Learning and research on the move has just become much easier as JANET(UK) is pleased to announce the launch of its new high capacity data service for education institutions and research organisations, JANET 3G.
From June 2011, the data service will allow academic and support staff to remotely access vital resources such as research data, virtual learning environments and library catalogues while on the move. With over 60 enquiries already received in the first week of its launch, from both universities and colleges, the appetite for this new service is evident.
Communications Minister Ed Vaizey said: “I am delighted that the education sector is putting in place plans to provide wireless broadband for the academic community. This is a really exciting development and will help us achieve our goal of having the best broadband in Europe by 2015."
JANET 3G has been developed to provide a range of 3G data packages that combine value-for-money with features specifically configured for the education sector. It is designed to be easy to deploy, helping organisations to make the most of their existing investment in wireless networking. Offering seamless integration with the international roaming service, eduroam*, their existing authentication mechanism can be used for mobile users, making security configuration much simpler. By enabling the use of an organisation’s existing IP addresses, JANET 3G also makes firewall configuration much easier.
“JANET 3G is a perfect example of our ability to respond to meet the needs of education and research,” says Tim Marshall, CEO at JANET(UK). “Increasingly academic and support staff are working on the move and we are delighted to respond to this by providing high quality connectivity both on and off campus.”
Educational organisations are offered a wide selection of price plans enabling them to precisely match their users’ needs whilst keeping control over costs. Data packages available range from low usage machine-to-machine plans to genuine 15Gb data allowances for demanding users, providing a real breadth of choice.
Customers are able to choose either to use a press-out SIM card useable with the iPad and tablet family; to add a dongle for individual users; or to create a Wi-Fi hub for up to five users with a Mi-Fi device. JANET 3G will be provided by aql, and powered by the Three 3G mobile data network.
Dr Adam Beaumont, Managing Director of aql, states: “This is a partnership where we have taken best of breed to create a unique product. aql is bringing together MDS, providing a scaleable billing solution and Three, offering high capacity network access, on one platform to provide a seamless service.” He continues, “In order to be able to provide a service to education and research, we need to be scaleable and cost effective. We believe we’ve achieved this and are keen to be rolling out JANET 3G to the JANET community.”
*eduroam (education roaming) is the secure, world-wide roaming access service developed for the international research and education community.
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CILIP has one invitation to tender open at present
Carnegie Greenaway Research Scoping Exercise
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Invitation to Tender: CILIP Carnegie Greenaway Research Scoping Exercise
Following a research grant from the Carnegie UK Trust, CILIP would like to research the overall impact of the CILIP shadowing scheme on children’s lives as well as reading habits.
Proposals for this tender must be submitted via email to ckg@cilip.org.uk no later than 4pm Monday 9 May 2011.
Project outline
The key items we would like to assess during the research project are in terms of the impact of shadowing on:
• Individual children’s reading habits
• Benefits to children participating in the scheme
• Benefits to group leaders (librarian’s) managing reading groups
• Effectiveness of shadowing as an advocacy tool for school and public librarians
Methodology
• Working with a database of info about shadowing groups
• Liaising with CKG development officer to identify a broad range of shadowing groups from across the UK to potentially interview and/or survey.
Main output
A scoping report to inform future web developments and the shape of the shadowing scheme to maximise participation. The report will lead to a bid for research funding from the Carnegie UK Trust.
Timetable and proposed format
• Invitation to tender open from 26 April to 9 May 2011
• Researcher appointed for scoping exercise 18 May 2011
• Scoping exercise data collection: May 2011 – July 2011
• Final analysis and report to CILIP: 1 September
• Assessment of scoping exercise: September 2011
• Proposal to Carnegie UK Trust for full research based on the scoping exercise: October 2011
A full project brief is available here: ITT CKG Research Scoping Exercise
More information about the CILIP Carnegie & Kate Greenaway Children's Book Awards and accompanying shadowing scheme is available here.
Submitting a proposal
Please include the following details in your proposal:
a) work plan
b) costings
c) details of similar projects undertaken, particularly if including researching children
d) CV and/or company credentials,
The maximum potential grant allocation will be £4000 inclusive of all costs and expenses. Please ensure you include a breakdown of costs with your proposal.
Proposals must be submitted via email to ckg@cilip.org.uk no later than 4pm Monday 9 May 2011.
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University technical colleges are being heralded as the answer to all education's problems, but we need to look carefully at what their impact will be, says Estelle Morris
Most big ideas in education can trace their roots to one or other of the political parties. For good or ill, they hook their fortunes to the coat tails of the left or right and become part of the "dividing line" in politics.
Yet an idea dreamed up by a former Conservative secretary of state and a former civil servant is managing to steal the limelight.
Lord Kenneth Baker and the late – and truly great – Ron Dearing are the unlikely parents of university technical colleges (UTC). These 14-19 vocational colleges, backed by industry, will offer vocational qualifications alongside an academic curriculum, but with the vocational qualifications clearly in the lead. The first is due to open in September and finance has been secured for 24 of these vocational colleges to be up and running by 2014.
Interestingly, it's the reasons given for supporting the idea that are more intriguing than the fact that the colleges have received general approval. I can't recall an idea being claimed as the answer to so many of our historic problems.
For some, these colleges are the answer to the nation's shortage of technical skills; for others they restore the status of craft skills. Some offer support because they promise a more "relevant" curriculum for the disengaged or the chance for a more robust vocational qualification framework.
They've also been described as unfinished business from the 1944 Education Act – the promised technical schools that didn't materialise. Then they've been claimed as an obvious development of the academy programme.
I'm a supporter because these schools could deliver a more coherent 14- 19 vocational curriculum. Students wouldn't have to navigate complicated consortia or travel from college to school to work placement. They will have the stability and continuity in their learning that their more academic classmates have always been offered.
The UTC's chameleon-like ability to be all things to all people is a strength, but it could turn into a weakness. People see what they want to see and that's a recipe for eventual disappointment. It is therefore timely to seek greater clarity on some key points.
First, who will they recruit? Baker says that there will be no selection and young people will transfer from school at 14 if they and their parents think it is appropriate. That sounds very much like the promise of parental choice the education system has found it difficult to deliver, until now. What happens when demand for places exceeds supply? Who will hold the power then?
Second, what impact will they have on other secondary schools? Will they, for example, be used to justify separate tailor-made provision for the most academically able? Could it be the tripartite system revisited, only with selection at 14 and vocational schools as well as the grammar schools being seen as having high status?
And what flexibility will there be if young people later conclude they have made the wrong decision? Will their skills and knowledge be transferable to other courses or jobs?
Finally, when evidence already tells us about the problems of school transition, what will be the impact of young people transferring at 14 as well?
If these issues are papered over, they will eventually undermine the whole project. I think a vocationally led curriculum can be a basis for a broader education and the fear of early specialisation is probably unfounded, but the impact these schools could have on wider secondary provision – the age of transfer, admission and curriculum – needs a wider debate than is currently being offered.
Dwelling on the difficulties of new ideas too early can stop them ever getting off the ground, but UTCs are now secure enough to invite debate around some unanswered questions.
They really could be a power for good, but only if we are more open about the important issues they raise.
Schools that convert to academy status reap a big funding bonus, but could this be at the expense of more needy schools? Warwick Mansell reports
With many public sector organisations facing spending cuts, no one was more surprised than headteacher Chris Healy when he realised his school was actually going to be better off this year. "The increase in funding has been dramatic," he says, and it's all down to the school's conversion to academy status in February.
His reaction, which is being echoed in many other converting schools, is not surprising, when you consider the sums involved.
Balcarras school, in Cheltenham, appears to have netted a staggering £570,000 this year simply by becoming an academy – an increase of nearly 10% in its £6m annual budget.
These figures, and those of other academies that have recently converted, ought to raise eyebrows, since the government has repeatedly said that academies enjoy no funding advantages over traditional local authority schools.
Yet there is now much evidence that this is not the case. In fact, schools are claiming to have made hundreds of thousands of pounds in profit by leaving their local authorities to become academies in the last year, investigations by Education Guardian reveal.
To critics, this may equate to a hidden boost for successful schools in better-off areas, since until three weeks ago, the coalition allowed only those with the best Ofsted reports, which tend to have more middle-class intakes, to apply to become academies.
Peter Downes, a former headteacher, funding expert and Liberal Democrat councillor, who tabled a motion against academies at the party's annual conference last year, is unhappy about the situation. He says: "On the whole, this is directing resources to the most privileged. In this way, life gets harder for schools at the bottom of the heap. The dice are massively loaded in favour of academies, in terms of funding. But my thesis is that this is simply not sustainable."
Kevin Courtney, deputy general secretary of the National Union of Teachers, adds: "If schools said to be 'outstanding' by Ofsted have been given a funding boost, that's a real scandal that needs to be investigated by MPs as a matter of urgency.
"Michael Gove [education secretary] claims that his policies are designed to help close the achievement gap and this blows that completely out of the water: by giving more to those who have, he must ultimately, in a time of cutbacks, be taking money away from schools that need it most."
The explanation of the apparent windfall for converting schools lies with complicated government funding formulae for academies – specifically the funding allocated for additional services, including behaviour support, school improvement and central administrative staff – known as the local authority central spend equivalent grant (Lacseg).
Since last year, schools have been able to calculate the amount of Lacseg that would come their way as academies through an online tool provided by the Department for Education.
And for those academies that have converted under the coalition, this Lacseg figure appears, in many cases, to be much higher than the sum they need for these services.
At Balcarras, a comprehensive rated outstanding by Ofsted, Healy calculates that, of the £600,000 the school has received through its Lacseg to cover previously centrally provided services, it is only spending £30,000 to replace them.
The £570,000 benefit was the difference, says Healy, between the school using up its £125,000 reserves and going £80,000 into the red in 2011-12 (as it would have done had it remained with the local authority) or remaining in credit.
"We were initially told that our Lacseg would be about 8% of our budget, but in fact it has turned out to be about £600,000 [10%]," he says.
Documents from eight more schools seen by this newspaper, including four grammar schools, include similar calculations, with net benefits from becoming an academy ranging from £150,000 to the £570,000 figure at Balcarras.
A document published by Torquay girls' grammar school says it will receive £465,000 from the government for converting to academy status, but then includes a detailed break-down of extra costs incurred, which come to only £146,424, giving it a profit of £319,000.
A further eight schools, though not listing the likely "net benefit" to themselves of academy status, have published prospective Lacseg figures of in excess of £500,000, suggesting six-figure potential gains if the pattern reported elsewhere were followed.
Some schools openly say that cash is the overwhelming reason for converting. Marsha Elms, executive head of Kendrick school, an "outstanding" girls' grammar in Reading, which last year told parents it expected a Lacseg figure of £669,000, says that it already had "all the freedoms we want" before becoming an academy in February.
A letter to parents and students from Tiffin school, Kingston upon Thames, cites a £225,000 annual net benefit of academy status, adding that "the principal advantage to the school [of academy status] is a financial one". The school would not use the word "academy" in its name, or in its literature, and the school's ethos would stay the same, said the letter.
A survey of 1,471 secondary schools published by the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL) last month found 72% citing financial gain for the school as a reason for pursuing academy status.
The reasons for these apparent gains are complex.
Some believe local authorities have not been providing value-for-money services, so with the greater freedoms afforded them academies can simply spend money more efficiently.
But there is evidence of other factors at play. Two grammar schools told Education Guardian that they would benefit, under the change to academy status, from the way funding is shared out.
Under Lacseg, money for services including behaviour support and school improvement is simply allocated to schools equally on the basis of their pupil numbers. Arguably, outstanding schools converting to academy status have less use for behaviour support and school improvement services, and would have received less support through their local authority, which may explain why they are now feeling flush.
Gordon Ironside, head of Sutton grammar school for boys in south London, believes this partly explains why his school is looking at a benefit of up to £150,000 when it converts this year.
Academies also receive a proportion of funding based on what the local authority spends on administrative functions including legal services, financial services and for local authority senior officers. Some of these tasks, Downes argues, are now carried out for them by the government agency now administering academy funding and support, the Young People's Learning Agency (YPLA).
Downes says: "All these services are costly. They are included in the Lacseg costs, but academies are getting quite a lot of these services through the YPLA, so they don't need to pay for them. They are making a bonus."
Local authorities have also complained about problems with the calculations. One, Devon, wrote to Michael Gove last August to say that the Lacseg figures were "flawed", and wrongly included funding for post-16 students, which had not been provided by local authorities since 2002.
Is the government in effect offering schools a bribe to take on academy status? Some headteachers are wondering.
One, who would have faced major reductions in the funding affecting his sixth form if his school did not convert, told the Guardian: "Our local authority director says that it is quite a coincidence that the cuts that schools are facing in their mainstream budgets are sometimes almost exactly the gains they think they can make from academy status."
So what next? The number of schools becoming academies in the last 12 months has been much larger than the government predicted in its own economic impact assessment last summer. This assessment forecast that 200 would convert, at a cost to the government, not recouped from local authority budgets, of £275,000 each.
In fact, some 357 academies have converted since September 2010, with another 473 in the pipeline. This suggests a total extra bill of £228m for the policy, even if no more conversions were agreed. If every secondary school in England converted, Downes estimates the figure would rise to £1bn, giving weight to his prediction that academy funding is not sustainable.
In January, ministers reduced the general spending of local authorities by £148m in 2011-12, and by a further £265m for the following year, to pay for the academies policy. It is unclear whether this will prove sufficient in the event of more conversions.
The government has already warned academies that some may face "significant" budget reductions for 2011-12. Two weeks ago, it announced plans to introduce a new academy funding system for 2012-13, arguing that the current methodology was confusing and "unsustainable". It is as yet unclear precisely what the changes will amount to.
Malcolm Trobe, policy director at ASCL, is convinced that the funding boost enjoyed by academies converting this year will not continue. He says: "It won't last long, because it is unsus–tainable."
For schools such as Healy's, the decision was largely about trying to secure some budgetary protection, at least in the short term. So while he might be cash happy this year, he is worried about the longer-term implications.
"That's the concern: this money is coming from somewhere, and, at the moment, it's OK. I just hope that there's not a significant drop in funding as more schools become academies, as I'm sure they will over the next two years."
A DfE spokesman said: "We've always been clear that academies receive additional funding to meet the responsibilities that are no longer provided for them by the local authority – but it is the same amount as was previously held back centrally. Obviously, one of the benefits of becoming an academy is that they have greater freedom on how they use their budgets and so they are free to procure these services more efficiently.
"The current funding system is opaque, full of anomalies and unfair – that is why we are planning to reform it. We recently published a consultation on the rationale and principles for reform and will consult on further details, including changes to academy funding, later in the year. We have also published a consultation on interim proposals for academy funding in the event that wider reforms take longer than expected."
Mock ceremonies, songs for Kate, lessons on honeymoon destinations – it's a royal bonanza for schools
David Cameron's plea to ignore council "pen pushers" and "bring out the bunting" for the royal wedding has clearly captured the imagination of schools up and down the country. They are organising hearty celebrations – including mock weddings and garden parties – that could surely melt the heart of even the most diehard republican. Here, Education Guardian takes a look at what Britain's schools are doing to mark the big day.
A day before William and Kate walk down the aisle at Westminster Abbey, another bride and groom will be surrounded by crowds of admirers. But, despite being the oldest in their school, Ryan "Prince William" Miller and Courtney "Kate Middleton" Pomerri are a still a lot younger than the royal duo.
The year 6 students have been picked alongside a best man, page boy and bridesmaid for Grove school's mock wedding. The local vicar will be dressing up as the archbishop of Canterbury, and there will be a buffet lunch for the whole school.
The big event follows weeks of royal wedding-related work, from geography lessons researching different honeymoon destinations, to history classes on royal weddings of the past and royal family trees. There have also been debates looking at the pros and cons of marrying into the royal family.
In literacy lessons, the children have written letters to Kate and William giving them tips for the wedding. One girl wrote telling Kate to think long and hard before going ahead, asking: "Do you really want to have to answer to someone else for the rest of your life?"
An empty classroom has been converted into a wedding planner's office and the children have made their own waistcoats, ties and accessories and designed a wedding cake, which is being made by the local bakery.
"We've been inundated with support from local businesses," says Janet Blackhurst, deputy head at the school. "A car hire company has provided a real wedding car to collect our 'Kate', and bridal companies are providing the dress and groom's outfits."
Most of the children at ACS Cobham International school are from overseas and attend for an average of three years before moving abroad, so music teacher Bill Noce wanted his pupils to create something "that would help them remember being in England when the wedding happened".
"The song follows the chord pattern of Jeremiah Clarke's Trumpet Voluntary, which is often played in bridal processions and we're hoping will be used for Kate's," he says. A performance of the song has been uploaded to YouTube and a copy has been sent to Clarence House as a gift.
"Several of the children are expecting to be invited to the wedding because of this," Noce laughs. Noce, himself a US expat, adds that the song-writing led to some interesting discussions about the monarchy. "The royal wedding adds another element to their English history lessons," he says. "For many, Kate's story is like a Cinderella tale for the 21st century, but one of the American boys asked why America didn't have a king, and that led to a long discussion about the idea of a head of state and a head of government, and the different ceremonial roles – it has been a brilliant project."
The Royal Wedding song
Hey Kate, we think it's great
And so on your wedding day we're gonna celebrate!
Hey Will, I mean your royal highness,
Oh heck, we're gonna call you Will!
Hey Will, it's such a thrill a modern day fairy tale, it's all so brill!
Your highness dressed up in all your finest and Kate as well will be dressed to kill.
He so handsome, she so pretty, rocking out in London city,
Giving us a grand occasion, and a day off for the nation.
Hey Will, we know until you ascend that throne you're gonna work your fill
We know your highnesses both will be pluses not minuses on that very modest civil list.
And when we think of it, our eyes all mist
So we wish you lots of wedded bliss. We wish you all the best!
Pupils will be arriving at school in their "wedding finery" on Thursday and their year 5 teacher, Nicky Newbury, is expecting to see a fair number of Cinderellas and Snow Whites dressed for a fairytale wedding. The children will be greeted with a wedding breakfast, and spend the day doing royalty-themed lessons.
There will be "wedding maths" on the curriculum – making spreadsheets for wedding costs and budgeting, and geography lessons will chart the matrimonial procession through London and the landmarks en route. In English, the pupils will be writing wedding speeches.
"We're also looking at what the royal wedding means to the UK," Newbury says. "Our class will be divided up, and each group will take roles such as the tourist industry, the media, or retailers, to look at the different points of view and the pros and cons of the wedding. We want the children to become more socially aware of the financial, moral, historical and social significance of the occasion."
Children at Oakengates nursery will be learning how weddings take place around the world. The nursery is also hosting a street party for parents and neighbours on Thursday. In preparation, the children have made wedding bunting, invitations and cakes.
"To help the children understand different kinds of weddings, a Sikh parent and a local vicar are coming in to talk about various ceremonies," says Sam Chamberlain, business manager at the nursery. "The children are only young, but it's important to foster an awareness of big events in society. Our students come from diverse backgrounds – we're classed as in an area of deprivation, with some children having access to free childcare, and some coming from Poland, and from various religious backgrounds – so the royal wedding is something that unites all the children."
When William and Kate start the first of their two wedding receptions on Friday afternoon, staff and boarding students at the independent day and boarding school in Yorkshire will be throwing a red, white and blue-themed garden party. It won't be all fun – those taking GCSEs and A-levels face a morning of revision sessions – but then the school is hosting a hog roast, bouncy castle, wedding trivia quiz, and guessing games with photos of staff in their wedding outfits.
"We're going to show the wedding on a big screen in school, and everyone's dressing in red, white and blue – although I'm a Scot so I might wear a Scottish tie," says the headteacher, Mark Lauder. "Half of our boarders come from overseas, so they're really excited about watching British royalty."
And it isn't just about partying, he says. "Students are always bursting with questions related to the news, so I'm expecting to be asked things like: 'What's the point of the monarchy?', 'Why is the Queen head of state?' and 'Will Camilla ever become Queen?'"
We'd love to know what your school is doing, so let tell us in the comments below or email janet.murray@guardian.co.uk with links to your blogs, examples of writing, audio, even photos and video – but only if you have parental consent.
The English baccalaureate is a just ploy to keep private schools at the top of the tree, says Phil Beadle
Recently I discovered that following his entry through the doors of number 10, David Cameron was in receipt of a bottle of the finest whisky from one Francis Rossi. Whether it was accompanied with a note saying: "From one front man of the Status Quo to another" is unrecorded.
And it is with matters of establishment that this column is concerned: the real motivation behind Gove's introduction of the English baccalaureate as a measure by which schools will be judged. Gove learned his masterly skills of oratory at Robert Gordon's college in Aberdeen: a private school. The boss, as we know, attended Eton; the chancellor, St Paul's, and there are representatives from Eton, Wellington, Rugby and Charterhouse sitting round the table every time cabinet meets.
The Tories have always been deeply in hock to the alma maters that furnished them with their inviolable sense of a right to rule, and over recent years these independent schools have been becoming increasingly unhappy with improving results in the state sector. There has been, I suspect, a worry that the logical end of these improvements will be that, with time, such a number of state schools will record results rivaling those in the independent sector that their chief piece of PR, that they achieve much better results, will cease to exist. This would mean fewer punters through the door of private schools and the potential closure of many.
Over the 13 years of a Labour administration which, for all its faults, did at least attempt to use education policy as a driver of social mobility, any rise in results has always been greeted with the extended bellyache of "dumbing down" from the independents. They have consistently disavowed the GCSE as offering a qualification that is in any way meaningful, and gone off in search of qualifications bearing fancy names from abroad. These they could claim were more academically rigorous than those taken by the plebs, thereby preserving the repugnant myth of the intellectual superiority of the haute bourgeoisie and of their educational institutions.
Now, for the first time in well over a decade, the independent sector has the ear of an education secretary, and is able to ask for the implementation of reforms that will identify their schools as providing an education that's well worth the £30,000 a year it costs at some schools – an education the state provides for free.
Et voilà: the English baccalaureate, which continues the coalition's fine tradition of clever stupid oxymorons: English baccalaureate, comprehensive grammars, unions as voices of the "establishment".
One wonders what rationale could be claimed for this beyond the purely political? Gove would struggle to put forward an argument that the reform is to ensure the system churns out more employable young people, in that at least two of the subjects are nigh on useless vocationally: a history degree qualifies you to be a historian, and an English degree opens few doors.
One could argue that it is reinstating academic rigour as central to the way in which we judge the success of an educational establishment. And, aside from the marked absence from the list of the most academically challenging of all subjects, music, or the fact that students do not have to read a single full literary text to qualify to be certified as academic, who would be so foolish as to disagree with that?
In reality, the English bac is merely a bludgeoning tool that will be used to clout schools that are performing miracles in poor areas and to tell them that, yet again, they are failing, this time by a new measure, and must be handed over forthwith to be run by someone who is a personal friend of the prime minister.
Using achievements in languages as a yardstick is a particularly nasty trick. Modern foreign languages were made optional at key stage 4 by the last administration for a good reason: teaching Spanish to a bottom-set year 11 on a northern council estate on a wet Friday is the definition of pointless, as the students will tell you – at length and loudly. The English bac will cause these same students to be plunged into compulsory language lessons, in which they learn nothing and which they detest, because the headteacher thinks that if one of them accidentally jumps over a benchmark set for them by a cabal of public schoolboys, the school will go up the league tables.
The English baccalaureate exists to reinstate the birthright of private schools to be seen as superior in all areas to their state cousins, and to create another measure by which those of us working at the bottom can be judged to be useless. The status quo? It keeps rockin' on.
Britain's poorest communities have been helped by Esol classes, but many will now lose out, says Alan Tuckett
There is no other area of lifelong learning policy that has a more positive impact on the life chances of Britain's poorest settled communities than English for speakers of other languages.
Study after study shows that the lowest levels of participation in education and training after school are experienced by communities of Bangladeshi, Pakistani and Somali heritage, and in particular by the women of those communities.
You need English to get a job, to support your children at school and to play an active part in the wider community – in short, to join the "big society".
The launch of the Skills for Life strategy over a decade ago increased the demand for Esol courses. Pressure on class places intensified with the arrival of large numbers of European Union workers.
By 2006, there were in excess of a quarter of a million people signed up for Esol classes. Two in three of those were women. Almost half were pursuing entry-level courses. And still there were long waiting lists in the cities, especially in London.
But since 2007 the success story has been marred by difficulties. We have seen measures to introduce fees, to change eligibility criteria, and to cap the numbers of Esol students funded by the government. There is no shortage of enthusiasm to learn the language, yet numbers have dropped year on year – from 267,000 in 2005-06 to around 187,000 this year.
The loss of government support for low-wage families and those on what the government now calls "inactive" benefits could mean an even bigger drop in participation. The Association of Colleges calculates that as many as half of all places are at risk next year. And it's not just the learners who will suffer; providers will cut classes and skilled teachers will lose jobs.
So how did we get here? Successive governments have been concerned – and understandably so - with persuading employers recruiting abroad to pay for their workers' English classes. And it didn't help to cool the debate to hear of posters in Poland saying "Come and work in Britain – the government will teach you English free", or words to that effect.
But the truth is, few employers are willing and able meet the cost of English lessons. Of course, the government will still continue to meet half the overall cost, but that leaves learners needing to find hundreds of pounds no matter how poorly paid they are. For many, that means the door to learning the language is now closed.
The government drive to focus resources on helping people actively seeking work to move quickly and successfully into sustainable employment also has its part to play. While this is also understandable, it doesn't reach out to all those in need, as those without work may well be in that situation because their language skills aren't up to scratch.
For people like this, Esol classes are a key cornerstone of industrial training. That is why so many have taken advantage of the classes on offer. At the parliamentary briefing on the Esol crisis co-ordinated by Niace and the Refugee Council last month, there was testimony after testimony from learners who, after Esol classes, moved on to become health professionals, community workers, teaching assistants, accountants and volunteers.
So, despite the sterling efforts of John Hayes, minister for lifelong learning, and Vince Cable, business and skills secretary, to protect further education and the role it can play in improving life chances, the situation facing many Esol learners is bleak. It is not too late to tweak the policy to ensure they get a fair chance.
• Alan Tuckett is chief executive of the National Institute of Adult Continuing Education (Niace)
It is tough to justify arts and humanities degrees to stony-faced science fans, says Jonathan Wolff, but who'd want to live in a world without them?
I used to have a badge that read "Wearing Badges is Not Enough". I don't wear badges anymore, but I do sign things, such as collective letters to newspapers. My surname, though, is so late in the alphabet that I'm normally one of the "62 others". If you don't see me there, that's why.
Signing online petitions has also become a habit, although I do worry about petition inflation, and subsequent devaluation of the currency. After all, it used to be quite impressive when a charity turned up in Downing Street pushing a wheelbarrow stuffed with sheaves of dog-eared pages that had done the rounds of doorstep, pubs and village newsagents. Now you just click three times, and then make sure you don't click again, inadvertently making a donation to the company that runs the online petition service.
This season's petitions of choice concern a worrying trend of proposals to close small philosophy departments, especially in new universities, and the Arts and Humanities Research Council's love-in with the "big society".
The AHRC is being accused of pandering to a party political agenda by including the term big society in its literature.
This has got a lot of academics hot and bothered and, dutifully, I have signed various things urging the AHRC to be less embarrassing in the future. The AHRC has replied that it added reference to the big society through its own free will, not because it was urged to by the government.
This is somehow meant to make it all better, but it seems the officials could do with a crash course in elementary sociology. The greatest power is exercised by those who can get their way without even having to ask.
This flirtation with the big society reflects a broader anxiety to show the "relevance" of arts and humanities and thereby preserve public funding for the research council. Somehow the sciences don't seem to face similar questions. Such as: why have we spent billions on the Large Hadron Collider, allowing physicists to smash small things into each other? I read somewhere that there was a hope that it would lead to a solution to climate change. Yeah, yeah. Maybe it will cure my backache, too. Perhaps we should view it just as a hugely expensive artistic installation, which actually makes me think better of it. And putting a man on the moon was a fabulous piece of performance art.
But to come back to earth; there is, at the moment, a growth industry in trying to justify the existence of the arts and humanities. This is not an easy task. Not because the arts and humanities are especially hard to legitimise, but because everything is hard to justify when your opponent is standing there with crossed arms and a stony face. How do you even get started?
Well, philosophers distinguish two types of justification: "instrumental" and "intrinsic". Intrinsic justifications appeal to the value of something in itself, while instrumental justifications appeal to the effects or consequences of something. Its contribution to the big society, for example. But instrumental justifications are, well, instrumental. Not only are they vulgar, they can be counter-productive. First, they are contingent. Suppose something else turns out to be better for the big society. Should we hand over our money? Second, they detract attention from what might really be of value in the arts and humanities.
But what is that thing? How do you capture intrinsic value? As soon as you try to justify something by appealing to something else, you seem to miss the point. Perhaps we can make some headway with the idea that the arts and humanities contribute to the enrichment and transmission of culture, but to some ears this sounds feeble when other disciplines promise clean energy, a cure for cancer or economic prosperity.
The best we can do, I think, is to adapt an argument from GE Moore. Suppose we have to choose between two worlds. In one of them, universities have flourishing departments of arts and humanities. You, your children, your grandchildren, can study literature, language, fine art or ancient history, and, talent permitting, can contribute to scholarly debates. In the other, only the rich can do this, but technical progress is a bit faster. Which world you would prefer to live in?
• Jonathan Wolff is professor of philosophy at University College London. His column appears monthly
New students often struggle with essays, but study skills departments are there to help
"When I came to write my first assignment, I cried," says Daphne Elliston. "I just didn't know what I was doing."
Elliston graduated with a degree in health and social care from the Open University. Though she's hugely proud of her achievement, she says that in the early days she worked up to three hours a night for weeks on end to construct an essay she was happy to submit.
"At the beginning, the most difficult thing was just understanding the academic words," she says.
"Then putting my own words into academic language was hard. And it was difficult to believe I was entitled to my own opinion or to disagree with all these academics who'd done years of research."
Elliston started her degree after decades out of the education system, and with just one NVQ qualification to her name.
She believes the gap in her education was to blame but, according to some academics, many of the current crop of students gearing up to A-levels will feel exactly the same when they start university this autumn.
Margi Rawlinson, academic skills co-ordinator at Edge Hill University, says it is wrong to think that only so-called non-traditional students wrestle with writing essays.
"We have people with A-levels who are arriving poorly equipped for academic writing," she says.
"I think one of the issues at A-level is that they're not being taught to research independently, and [with essays] it's not just the writing – that's only part of it."
At Worcester University, Helena Attlee, fellow of the Royal Literary Fund and writer in residence, agrees.
"It seems to me there's a lack of interface between A-levels and degrees, so the thing that people are required to do to get very good A-levels isn't equipping them to do what is required to get a degree."
Over the last year, part of Attlee's role has been to offer one-to-one sessions with students to help them develop the skills needed to complete a well-written assignment.
"The absolutely common thing is they have no clue that there is a recipe for an academic essay. That can make life considerably easier for you if somebody bothers to tell you," she says.
"Students can have no idea of the concept of making an argument so their essays are entirely descriptive. You know, 'and then this happens, and such-and- such an academic says this about it, and then this happens, and so-and-so says that'."
With the ability to think or write analytically "there's no end of the reading you can do," she says. "And, at that point, students start to say they feel overwhelmed."
Kate Brooks, principal lecturer and student experience co-ordinator in the faculty of creative arts at the University of the West of England (UWE), has carried out research into students' experience of the transition between school and university, and says that essay writing featured strongly in their comments.
"One issue was time management – do they start writing weeks before or the night before?" she says.
In the workshop sessions she runs, she tries to explain that, in fact, writing is a small element in creating an essay.
"Students can have an idea that it's a linear thing – you do your reading, then you get a cup of tea and sit down to write. We try to get across that it's a much more cyclical process; do some research, draft a bit, read some more, think, consider what you've written, redraft... I'll explain that it's like that for academics, too – after all, I don't just sit down one day and think, 'Right, I'll write a book!'"
Some universities are now actively addressing the problem in individual faculties or by creating generic cross-subject courses delivered by their study skills departments. But some students resist the help on offer.
"The English department here put on a compulsory module called 'Writing at degree level', but dropped it because the students rebelled," says Attlee. "They felt it was remedial and offensive and they wouldn't go."
Attlee's one-to-one sessions are voluntary and very popular. Having individual attention, she says, can make all the difference to someone who is embarrassed to say that they're failing to master a basic – though far from easy – skill.
At Essex University, the head of philosophy, Professor Wayne Martin, is passionate about the voluntary module on essay writing he's created for MA and first-year undergraduate students – and he needs to be, because it sounds distinctly time-intensive and is not an official part of his job.
"Students do it because they want to. They're not assessed, but it's really hard work," he says.
"In philosophy, a particular skill that's needed, and which needs time to develop, is the representation of argument so you don't get tangled up in writing long, ugly sentences. And then, some very smart students can write, but they get to university and they overreach themselves, using phrases like 'hegemonic dialectical superstructure'!"
Sessions are run with all the students together in a room, so there's an element of having to cope with a bit of gentle public ribbing at some of the more desperate clangers. Creating an atmosphere of trust and constructive criticism is therefore essential to helping people feel safe and ensuring they want to come back.
Essays are due into Martin's inbox at midnight on Sundays. He is up the following morning at the crack of dawn reading them, so he can selects excerpts for the entire group to discuss and rewrite together.
As he points out, this form of tuition doesn't appear to make economic sense, especially with universities under tremendous pressure to teach in more efficient ways. But, he says, it is more cost-effective than it sounds. "My strategy with that is for universities to be offering a combination of very high-efficiency lectures – [he means with hundreds of students] – but then use that efficiency to offer this kind of intimate instruction."
But is it realistic to think that people's essay-writing skills can improve significantly if they've not already been developed over years in a school setting?
"Yes, incredibly. And the biggest improvement is generally in the first five weeks," he says.
Elliston is living proof . By absorbing and working through all the feedback from her OU tutors over the six years it took her to get her degree, her marks went up from 56% on her first assignment to 84% in her last essay of her final year.
"That feedback, and the nice way it was given, was so important," she says. But she wishes she had been better prepared for the shock of leaping into an academic environment.
"I think an access course might have helped me, before I started, to ge t the skills that were going to be expected of me."
On the cost of doing a degree and the qualification you get at the end of it
Last week, Josie Long spoke to Mary O'Hara about her new education charity aimed at helping young people to go to university and tackle their debt.
Admirable ideals, although perhaps Josie Long should tone down the pro-useless degree line. I hate to be all utilitarian about it, but it's not a bad idea to study something that will actually help you in life as well as being interesting to you. Not sure I'd donate to a charity that's going to use my money to pay off the loans of students with daft degrees.
TheFatCaptain via EducationGuardian.co.uk
• Instead of fighting her corner and gathering support on the left to back her point up, Long seems to have done exactly what the Tories are encouraging people to do, in the hope that the perceived "luxury" elements of society, like higher education and art, will survive on the generosity of benefactors and philanthropists, instead of funding it properly themselves, which they would if they gave two shits about people and society.
markle79 via EducationGuardian.co.uk
Last week, Professor Nigel Seaton, deputy vice-chancellor of Surrey University, argued that degree classifications should be scrapped in favour of a transcript detailing the results of all degree modules.
I completely agree with Nigel Seaton's call to do away with degree classifications (Comment, 19 April). He could also have pointed out that universities and individual departments also have an incentive to inflate them. Lamenting the decline in exam standards has long been a popular sport, but the finger is rarely pointed at HE. The only obvious national decline in standards over the last 40 years is manifest in the average degree classification rising from a 2:2 to a 2:1. More did not mean worse, apparently.
Phelim Brady
Guildford
• I agree with Nigel Seaton that degree classification is unfair, but so quite possibly are all the other ways of doing it. The transcript system sounds ominously like a way of introducing continuous assessment where any student who hasn't been paying proper attention in lectures consistently for three years will be in trouble.
Further, I'm not sure that the good degree is always quite what it seems. I got a 2:1, but I've always felt that employers have paid more attention to the beard and the Marxist politics somehow.
Keith Flett
London N17
• Why should a hiring manager in, say, financial services sit there and wonder whether the marks a candidate dropped in his particle physics module are made up for by what he gained in condensed matter physics? It's an important part of the university's job to summarise this information and provide an honest indicator of how much effort each candidate put in compared to his/her peers.
roofdog via EducationGuardian.co.uk
• While we're at it, let's allow people who fail their driving exams to drive anyway. They might have just failed by the slightest error, and preventing them from driving on the motorway, when they really really really want to put their foot down and work their way through the gearbox, is unfair to them.
londonsupergirl via EducationGuardian.co.uk
Revolutions in the Arab world make it a great time for a lesson on democracy, and you'll find one this week on the Guardian Teacher Network
Democracy is big news. Revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt earlier in the year saw long-serving oligarchs thrown out onto the street and sparked calls for political freedom in many more countries. Libya, where the rule of Colonel Gaddafi seemed rock solid, could well be the next to go.
It is a great opportunity to talk to children about democracy, but to the uninitiated, the complex histories of these countries can seem baffling.
On the Guardian Teacher Network, you can find now find a one-hour PowerPoint lesson, which can be used in classrooms and homes, to get children thinking about democracy.
The lesson outlines the developments of people power in the Arab world and explores definitions of democracy and different voting systems. Children are encouraged to think critically about Gaddafi's rule and to ask questions on controversial topics, such as who or what was responsible for the 1988 Lockerbie disaster, when a bomb exploded on a plane over southern Scotland, killing 270 people.
Although this is a citizenship lesson, it could be adapted for use in geography, history and RE. Children can get the inside track on different democratic processes through a role-play activity where they take the parts of victorious Libyan rebels looking at the future direction of their country. This challenges children to take bold decisions and to justify new laws and policies for a newly democratic country.
And with the AV referendum just around the corner, there is also an opportunity for children to discuss what kind of government they would like. Does the alternative vote seem like a fair way to elect a government? They might just have some bright ideas political types haven't thought of.
Find the lesson plan and other resources on democracy here.
• John Rutter is a Principal Teacher of Geography and a Chartered Geographer (Teacher). He has written and contributed to several textbooks and online teaching resources. Please add your comments to the lesson and share your own ideas and lesson outlines.
The Guardian's new education resources network offers access to 70,000 pages of lesson plans and interactive materials all absolutely free. This content is being added everyday by classroom teachers and other educationists. Thousands of teachers have already signed up. To see (and share) for yourself go to: teachers.guardian.co.uk
Legal degrees are proving popular with prisoners and ex-convicts – but can they ever become solicitors?
Like many students, Malcolm Sang, who is working towards a law degree, spends hours poring over his books. But when it comes to some aspects of his studies, the reality of what he's working on is very close to home – because he is in jail, serving a life sentence for murder.
And if his subject is unlikely, his educational past is, too: because when Sang was convicted, a decade ago, he hadn't a single GCSE to his name. "Malcolm was kicked out of school at 13," explains Jude, his mother (as he's a prisoner, Sang isn't allowed to give interviews, but he has given her permission to tell his story). "It wasn't until he found himself inside that he went back to studying. He passed GCSEs in English and maths and then got an A in A-level English."
Sang's decision to pursue a distance-learning degree in law at Nottingham Trent University was partly motivated by his disillusionment with the law. He believes he should have been convicted not of murder, but of manslaughter, as his co-defendant was.
Now 30, Sang is an inmate at Verne prison in Portland, Dorset – but when he started his degree, he was in another prison and staff there tried to dissuade him from enrolling. "They said law wasn't a suitable subject for a prisoner to study. But there's no reason why not, and he was determined to do it," says his mother.
Sang's funding came from the young people's charity The Longford Trust, named after the Labour peer and prison reformer, which since 2004 has offered scholarships to current and former convicts who want to study for a degree. But what the trust has come to realise, explains its director, Peter Stanford, is that prisoners like Sang aren't alone: law is a subject that prisoners often feel particularly drawn towards; so much so, that the Longford Trust decided to establish a new batch of awards aimed at enabling prisoners to study law. The Patrick Pakenham awards are named after Lord Longford's son, a barrister who died in 2005, and they offer practical, emotional and psychological support to students during their time at university.
"In many ways it's entirely understandable why prisoners who get involved in education should feel drawn to law as a subject," says Stanford. "They're far more likely to want to study law than they are to be drawn to, say, English or classics or history – these subjects aren't going to have the same relevance for them that they do for young people coming out of school, who have maybe had more advantages in life than many of those who end up in jail."
Another law student who has had personal experience of being on the wrong side of the law is Ana Ruiz, who was convicted of drug dealing eight years ago. "Being sent to prison is a crushing blow to anyone's self-esteem – you think you're worthless, you feel excluded," she says. "Starting to study makes all the difference, because you realise you can achieve something."
Ruiz, who is 33, is in her final year of a law degree that she started in 2007, having been released from prison the previous year. She hopes to become a solicitor, specialising in environmental law. "I feel very strongly about these cases, and I'd love to make working on them my future."
Maria Aristodemou, a senior law lecturer at Birkbeck College, where Ruiz is studying, says students who have direct experience of being caught up in the criminal justice system often have fascinating insights to share in seminars and tutorials. "At many universities, though not at Birkbeck, many students have come straight from school and have no experience like this – so someone who can talk from personal experience can be really interesting for them," she says.
"But there is a downside, too, which is that people who've been in this situation can sometimes be quite opinionated and stubborn – they're entrenched in their own experience, and they're unable to see the wider picture. You start to feel that what they're unpacking in a seminar would be better unpacked on an analyst's couch, and it can be hugely time-consuming for everyone else.
"But certainly in the long term, those who stay the course and maybe go on to work in the legal system will be able to relate to defendants in a way that many lawyers maybe can't, and that has to be valuable."
One anxiety for people like Ruiz and Sang – who would also like to work as a solicitor eventually – is that they may never be able to make the leap from one side of the courtroom to the other, despite having studied hard for their degrees. That's because they fear that the Solicitors' Regulation Authority (SRA), part of the Law Society, won't sanction their applications to work as solicitors. "I understand their worries, because certainly on past experience the Law Society has been reluctant to admit people who've been convicted of crimes to the solicitors' course," says Stanford.
According to Diane Lawson of the SRA, every application for admission to the solicitors' course is evaluated on merit – but there are concerns. "The overriding consideration is public protection," she says. "The type and number of convictions are taken into consideration, and applicants have to provide evidence of rehabilitation.
"It's quite understandable that someone who'd been exposed to the legal system may have a great interest in pursuing legal studies. However, the SRA has an obligation to build public confidence in our legal system and has to ensure that all entrants to the profession meet the requirements for competence and conduct."
But some prisoner law students have already put their learning to practical use. "Gary", who can't be named for legal reasons, served three years of a six-year sentence for rape. Like Sang, he became interested in studying law partly because he felt he'd been the victim of injustice. "When I was convicted, I was disqualified from seeing any children including my own – but when I read up on what the law actually said, I discovered it shouldn't have happened in my case.
"I lodged an appeal and represented myself – and I got the disqualification overturned. I was very nervous, but I knew I could do it. The judges took 10 minutes to reach their decision, and winning really spurred me on to study law. It made me realise how brilliant it is to be able to argue a case in a court of law – it made me determined that this was what I'd like to do."
And when he got back to prison, there was a long queue of fellow inmates all waiting to see him. "They wanted me to work on their appeals for them. My nickname became "the QC"; even some of the prison guards came to see me, to ask advice about their divorce cases.
"You need a lot of books to study law, and when I was inside, it was difficult to get them. Eventually, I decided to write to every judge, barrister and solicitor I could find, asking them to donate books they didn't need any more. Lots of them did – in the end, I had 40 or 50 books, so many that I had to be moved to a bigger cell!"
Gary is now out of prison and continuing the law degree. Like Sang and Ruiz, he hopes to practise as a solicitor. "I'd like to work in criminal and family law," he says. "I don't feel the lawyers I encountered served me as well as they should have done. I want to be a better lawyer for some other defendant in the future."
The energy from cremation can be harnessed for use in public buildings or houses. But what are the moral questions?
Recycling the excess heat from cremation might not sound like the most obvious way to honour your loved ones, but for the environmentally aware, it could be a more efficient way to create energy.
Dr John Troyer, deputy director of Bath University's Centre for Death and Society (CDAS), is currently grappling with some of the moral issues – such as whether the process is respectful to the dead – surrounding the process, which is known as heat capture.
He has become a familiar presence at funeral services held at the city's Haycombe Crematorium. A sombre job, perhaps, yet crucial to his one-year research project, which is funded by the South West Regional Development Agency and European Regional Development Fund.
Haycombe was among the first crematoria in the country to install expensive equipment that prevents mercury emissions from the cremation process escaping into the atmosphere. Heat capture could, in time, be a possibility there, but it's sensitive territory and Troyer is at pains to tread carefully, steering clear, for instance, of canvassing the bereaved for their views. "My father was a funeral director," he says. "I'm very conscious of not being cavalier – projects can be torpedoed if you don't keep in mind exactly what you are dealing with."
Besides exploring moral questions around heat capture, he is also learning about developments in technology. As other crematoria install new equipment to comply with rules on reducing mercury emissions, some are making profitable use of excess heat that otherwise would be wasted.
But Troyer's work is concerned as much with the ethics of heat capture as with the process. "This research isn't about trying to design a system per se, but asking how you design for the future and create facilities that are used more efficiently – current crematoria designs are late 19th century," he says. "It's about the relationship between death, the body and technology."
The onus is on UK crematoria to halve mercury emissions, which come mainly from tooth fillings, by 2012 and eliminate them altogether by 2020. Many will need to install new equipment. Those that have already invested in heat-capture technology usually divert the excess heat to other crematorium buildings.
Some crematoria in Sweden and Denmark have gone further, selling surplus heat for use in houses. Many see this as entirely sensible, avoiding the need for crematoria to have expensive and energy-hungry cooling towers. But others wonder if it breaches an ethical code drawn up the International Cremation Federation, a body set up in 1937 to promote and provide information on cremation practice. This states that "the products or residue of a cremation shall not be used for any commercial purpose".
The issue is so sensitive that the Danish Council of Ethics, a group including scientists, clergy and philosophers that advises parliament, was summoned to give its opinion. After much deliberation, it found no ethical reason to oppose recycling heat despite the ICF code. Several crematoria now export energy to local companies.
The UK has a long way to go in comparison, although a new system at Redditch, Worcestershire, will pipe water to heat a swimming pool and save local council taxpayers around £14,500 a year. Councillors sought to forestall an outcry by consulting the public beforehand and 80% to 90% of responses were in favour, it says. Nevertheless, there were instances of what Troyer describes as "moral outrage". At the time, a spokesman for the public sector union Unison described the scheme as "sick and an insult to local residents".
Troyer believes such knee-jerk reactions are triggered by ignorance about what is involved. After cremation, water is used to cool gases in the crematorium chimney. Mercury is filtered out, and water heated by the cooling process then piped away. Surplus heat harnessed in this fashion is now being used in chapels and offices at Dukinfield, Cheshire, Warwickshire and Sandwell Valley, West Midlands.
"Most of it comes from the gas used to get the fire burning – a negligible amount from the bodies themselves," says Troyer. "But you are entering an area of public concern. There are questions that need to be sorted out and taken up with local and national authorities. You have to get policy-makers thinking about it. That isn't a simple thing to do."
For those UK crematoria that hold lots of daily services, the amount of excess heat generated could open up the possibility of selling energy to the National Grid.
The economic argument for heat capture would appear compelling in countries such as Japan, where over 95% of the dead are cremated (in Britain the figure is 72%). But Troyer thinks it unlikely every culture would take the same liberal view as Denmark over selling energy to a network. Here, the Federation of Cremation and Burial Authorities (FCBA) is quite relaxed about this use of technology. "There's been a fair bit of hype – talk of family members heating the swimming pool," says its secretary, Richard Powell. "But we don't see any ethical issues."
Tim Morris, chief executive of the Institute of Cemetery and Crematorium Management, supports "any innovative approach with environmental benefits". He says plans to install heat-capture equipment at a crematorium in Cardiff provoked no hostility after staff took to the streets and explained how it works.
Troyer says he is not trying to court controversy. Rather he is using Haycombe as a base to look more broadly at possible future designs, while studying all aspects of the ethical debate. "Some grieving families like the idea of their loved ones 'giving back something'," he says. "I see that becoming predominant, and this research as an opportunity to do something innovative and respectful to the funeral mourning process."
Men's ears never stop growing ... and neither do women's
Old men have big ears, is the consensus of several medical studies. The most celebrated work focused exclusively on men, according with British male doctordom's smug tradition of showing interest mainly in themselves.
But in Japan and in Germany, wide-ranging investigations have made plain a long-untold half of the story: that old women also have big ears.
The British action played out in the British Medical Journal, where body parts are always of interest. In 1993, Dr James A Heathcote, a general practitioner in Bromley, Kent, set out to answer the question, "as you get older do your ears get bigger?" Heathcote and three colleagues examined the ears of 206 men of various ages. The biggest oddity, ears aside, comes at the end. The paper mutters: "Why ears should get bigger when the rest of the body stops growing is not answered by this research."
In Japan, primary care physicians Yasuhiro Asai, Manabu Yoshimura, Naoki Nago and Takashi Yamada measured the ears and height of 400 adult patients – of both sexes – who visited their clinics. The team's 1996 report, called Correlation Of Ear Length With Age In Japan, also appeared in the BMJ.
The doctors claim they made two discoveries: that ear length does correlate closely with age and the rather unfathomable conclusion that "ear length corrected for height shows [even] greater correlation with age".
A decade later, Carsten Niemitz, Maike Nibbrig and Vanessa Zacher at Freie Universität Berlin, Germany, examined data from a thesis by a scientist named Montacer-Kuhssary, published at the university in 1959.
Montacer-Kuhssary's data was of a rare kind: photographs of 1,448 ears of newborn children, older children, and adults up to and including 92-year-olds.
For each ear, the team made 15 different measurements. This confirmed, they say, that ears never really stop growing throughout a person's lifetime. But the big surprise came from comparing women and men: "In all parameters where post-adult growth was observed, female ears showed a lesser increase than those of men." Old men have bigger ears than old women.
Montacer-Kuhssary, by the way, noted that people's noses, too, usually grow throughout their lifetimes. But, he concluded, ears usually outpace noses.
• Marc Abrahams is editor of the bimonthly Annals of Improbable Research and organiser of the Ig Nobel prize
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Melissa Wyatt is the Library and Information Manager at the Royal Town Planning Institute where she has ensured that the library service is the focus for knowledge management for the organisation and is recognised as an important resource for the planning profession. She is working towards Chartership.
With a Diploma in Business & Finance and experience as a library assistant in the West Midlands, I enrolled on a library and information degree course at Brighton University. Supporting myself with jobs as diverse as selling ice-cream on the pier and working as a fashion model. A university placement provided me with an opportunity to catalogue a unique collection of Rudyard Kipling manuscripts and books, one of my best student memories.
Personal circumstances prevented me from completing the course but I was determined to pursue my career in collections management so I used my experience and knowledge to work in the music library at Lewes and then at the Lewes Barbican House Museum. At the same time I completed my degree as an Art History Bachelors with the Open University.
I had the opportunity to experience an intriguing variety of information work: the Royal Society, cataloguing historical documents in German, Latin and French; project work at the London Underground Library, and then becoming Local Studies Librarian at Lewisham. This was not just local studies but community librarianship, reaching all sections of the local community by exploiting the collection.
Whilst working in library management posts, I have managed information in subjects as diverse as town and country planning, architecture, history, transport, family history and art. I have experience in running information and library services as well as specialising in research and librarianship within a museum and heritage environment.
A diploma in Business helped me to focus, a degree in Library and Art Studies helped me to specialise and working and studying simultaneously helped me begin the path to Chartership.
Melissa Wyatt - at a glance
Assistant experience at a public library
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Enrols on an accredited degree course at Brighton University
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Completes degree in another subject (Art History)
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Continues to develop professional experience Lewes music Library and Lewes Barbican House Museum
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Assistant Librarian in the local history library at Lewisham
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Library and Information Manager at the Royal Town Planning Institute
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Enrols as extraordinary candidate for Chartership
October 2007 Melissa's application is accepted by the Chartership Board and she registers as a Chartered Member of CILIP (MCLIP
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As tuition fees continue to make the news, the comedian Josie Long has taken her comedy – and her actions – into the political arena, setting up a charity to support students
Josie Long possesses the kind of playful energy that could make even the most hardboiled curmudgeon mellow, so it takes a few moments to realise that the young comedian, known more for her whimsical musings on the minutiae of life than her political opinions, has a serious message to get across.
For someone who is worried she is "going to say things that make me sound stupid," Long displays a natural flair for articulating why, after more than a decade spent honing her comedy credentials, she is suddenly getting all political.
In 2009, Long, who has accumulated a string of awards since entering the comedy world at just 17, embarked on a typically whimsical project: "a hundred days to make me a better person" (her comedy shows have upbeat titles such as Be Honourable! and Trying is Good). She set herself small arbitrary tasks such as writing a joke every day and speaking to strangers.
One of the aims of the project was to become more politically aware because she felt a bit "woolly" on the subject. It was an experiment that sparked an unlikely journey and, later this month, she will launch an educational charity to help young people from underprivileged backgrounds get to university and tackle their debt. Underpinning the project is her desire to raise the profile of the liberal arts, which she believes have been sidelined by government ministers keen to push the idea of higher education as a route to employability rather than an end in itself.
Long, who is now 29, says she has always been annoyed that she left university in debt, when her rich friends didn't. "I've always believed that higher education shouldn't make you have a massive debt at the end. It should be state–funded."
But the thing about being more politically active is that it has been a "world of hurt" every day, she says earnestly. "I began to feel like I couldn't possibly be leading a good life unless I was doing more things. It came from feeling like I wasn't doing anything to help society be more like how I wanted it to be. I guess it was just getting a bit older and feeling a bit disillusioned with being a comedian because it felt a bit too easy and good for me."
It was the prospect of a Tory government that made her think hard about education (she is proud of having studied English at Oxford despite coming from a modest background with "no connections" or family financial assistance). "I was thinking about how much my degree enriched my life, and how much it gave me for the future, in terms of learning how to study and read and research and think critically".
Rather than stay mired in vague exasperation or using comedy to vent (although she confesses to having enjoyed doing just that as part of her political awakening), Long decided to act on her impulses.
First of all she took part in the student protests last year, ending up on the late-night political programme The Week at one point and giving Michael Portillo a run for his money debating tuition fee increases. She also became involved with UK Uncut, the disparate anti-tax avoidance network, taking part in some of the group's occupations of high-street banks.
But it still wasn't enough, according to Long, so – despite having no voluntary or education sector experience whatsoever – she decided to set up her own charity. She is starting small with the mentoring where she lives in Hackney, east London, with "perhaps only a handful of pupils", but the long-term aim is to help students all over the UK.
Her new charity, Arts Emergency Service, is a collaboration with her friend Neil Griffiths, an experienced fundraiser. As well as running a small monthly lottery for graduates where winners get some and possibly all of their debts paid off, the pair also want to raise money for a long-term mentoring scheme and to convince their friends and others that "it's not enough to have the 'correct' opinions and anxieties", but that they should play an active part in effecting change.
It's not surprising, perhaps, that for all her earnestness Long seems unable to veer too far away from her comedy roots when talking about her plans. She beams mischievously while outlining one of her more quixotic ideas for Arts Emergency Service, which involves renting a van with a few friends and "going round for 10 days doing ad hoc [comedy] shows in the middle of nowhere – like in cul-de-sacs" to promote it. Another idea scheduled for later this month will entail using Twitter [@artsemergency] and the charity's website [arts-emergency.org] to have a playful poke at Prince William. "We've got an idea to coincide with the royal wedding because prince thingy studied history of art – and he probably left debt-free." Pausing for comic effect, Long adds: "I wouldn't be surprised if he doesn't have a student loan."
She says the "ultimate aim" of Arts Emergency Service is "to reinstate free education for all at a tertiary level," and, she says, giggling, trying to be as unrealistic as possible. "I'm almost perversely pro-stupid degrees now. I don't care if you are studying beer management. Good for you – you enjoy yourself. Have three years of absolute flowering."
Long recalls the one-woman standup show she did at the Edinburgh festival in 2010, Be Honourable! It was her first foray into political comedy and was written as the concept of Arts Emergency Service was gestating. The critics loved it, with some saying she was unexpectedly filling a gap where political comedy should have been.
"I'm just [trying] really hard not to be shit," Long says half-seriously. "I didn't intentionally start doing shows [that were political]. I just always believed that if I said what I really cared about I would build the right audience. That's why this last show felt totally a part of all the other ones."
Whatever Long may have felt she was doing, there is a sense of someone who has put herself in the firing line – right in the middle of one of the most contentious issues of the day. When she first began mooting her views on the cuts and on education policy on Twitter, she was slightly thrown by the "massive resentment" of many of those who responded.
"What's been really upsetting has been getting loads of people saying things like 'Why should I pay for other people to flit around?' The idea is that you would want to [pay tax to fund education] because you feel responsible for everyone else in a society. I feel old-fashioned because that's what I care about and believe in."
As she toured the country after the Edinburgh festival, Long, whose comedy is not the sort that tends to attract hecklers, found herself on the receiving end of some aggressive challenges. She recounts how one punter shouted that she shouldn't be able to rant about government policy without any balance. "I was like, 'yes I fucking can, it's my gig you prick'.
"There are people who don't like me because of a [comedy] aesthetic," Long adds, shrugging her shoulders. "But what I've encountered recently – which I've not really encountered before – is that I've made people angry and upset. That's been really hard to deal with and quite sad."
But if it has been tough, it also seems to have reinforced her view that, with a few notable exceptions such as Mark Thomas, the contemporary scene is failing to embrace political satire.
"I feel like there's been a real aggressive attempt to make comedy apolitical and to send it back to pre-alternative comedy. A lot of the mainstream shows are just men coming on and going 'Oh this is crap isn't it I hate my wife' and that's been quite tedious."
Does she worry that by venturing beyond comedy and setting up a grassroots project – and one that could ironically be heralded by the Tories as a prime example of the "big society" in operation – potentially opens her up to accusations of naivety? "I would rather do something now than look back in 10 years and [realise] that I hadn't done anything. I feel like I won't be able to sleep at night unless I'm articulating these things at every opportunity and doing everything that I can."
Then does she at least acknowledge that she's taken on a very ambitious task? Yes, she says, but that is beside the point. "We've got a lot of righteous indignation. It's fuel. And I think the government is going to keep giving us fuel for at least the next four and a half years. If in five years' time we have paid for even one person to go through university to study an arts degree, that would be wonderful."
As the teachers' union conferences loom, a row is brewing with the government over academies
As the schools minister, Nick Gibb, travels north this week to address the annual teachers' union conferences, he might sense a hint of tension in the air.
Up to now, union leaders say, relations with the coalition government have been cordial, if inconsequential. But a row is brewing which could mean that instead of locking horns over coffee and biscuits, officials and ministers could soon find themselves doing battle in the courts.
The general secretary of the NASUWT teachers union, Chris Keates, has been embroiled in an increasingly fraught exchange of letters and meetings over pay and conditions for teachers working at academies that now looks likely to result in legal action. And the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL) is threatening to go to law over the same issue.
Underlying their growing sense of frustration is a novel problem. While previous education ministers – both Labour and Conservative – were sometimes publicly bullish in their approach to the unions, the current crop are both urbane and accessible. But the end result, the unions say, is much the same.
"They are very charming and polite, and they listen – and then they carry on," says Mary Bousted, general secretary of the ATL, whose conference started yesterday in Liverpool and will be addressed by Gibb tomorrow. "It's like tanks rolling over your lawn. There's never any ceasefire; there's never a chance to map out the lie of the land – they just carry on, and they are going to be left with many unintended consequences."
She says her representations about synthetic phonics, the reform of the national curriculum and free schools have all yielded little or nothing in terms of policy change. But the real flashpoint between the government and unions concerns academies.
It all started when the NASUWT wrote to schools that were considering becoming academies, asking them to sign up to an agreement that their teachers would continue to work under national pay and conditions. Lord Hill, the minister responsible for academies, responded with his own letter to the same schools in December last year, telling them to ignore the NASUWT's demands.
But the philosophy behind academies is all about giving schools greater freedom to run themselves and Hill said there was no requirement to reach such agreements. Furthermore, he hinted, ministers might even turn down schools for academy status if they declared themselves happy to stick with national pay agreements.
"We consider the ability to set the pay and conditions of staff to be one of the key freedoms of academy status," he wrote in a letter passed to the Guardian by the union. "Consequently, the existence of any such agreement will be a significant factor in the assessment the secretary of state will make before deciding whether or not to enter into a funding agreement for an academy."
Unsurprisingly, the letter drew an angry response from NASUWT, which has accused Hill of encouraging schools to flout the law – schools must consult teachers' representatives about any change to their terms and conditions. In a missive peppered with words such as "ludicrous", "astonished" and "unprecedented", Keates warned him that schools that failed to consult unions about academy plans faced possible legal action.
"We are evaluating schools' procedures against whether they are meeting a test of public law, and we are not going to pull back – they could face judicial review or an employment tribunal, because Lord Hill's letter was wrong," she says.
"It's perfectly appropriate for the government to write to schools saying: 'We want to remind you you don't have to enter into an agreement with the unions.' But it isn't appropriate for it to then say: 'What's more you shouldn't, and some action will follow if you do.' That's where it oversteps the line."
The government's response has been intransigent. Keates met the education secretary, Michael Gove, last month to discuss the issue, but saw no signs of a concession: "Basically, we got no clear answers. What we have done is to go back to our counsel, who is reviewing the situation."
Both the NASUWT and the ATL are now preparing to launch legal cases against schools that fail to consult them fully on plans to convert to academy status.
Meanwhile, the National Union of Teachers (NUT) will gather for its annual conference in Harrogate on Friday, with no expectation of a ministerial visit – it is many years since the NUT invited a government spokesperson to address its delegates.
The NUT's relations with the current crop of ministers have been polite but unproductive, says Christine Blower, NUT general secretary. And, as with the other unions, the issue of academies is causing concern. Earlier this month, new figures revealed that one secondary school in six is now an academy, and many more are in the process of conversion.
"All the unions, ourselves more than most, were highly critical of the unseemly haste with which the coalition put through the Academies Act when it first came into office. That meant they set off on the wrong path with us," Blower says. "Michael Gove is courteous in the sense that he listens, but whether he actually hears what we're saying is a different matter. We have significant differences with him on a number of issues, including academies and free schools, the English baccalaureate and the use of synthetic phonics."
She warns that the issue of academies, in particular, is likely to lead to protests by teachers: "There is, of course, a risk that there might be industrial action about academy status, because none of the unions support it."
Threats of legal or industrial action are nothing new, of course – they happened under the last Labour government, too. John Bangs, former head of education at the NUT and now a senior research associate at the University of Cambridge, says that in some ways the unions' relationships with Labour were even more fraught.
"I don't think Labour does pluralism very well," he says. "I think they believe the trade unions to be part of the family, so if they are being oppositional, they get upset. Looking back over 20 years of working with secretaries of state and ministers, it all revolves around individual personalities. Some ministers will go out of their way to talk to the unions, and some won't. I suspect Michael Gove is probably quite interested in what teachers have to say."
A Department for Education (DfE) press officer said he didn't feel able to comment on union complaints that its ministers were not listening. Nor did the DfE respond to a request to defend the legality of Hill's suggestion that he might refuse academy status to schools that signed agreements with the unions.
"The ability for academies to set their own pay and conditions for staff is one of the key freedoms of academy status," Hill said in a statement. "In response to questions from schools over communications from NASUWT on the academy conversion process, we have written to clarify that there is absolutely no requirement for any school taking up the academy freedoms to enter into an agreement with the union to maintain national pay and conditions."
Keates remains unimpressed, though. Despite all the outward cordiality – Gibb will address her union's conference in Glasgow this weekend – she does not predict an early end to hostilities. In general, the unions' relations with the new government have been far less productive than with the old one, she claims.
"It's markedly different from the conversation we had with the last government," she says. "I wouldn't want to give the impression our relationship with them was all smiley meetings, and that if we asked for something we got it. But I would say we had some common ground. And they had a genuine willingness to actually listen.
"Now you can meet ministers, but the question is, are they listening? And if they aren't listening, it means deep down they don't really think we've got anything to contribute. That's the only impression you can come away with."
Colleges are training stewards for London 2012 in a link-up with the security industry
If you're planning to fetch up at any of the Olympic or Paralympic venues next summer, it's likely that sporting prowess rather than security concerns will be at the forefront of your mind.
But ensuring that London 2012 events are safe for spectators and competitors will require about 10,000 security personnel, which poses something of a challenge for organisers – where are all these qualified stewards going to come from?
Further education colleges are providing the answer.
Uzi Khan, 18, is studying for a level 3 BTec in health and social care at North Hertfordshire College. He has also got a weekend job that he loves, as a bouncer – or door supervisor, to give it its more formal title – at a local pub.
Khan is one of 85,000 college students and unemployed people who have undertaken accredited security industry training over the last two years in an initiative spearheaded by North Hertfordshire College. Known as Bridging the Gap, the scheme is a partnership between the Games organisers, UK security industry representative bodies and North Hertfordshire College to bring thousands of new recruits into the security industry in time for the Games next July.
Students who complete the basic course in understanding security at spectator events (USSE), usually offered alongside their core college curriculum, can then go on to gain the more rigorous door supervisor qualification.
"We start with 16-year-olds who do the USSE training while they're in full-time education," explains Michael Wright, executive director for education at Bridging the Gap. "Usually the course is offered to students studying on public services courses or those with a public service aspect." It is a qualification that makes them "instantly employable", he says.
Khan has passed both qualifications and says he'll definitely apply for a job at the Games – security is one of the few paid, rather than volunteer, short-term roles available.
"On the first course, the most interesting part was the real-life scenarios we studied and the roleplay," says Khan.
"We also looked at how things shouldn't be managed, like a football stadium when it collapsed and door supervisors when they cause conflict and end up in court."
In addition to his weekend job, Khan recently volunteered as a steward at a conference that explored the role of further and higher education providers in London 2012. The work experience he has gained has developed his confidence, interpersonal skills and initiative, he says – all qualities that should make him attractive to any employer, and not just those in the security sector.
"It's such a great job, security," enthuses fellow student Josh Rothon, 17, who is studying for a BTec in public services at East Norfolk College. He hopes to work either in the security industry or to join the army. Having completed both qualifications, he's now just waiting for his door supervisor's badge to come through.
"The courses were brilliant. We did a lot about teamwork, and it built your confidence up, which is what you need in security," he says.
"The most interesting part was when we went to the Norfolk Show as stewards to get practical experience. Dealing with the public meant we met lots of colourful characters. We did the Great British Cycle Race too, which involved basic stewarding duties, handling the car park and entrances, and giving directions."
Much of the training, Rothon explains, "is to help you avoid getting on people's nerves, and learn to be calm in how you talk to people". He has also learned how to evaluate body language to predict how a crowd might react.
The opportunity to enhance students' future employability is what most interested Fintan Donohue, principal of North Hertfordshire College, when he was first approached with the idea of colleges providing training in the security skills required for London 2012.
"I had no idea of how transformational it could be for FE students," he explains. "But the Olympics contractor, G4S, is the second largest private employer in the world – and at that point we had no relationship with them. Now, some 8,000 college students will be employed by them."
But the "real legacy story", he says, is that the initiative is connecting young people to part-time employment and training in tough economic times.
The wages for part-time work aren't at all bad for a student trying to augment their income, says Khan – between £8 and £15 an hour depending on the role.
And although the image of security may need a bit of burnishing (Khan acknowledges that doormen, for instance, often have a poor reputation), there is no doubt that the sector offers fascinating career options. G4S protects rock stars and sport stars, secures iconic buildings, ensures safety at ports and airports, and manages the security at major entertainment, political and business events worldwide.
With opportunities for international travel, excitement, variety and responsibility, it is hardly surprising that Khan has been keen to gain further qualifications in first aid, drugs awareness, child protection, safeguarding and behavioural management to boost his CV.
But how are qualified students going to get jobs at the Games? Part of the deal with colleges is that any FE student who has completed the USSE qualification and wants to apply for a security job at London 2012 is guaranteed an interview. Those who are selected will participate in some of the 40 live test events that will take place before the Games kick off.
Kim Barry, 19, who is currently studying uniformed public services at Fareham College, is hoping that she'll get the chance to try out for an Olympics role.
She did her USSE work experience at a football match. "It was overwhelming! I won't lie, we were all nervous beforehand and really on our toes. But the atmosphere, the crowd, you just go away buzzing."
There's likely to be a similar buzz, she says, when she volunteers as a steward later this month at the royal wedding. Barry, Khan and Rothon are all clearly grasping the opportunity they have been given with both hands, but, says Donohue, there's a long-term vision for this model of training FE students in industry-accredited qualifications that goes beyond the security sector – in events, catering and technology.
"If we get this right we believe that industry employers will come to colleges over the next decade, as a single point where they can recruit," he says. "It has the potential to create a prototype and to transform the relationship between industries and colleges."
The government is railroading schools into becoming academies and directing what subjects they teach through the English baccalaureate, despite the rhetoric on autonomy
The Easter school holidays are a landmark – and I am not thinking about the build-up to the royal wedding. At their annual conferences, the teacher unions will get their first chance since the general election to voice collective opposition to the coalition government's policies.
But while they are busy condemning the spread of academies and free schools, headteachers and governors will be using the holiday period to ponder whether to join the growing rush towards academy status.
By the time schools return from the holidays, the first anniversary of the coalition government will be virtually upon us. And, make no mistake, for all the talk about boosting school autonomy and ending central interference, it is becoming clear that this government is driving extensive change in the school system.
Twenty years ago, on becoming education secretary Kenneth Clarke complained that "half the levers are missing". He felt unable to affect what happened in thousands of individual schools. Today the levers are all there, and Michael Gove is pulling them like an enthusiastic railway controller.
In particular, he is using the two most powerful levers: finance and accountability targets. Let's begin with finance. The biggest change to the school system right now is the conversion to academy status.
Last month, a poll conducted by the Association of School and College Leaders showed that almost half of secondary schools had either converted or were actively considering doing so. A further 34% of school leaders were undecided, and only 19% remained defiantly against the change.
And what was driving all these schools to consider becoming academies? Of those considering change, 72% said they believed it would help them financially. Only 24% were motivated by dissatisfaction with their local authority.
Headteachers I speak to are quite clear that academy status offers a financial cushion to soften the hard landing that is coming with the April budgets.
Soon, a tipping point will be reached and even the most reluctant will feel unable to resist the tide. Once several large secondary schools have converted, taking their share of central budgets, a local authority will be unable to support those schools that remain.
This is the fear of many primary heads. They do not want to convert, but see an inevitability to it. Anticipating this, some councils even suggested that their schools should convert en masse.
I predict that by the next general election most schools will have become academies. This will be the coalition government's big legacy, far more significant than the relative sideshow of free schools.
And while academy status will benefit many schools, I predict casualties. There have always been some schools that have gone off the rails, but local authorities were usually there to pick up the pieces. In a fragmented, cash-squeezed system, more schools will hit trouble, and who will step in to save them?
Now it could be argued that we are only getting what we voted for. The Conservative 2010 manifesto promised every school "the chance to achieve academy status". But it was meant to be permissive; no one warned schools they would feel stampeded to convert.
The Liberal Democrats would prefer to forget that their manifesto promised to replace academies with their own model of "sponsor-managed schools" commissioned by and accountable to local authorities.
Meanwhile, the other big lever, accountability, is driving curriculum and classroom reform. With the Ebacc, Michael Gove can shape what pupils are taught. It will be much more influential than the national curriculum review, which can be ignored by academies.
Schools are changing their timetable options and focusing their teaching resources to maximise Ebacc scores. It has some positive aspects, not least as a guarantee of minimum curriculum entitlement. But, once again, a Whitehall lever is replacing what should be a local judgment of what is right for particular pupils.
Many other levers have been pulled over the last year: IGCSEs, the pupil premium, discipline rules, the cull of Building Schools for the Future and quangos, and the withdrawal of support for diplomas. All do rather more than just "nudge" change in schools.
So, as we approach the government's first anniversary, be in no doubt that elections do matter and that governments can direct change, even when their rhetoric is all about school autonomy.
University of the Arts London and other major arts colleges forced to look elsewhere for funding as cuts hit
The University of the Arts London (UAL), England's largest art and design university, should be planning the launch of its new state-of-the-art campus in King's Cross, which is due to open in September.
But this has been marred by a collapse in its public funding, which has led UAL to embark on a radical restructure of its courses.
Set to lose more than £50m in public funding by 2015, the university, which comprises six colleges including Central Saint Martins (which is moving to the new campus), Chelsea College of Art and Design and the London College of Fashion (LCF), is having to think creatively about how it might secure its financial future.
Among other things, it is looking to set up courses in China and the Middle East while amalgamating three of its loss-making further education foundation courses and expanding its range of more lucrative postgraduate degrees.
It is not the only major art and design school under financial pressure. Goldsmiths also faces the loss of its teaching budget as it only runs arts and humanities courses, which have been particularly hard hit by the funding cuts.
The postgraduate Royal College of Art (RCA) plans to increase student numbers by 50% over the next three years to increase its income.
But of the big London art schools, UAL faces perhaps the greatest challenge. A relatively new university, it has undergone a series of significant structural changes, including the recent amalgamation of Byam Shaw School of Art and Central Saint Martins (CSM).
Nigel Carrington, rector of the UAL, admits the university is in a challenging financial position. Not only is it set to lose almost all its public funding for teaching over the next three years, but like other universities set up after 1992, it has already lost millions of pounds of research funding.
"There is a complete collapse of funding for universities like this," says Carrington. "We have to assume we are being privatised. We will have virtually no public funding at all by 2015. We have £52m of teaching funding at the moment. We expect all but £1m-£2m of that to have gone by 2015."
Over the last three years, he says, the institution has been hit hard by pretty much every budget cut, including a loss of just over 34% of its government funding for the coming academic year.
Last week, UAL announced its undergraduate fees would be £9,000 a year from 2012. Carrington says there isn't much choice; by 2015, 75% of its income will come directly from its 20,000 students and only about 5-7% will come from the public sector.
"It would be impossible for us to charge £6,000, given the high cost of running technical workshops and providing studio space in central London. We're about to see a massive capital budget cut when we need to refurbish several of our sites."
UAL has already taken "a huge number of efficiencies," he says, including a redundancy programme that should shave about £4.5m from staff costs.
As well as expanding its overseas and postgraduate provision, plans include scaling back loss-making courses (including art foundation courses); amalgamating technical and support services, and expanding its short taught courses, which bring in about £10m a year. But Carrington admits that moving from "a public sector institution into an entrepreneurial institution" won't be easy.
Efforts will be focused on maintaining UAL's high number of international students, who make up a quarter of the total. The London College of Fashion ran courses in Dubai last year aimed at attracting students to study in the UK. China is the next target – Carrington notes that the Chinese are "furiously building" art and design schools in a bid to stem the flow of young talent to the west.
"We are looking at whether we can teach something like a foundation [art foundation course] in China," he explains. "Those who either can't or don't want to come here straight after school can do a course offshore, which is then quickly topped up here and then they go straight into our undergraduate courses. We're not looking to set up an overseas campus – we're looking at sending staff over."
This plan is likely to prove controversial. The foundation course in art and design at the London College of Fashion is due to close in May, while from September, Camberwell, Chelsea and Wimbledon foundation students will all be taught at a new venue in Camberwell, with the aim of steering them into UAL undergraduate courses rather than studying at rival art and design institutions.
But Susan Collins, director of the Slade School of Fine Art, part of University College London (UCL), is concerned that this will reduce access to degree courses. "Our worry is that getting rid of foundation courses is going to turn higher education into an inverted pyramid," she says.
Meanwhile, UAL is increasing its postgraduate portfolio, including a fashion MBA, while CSM will run six master's courses, three practice-based MAs, including one in art and science, and three research-based MRes courses. Carrington also warns that postgraduate fees will jump to be the same as or slightly higher than those for undergraduate degrees as they are set to lose all their funding for new entrants from 2012.
But with students set to amass far greater debts due to rising undergraduate fees, UAL is trying to design courses that give students more time to work, not least because its students also have substantial material costs.
Its taught master's degree programmes are increasingly what are known as "extended mode" courses, running two to three days a week over two years – putting them somewhere between a traditional part-time course and a full-time course. For example, the new photography MA will run on 3.5 days in the first year and 2.5 in the second, charging £3,800 per year – compared with £7,500 for the full-time MA at the RCA or £6,000 at the London College of Communication.
Mark Dunhill, the dean of fine arts at CSM, believes scholarships, bursaries and subsidised accommodation should be on offer for less well-off students to ensure art and design does not become "the preserve of the wealthy".
He also believes arts institutions should be running more short courses and evening classes and offering modules that allow students to build up credits over a longer period of time as is common in the US. "There, they could choose whether they wanted to take a class in the morning or in the evening or do a 'minimester' in the summer. So maybe a kind of mixed economy, a mix of pay as you go and a loan."
While Dunhill is reasonably optimistic that UAL and other big-name art and design colleges will adapt to the new market, he fears some non-specialist universities may dump departments to cut costs. "There's a danger we could dismantle art education in response to market demand. To be honest, I think everyone is in a state of shock. I don't think anyone believed this could happen. It's such an assault on the success UK art schools have demonstrated over the past 20 years."
'Blended learning' – combining face-to-face sessions with online work and forums – is one of the fastest-growing trends in education
When Melanie Liley donned mortarboard and gown to graduate with a degree in business studies last week, it was the end of five years of juggling essays and revision with a full-time job in marketing.
And, thanks to blended learning – one of the fastest-growing trends in education – Liley did it all without taking a day off work. "Blended learning meant I could squeeze the degree into my spare time, and study whenever I wanted, but still receive personalised advice and help from tutors and other students," she explains.
Blended learning describes courses that mix classroom-based education with distance learning, often via online features that allow students to receive tailored help from tutors, such as online forums, video conferencing and internet telephony technology such as Skype.
Liley began blended learning after spending a year on a traditional course studying marketing and English at Keele University in Staffordshire. "I was having a really good time and learning a huge amount," she says. "But in my first summer off, I got a marketing role working for Triumph motorcycles and, at the end of the holiday, the company offered me the position of marketing manager. It was too good an opportunity to turn down, so I decided to leave university. But I realised that for a good career, I'd need a degree. So after researching the options online, I found out about blended learning on the Open University's business course. It really appealed to me as I could fit studies into my own time around work."
Liley spent about 12 hours a week studying, both after work and at the weekend, but wasn't always toiling alone with textbooks. "I'd find it really hard to do it just that way," she says. "Instead, there was a really good focus on mixing up the way you learn, speaking to tutors by phone and email, using chat forums, and face-to-face study sessions. I met up with tutors and other students six times during my course. That helped hugely – you can't pick up everything from a book or even an online tutorial. I stored up lots of questions and blitzed my tutors with them all in one go."
"I struggled with the finance part of my course, so the forums were really helpful. Other students would respond, saying things like, 'I look at it this way, maybe it can help you'. Blended learning was crucial to helping me get my degree while working, and now I'm graduating with five years' full-time work experience, too."
Next year's increase in tuition fees is expected to fuel demand for alternative ways of obtaining a degree, particularly options that allow students to work at the same time. Blended learning is top of the agenda for many of the private education providers who are set to become big players in the UK when the government implements its plans to open up higher education to a wider range of providers. The white paper on the issue is to be published over the next few months. For students such as Liley, the days of distance learning being a one-way stream of static study materials and mailed essays are over.
The OU – the UK's biggest distance learning provider – already has 7,000 academics hosting tutorials in person, marking online assignments and teaching live sessions on the internet – often in unusual ways. The university's science courses, for example, use a "virtual microscope" application, where students and tutors look at tissue samples together, with the technology able to change the lighting conditions and "move" the samples around as if under a real microscope.
"Students come together through organised face-to-face events, but the convenience of not having to travel to classes means that online ones are appealing to a growing number of our learners," says Niall Sclater, director of learning innovation at the university. "A lot of language tuition takes place using audio conferencing, and the mathematicians teach classes using shared whiteboards which are visible on students' home computers, talking to students as they reveal one line of an equation at a time."
Even hands-on courses are now being studied at a distance with the help of blended learning. The University of Northumbria runs a practical anatomy postgraduate certificate for health workers: it's all online apart from a summer school.
Many universities are now opting to teach modules to distance learners at the same time as traditional students to help avoid isolation. Birkbeck College, University of London, is one of them. "Distance learning students are encouraged to join in the face-to-face activities as much as possible," says spokeswoman Bryony Merritt. "From attending lectures and field classes to coming to Saturday sessions, revision classes and making other visits, for example for social events. It encourages a sense of belonging."
Blended learning has also become a key way for universities to attract international students. Students on Portsmouth University's master's in international criminal justice include a Japanese postgraduate working for an international NGO in Afghanistan, a Czech student working for a victim support agency in London, and British police officers working in the UK, Europe and North America. They meet each other and tutors for a two-day induction session at the university before dispersing around the world and working using virtual classrooms.
Similarly, current graduates on the screenwriting master's at Bournemouth University are studying from as far afield as Japan, Sri Lanka and Germany. The course content includes online lectures, seminars and discussions via web forums.
Throughout the two-year part-time course there are four residential stays at Bournemouth's Media School, with five days of workshops, seminars, lectures and networking opportunities each time.
Blended learning is booming as higher education becomes more demand-focused. London South Bank University sends professors from its faculty of business around the country as it guarantees at least three contact days for distance learners each academic year. "We go to venues near them – Edinburgh, Belfast, Manchester, Sheffield, Newcastle, Birmingham, Bristol and Plymouth, as well as London," says Nigel Scott, course director. "Blended learning suits those whose role requires travel or absence during the academic year, plus those who prefer to learn at their own pace."
Free schools, secular education and Middle East studies
Last week Sara Gaines reported on growing interest from the independent sector on converting to free schools.
Would you believe it? Michael Gove is nationalising all the private schools! Seriously though, those fee-paying parents must be laughing their way to the bank. We are certainly all in this together! No soul searching by Moorlands school (Luton) parents about their £6,000-a-year fees being paid out of the free meals budget. Chokes, doesn't it?
Keith F Cox,
Bedfordshire
• So Gove wants to help out a generation of parents by enabling them to continue attending fee-paying schools but with the state paying their fees – to the detriment of the rest of the schools budget.
Where is this additional funding coming from to fund these pupils who currently do not require public funding? Of course, all their siblings are likely to now get preferential entry into these schools. How is Gove planning to guarantee the funding that will allow class sizes of 18, something that small maintained schools cannot afford? Why should already privileged children get this benefit? How is this a good way to spend taxpayers' money – and don't we deserve to know exactly how much is being spent?
JudgeMental11 via EducationGuardian.co.uk
• Gove and his coalition cronies will come up with any stupid gimmick to distract attention away from the fact that they have no real education policies but want all schools to fall into the "open market" where anything goes, profit-making is the main driver, and schooling just becomes another utility to be bought and sold like some shoddy commodity. Hence, the fruitcake schools wanting to become free schools, keep their charitable status, and claw away large chunks of the monies directed to ordinary state schools.
blackfirscharlie via EducationGuardian.co.uk
What an awfully sad article ("I've never really met any Christians", 12 April) about the primary school children who had to be brought together in an artificial environment so that they could at least meet a similar-age child from a different faith. This is an indictment of us all in the way we deliberately neglect our children's wellbeing and their future security by forcing them to live a good part of their childhood in environments that promote difference and are based on religious dogma. A civilised society should insist on a free secular education that promotes intellectual curiosity and builds emotional resilience for all children in schools nearest to their homes. Anything less than that is a scandal of national neglect.
Shirley Williams,
Stockport
Harriet Swain's article "Lessons on Israel" (12 April) carries the lead-in: "A new association aims to fulfil growing demand from students for knowledge about the Middle East". If that is the case, why does it promote Israel studies rather than Middle East studies? And if it is neutral with regard to Israel/Palestine, then why is the European Association of Israel Studies not called the European Association of Israel/Palestine since 1948 studies? The backer of the new Soas Israel studies posts, the Pears Foundation, is said to be rooted in Jewish (not Middle Eastern or Palestinian) values; the foundation's attitude towards Zionism is not mentioned. One can only speculate.
Sophie Richmond,
London N8
This letter has been amended to read "the new Soas Israel studies posts", rather than LSE, which it said originally.
What do the Chinese like about Europe? Researchers hope the answers will improve our relationship with them
David Beckham is an icon. Louis Vuitton handbags are a "must have" (but not necessarily among football fans) and sales of the latest Volkswagen Golf GTi are buoyant. Welcome to Communist China in the second decade of the 21st century. A new research project suggests that football, cars and fashion are what intrigue the Chinese most about Europe. Next up is perfume, historical sites, music, film, nature, technology and beer.
More than 3,000 Chinese citizens were asked how they see Europeans and the European Union as part of a project known as Chinese Views of the EU, funded by £1.4m from the European Commission's research support programme. The programme is being led by the University of Nottingham working with researchers in universities in Beijing, Leiden in the Netherlands and Bremen in Germany.
The researchers point out that consumerism hasn't completely taken over Chinese consciousness, as more than half of the respondents said they like European ideas of democracy. But there may still be some way to go: when respondents were asked to name European historical figures they knew, Napoleon Bonaparte, Adolf Hitler, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin and Karl Marx topped the list.
While the main part of the study concentrated on the city dwellers, a separate survey of 700 or so government officials, NGOs, business people and media people showed better knowledge of the EU.
"The greater the knowledge of European procedures, the greater the tendency to be positive about the EU," says Richard Pascoe, consultant to and former director of Nottingham University's China Policy Institute. "The survey suggests that if we engage more effectively with Chinese people, they will have a more positive view of Europe."
Beckham may not have made it on to the list of historical figures, but the Chinese are certainly seduced by the magnetism of his instantly recognisable image. "Premier League and European Champions League have been beamed into bars as well as homes across China for some time," says Pascoe, who set up the project three years ago. Replica shirts with footballers Wayne Rooney and Lionel Messi's names on the back are worn, as well as woven, in China.
Dr Jasmine Zhang Li, a research fellow at Nottingham University's School of Contemporary Chinese Studies, says there is a rapidly growing urban middle class with spending power. "Louis Vuitton handbags are mostly bought by Chinese tourists. Like anything with a Burberry label, it's a very popular brand."
Cars that were once made in Europe are popular, too. "Almost all the European motor companies have joint ventures in China and well over 1,500 cars are sold in Beijing in any one day," she says.
But, as ever, progress can have downsides. "That's why the streets are so congested," says Pascoe, who is old enough to remember a very different China. He went there first as an undergraduate in the mid 1970s, when the Pudong district of Shanghai was made up of rice fields and a ferry terminal rather than "a forest of skyscrapers". Back then, you wouldn't have been allowed to conduct a survey like this, he says. "And even if you had been, all the answers would have been the same, as everybody would have parroted the Communist party line. Otherwise, they would have been arrested and sent to a prison camp. Nowadays you can get honest answers, as people are not afraid any more."
But social networking sites are still banned, and the Chinese government has put in place a sophisticated censorship mechanism to block comment on controversial topics such as Tibet and Tiananmen Square. But Pascoe says the Chinese have not totally missed out on the internet explosion. "It's not democracy as we would understand it," he says, "but this amazing forum for communication and debate has had a hugely positive impact on the way people can express their opinions."
Yet there are still big differences between Chinese and European culture. "We are prone to constantly misunderstanding one another," he says. "There was virtually no contact between us for 2,000 years and then, as soon as there was, it quickly became a clash of civilisations in which, as the Chinese see it, the warlike Europeans got the upper hand and started to colonise chunks of Chinese cities such as Shanghai, Tianjin and Guangzhou."
According to Pascoe, Chinese people have long memories and still see us Europeans as being quite aggressive. But, the research shows, there is a certain fondness for all things European, which could be capitalised on. "The EU needs to tap in more to this reservoir of goodwill. But you can't improve a relationship unless you make a real effort to understand the other side and take the trouble to work out why they think what they think. That's what this project is all about."