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.
Now his successor, David Lyscom – a former Foreign Office diplomat who was once "our man in Bratislava" – has retired from the field, leaving this month with a severance package and confidentiality clause.
Not only has the council, set up nearly 40 years ago to represent eight associations of heads, bursars and governors, lost two chief executives in three years, it has also seen the departure of its chairman, Dame Judith Mayhew Jonas, the New Zealand lawyer who oversaw both appointments.
Leaderless and without strategic direction and a viable media team, the council is now fighting for its existence as one of its most powerful masters threatens to walk out and withdraw critical funding.
In a secret ballot, the heads of the big independent senior boys and co-educational schools have voted by more than 80% to pull out next month unless they see very substantial changes in the way the council conducts itself.
Eight associations for heads, bursars and governors fund the organisation in central London, but the loss of subscriptions from heads who belong to the powerful Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference (HMC) would make a large dent in its income. Subscriptions from HMC – the heads of schools such as Eton, Harrow and Westminster – provide 40% of its £1.4m annual membership revenue.
The fragmentation of the independent sector, just when the coalition government is looking to it for leadership in curriculum innovation and the setting up of academies, would be a serious threat to its influence. But the council has angered many heads, who say it appears to be working to its own agenda. One told Education Guardian that the ISC was not so much an umbrella organisation, but more a poisonous "Bulgarian" umbrella, "poking and prodding us in the back of the leg".
The ISC did not wish to comment.
Quite how a body set up to represent 1,200 schools could become so vilified is hard to understand. But the HMC says fundamental change is essential. This week, the associations are interviewing for a new chairman and looking closer to home, interviewing retiring heads they hope will be more in tune with their aspirations.
There will be redundancies, and a new, "flatter" structure at the council's headquarters in London. The post of chief executive is to be abolished and the job given to the new, part-time chairman. The restructuring has staved off the immediate threat. Ian Power, HMC's membership secretary, says the disquiet had been long lived. Headteachers had felt for several years that the council was not sufficiently representing their views to the government and the media and appeared to be making up its own policies. There were concerns about the growth in staff numbers as it expanded its empire, the cost of which was ultimately borne by schools and parents.
"The new chairman will be a part-time position and I expect it will be someone from an educational background," he says. "The last government was very focused on regulation and the present one is focused on education and promoting excellence, which is where we want to be."
Sheila Cooper, the executive director of the Girls' Schools Association (GSA), welcomes the moves: "The changes are designed to bring members closer together and to help us create a more streamlined organisation, better placed to represent the needs and views of our diverse sector," she says.
But according to Tim Hands, the headmaster of Magdalen College school, Oxford, and co-chairman of the HMC and GSA universities committee, both Parry and Lyscom were only following orders.
"The real problem was in the high command that first asked for warfare and then decided it wanted diplomacy," he says. "Both are men of considerable qualities and high ability."
Certainly Parry had lost no time in carrying out the job description. Just days into the job, he said that some state pupils were "unteachable" and had "ignorant" parents, though he has said that his words were taken out of context and that he was criticising government policies.
He went on to tell the Commons education select committee that standards in some state schools were "offensive" to parents such as he, who had no choice but to pay for private education. And he blamed some state school teachers ideologically opposed to private schooling for promoting a "cold war" between the two sectors.
Parry says that when he stepped down, he received more than 300 letters and emails of support from people within independent education.
The crisis comes at a difficult time, when schools are awaiting the verdict of their appeal to the Charity Tribunal over the way the Charity Commission assesses whether they provide sufficient public benefits to retain their charitable status. The council argues that the commission's guidelines put too much emphasis on bursaries for poor students that could push up fees and hurt lower-income parents.
There is also a wide range of views among heads and governors over the extent to which the independent sector should get involved in running academies. Already 28 independent schools are helping to run the flagship schools, but last month Nick Gibb, the schools minister, said there should be an expectation that all successful private schools should support an academy to spread their unique ethos, culture and thinking.
And that could prove more costly than providing more bursaries to satisfy the Charity Commission.
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...The higher education white paper proposes that universities should train students for their future jobs. But not all academics are keen
Kim Hughes studies a bar of chocolate in the way that most of us would examine a diamond necklace. She has no thought of eating it, but admires its design and the effort that has gone into its construction. Having completed Nestlé's graduate training programme last year, she is now a "focused improvement specialist" charged with reviewing confectionery production systems.
Hughes competed against hundreds of other hopefuls in a gruelling recruitment process to gain her place at Nestlé, but acknowledges she was lucky to have graduated before her chances of finding work receded dramatically.
Latest figures from the Higher Education Statistics Agency show that among the graduate class of 2010, only 62% were in work six months after leaving university, with a further 7% combining work and further study. This is an improvement on the previous year, but is still well below pre-credit crunch levels.
The universities minister, David Willetts, seized on the figures to justify proposals, outlined in the higher education white paper, to make universities work with employers to develop and "kitemark" courses, and boost enterprise skills training for students. He also pointed to the wide discrepancy between individual universities, ranging from a 100% employment record at the University of Buckingham to 78% at the University of East London, as evidence that poorly performing courses should be named and shamed, so that students could make informed choices about what and where to study.
However, many academics are less than enthusiastic about the prospect of training students for work. Dr Wendy Piatt, director general of the elite Russell Group, says its member institutions aim to provide students with fundamental skills, such as problem-solving, analytical techniques, creative thinking and innovation, so that they are adaptable to new work environments. "Developing these high-level skills and qualities, rather than training for a specific job, is one of the vital roles universities should play," she says.
Professor John Brennan, director of the Centre for Higher Education Research and Information at the Open University, has studied graduate employability for the past 20 years and sees real danger in "training for work" displacing "education for life" in the student experience.
"Employability of graduates is a shared responsibility between employers and universities, but you really have to consider whether you are in the business of preparing students for their first job or for lifelong careers," he says. "I would say that in the UK, there is very often a four- or five-year transition period between a graduate leaving higher education and becoming established in his or her career."
In one research project, Brennan compared UK and German HE systems, concluding that graduates in each country might be at "about the same point" by their late 20s, the German having spent a long period in vocational higher education, while the Briton gained experience of employment after a much shorter degree course.
"There are real advantages to the UK system of having a short study period at university," says Brennan, "but you have to ask, what can reasonably be taught during a three-year degree and what is best left until graduates begin their career?"
Brennan is the first to admit that providing relevant work experience, such as placements and internships, can be of great benefit. The real concern, apparently shared by graduates, is the government's intention to allow businesses to influence the core content of degree courses.
Before joining Nestlé, Hughes completed a five-year course in biomolecular and medicinal chemistry at Strathclyde University, which included a year in industry. "Experience of the workplace definitely helped me to get on to the Nestlé training scheme," she says. "Even the part-time job I had as a student taught me more work skills than my course, but I don't see employability as something that should be taught in academic situations."
A report by Edge, the education charity, published shortly before the white paper, recommends that universities should consult employers on the design of degree courses and put employability at the centre of strategic planning.
According to the report, employers expect graduates to have attributes including team-working, communication, leadership, critical thinking, problem-solving and even managerial abilities, in addition to a knowledge of their degree subject.
"There is a tendency for employers to want their graduates 'oven-ready' and it is not fair that some are let down by their universities and are at a disadvantage to other graduates when applying for jobs," says David Harbourne, director of research at Edge, which commissioned Glasgow University to conduct the study.
"Some academics regard employability as a function of the university careers office and will not sully their hands with it. There is a balance to be struck, but you cannot argue that a student of English literature is not going to think about the job they are going to do when they graduate."
Some universities have embraced the principle of employability skills in their mission statements and websites. For example the University of Hertfordshire proclaims that "employability is at the heart of everything we do"
A different approach is being taken by AC Grayling's proposed New College for the Humanities in London, which plans to charge fees of £18,000. Its graduates will come away with a degree and a separate diploma for an additional course that includes practical professional skills such as financial literacy, teamwork, presentation and strategy.
Professor Alan Smithers, director of the Centre for Education and Employment Research at the University of Buckingham, says many employers have only vague, or unrealistic, ideas of what they expect universities to teach. "For example, how do you teach teamwork?" he asks.
There are risks in allowing employers to influence course design, he says. "Sandwich courses were set up by universities working with industry, but many of them were popular with neither students nor employers. Students were put off their subject because, for example in engineering, they spent a year filing bits of metal in a factory, and it turned out most employers recruited engineering graduates from more academic universities anyway."
Professor Roger Brown, co-director of the Centre for Higher Education Research Development at Liverpool Hope University, says: "Universities should aim to provide a good rounded education that equips students for the rest of their lives ... The employability proposals in the white paper are dangerous nonsense because they are based on extraordinarily unreliable and poor-quality information."
But universities needn't worry too much, he says. "These sorts of ideas have been a theme of government policy since the 1980s and have never really been implemented successfully."
The higher education white paper proposes that universities should train students for their future jobs. But not all academics are keen
Kim Hughes studies a bar of chocolate in the way that most of us would examine a diamond necklace. She has no thought of eating it, but admires its design and the effort that has gone into its construction. Having completed Nestlé's graduate training programme last year, she is now a "focused improvement specialist" charged with reviewing confectionery production systems.
Hughes competed against hundreds of other hopefuls in a gruelling recruitment process to gain her place at Nestlé, but acknowledges she was lucky to have graduated before her chances of finding work receded dramatically.
Continue reading...The higher education white paper proposes that universities should train students for their future jobs. But not all academics are keen
Kim Hughes studies a bar of chocolate in the way that most of us would examine a diamond necklace. She has no thought of eating it, but admires its design and the effort that has gone into its construction. Having completed Nestlé's graduate training programme last year, she is now a "focused improvement specialist" charged with reviewing confectionery production systems.
Hughes competed against hundreds of other hopefuls in a gruelling recruitment process to gain her place at Nestlé, but acknowledges she was lucky to have graduated before her chances of finding work receded dramatically.
Continue reading...Schools will have more freedom next year, but concerns about a fragmenting system are real, says Estelle Morris, and teaching schools may be our only hope
The next school year will see a further big step towards the government's goal of a nation of independent state schools, each with additional freedom over their curriculum and admissions and free from any legal obligation to work or cooperate with anyone beyond their own gate.
I've no doubt that the majority of our school leaders will use these additional freedoms responsibly, but concerns about a fragmented and incoherent school system are well rehearsed and real.
Continue reading...Schools will have more freedom next year, but concerns about a fragmenting system are real, says Estelle Morris, and teaching schools may be our only hope
The next school year will see a further big step towards the government's goal of a nation of independent state schools, each with additional freedom over their curriculum and admissions and free from any legal obligation to work or cooperate with anyone beyond their own gate.
I've no doubt that the majority of our school leaders will use these additional freedoms responsibly, but concerns about a fragmented and incoherent school system are well rehearsed and real.
The beacon of hope in all this is the development of teaching schools, a network of schools that will work with others to help train teachers and support them throughout their careers. The names of the first 100 of these have been announced. They will build on the training schools and collaborative initiatives of the last government, but they do so in a bold and imaginative way. They are without doubt a good thing.
It's widely accepted that schools improve most when they challenge and support each other; the irony is that although the government signs up to this philosophy, many of the successful school partnerships of recent years have either been abolished or ignored. The specialist schools networks, creative partnerships, city challenge areas: all depended on schools learning from each other, but they are not the players they once were on the education scene.
These teaching schools will carry a huge responsibility and the government will need to make absolutely sure that they get the details right. They are the only glue that is holding a fragmenting system together.
I offer three suggestions as helpful advice. First, they are based on the idea of teaching hospitals, so let's make sure that they do learn from them. Teaching hospitals are all linked to a university; one of their strengths is that they bring together research and practice. Medical students and doctors have the chance to see the relationship between the two and learn to understand the nature and importance of evidence.
That ability to bring together research and practice is the mark of a professional. Too many in government see teaching only as a craft; skills to be learned from those already in the business. It is that ... but not only that.
Education has never had really effective links between research and practice. Education research is the great unreformed part of the system. Too little has an impact on children's learning, and too few teachers use research evidence to inform their teaching. Teaching schools could change that. Initial training should include how to use research and evidence and teaching schools should hold a research budget to fund teachers as researchers.
Second, teaching schools are not a cheap option. Providing £50,000 a year for core costs doesn't sound enough to do the job. These schools will have to fundamentally re-assess the way they operate, and their new responsibilities must not be at the expense of their prime task of teaching their own children. If any of these teaching schools ever felt they could no longer continue, it would leave a massive hole in the local provision.
Third, there must be the right balance between the training we expect all teachers to do and that over which they have some choice.
It looks as though most of the funding going to teaching schools will be commissioned work to deliver government objectives – supporting under-performing schools, or initial training, for example. These schools will need to be more than government agencies, but places of learning that will inspire teachers and give them a sense of true professionalism.
We should all hope for the very best for this particular government initiative. At a time when "independence" is the only show in town, it stands alone in reflecting that equally important characteristic of "interdependence". I'm convinced that, to a large measure, our future lies in their hands.
Schools will have more freedom next year, but concerns about a fragmenting system are real, says Estelle Morris, and teaching schools may be our only hope
The next school year will see a further big step towards the government's goal of a nation of independent state schools, each with additional freedom over their curriculum and admissions and free from any legal obligation to work or cooperate with anyone beyond their own gate.
I've no doubt that the majority of our school leaders will use these additional freedoms responsibly, but concerns about a fragmented and incoherent school system are well rehearsed and real.
Continue reading...This week on the Guardian Teacher Network you can find out how to make the most of a trip to one of the UK's 15 national parks
Those seeking to refresh an exhausted mind, body or spirit this summer, or to plan for next term and beyond, may want to visit one of the UK's 15 stunning national parks. "National parks are ideal for outdoor learning – they are free, and available 365 days a year," says Kathryn Cook, the UK coordinator of the UK Association of National Park Authorities (UKANPA).
"All young people should experience inspiring landscapes first-hand and they cover a huge range of issues – from farming to tourism, rural history to sustainable development and renewable energy."
Continue reading...This week on the Guardian Teacher Network you can find out how to make the most of a trip to one of the UK's 15 national parks
Those seeking to refresh an exhausted mind, body or spirit this summer, or to plan for next term and beyond, may want to visit one of the UK's 15 stunning national parks. "National parks are ideal for outdoor learning – they are free, and available 365 days a year," says Kathryn Cook, the UK coordinator of the UK Association of National Park Authorities (UKANPA).
"All young people should experience inspiring landscapes first-hand and they cover a huge range of issues – from farming to tourism, rural history to sustainable development and renewable energy."
As it is national parks week (25-31 July), there are extra incentives to visit. You can brush up on bushcraft and survival skills in the Lake District, or experience life in an Iron Age hut on the Pembrokeshire coast. Details are at: www.nationalparks.gov.uk.
The Guardian Teacher Network has excellent resources on national parks, mostly supplied by UKANPA. To record a wonderful walk, children can follow in the footsteps of native Australians and Americans by making a journey stick .
What impact does tourism have on an area of natural beauty? Our activity sheets and questionnaires encourage children to get to grips with what's going on by observing and recording.
For those seeking a real adventure there are resources designed to be used on the mysterious island of Inchcailloch on Loch Lomond, an uninhabited island in Loch Lomond and The Trossachs national park. Activity notes describe the thrilling Island Detectives activity, which includes using burial grounds to discover the story of previous inhabitants. Everything you need for the adventure of a lifetime can be found here.
The debate about windfarms rages on and children will find fuel for thought in these factsheets and activities for use after an outdoor visit or in the classroom.
More educational resources from UKANPA .
• The Guardian Teacher Network offers more than 70,000 pages of lesson plans and interactive materials. This is added to every day: 35,000 teachers have already registered. Go to teachers.guardian.co.uk. There are more than 1,000 jobs and schools can advertise free: schoolsjobs.guardian.co.uk
This week on the Guardian Teacher Network you can find out how to make the most of a trip to one of the UK's 15 national parks
Those seeking to refresh an exhausted mind, body or spirit this summer, or to plan for next term and beyond, may want to visit one of the UK's 15 stunning national parks. "National parks are ideal for outdoor learning – they are free, and available 365 days a year," says Kathryn Cook, the UK coordinator of the UK Association of National Park Authorities (UKANPA).
"All young people should experience inspiring landscapes first-hand and they cover a huge range of issues – from farming to tourism, rural history to sustainable development and renewable energy."
Continue reading...Scientists are appealing for jars of honey to help them try to develop new antibacterial drugs
Who knows what medicinal secrets lurk in a pot of honey? Scientists in Wales intend finding out and are asking beekeepers throughout the UK to send in their honey for inspection. They're especially keen to know what plants their bees have been feeding on – information that could, in time, help to develop new antibacterial drugs.
Researchers at Cardiff University and the National Botanic Garden of Wales (NBGW) plan to construct a detailed profile of the nation's honey. By analysing each sample, they aim to identify plants that can help to fight antibiotic-resistant bacteria such as MRSA, scourge of many a hospital ward; and also diseases ravaging the bee population.
At the university's Welsh School of Pharmacy, work has just begun on screening samples of honey collected from different locations across the UK. The first stage is to see if the honey can conquer MRSA and Clostridium difficile. There's a straightforward test: honey is mixed with the bacteria and if these are killed off by antimicrobial activity within the honey, this indicates the medicinal potential of the bees' plant food.
The second key piece of work is to identify the plants that show up in the most potent antibacterial honeys. This will be done using a DNA-based identification method developed by the National Botanic Garden.
Long-term, the research aims to point a way towards creating drugs through the plants rather than the honey itself. Les Baillie, professor of microbiology at Cardiff University, sees tackling bugs such as MRSA with new plant-based products as an urgent matter. "We're running out of ways of treating them," he says. "We're living with the legacy of the past – the inappropriate use of antibiotics through buying them on the internet and using them in animal feed."
Honey has been used as a medicine since time immemorial, yet the science of its therapeutic properties is little understood. So far, Baillie's team has acquired more than 50 jars to work on, mainly from supermarkets and Welsh beekeepers, along with a handful from England.
Samples have been passed on to the NBGW. There, plants contained in the most powerful honeys will be identified by a DNA profiling process that has already "barcoded" Wales's 1,143 species of flowering plants.
The usual pattern of drug development entails an expensive laboratory screening of many plant products, often without success. "We're hoping to cut out the middle man and let the bees do a lot of the hard work, guiding to us those plants which work," says Baillie.
Another focus of the research is to try to find honeys with plant constituents that could help bees to resist pests such as the Varroa mite, which has ravaged the UK bee population, and American foulbrood, a destructive infectious disease that attacks bee larvae throughout the world.
"Honey at its most basic is concentrated sugar, but even that can do nasty things to bugs, sucking the water out of them," says Baillie. Antibacterial activity is linked to factors such as the presence of phytochemicals, which derive from plants visited by bees. These include chemicals that are produced by plants as protection against pathogens (organisms that cause disease). "We hope to identify compounds that will also target pathogens of humans and bees," says Baillie.
In the past, honey has been used as a medicine on a "try it and see" basis. Baillie believes most of the science is unknown: "we've only scratched the surface of the biology". The research is currently being financed by the Society for Applied Microbiology and will, from October, be supported by the European Social Fund and the Welsh government.
Baillie is now on the hunt for a PhD student to work on the project full-time. Meanwhile, his early screening of samples has already yielded honeys with antimicrobial properties that can kill MRSA.
Who knows what chance the Welsh research project has of isolating a plant with similar properties to manuka, celebrated for its antibacterial potency and used in medication to treat wounds? "If you don't look, you don't find," says Dr Natasha de Vere, head of conservation and research at NBGW. "While some plants are closely related, their chemical properties are quite different, so there's all to play for."
Around half of Wales's flowering plant varieties are insect-pollinated and de Vere is keen to get samples of honey from the same hive at different times of the year. DNA extraction is likely to begin in the next couple of weeks after samples have been through the bar-coding process.
NBGW has a detailed biological record of every Welsh flowering plant on its database. This has been built up by using sections of DNA that enable any species to be identified from the tiniest fragment of leaf, seed or pollen grain; and also at different life stages, or from a mixture of samples.
Aside from the latest research, Wales has long focused on studying the value of honey for use in dressing wounds. Professor Rose Cooper, of the University of Wales Institute, Cardiff's microbiology and infection group, has focused on manuka honey, but also examined other honeys from Britain and abroad.
Although people have been tempted into home experiments with cheap honey, Cooper's team found that more than half – 10 out of 18 – samples examined failed to display any antibacterial activity because they lacked the necessary constituent plants. And while the quality of honey used in the manufacture of licensed wound-care products is regulated, supermarket honey is not regulated for medical use. The possibility of infecting vulnerable patients exists, Cooper warns.
Soon the fog over what works – and why – may be lifted , though understanding the potential of what's under your nose can take time. "It wasn't until the 1950s that the medical properties of daffodils were fully appreciated," says de Vere. "Research has since developed a chemical, galantamine, that's important in treating Alzheimer's.
"There's an awful lot we don't know. This is one aim of the project – looking at the medicinal properties of the plants to see if there's anything like manuka. We might even be able to make a superhoney."
• Beekeepers, please send your honey samples to: Jenny Hawkins, Welsh School of Pharmacy, Redwood Building, King Edward VII Avenue, Cardiff, CF10 3NB
Scientists are appealing for jars of honey to help them try to develop new antibacterial drugs
Who knows what medicinal secrets lurk in a pot of honey? Scientists in Wales intend finding out and are asking beekeepers throughout the UK to send in their honey for inspection. They're especially keen to know what plants their bees have been feeding on – information that could, in time, help to develop new antibacterial drugs.
Researchers at Cardiff University and the National Botanic Garden of Wales (NBGW) plan to construct a detailed profile of the nation's honey. By analysing each sample, they aim to identify plants that can help to fight antibiotic-resistant bacteria such as MRSA, scourge of many a hospital ward; and also diseases ravaging the bee population.
Continue reading...Scientists are appealing for jars of honey to help them try to develop new antibacterial drugs
Who knows what medicinal secrets lurk in a pot of honey? Scientists in Wales intend finding out and are asking beekeepers throughout the UK to send in their honey for inspection. They're especially keen to know what plants their bees have been feeding on – information that could, in time, help to develop new antibacterial drugs.
Researchers at Cardiff University and the National Botanic Garden of Wales (NBGW) plan to construct a detailed profile of the nation's honey. By analysing each sample, they aim to identify plants that can help to fight antibiotic-resistant bacteria such as MRSA, scourge of many a hospital ward; and also diseases ravaging the bee population.
Continue reading...How does a college go about selecting students for an 'Oxbridge' among apprenticeships?
"I'm really, really happy!" exclaims Lucy Cockett, 16. She is one of just 16 young people to win a place on a new hospitality apprenticeship scheme at the Michael Caines Academy launching at Exeter College this September. She knows the next four years are going to be very hard work — and an extraordinary opportunity.
While catering courses are sometimes viewed as a last-resort option for kids with poor GCSE results, there was a clamour for places on this apprenticeship because the Michael Caines Academy aims to offer its students something approaching an Oxbridge experience. Caines, a Michelin-starred chef, who himself trained at Exeter College and is now a governor there, is determined to improve the quality of graduates looking for work in his field. "The hospitality industry is a great employer," he says. "It's fantastically dynamic and requires energy, creativity and all sorts of different people and personalities."
Continue reading...How does a college go about selecting students for an 'Oxbridge' among apprenticeships?
"I'm really, really happy!" exclaims Lucy Cockett, 16. She is one of just 16 young people to win a place on a new hospitality apprenticeship scheme at the Michael Caines Academy launching at Exeter College this September. She knows the next four years are going to be very hard work — and an extraordinary opportunity.
While catering courses are sometimes viewed as a last-resort option for kids with poor GCSE results, there was a clamour for places on this apprenticeship because the Michael Caines Academy aims to offer its students something approaching an Oxbridge experience. Caines, a Michelin-starred chef, who himself trained at Exeter College and is now a governor there, is determined to improve the quality of graduates looking for work in his field. "The hospitality industry is a great employer," he says. "It's fantastically dynamic and requires energy, creativity and all sorts of different people and personalities."
He aims to recruit the best and persuade big names from every sector of hospitality to teach them. "Industry has always come to the college saying 'you're not up-to-date, you're not supplying the quality we need,'" he says. "And the college replies, 'you're not supporting us'."
Caines recently hosted a reception for prospective partners, inviting leading lights in the south-west food world to come on board. He's not just after their time and expertise; he wants them to offer placements so students are exposed to the best in the profession. "It's about the chance to develop in-depth knowledge," says Caines. "I want them to understand about food culture, regionality, fair trade, sustainability, environmental issues such as food miles and how that affects local economies."
With coffee, for instance, it's not just about making the coffee, but understanding where it's from, the ethics of it, the value of that, what organic means. My coffee supplier will come and show them."
But before that, students have to demonstrate their potential under pressure. Many universities, let alone further education colleges, don't bother interviewing prospective students these days. For the academy, however, Exeter College assistant principal Rob Bosworth decided to dedicate several staff to run a two-day selection process.
Day one is about testing applicants' practical skills. In the college training kitchens, under Caines's eagle eye, six pairs of hands shake visibly as nervous teenagers slice leeks into wafer thin julienne strips. Some efforts turn out distinctly chunkier than others. One girl gets her juliennes in a tangle and struggles to marshall them back into a tidy stack. Tensely, silently, the group completes the task.
Along the counter, the academy director, Huw Southcott, is assessing applicants' palates. Bright green, variously flavoured jellies are arranged on a plate, accompanied by an oily shred of mackerel and a morsel of sweetbread. "What I'm looking for is that they're prepared to taste everything," Southcott explains. "Also, I'm interested in how they approach it – are they going to do more than taste? If they get part of the way there – that it's citrusy, or tropical – if they think about it, that counts."
Investing the time to find out more about applicants' attitudes certainly exposes the faint-hearted: one student, asked to taste and identify the offal, shrieks, covers her mouth and jumps up and down in horror. Though Southcott's expression remains admirably non-committal, this reaction doesn't bode well.
Connor Saunders, 16, however, looks carefully at his first jelly, sniffs it, chews and considers the flavour for an age before suggesting what it might be. His passion for food and the maturity of his approach to the task is instantly evident.
Steve Edwards, who heads all front-of-house services for Caines's Abode group and is interviewing applicants about their views on the service side of hospitality, says that this selection process must also assess enthusiasm and understanding of the importance of engaging with customers.
"I've had a 17-year-old who's never even stepped into a brasserie, and that's hugely challenging because he has no experience of that environment," says Edwards, adding that the question then had to be, "can they grow enough?"
By day two, the group has been whittled down to 19 serious contenders.
"Really, really scary," is Cockett's reaction to her grilling by six panelists, though she says she was quickly put at ease. And having the time to dig deeper into individuals' motivations certainly gave the panel pause for thought, says Bosworth. "One young lad learned to cook at 12 because his mum and dad fell ill," he says. "He then developed diabetes and had to learn the skills and knowledge to deal with that."
Those who weren't chosen will have the chance to prove themselves on the college's standard hospitality course and can move across in their second year. But for those like Cockett and Saunders who emerged triumphant from their two-day selection marathon, the world is now their oyster — they just have to learn how to shuck it.
How does a college go about selecting students for an 'Oxbridge' among apprenticeships?
"I'm really, really happy!" exclaims Lucy Cockett, 16. She is one of just 16 young people to win a place on a new hospitality apprenticeship scheme at the Michael Caines Academy launching at Exeter College this September. She knows the next four years are going to be very hard work — and an extraordinary opportunity.
While catering courses are sometimes viewed as a last-resort option for kids with poor GCSE results, there was a clamour for places on this apprenticeship because the Michael Caines Academy aims to offer its students something approaching an Oxbridge experience. Caines, a Michelin-starred chef, who himself trained at Exeter College and is now a governor there, is determined to improve the quality of graduates looking for work in his field. "The hospitality industry is a great employer," he says. "It's fantastically dynamic and requires energy, creativity and all sorts of different people and personalities."
Continue reading...A study of Slovakian shepherds and their sheep, and another comparing Austrian hunters with Austrian butchers
When you hobnob with Slovakian shepherds, don't mention wolves. A new study called Mitigating Carnivore-Livestock Conflict in Europe: Lessons from Slovakia, says: "Compared to other sectors of society shepherds had the most negative attitudes, particularly towards wolves."
Wolves are again roaming the forests of Slovakia. They were almost wiped out in the mid-20th century, then reappeared thanks to a 30-year moratorium on hunting. Now the small-but-growing wolf population has restored its tradition of helping local livestock go missing or be mauled.
Continue reading...A study of Slovakian shepherds and their sheep, and another comparing Austrian hunters with Austrian butchers
When you hobnob with Slovakian shepherds, don't mention wolves. A new study called Mitigating Carnivore-Livestock Conflict in Europe: Lessons from Slovakia, says: "Compared to other sectors of society shepherds had the most negative attitudes, particularly towards wolves."
Wolves are again roaming the forests of Slovakia. They were almost wiped out in the mid-20th century, then reappeared thanks to a 30-year moratorium on hunting. Now the small-but-growing wolf population has restored its tradition of helping local livestock go missing or be mauled.
The researchers, Robin Rigg and Maria Wechselberger at the Slovak Wildlife Society, Slavomir Findo at the Carpathian Wildlife Society, Martyn Gorman at the University of Aberdeen, and Claudio Sillero-Zubiri and David Macdonald at the University of Oxford, published their work in the journal Oryx.
They found that, mostly, wolves grab sheep near the edge of a forest, especially if the shepherds employ what the scientists call "ineffective methods (chained dogs and inadequate electric fencing)". Experimenting, the team identified two effective methods: unchained guard dogs and adequate fencing.
As with much research, the obvious was apparently not obvious beforehand to all who needed to know about it.
That's the story with shepherds. Now, for people who kill lots of animals: hunters and butchers. A study by an Austrian/British/Malaysian team probes the psychological differences between them.
The monograph, Multi-Method Personality Assessment of Butchers and Hunters: Beliefs and Reality, appeared last year in the journal Personality and Individual Differences. The authors, Martin Voracek, Stefan Stieger and Viren Swami, learned, through direct questioning, that 102 Austrian university students feel hunters and butchers have "higher aggressiveness and masculinity". The students also seem to believe that hunters — but not butchers — possess unusually high self-esteem.
The researchers then studied 25 hunters and 23 butchers from rural Lower Austria, and compared them with 48 persons who neither hunt nor butcher.
First, they tested for hypermasculinity, using a survey technique that "gauges macho personality". They verified their findings "unobtrusively", by doing an analysis based on the relative lengths of each person's second and fourth fingers.
Then they used a standard test to measure each person's self-esteem. They double-checked by having each individual rate "the likeability of all letters of the alphabet", bearing in mind that "letters appearing in individuals' names, especially their initials, are rated more favorably than the remainder of the alphabet".
All told, the researchers "found little evidence for the factuality of" hunters or butchers having great masculinity, aggressiveness, or self-esteem.
(Thanks to Greg Wells for bringing the Slovakian shepherds to my attention.)
• Marc Abrahams is editor of the bimonthly Annals of Improbable Research and organiser of the Ig Nobel prize
A study of Slovakian shepherds and their sheep, and another comparing Austrian hunters with Austrian butchers
When you hobnob with Slovakian shepherds, don't mention wolves. A new study called Mitigating Carnivore-Livestock Conflict in Europe: Lessons from Slovakia, says: "Compared to other sectors of society shepherds had the most negative attitudes, particularly towards wolves."
Wolves are again roaming the forests of Slovakia. They were almost wiped out in the mid-20th century, then reappeared thanks to a 30-year moratorium on hunting. Now the small-but-growing wolf population has restored its tradition of helping local livestock go missing or be mauled.
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Arabic medicine was once the most advanced in the world and now entire digital facsimiles of some of its most important texts have been made freely available online. The unique online resource, based on the Wellcome Library’s Arabic manuscript collection, includes well-known medical texts by famous practitioners such as Avicenna, Ibn al-Quff, and Ibn an-Nafis, lesser-known works by anonymous physicians and rare or unique copies such as Averroes’ commentaries on Avicenna’s medical poetry.
The Wellcome Arabic Manuscript Cataloguing Partnership (WAMCP) combines the efforts of the Wellcome Library, the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, and King’s College London Digital Humanities Department and is funded by JISC and the Wellcome Trust. It offers a rich digital manuscript library available online for free which represents a significant resource for a wide range of researchers including Arabic studies scholars, medical historians, and manuscript conservators to aid and enhance their work.
Alastair Dunning, programme manager at JISC, said: “When it comes to digitising manuscripts, there are real challenges not just in faithfully representing the original image in digital form but also in ensuring that manuscript is described with precision and accuracy. This JISC-funded project has surmounted these challenges, allying the remarkable collections at the Wellcome Trust with the technical and academic expertise available at the Library of Alexandra, and creating a resource to open up new avenues in Islamic Studies scholarship.”
“We were keen here at the Library to create the Wellcome manuscript collection online resource with the functionalities it offers,” said Professor Magdy Nagi, head of the information and communication technology sector at the Library of Alexandria. “The smooth streaming of content without the need for high bandwidth, and being able to zoom endlessly into the pages helps users to explore the details and beauty of the manuscripts. One of the key challenges in developing the online catalogue was maintaining the authenticity of thousand year old manuscript texts, such as rendering the old Arabic characters as they appear in the manuscripts.”
All the manuscripts have been photographed in their entirety, and can be viewed in detail alongside the comprehensive manuscript descriptions. Sophisticated cataloguing tools were built based on definitive standards in order to achieve rich, thorough manuscripts descriptions. Users are able to link between specific descriptive fields and the related images with the possibility to compare two manuscripts side-by-side on the screen to illuminate the differences. Moreover, significant passages in the manuscripts, such as the incipits, basmala, explicits and section headings, are fully transcribed. Extensive physical descriptions have been recorded by conservation specialists.
Researchers may explore the content of the online catalogue more selectively, where manuscripts may be browsed according to their categories or searched via the full text search facility. Significantly, the system allows users to search using the old Arabic alphabet through a virtual keyboard, matching the original content of the manuscripts. The results of the searched manuscripts may be further narrowed down through the faceted filters, which retrieve more precise results for the researcher’s convenience.
Simon Chaplin, Head of the Wellcome Library, expressed his enthusiasm for the project: “Providing global access to our collections is at the heart of our mission to foster collaborative research and we are delighted to see these particular treasures become freely accessible online. We are grateful to the Library of Alexandria and Kings College London, whose partnership in this project has enabled us to extend the availability of these rare materials to the countries of their origin.”
JISC EMBEDDED OBJECT
via Jisc news
The Library and Information Science Research Coalition has announced a Library and Information Science (LIS) Practitioner Researcher Excellence Award for LIS professionals based in the UK and Republic of Ireland.
The award will be presented in July 2012 to either (a) an individual librarian or information scientist, or (b) a team that has made a substantial contribution to LIS research since 2009. The award winner will receive £500 and a plaque.
The award was announced at the Developing Research Excellence and Methods (DREaM) launch conference held at the British Library on Tuesday 19th July 2011. The presentation to the winner will be made next year on Monday 9th July 2012 at the British Library at the last of the five DREaM project events.
Nominations should take the form of a 500-word statement that demonstrates the research excellence of the candidate (or candidate team) and refers to evidence of their research output (e.g. published articles, blogs, conference papers, presentations on SlideShare).
The deadline for nominations is 30th April 2012. Nominations should be sent to hazel.hall@lisresearch.org . Members of the LIS Research Coalition Board of Directors will form the judging panel for the award.
Press contact:
Hazel Hall, Library and Information Science Research Coalition
Tel: +44 (0)7969 078181
E-mail: hazel.hall@lisresearch.org
Web: http://www.lisresearch.org
Twitter: @lisresearch
Notes to editors:
1. DREaM
The DREaM project is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). It is based at Edinburgh Napier University and supported by the LIS Research Coalition. Follow the DREaM project on Twitter at @LIS_DREaM.
2. The Library and Information Science Research Coalition
The LIS Research Coalition was established in March 2009 with the remit of facilitating a co-ordinated and strategic approach to Library and Information Science (LIS) research across the UK. To find out more visit http://lisresearch.org
3. Definition of practical researcher
In this context “practitioner researcher” means anyone who works in a library or information service. Academics and consultants are not eligible for nomination.
Self-nomination is not permitted. DREaM project web pages: http://lisresearch.org/dream-project/
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Libraries, museums and archives have recently taken to experimenting with open data with a vengeance and now the JISC Discovery programme with the DevCSI project are running an international competition to see what people can unearth in this data.
The challenge is to develop an application which allows people to discover the treasures hidden in one of ten datasets - from the shipwrecks lurking off UK shores, to the metadata behind Jane Austen’s will online.
The rich data sets on offer are:
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Andy McGregor, JISC programme manager, said: "Libraries, museums and archives are opening up their data because they recognise the potential to harvest it in interesting new ways to make their collections more useful for education and research. Whether this is through striking visualisations, ways of exploring their content or valuable juxtapositions with other, similar collections, this competition is an opportunity to see what exciting possibilities clever developers can dream up for this rich pot of information."
The judges are interested in browser-based applications that genuinely make the collections from these libraries and museums even more useful for people.
There’s a tablet computer - an EEE Pad Transformer - for the overall winner but also twelve other prizes to be won.
The competition closes on 1 August 2011.
Read the rules of the competition on the Discovery site
Here's an example of what you could do with this data; Alex Parker from the University of Southampton, won a previous JISC competition by bringing to life library data with his Book Galaxy.
Move your mouse around the galaxy to see the book titles and courses. Blue dots are books, yellow dots are courses. If nothing is appearing, you might not have Java installed. Download Java
JISC EMBEDDED OBJECT
via Jisc news
We are asking schools to tell us about their A-level and GCSE results online
This summer, the Guardian is asking schools to tell us all about their A-level and GCSE exam successes. We are asking schools to respond to a few quick questions as soon as possible – on August 18 for A-levels and August 25 for GCSEs.
Simply go to our website (the addresses are below) to fill in results on those days.
No special login is needed.
www.guardian.co.uk/gcse-results-2011
www.guardian.co.uk/a-level-results-2011
We want to tell our readers how well your pupils have performed: please get ready to tell us.
We are asking schools to tell us about their A-level and GCSE results online
This summer, the Guardian is asking schools to tell us all about their A-level and GCSE exam successes. We are asking schools to respond to a few quick questions as soon as possible – on August 18 for A-levels and August 25 for GCSEs.
Simply go to our website (the addresses are below) to fill in results on those days.
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