feminist? She answers with a long "oooh ..." and becomes agitated again. She ventures, though, that "there's something distinctive" about the way women run schools. "When the majority of the leadership is female, you get a collaborative approach, lots of empathy and consideration. You also get this perfectionism and attention to detail, which can be negative and sometimes needs managing. As women, we still feel we have something to prove, so there's a lack of complacency." But, she adds hastily, "I have some wonderful men working here".
What she's most anxious to tell me is that she has created "a happy environment". "I've talked at reunions to women who attended in previous decades and many had a horrible time here. The boarding houses were quite miserable places, run by women who didn't understand children and didn't really like them. That had changed by the time I got here, but most of the former pupils wouldn't look at us for their own children." Only now, she says, is she seeing ex-pupils who want places for their daughters.
Tuck was not impressed with her own schooling at City of London Girls. "Not much pedagogy, not much understanding of children, not much passion. I don't like being bored, and I was bored." She later read French and Italian at Kent University and did teacher training at the Institute of Education, University of London.
She did teaching practice in a tough area of London where "any kind of motivation to learn French was practically non-existent and I wanted to teach my subject, not be a policewoman". That made her more inclined to look at fee-charging schools but, she insists, "my life could easily have taken a quite different turn". She got her first job at Putney Girls' High, but also applied to a state school, which turned her down.
Later she moved to Bromley Girls' High and, after having two sons, to the Institute of Education as a lecturer, eventually taking charge of its PGCE course. She then became deputy head at her old school before putting her name forward for the Cheltenham headship.
So what about social justice? I suggest that the fee-charging sector hogs too many high-quality teachers, denying the benefit to state schools. "They get the benefits of lots of people I've trained," she retorts. Beyond that, we hardly discuss the case for fee-charging. As she told me before we met, she's weary of making it, I'm weary of hearing it and, anyway, Guardian readers know all the arguments.
If Cheltenham Ladies is supposed to be the girls' Eton, the parallel is false in at least one respect: it has never been a training college for future rulers, because, however privileged the girls, they are in one sense members of an underprivileged group. Alumnae that include two ministers, a deputy governor of the Bank of England and one national newspaper editor (Rosie Boycott) constitutes a good record by girls' school standards, but nothing compared to Eton, Westminster or Winchester. Tuck talked a lot about the importance of girls learning to lead and, if she has inspired more women to aim for the top, good for her. Readers, please be gentle in your comments.
Lincolnshire county council says it cannot afford to run all its schools
Anti-academies campaigners will be closely watching events in Lincolnshire over the summer, as the county council seems poised to advise all its schools to become academies, warning that without this move, many of its small rural primary classrooms face closure.
In what is believed to be the first development of its kind in England, the council says that the government's drive to encourage schools to take on quasi-independent academy governance puts at serious risk the support services and even existence of those schools that remain linked to the local authority.
Conservative-controlled Lincolnshire is likely to propose that all its 360 primary, secondary, nursery and special schools opt out together to join an overarching academy trust, sponsored by the Centre for British Teachers (CfBT), a charity. The proposal was accepted at a meeting last week, and now only needs approval from the council leadership team in September to become policy.
But it is likely to be seized upon by academy critics as raising serious questions about the policy nationally.
The paper, discussed by the council's children and young people scrutiny committee last Tuesday, set out four options. But it argued that schools simply remaining with the authority might not be sustainable. Meanwhile, schools branching out and setting up their own academy arrangements – the government's favoured option – also contained many pitfalls.
The paper suggests that the increasing numbers of schools moving to academy status – some 55% of Lincolnshire secondaries and 11% of its primaries are expected to be academies by January – threaten the viability of services for the remainder.
Academies receive money from the government for a share of the support services the local authority provides to all its schools. The academy can then choose to "buy" services from their local authority, or from elsewhere, or not to provide them at all. If large numbers of academies take the latter two options, councils fear they face declining budgets out of which to fund services for the remaining schools.
Lincolnshire's paper says: "There are potential significant funding implications for the local authority as more schools convert to academy status … If all schools converted, the LA … could see a reduced revenue grant of £28m from the core revenue budget from 2012/13." This might make running those services "unviable".
It is with regard to small primaries, however, that it gives the starkest warning. Such schools "lack the capacity" to take on the entrepreneurial opportunities offered by branching out as academies on their own, and thus would need either to remain with the local authority or to join a sponsored group of academies.
However, these schools would constitute a "business risk" for any sponsor, says the paper, since businesses would need a primary school to have at least 180 pupils to be economical. Two thirds of the county's 276 primaries are smaller than that.
If they remained with the local authority while others left, "[the] local authority could be left with small vulnerable schools, without a support infrastructure or funding to drive improvement, which could lead to serious risk of closure."
It concludes: "The development and implementation of the current academies policy could lead to 184 out of 276 primary schools being at serious risk." It says CfBT would offer support for all schools, including small rural primaries.
Members of a "Save our Schools" group are enraged. Sarah Dodds, its founder – who is now a Labour district councillor – says that while many of the warnings in the paper reflect genuine worries about academies, schools are being unfairly steered towards an alternative with a privately managed organisation, an outcome that would lack democratic accountability.
CfBT has a close relationship with the authority: it has had a contract to run school improvement services there since 2002. The contract runs until 2017, and the council paper says the current proposal would allow Lincolnshire to re-negotiate this arrangement with CfBT.
Although school governing bodies get the final say on academy status, Dodds says: "The risk is that schools are panicked into the trust option." She is also concerned that CfBT was the only potential sponsor put forward in the council paper.
Peter Downes, a former headteacher and Cambridgeshire Liberal Democrat councillor, describes the Lincolnshire situation as an "appalling mess". He says: "The paper as a whole illustrates the ridiculous situation our education system now faces. It is disintegrating. We are replacing a system of local authority oversight with one of hundreds or thousands of individual schools, which will inevitably in the end have to come together, either through commercial organisations or charities, without the democratic accountability of the local authority."
Patricia Bradwell, Lincolnshire's executive councillor for children's services, says school governing bodies must consult the public on any decision to become academies. The current government consultation on school funding, though not yet complete, indicates that the council would "face a serious financial challenge" as the number of academies grows. Doing nothing would leave the council insufficient time to manage a budget reduction.
"We have to be prepared for more and more schools becoming academies, in line with the national agenda," she says. "It is important that we provide clarity to enable schools to identify what is best for them and their communities. Lincolnshire has been rated nationally as an outstanding authority for children's services, including education. We refute the claim that education is in a mess."
With members of the council's Labour party still unhappy about the lack of public consultation, and Save our Schools exploring legal options, controversy over this move will continue.
Sadly, higher education is not immune to the English vice of hypocrisy, says Peter Scott
I have to make a terrible confession, especially writing in the Guardian. I once worked for Rupert Murdoch. And it gets worse – at any rate, as far as the bit of Times Newspapers where I worked goes, he was not such a bad boss.
My memories of Murdoch flooded back because I have been struck by two things in recent weeks. The first, of course, is the tackiness of tabloid journalism, taken to new depths by phone hacking at the ex-News of the World. But the second is the English establishment's famous talent for hypocrisy; as if reporters have not always had over-cosy relations with police and politicians, and their accomplices have never before rummaged in promising dustbins.
Hypocrisy has always been seen as a particularly English vice – the limitless ability to condone behaviour in private but attack it in public. But hypocrisy is not confined to bad behaviour; it can also run like a rotten vein through public policy. Sadly, higher education is not an exception.
For the past generation, a university education has been seen more and more in instrumental terms. In the eyes of most members of the establishment – politicians of all parties, mandarins and quangocrats, and (the more boss-like) vice-chancellors – higher education's success seems to stand or fall on its capacity to turn out flexible entrepreneurs, professional workers and technical experts.
Enlightenment, civilisation, emancipation, critical inquiry – such words seem to have dropped out of the dictionary of higher education policy making. If the words of the establishment are to be believed, modern higher education is not much more than the human resources, training and organisational development arm of UK plc.
Much the same has happened to research. In the forthcoming research excellence framework, a key criterion is to be "impact", code for research that most directly leads to wealth generation or social wellbeing. Research councils have crafted lists of priorities that uncannily echo political agendas. Again, if the establishment's words are to be believed, research's role is as the R&D arm of the same soulless corporate nation.
But should we believe their words? After all, relatively few members of the establishment are graduates of the "instrumental" subjects. They are historians, economists, political scientists and a few (sadly too few) are natural scientists. And, by and large, they do not expect their own family members to make different choices.
If they are indeed hypocrites, their hypocrisy appears to operate on two levels. The first, and forgivable, is tactical hypocrisy. Of course, they do not believe higher education is just "training" or research only about "impact". But this is the kind of language that must be used to impress the Treasury or fight HE's corner against competitors for public funding.
The second, and unforgivable, is double standards. Of course, people like "us", the elite and the establishment, should not be constrained by a narrowly instrumental view of a university education. If Oxbridge disappoints, there is always art history at St Andrews – or, coming soon, Anthony Grayling's New College of the Humanities. We can cope with wisdom.
But for the mass, for the people, for "them", it is different. They cannot cope with wisdom – or, if they could, they might begin to ask unanswerable questions about the unequal constitution of society. Instead, they are destined to become the well-trained helots of the knowledge economy, wielders of vast technical expertise, but with their access to symbolic power and cultural capital strictly rationed.
Of course, I am being unfair myself. Most members of the establishment are accidental hypocrites; these are unspoken thoughts and silent beliefs. It is also perfectly possible to combine a high-level professional training with a critical university, even liberal, education; indeed, it is essential for both. And there is nothing wrong with taking into account the "impact" of research; in a democracy, higher education has a profound social purpose (and we all need to live and prosper).
But I do not think I am being entirely untrue. There is evidence of double standards in the recent white paper. The "elect", with good A-levels, who are largely the privileged, will be unconstrained. The most utilitarian of HE providers, especially the for-profit sector, will also be encouraged to expand. No direct public support is to be provided for the humanities and most social sciences, leaving them supported entirely by fees.
Little effort is required to decode these signals. Perhaps we should even be grateful. Prejudices that have slithered under the surface for 20 years or more have finally been exposed to view – and, therefore, to resistance.
• Peter Scott is professor of higher education studies at the Institute of Education and a former editor of the Times Higher Education Supplement
Is going to university better than doing a vocational qualification or an apprenticeship? We asked four people their views
For years we have been sold the complete load of bollocks and told that if you want to get on in life and be successful then you have to go to university, and manual work is only for those who aren't clever enough to make it to university. And where did that get us? Thousands of useless courses and hundreds of thousands of students with huge debts and no jobs, that's where. After ranting about this for years, it seems I'm not alone here any more.
In her report on vocational education, Professor Alison Wolf concluded that jobs like plumbing, carpentry, electrics – you know, the useful ones in society – have been downgraded in social status over the years, a situation she said must be amended if we are going to solve the huge youth unemployment problem.
One step forward might be to stop using terms like vocational. We should be talking about "getting a trade", something many parents used to aspire to for their kids as recently as the 1970s. The fact that, just to get the subject out there for public discussion, you have to come up with a word that plumbers like me don't even use says it all really.
The government is investing heavily in creating new apprenticeships. At the same time, it has introduced the Ebacc, which focuses solely on academic qualifications. What is missing is an alternative, a technical baccalaureate, which offers valuable learning and real skills, and leads to real jobs for young people.
Critics might say that encouraging children down one pathway at 14 is questionable. Our experience shows that getting children on the right programme for their learning needs is what leads to success.
Vocational qualifications serve a need for particular kinds of students, but let's not pretend they are the same as academic qualifications.
In 2004, 15,000 vocationally related qualifications were taken in schools. By 2010, this had risen to around 575,000, with many schools using them to boost their success in the league tables. You'd get schools doing well in the tables where some children couldn't read and write properly. The new Ebacc gives an honest indicator of how well schools are really doing. Children need the ability to sit in a controlled environment and be tested on their knowledge.
Vocational qualifications definitely seem more attractive now that big companies such as BAE Systems are offering apprenticeships, but I think I'd only really consider that route if I didn't get the grades I needed for university. Given the choice, I'd definitely go for A-levels, as I think they are far more respected by employers and universities.
Cutting and slicing provide a meaty topic for researchers to get their teeth into
Through the clever use of cheese in 2004, researchers at the University of Reading claimed to have solved one of life's great little mysteries. "Why is it relatively difficult, even with a sharp knife, to cut when simply 'pressing down', but much easier to cut as soon as some sideways sawing or slicing action is introduced?"
The scientists, AG ("Tony") Atkins, George Jeronimidis, and X Xu, published a monograph called Cutting, by "Pressing and Slicing", of Thin Floppy Slices of Materials Illustrated by Experiments on Cheddar Cheese and Salami. It was the highlight of that April's issue of the Journal of Materials Science.
The team experimented on a piece of cheese that they identified only as "commercial Cheddar cheese".
They were equally cagey about the nature of the meat. The report employs the phrase "a commercial pepper salami". Now salami experts understand that those four words, when huddled together, cover a multitude of possibilities: delicious or not; cheering or horrifying; mushy, stiff or adamantine. We learn nothing about this particular salami, save that thin slices of it become "floppy". But that's all right, because floppiness is the key thing here.
Atkins, Jeronimidis and Xu write in fairly stiff, technical language. But they loosen up a bit when talking about floppiness. Then they use language suitable to the casual reader who might, say, peruse an issue of the Journal of Materials Science while lounging in a dentist's waiting room:
"Further examples of the sort of globally-elastic cutting considered in this paper," say the scientists, "are to be found in the slicing of meat by the butcher ... lawnmowing, hair cutting, the cutting of fabrics by the dressmaker, surgery and so on. These cases are characterised by the offcuts [the individual slices] being elastically very floppy (ie, have negligible bending resistance and are not permanently deformed)."
Cutting into non-floppy material can be a different game. Atkins, Jeronimidis and Xu explicitly leave that for others to investigate.
They chose cheese, they say, because "the cutting of cheese is notoriously affected by friction (hence the use of wire to cut cheese)". They do not explain why they selected salami.
The team did their cutting not with a wire, but with a delicatessen-style "bacon" slicer. Its whirling blade can, depending on the substance and on the angle of the cut, fall prey to varying amounts of friction. To keep things from getting too, too floppy, they chilled the cheese before slicing it, and ditto the salami.
They quantified, in unprecedentedly technical detail, what good butchers, lawnmowers, hair cutters, dressmakers and surgeons have always intuited. The faster the whirl of the blade (or the horizontal drawing of the knife), the less force is needed to drive the blade down, down, down into the material. But, because of friction – the rubbing of blade against substance – there's a limit to how easy that downward slicing can get.
Cutting-edge stuff.
• Marc Abrahams is editor of the bimonthly Annals of Improbable Research and organiser of the Ig Nobel prize
MPs recently recommended improvements to the way scientific papers are checked before they are published, calling for the peer review process to be more transparent - see the BBC article.
The recommendations came out of a House of Commons Science and Technology Committee report which also urged that researchers make their scientific data publicly available, and that reviewers have formal training.
Executive secretary at JISC, Dr Malcolm Read, said, “At JISC we strongly support the recommendations of the House of Commons Committee report. Though most researchers agree with the principles of peer review, many feel there is room to improve how it is implemented. Recently there have been suggestions about alternatives, like open peer review and JISC has funded universities to look into open access academic journals which are compiled from other openly available material.”
JISC is already acting on a number of the recommendations - including funding the Dryad project mentioned in the report. Dryad-UK provides a repository for the data underpinning research articles, encouraging greater research openness. The BMJ Open journal and titles from BioMedCentral and PLoS have become partners, integrating their submission process with Dryad and strongly encouraging authors to deposit research data.
Neil Jacobs, programme director at JISC, said, “We are also engaged in productive collaboration with innovative publishers such as PLoS, as well as industry bodies, for example on standardising the way usage statistics for articles are reported.”
The government report describes access to data as ‘fundamental’ for researchers to reproduce, verify and build on each others’ results.
This spirit of openness is something JISC supports, through its work with the UK Research Councils.
However, there are challenges, as JISC’s programme manager for data management Simon Hodson explains, “These objectives will be difficult to realise unless research practice and supporting systems and infrastructures are developed to make good practice easier. Similarly, researchers will feel little motivation to make data available in a timely way unless conventions of recognition and reward evolve to encompass the effort required to ensure data quality and reusability. The JISC Managing Research Data Programme is helping universities support researchers in responding to these challenges.”
What does JISC think about open-ness in research?
via Jisc news
The UK’s changing fashions from tracksuits to knitted bikinis are to be collected in a huge online wardrobe f
Celebrated mail-order company Kay & Co Ltd was for more than 100 years a staple of shopping in the UK, providing contemporary fashions, household items and luxuries at affordable prices to the general public.
Now over 1500 images from the catalogues are to be digitised online by the University of Worcester with funding from JISC – and the public are invited to contribute images and stories of their own concerning their favourite outfits which will give future historians an insight into today’s attitudes to the fashions on display.
Paola Marchionni, programme manager at JISC said: ”The World of Kays is such an interesting project not only because it brings back images of what our taste in fashion used to be - like velour tracksuits with heels - but because it provides a visual history of society and culture in the last century. It proves that history isn’t always written down but is also alive in our stories and memories which people can contribute to academic research. At JISC we were interested in funding this project as it has a strong local focus but wider appeal to researchers, teachers and the public outside the Worcester area as well.”
The website will explore the impact of Kay & Co Ltd on shaping the nation’s lifestyle and clothing choices from 1920 to 2000, as well as the contribution the company made to city life.
Until the website is launched, members of the public can get involved with the World of Kays project on Facebook or by following @WorldofKays on Twitter.
Project manager Jenni Waugh said: “The website will be a fantastic resource for community historians and fashion enthusiasts alike. It’s a wonderful opportunity to make the history of Kays more available.”
The Kays Collection of catalogues and business records was deposited in the University of Worcester’s Research Collections by Bernard Mills, Chair of Kays Heritage Group. Mr Mills was responsible for rescuing the Kays business archive.
You can search all of JISC’s imaginative content using the tool below - including the Kay's catalogue once the collection goes live:
JISC EMBEDDED OBJECT
via Jisc news
New EURIM report: Public sector information – fit for purpose or a growing liability?
The EURIM Report, “Improving the Evidence Base: The Quality of Information” focuses on the data collected by most public sector bodies and the information that is based on this data. It challenges how fit for purpose much public sector information is and sets out what needs to happen to address major shortcomings. Many applaud the idea of evidence-based policy-making and much more information is being made available to the public for transparency and accountability reasons. It is therefore essential that the quality of the information is sufficient for the purposes to which it is being put. This is especially the case when public expenditure is being so heavily reduced and remaining resources need to be targeted on those things making the most effective contribution.
Guy Daines, CILIP’s Head of Policy, chaired the EURIM subgroup that drafted the paper and CILIP was also one of the sponsors of a Local Government Association Conference fringe event where the report was launched on 29 June. A number of CILIP members from UKeIG (UK e-Information Group) and GIG (Government Information Group) commented on drafts of the report.
Read Guy Daines’ blog post about chairing the EURIM subgroup and how this ties in with the Big Society and Government:
http://communities.cilip.org.uk/blogs/informationadvice/archive/2011/07/26/big-society-and-government.aspx
The EURIM Report, “Improving the Evidence Base: The Quality of Information” is now available on the EURIM website:
http://www.eurim.org.uk/activities/ig/1106-QoI_ImprovingTheEvidenceBase.pdf
For further information contact:
Guy Daines
Head of Policy
Email: guy.daines@cilip.org.uk
Tel: 020 7255 0632
Notes:
EURIM – The Information Society Alliance - brings together politicians, officials and industry to help improve the quality of policy formation, consultation, scrutiny, implementation and monitoring in support of the creation of a globally competitive, socially inclusive and democratically accountable information society. CILIP is an Associate Member.
via RSS Feed
Email: cpd@cilip.org.uk Telephone: 020 7255 0610
Fax: 020 7255 0611
Follow us on Twitter
Address:
Continuing Professional Development
CILIP
7 Ridgmount Street
London
WC1E 7AE
via RSS Feed
Electronic submission of your Revalidation portfolio is designed to minimize your workload by cutting out the need for printing, binding and posting large parcels.
Assessing electronic applications is less straightforward than assessing paper ones, so for clarity and ease of use we ask you to follow these guidelines closely.
Electronic Submission Guidelines for Revalidation
(PowerPoint)Electronic Submission Guidelines for Revalidation (Word)
Once you have created your electronic submission, label the folder with your surname, initial, membership number and ‘Reval’. Then complete and print off one copy of the submission form. Return it with your application which will be on two CDs via secure post to: Continuing Professional Development, CILIP, 7 Ridgmount St, London WC1E 7AE.
via RSS Feed
A secondary school has divided its students by ability, complete with different uniforms. Innovative way to lure the middle classes, or worrying segregation?
Students with purple ties are gifted and talented. All the children at Crown Woods college in Greenwich, south London, know that. They are taught in separate colour-coordinated buildings, play in fenced-off areas and eat lunch at separate times. At 11 years old, all pupils at the college are streamed according to ability in what the headteacher argues is the only way to survive in the brave new world of market-driven education.
Crown Woods re-opened in May this year after a £50m rebuild under the Building Schools for the Future programme. Based on a small-schools model in the US, the pupils are ranked as they leave primary school and put into one of three "mini-schools" on site. The gifted and talented go to Delamere. They have purple badges on their smart blazers. The rest go to Ashwood, which wears blue, or Sherwood, which wears red. These two schools are more mixed ability, but they are still streamed into three tiers. Each school has 450 students and functions independently. There are no shared subject departments.
The light, bright white corridors in the nine new buildings make the site feel more like an art gallery than a state comprehensive. The state-of-the-art competitive gym with capacity for 450 people feels like a professional facility. There is a sensory garden and design centre named after William Morris. The use of prefects, the school's stately crown logo and the formal use of the tie in the uniform add to the traditional posh-school image, but this school's facilities are available to all students, and it offers vocational subjects.
The headteacher, Michael Murphy, glows with pride at the new set-up. The son of Irish immigrants who was rejected by a secondary modern before being educated at a mixed comprehensive in Brixton, he is keen to point out all the ways in which standards have been driven up. When he took over the school, it was in special measures, and was "losing out" to grammar schools in Bexley and the selective comprehensive schools in Bromley. Now Murphy says the school is over subscribed for the first time, and is enjoying a more balanced intake of social classes and abilities. The reason, he says, is the streaming.
"I felt if we made explicit the provision for high-ability children, we would be able to attract those children and their parents who would rather not put them in to take the Bexley 11-plus, but would feel comfortable with the type of provision we'd make for them – and that's entirely what's happened."
But he believes the model is better for all students, not just the gifted and talented. "Combining setting with the small-schools model is a powerful combination that allows highly personalised learning. Mixed-ability teaching in state schools has patently been shown to have failed – our model allows all students to work at their own level and get the support they need."
Although GCSE results here remain below local grammar schools, they have been improving; 45% of students gained five A*-Cs including English and maths this year, up 14 percentage points from three years ago. Five per cent of students achieved the government's new Ebacc measure. Ofsted ranked the school as good during its last inspection in 2009.
But Murphy says that without setting, the school wouldn't have survived. He says that he has heard of other schools using different colour uniforms to mark different "houses", but the idea of using different colours for different streams came from his "own head".
"I think it was Mrs Thatcher who said you can't ignore the market, you have to respond to it. If we had a system that really recognised value added, it would be different. But we have a system that increasingly focuses on results. If you have a really hard-nosed view and want your school to succeed, this is what you have to do. We wouldn't have attracted the students otherwise."
The school's students are all positive about the new building and take pride in their smart uniforms. Some tell me they like the small-school model, because it makes them feel safer than being left in a playground full of thousands of students they cannot name. Some of them, however, are not so keen on the overt streaming model.
One girl aged 15 who attends Sherwood school says that students in the top school "look down" on students in the other ability schools like hers. She says arguments and fighting have broken out between different schools, which she says started when the students were told which block they'd be going into.
"If you were friends with someone in Delamere, you are kind of enemies now, because you don't want to talk to them. If you talk to them you kind of feel like you're betraying (your school)."
"There was an argument in the school the other day and the girls were arguing between the fences ... it just feels like we've been cut off from them."
"They say if you're gifted and talented you'll be in Delamere, but there are other people in Sherwood and Ashdown that are gifted as well."
Another girl, also 15, worries the system could hold her back. The student, from Sherwood, wants to do triple science to become a neuro-psychologist, but can't. There is only space for her to do additional science in her timetable, something that she says "doesn't seem fair at all". The college says it will be making space for more triple-science provision next year.
Other students, though, say that they still feel united. They point out that many activities – including sports and music events – still allow opportunities for mixing across the college. Eylul Arif, 12, who has been put in Delamere, says: "Although we're split up, we're all friends. They look up to us, we look up to them. We're different visually, but we all go to the same school."
Streaming existed on the old school site, but differences in uniform corresponded to different ages rather than abilities. Students at different levels weren't taught in separate buildings and it was more common to move between sets. Under the new system, it is still possible to move, but the emphasis on the small-school community means that there is a reluctance to allow too much mobility. There is no systematic review of students' school allocation, and none has yet moved in the two months since the school opened.
Students are allocated a school in the college when they first arrive. They are allocated schools on the basis of their year 5 banding score, a teacher assessment and a cognitive ability test. Although there are around 1,800 students at the school including the sixth form, only two parents have questioned the stream given to their child.
Justine Kirkham is a new teacher who has been working at the school for 18 months. She asked to be put in Sherwood or Ashdown so she could "earn her stripes", and says she has seen a huge improvement in behaviour.
"Some students in the past had real behavioural problems and there is now far less trouble," she says. "There is the ability to personalise learning, and people who are struggling can actually get the help they need. Instead of being one of the less intelligent kids in the class, they are now able to do as well as everyone else. If they had been mixed and mainstream, I can't imagine them doing better. I just had a student get 4Bs rather than 3Bs. In our grade that's the target, but if it was across everyone he wouldn't have felt the same."
But this sort of approach is controversial. Kevin Courtney, deputy secretary at the National Union of Teachers, condemns the school's practices. "It's really upsetting. The idea of taking a large school and turning it into three mini schools is likely to be good for relationships, but streaming them is a step backwards. All the evidence shows that mixed-ability in places like Finland does better, although people find it hard to believe. The academisation of the school system will lead to more backwards steps like this. It leads to competition for children rather than improvement in teaching."
Courtney cites famous research conducted by American teacher Jane Elliott in the 60s, in which blue-eyed children did better and began bullying brown-eyed children after being told that they were superior. "There are very established studies showing that kids take the message that they are given from schools and teachers and internalise them," he says. "We moved away from secondary modern partly for that reason and it is depressing to see the system return."
A secondary school has divided its students by ability, complete with different uniforms. Innovative way to lure the middle classes, or worrying segregation?
Students with purple ties are gifted and talented. All the children at Crown Woods college in Greenwich, south London, know that. They are taught in separate colour-coordinated buildings, play in fenced-off areas and eat lunch at separate times. At 11 years old, all pupils at the college are streamed according to ability in what the headteacher argues is the only way to survive in the brave new world of market-driven education.
Crown Woods re-opened in May this year after a £50m rebuild under the Building Schools for the Future programme. Based on a small-schools model in the US, the pupils are ranked as they leave primary school and put into one of three "mini-schools" on site. The gifted and talented go to Delamere. They have purple badges on their smart blazers. The rest go to Ashwood, which wears blue, or Sherwood, which wears red. These two schools are more mixed ability, but they are still streamed into three tiers. Each school has 450 students and functions independently. There are no shared subject departments.
Continue reading...A secondary school has divided its students by ability, complete with different uniforms. Innovative way to lure the middle classes, or worrying segregation?
Students with purple ties are gifted and talented. All the children at Crown Woods college in Greenwich, south London, know that. They are taught in separate colour-coordinated buildings, play in fenced-off areas and eat lunch at separate times. At 11 years old, all pupils at the college are streamed according to ability in what the headteacher argues is the only way to survive in the brave new world of market-driven education.
Crown Woods re-opened in May this year after a £50m rebuild under the Building Schools for the Future programme. Based on a small-schools model in the US, the pupils are ranked as they leave primary school and put into one of three "mini-schools" on site. The gifted and talented go to Delamere. They have purple badges on their smart blazers. The rest go to Ashwood, which wears blue, or Sherwood, which wears red. These two schools are more mixed ability, but they are still streamed into three tiers. Each school has 450 students and functions independently. There are no shared subject departments.
Continue reading...Fee-paying schools bid farewell to a second chief in three years, after a row among elite headteachers
Rear Admiral Chris Parry disabled an Argentinian submarine in the Falklands and handled challenging, complex operations. But when it came to dealing with some of the most powerful independent headteachers in the country, his bravery in the field counted for little.
Just seven weeks into the job as the chief executive of the Independent Schools Council, the body that speaks for private education, Parry made critical remarks about state schools that left independent heads running for cover. Parry promptly departed, and now heads a strategic forecasting and change consultancy.
Continue reading...
Download the podcast