Surgeons compile review of the literature on foreign bodies recovered from patients' rectums
In 1995, the Ig Nobel Prize in literature was awarded to two surgeons who painstakingly assembled a study called Rectal Foreign Bodies: Case Reports and a Comprehensive Review of the World's Literature. Those case reports involve, among other items: seven light bulbs; a knife sharpener; two flashlights; a wire spring; a snuff box; an oil can with potato stopper; 11 different forms of fruits, vegetables and other foodstuffs; a jeweller's saw; a frozen pig's tail; a tin cup; a beer glass; and one patient's remarkable ensemble collection consisting of spectacles, a suitcase key, a tobacco pouch and a magazine.
The doctors, David B Busch and James R Starling of Madison, Wisconsin, were inspired by one of their own patients: "A 39-year-old married white male lawyer presented with a self-inserted perfume bottle in his rectum that he was unable to remove using various objects, including a back scratcher."
Starling and Busch explored medical archives. They found accounts of "approximately 700 identified objects recovered from approximately 200 patients".
They took note of a 1937 Kentucky Medical Journal report that described the "insertion of a light bulb into a 52-year-old grandfather by several inebriated 'friends'".
Their attention was caught by a "case of suspected misreporting of an assault" described in a 1934 New York State Journal of Medicine article: "A 54-year-old married man admitted to self-insertion of two apples, having previously complained of assault by several men involving forced insertion of a vegetable (one cucumber and one parsnip)."
Busch and Starling explain that in many cases, patients will misreport certain aspects. "This appears to be a means of coping with the embarrassment," they write. "Such patients should be treated with the utmost concern and tact, keeping in mind the great embarrassment they feel."
A 1928 American Journal of Surgery article described a "patient who admitted to self-insertion of a lemon and a cold cream jar and stated that a drug clerk had advised him to use lemon juice and cold cream for relief of haemorrhoids, which were not found on examination". A 1935 report in the same journal concerned a patient who "presented with a broken broom handle, stating that he was using the object to massage his own prostate, a service allegedly rendered twice a week by his physician when the patient had more money". In 1932, The Illinois Medical Journal described a patient who "reported self-insertion of two drinking glasses for relief of itching".
Drs Busch and Starling extracted not just information, but also practical advice, some of which I will describe here next week.
• Marc Abrahams is editor of the bimonthly Annals of Improbable Research and organiser of the Ig Nobel prize. The Ig Nobels show is currently touring the UK. For dates and information go to http://improbable.com/improbable-research-shows/ig-uk-tour
The Public Libraries & Museums Act 1964 is the law that makes public libraries a statutory service. It requires local authorities to provide a comprehensive and efficient public library service.
The information on this web page relates to England. As public libraries are a devolved matter for CILIP, contact CILIP in Scotland, CILIP Cymru/Wales, CILIP in Ireland for information relating to those nations. You can show your support for libraries in Scotland through lovescottishlibraries.org
Local councils have to abide by this Act which makes public library services a statutory duty for local authorities. Councils must:
The Government superintends councils' role and has a duty to:
This role is currently undertaken by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS). The Secretary of State of the DCMS is Jeremy Hunt. The Minister responsible for libraries (the Minister for Culture, Communications & the Creative Industries) is Ed Vaizey.
The statutory duties imposed by the Act are important because:
In 2011 the Department of Communities and Local Government asked for comments on the statutory duties placed on local government (including those fconcerning libraries) and received over 6,000 responses. The review has noww closed. Any future cosinderations about whether to remove specific duties will involve further consultation.
To a question in the House of Lords in June 2011, Baroness Hanham, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Communities and Local Government stated that: "The Government have no intention to remove statutory protection where this will have a negative impact on the services provided to the public. Such protections that will rightly remain include, for example, services for vulnerable children...allotments and libraries."
We have sent an 
open letter to Ed Vaizey urging him to make it clear to the DCLG that there is a continuing need for the public library duties. We have reminded him how much public concern there is over the future of public libraries.
We published a statement on the position of the public library service in England (on Save our Libraries Day 5 February 2011).
In 2010 we revised and sent out to all local authorities our guidelines on what makes a good public library service.
As local councils have announced cuts and closures of public libraries, local campaigns (and CILIP in our public libraries statement) have called for the Secretary of State to use his powers to intervene. However, to date he has not.
Find out more about local campaigns on Public Libraries News and Voices for the Library websites.
CILIP was involved in the Wirral Inquiry. CILIP referred Wirral MBC to the DCMS with a recommendation that the Minister investigate its proposals to close 11 libraries. In 2009, the Government conducted a formal public inquiry into Wirral Council's changes to its library service. The Inquiry was led by Sue Charteris.
The Inquiry found that Wirral had been in breach of its statutory duties to provide comprehensive and efficient public library services and had failed to make an assessment of local needs and did not have a strategic plan or review for the library service.
Wirral withdrew its proposal to close 11 libraries. The Wirral Inquiry report remains an important document that sets out, for instance, the need for a library strategy based on an analysis and assessment of local needs.
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Academics have been working on the technology that could end the agony of goal-line injustices
• Great goals that were disallowed
Ever since Frank Lampard's should-have-been-a-goal shot bounced behind the line before being disallowed at the England v Germany World Cup tie last summer, fans have condemned the organising body, Fifa, for its technophobia. Some 45 years earlier, England benefited from a linesman's decision to allow Geoff Hurst's dubious goal against Germany at Wembley and won the tournament. But the difference was that by 2010 Fifa could have invested in various types of goal-line technology.
Whether or not the football body takes action before the next World Cup, technology experts are feverishly working on new-generation devices . But much of that research does not happen in media powerhouses or big sport clubs – it is done by academics. And some of the leading experts are based on British campuses.
The University of Surrey's visual media research group is headed up by Professor Adrian Hilton. His team works on video analysis, computer graphics and animation techniques, and regularly works with broadcasters such as the BBC, as well as big film studios, to develop 3D techniques and graphics. One of Surrey's big areas of recent research was its collaboration with the BBC for its "iview" project, which allows sports pundits to analyse matches from a huge array of angles to get the best view.
"It works by using the footage streaming in from the usual 8-12 cameras around a stadium," Hilton explains. "From that, we use our scanning technology to reconstruct a 3D model of the scene, like a computer graphic, which commentators can use to render any viewpoint.
"So when they're talking about a particular instant in, say, a football game, they can view it from the sideline, or the referee's perspective, or the goalie's – even if there wasn't a camera there."
The technology is currently being trialled by the BBC, but, with Lampard's shot in mind, Hilton adds: "In principle the iview system can also solve specific goal-line issues, but the main reason it wasn't used in the World Cup was the approval of the governing bodies rather than the technology itself."
It's not all about football, however. The Surrey team is working with the BBC on technology for athletics fans, finessing a way to measure athletes' movements using footage from just one broadcast camera. "The aim is to allow overlay of 3D skeletal motion on the video footage and provide analysis of actor movement," says Hilton. "There's a big push for 3D broadcasting, but it normally needs a lot of extra cameras in order to create that all-round experience. Using our 3D resconstruction technology it's possible to make footage from a single camera into 3D afterwards. It's much cheaper."
Hilton's interest in 3D imaging began with his PhD in mechanical engineering. "I became interested in artificial intelligence and how people understand and navigate the real world through seeing and hearing," he says. He took up a research post in the computer vision group at Surrey, where he first created "hand-held" 3D capture technology, allowing users to measure 3D objects by running laser light across their surfaces. "The technology was commercialised, and used for automotive design and in entertainment industries," he says.
Animators, including those behind the BBC series Walking with Dinosaurs, paid the University of Surrey a license fee to use the technology. On Walking with Dinosaurs, artists made models of dinosaurs, with the 3D capture technology then used to create realistic animated models.
Next, Hilton worked on a way to capture 3D models of people from photos, eventually developing another spin-off company, AvatarMe. That was inovlved in making 3D avatars of real people to "walk into" popular video games. It was also used to create 3D avatars for over 250,000 visitors to the Millennium Dome exhibition.
Many of the blockbuster effects on films and TV are also a product of universities. "Most special effects in films probably have their origins in academic research," says Hilton.
The number of steps between academic research and its use in production makes it tough to identify the films that use Hilton's technology, but film production companies that use it had a hand in Avatar, Harry Potter and the recent Batman films.
Hilton is now working on ways to support the creation of digital "doubles" of actors in film production. "In films like Avatar, there was a requirement for visual effects that change the appearance of an actor after they have been filmed," he says. "We're investigating how to integrate 3D capture technologies into the established film production pipeline. But it's extremely challenging – the visual-effects have to be "photo-realistic" on the big screen, and the technologies have to work with existing production tools."
The university's work with film and TV firms echoes partnerships around the world. "Several US universities, including MIT, Stanford, Washington and Carnegie Mellon are involved in collaborations with the film industry, and the Max-Plank Institute in Germany and ETH Zurich are also active in reconstruction from video," says Hilton. "But our research has contributed advances at the leading edge of this field over the past decade, pioneering a number of new technologies."
However there may be obstacles ahead. The research is mainly paid for by UK or EU research agencies. "Support for academic research even in collaboration with industry is much more difficult to obtain in the current environment," Hilton admits. "Funding agencies are directing money towards strategic priorities. Support for the adventurous research, which has led to many of the advances we've made over the last ten to 15 years, has become relatively difficult to obtain."
Still, Hilton predicts more applications for his 3D model-making technology will emerge, perhaps including better-fitting jeans. "We're working with the London College of Fashion to make a low-cost recognition of 3D body shape to improve clothing shape design," he says. The Surrey academics are also in talks with big players in the UK games industry, looking at a way to create ever-more realistic animated interactive characters. The UK's "very strong creative industries ensure we are collaborating on challenging problems that make a real difference in industry."
Join CILIP and invest in your professional future. Membership provides a range of benefits that help develop your skills, keep your knowledge up to date and advance your career.
CILIP advocates the value of library and information professionals and the services they provide to the government, key agencies and the public.
Anyone with an interest in information, knowledge or libraries can join.
The benefits include:
Through membership you can gain internationally recognised qualifications and participate in a community of people who care about professional development.
Keep your skills and knowledge up-to-date through member-only content on the CILIP website, CILIP Update magazine, the latest titles from Facet Publishing, events and training courses.
By joining CILIP you are also investing in the future of the profession - you help us advocate the value of library and information professionals and the services they provide to the government, media and other key decision makers.
CILIP encourages people to consider a library and information career, to ensure that university courses meet the needs of employers, and to raise the status of all those who work in libraries and information.
If you have any questions about the benefits of membership contact the Membership Team.
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As senior managers are looking for more information about finance and costs, a fresh toolkit from JISC is helping them source hard evidence to support decision making.
The popular strategy infokit has been revamped to include a major new section on ‘business intelligence’ and the role it can play in enabling institutions to make informed evidence-based decisions.
Steve Bailey from JISC Infonet, the service that developed the kit, explained why this approach is becoming increasingly popular among institutions:
“Higher education is going through a great deal of change at the moment; consequently the need for institutions to have access to detailed and accurate information about their activities and the environment in which they operate has increased markedly.
“There are many routes available to an institution when seeking to improve their business intelligence capability and many potential pitfalls to avoid along the way. Hopefully through this infoKit we can help institutions to plan and implement their chosen business intelligence strategy as smoothly and productively as possible.”
The infokit also now includes the experiences of four institutions who used aspects of the Strategy infoKit within their institutions - the University of Sheffield, Edinburgh University, Cambridge Regional College and Beaumont College, Lancaster.
Each of these pilot institutions tried out aspects of the infokit in ‘real world’ contexts and their reflections have been integrated within the main infokit, as well as each being available for download in their entirety.
Beaumont College is one institution where senior staff have used the advice to inform their strategy planning meetings.
Rohan Slaughter, head of technology at Beaumont College said: "Having the kit as a reference point for everyone kept the task focussed, indeed the excellent structure of the kit was mentioned several times as being very useful. It was also noted by new leadership team members that the kit really helped them as they 'found their strategic feet' and provided a good way to benchmark their activity."
Access the Strategy infokit and related pilot resources
Visit the new business intelligence resource direct
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Facet Publishing has announced the release of E-books in Libraries: A practical guide, edited by Kate Price and Virginia Havergal, the first practical appraisal of e-books for library and information professionals.
CILIP Vice President Phil Bradley said, “Given the current controversies surrounding e-books - the formats, costs, availability and e-readers - this is a timely publication that considers their role within a library service. E-books are already proving very popular with all readers, but within a library environment they give the library service a perfect opportunity for outreach to their members. E-books provide access to reading materials for those people in society who are, for whatever reason, unable to visit a local library.”
Despite the fact that e-books have been in existence for decades in various guises and added to library collections for several years now, there has been a lack of published manuals on the subject. This is doubtless owing to the rapidly evolving nature of the market. There are now many different types of e-books and a bewildering number of business and access models to match.
The pace of change shows no sign of abating and there is an increasing amount of interest in e-books. What is needed is practical information to assist library and information professionals managing collections of e-books and doing their best to inform their users right now.
This book, the first of its kind to provide a practical appraisal of e-books, fills that need by addressing the key questions: Where do e-books come from and what are the key business models that support them? What needs to change before e-books become universally and easily used? What will the e-book landscape look like in ten years’ time? How can you be sure you are building a good collection that your users can access easily? What about money and budgets?
Phil Bradley continued, “E-Books in Libraries: A practical guide provides vital background information on their use as well as updating information professionals on those aspects of provision that must be taken into account. E-books really do need to be viewed in an entirely different way, since they are a new and increasingly important type of publication."
This book is a ready reference source for any library and information professional with an interest in e-books and their development. It will also be of interest to publishers, who need to be aware of the issues faced by libraries managing e-book collections, and will be of great value to students of librarianship and information studies, and those on publishing related courses.
E-books in Libraries: A practical guide is available in hard copy and will be one of the first Facet Publishing e-books when their e-book programme is launched in April 2011. A sample chapter and table of contents for this book are available from the Facet Publishing website. CILIP members receive a 20% discount on Facet books.
-ends-
Press contact:
James Williams, Marketing Manager, Facet Publishing
Tel: +44 (0)20 7255 0597
Email: james.williams@facetpublishing.co.uk
Notes to editors:
1. E-books in Libraries: A practical guide (March 2011; 368pp; paperback; 978-1-85604-572-8; £49.95) is published by Facet Publishing. It is available from Bookpoint Ltd, Mail Order Dept, 39 Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4TD | Tel: +44 (0)1235 827702 | Fax: +44 (0)1235 827703 | Email: facet@bookpoint.co.uk | Web: www.facetpublishing.co.uk. The book is available in the US and Canada from Neal-Schuman Publishers www.neal-schuman.com
2. Facet Publishing e-books (including this one) will be available from www.myilibrary.com and www.dawsonera.com from April 2011.
3. Facet Publishing, is the commercial publishing and bookselling arm of CILIP: the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals, is the leading publisher of books for library and information professionals worldwide. At the forefront of library and information development, Facet Publishing has a comprehensive list covering all the major areas of professional activity.
4. Virginia Havergal BA(Hons) MSc MEd FIFL is a Learning Centres and e-Resources Manager for Petroc, a further education college in Devon. Prior to this role she was an e-Learning Advisor with JISC, with a particular focus on Learning Resources.
Kate Price BA(Hons) MA MCLIP is Head of E-Strategy and Resources at the University of Surrey.
5. The contributors to this book are:
6. All titles are available at 20% discount to Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals members. Remember to quote your Membership Number if claiming the discount.
7. A sample chapter and table of contents for this book can be viewed at www.facetpublishing.co.uk/title.php?id=572-8
8. CILIP: the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals is the leading professional body for librarians, information specialists and knowledge managers. CILIP’s vision is a fair and economically prosperous society underpinned by literacy, access to information and the transfer of knowledge. CILIP is a registered charity, no. 313014. Visit www.cilip.org.uk for more information.
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JISC Inform 30 Spring 2011 is in a new interactive format full of video interviews, comment and advice on how digital technologies can help you address today's financial and business challenges in your college or university.
Professor Eric Thomas, vice-chancellor of the University of Bristol and keynote speaker at JISC’s annual conference next week, shares his views on why universities need to find a unique selling point in times of austerity.
The theme of leadership continues as Ewart Wooldridge, chief executive of the Leadership Foundation, addresses whether leaders should direct from the front or seed decisions through their staff.
Putting this ethos into practice Dame Lynne Brindley, chief executive of the British Library, outlines her vision for the future and why partnerships are one of the keys to success.
We also answer your questions on how digital technologies can help your trim your budgets through digital technologies and look at RSS feed readers, which channel news and information for you so you can keep on top of your inboxes.
JISC’s director of communications and marketing Robert Haymon-Collins explains why JISC Inform has gone digital. “As universities and colleges are under increased pressure to reduce their costs, moving printed materials online is one way to achieve possible savings, not just financial but also environmental.
“This edition of Inform has been created so each article can be forwarded and shared with colleagues. There are also comment boxes so readers can add their own thoughts and links to other articles creating a valuable set of resources to refer to.”
The new Inform is a beta version so if there are areas that don't work as you would expect, or you think could be improved, please let us know on informeditor@jisc.ac.uk
Read and comment on JISC Inform 30 now
JISC EMBEDDED OBJECT
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The CILIP Libraries Change Lives Award is established as one of the leading accolades in the library and information world.
Entries have now closed for the 2012 award
The Award highlights and rewards good practice in any innovative library and information projects which:
We welcome entries from any sector of the library and information world. They could be reading projects, learning projects, or projects that promote information. They must be shown to have affected people’s lives for the better, whoever those people might be.
The overall winner will receive a trophy and prize money of £4,000.
All finalists receive:
The Libraries Change Lives Award is run by CILIP and it's Community Services Group.
The purpose of the award is to recognise positive achievements and promote outstanding library based initiatives which:
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How CILIP will respond to reports of service reductions.
We are concerned about the impact of cuts and are raising awareness about the scale and impact of service reductions on library and information services. We are gathering information about service cuts that we hear about. You can also let us know what's happening.
Contact us with information about service cuts or redundancies you have heard about or updates on proposals for library services.
CILIP's Policy and Advocacy team logs essential details and where possible, gathers any more information. If the case is serious, we refer it to one of our three sector panels: Community, Learning and Special.
As we have now received information on a good number of library services, from March 2011, we are only referring the most serious cases to the Panels. For those serious cases, the Panels assess the case against our criteria and decide whether to take any further action. This could be writing to the Head of Service, or lobbying local councillors and MPs to draw attention to the issue
The key role of the Panels now is to identify emerging themes and messages for their particular sectors.
We are not afraid to criticise and take further action where the reductions are poorly thought through and have taken little or no notice of user need or professional advice. But we will not oppose all changes resulting in service reductions or job losses.
We continue to:
CILIP assesses each case against the folllowing core critera:
1. Is there a strategic plan for the library/information service in place?
2. Is there evidence of a proper needs assessment informing the strategic plan and proposals for change?
3. Can the proposals be seen as proportionate to the resource requirements of the library service and its parent institution?
4. Have the stakeholders in the library service, especially user communities and staff, been properly consulted?
5. Has professional advice been taken in determining the proposals for change?
[6. In the case of public libraries, Do the proposals allow a council to meet its statutory obligation? (that is, the Public Libraries and Museums Act 1964)]
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A 350-year-old notebook describing the execution of innocent women for ‘consorting with the Devil’ has been published online with JISC funding by The University of Manchester’s John Rylands library.
The notebook was written by Puritan writer Nehemiah Wallington who describes how a supposed coven of witches lived in the Suffolk village of Manningtree.
Unfortunately for them, Manningtree was also home to the Witchfinder General Matthew Hopkins, notorious for his brutality against women.
In 1645 the Witchfinder General examined one of the suspected witches Elizabeth Clarke for ‘devil’s marks’ like warts or moles.
Under torture, Elizabeth then named other women as witches including her own daughter Rebecca, who later confessed to being a witch.
19 women were eventually hanged, though Rebecca was saved thanks to her confession.
The witchcraft trial is just one of the fascinating episodes contained in Wallington's notebook, one of only seven remaining out of the 50 he wrote, which documents his attitudes to life, religion and the civil war.
Caroline Schofield, collections manager at Tatton Park Mansion which holds the notebooks, said: “Nehemiah Wallington, a turner by trade and a Christian by religion, was an intelligent working man battling with the adversities of life in the seventeenth century. At times he doubted his salvation to the degree that he suffered a mental breakdown and tried to take his own life. He began to keep his diaries in an effort to record his own sins and God’s mercies. The Wallington manuscripts are hugely important primary sources for scholars of the period.”
Last year a team of experts from the John Rylands’ Centre for Heritage Imaging and Collection Care (CHICC) at the university of Manchester funded by JISC spent a week capturing the document on camera.
James Robinson, senior photographer at the John Rylands Library, said: “Our work at Tatton Park involved careful documentation of each and every page of this fragile and important notebook. We’re delighted the public, free of charge, will now be read for themselves the horrors of that period.”
Paula Marchionni, programme manager at JISC, explained why JISC is supporting the work: “Future generations of researchers will need more and better access to precious documents like Wallington’s notebooks so digitising them is a real investment. But even then, it’s not always easy to sustain these collections. Through the eContent programme, JISC has supported the John Rylands Library in setting up the CHICC to investigate how the right business models can help them maintain and further develop their digital assets.”
See and search Wallington’s notebooks close up
Find out more about JISC’s investment in CHICC
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Training will be held in all regions.
The purpose of this course is to provide participants with a background to mentoring, a basic framework for conducting mentoring both long and short term. The focus of the event is to enable participants to develop effectively as mentors in the context of the CILIP professional development scheme, their workplace and career development.
Members who have previously attended a course on mentoring skills may attend the afternoon only to join in the elements relating to the CILIP scheme.
Wednesday 9th March 2011 - Exeter College 9.30 - 4.30
Bookings via Janet Westcott - j.westcott@poole.gov.uk
Thursday 10th March 2011 - Bodleian Libraries 9.30 - 4.30
Bookings via Helen Blanchett - Helen.Blanchett@newcastle.ac.uk
Friday 1st April 2011 - National Library of Scotland, Seminar Room 9.15 - 13.00 & 14.00 - 16.15
Bookings via Morag Andrew - cilips@slainte.org.uk
Further dates are being arranged across the UK. Dates and venues will appear as soon as they are available.
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Renew online:
You can now renew your membership online. Click here for further details.
Renew by post:
We will send you a renewal pack at least a month before you are due to renew. If your pack has been lost or misplaced you can download, complete and return the Membership Renewal Form.
Send to:
Membership Team, CILIP, 7 Ridgmount Street, London WC1E 7AE
Email: membership@cilip.org.uk
Fax: 020 7255 0501
To set up a Direct Debit complete, sign and return the Direct Debit Instruction with the Renewal Form.
You can find 2011 renewal rates here.
If you are renewing a 2010 membership please email the membership team for the renewal form: membership@cilip.org.uk
At peak times, when we are receiving a very high volume of forms and payments, it can take at least three working weeks for us to process a membership renewal. Please avoid contacting us about your renewal unless it is urgent.
If you require a receipt, please tick the box in section 3 of the renewal form and enclose a self-addressed envelope.
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The assessment of individual cases of service reductions in England is carried out by three sector Panels: Community, Learning and Special. Their key roles from March 2011 are to identify emerging trends and issues and consider the most serious cases against our criteria.
CILIP has three Panels that have been looking at individual cases of service reductions in England.
The panels are:
Each Panel is chaired by a member of CILIP's Presidential team and members include CILIP Trustees, Special Interest Group committee members and CILIP members with expertise in the area.
Position of public libraries
In February 2011 the Community Libraries Panel issued a statement on the position of the public library service in England.
The statement set out actions for the Government:
Read the full statement
CILIP also has guidelines on what makes a good public library service.
Value of special library and information services
CILIP has published resources lists that demonstrate the value and impact of special libraries such as government libraries, law libraries, health libraries and corporate libraries.
The sector panels have considered proposals of expenditure or service reductions from library and information services within their remit. From March 2011, the Panels are only examining the most serious cases. Proposals are evaluated against our assessment criteria. The Panel then decides whether further action is required. For some cases, the work of the panel is likely to be confidential.
Actions
Although a regrettable sign of the times, in some cases the proposals will not require further action. It is unrealistic to expect that library and information services would be exempt from reductions that are taking place across the public sector and formed part of the manifesto proposals of each of the major political parties. In other cases, action may be necessary and could include:
Community Libraries Panel
Chair: Brian Hall
Members: Linda Constable, Jon Davis, Ayub Khan, Emma McDonald, Lesley Noblett, Nigel Thomas, Sue Wilkinson
CILIP staff: Guy Daines
Chair: Biddy Fisher
Members: Lucy Gildersleeves, Liz Jolly, Jill Lambert, Anne Rowlands, Sue Shaper, Jo Webb
CILIP staff: Jacqueline May
Special Library and Information Services Panel
Chair: Peter Griffiths
Members: Pauline Blagden, Veronica Fraser, Dion Lindsay, Sandra Ward, Celia Waters
CILIP staff: Guy Daines
Contact the Panels
If you want to contact the Panel, send an email to: policy@cilip.org.uk and we will pass it to the Panel through their dedicated Mailtalk list.
Scotland, Wales and Ireland
CILIPS (CILIP in Scotland) CILIP Cymru /Wales and CILIP in Ireland are responsible for dealing with cases arising in their own countries.
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In Guatemala, up to 1.5 million children are missing school to try to scrape a living on the streets. What can be done to get them back into classrooms?
Bearing more than a kilo of mangos, oranges and apples on his shoulders, 13-year-old José slips through the queue and jumps on the bus. Here, he walks along the aisle offering his goods for sale. But in an instant, he's back down on the road and on his way to the next bus, squinting from the mixture of midday Guatemalan sun and diesel clouds.
José knows how to spot a potential customer and when it's not worth sticking around. Instead of being in school, he has spent nearly every day earning money this way since the age of six.
The proportion of seven- to 12-year-olds enrolled in Guatemala's schools is rising, according to the United Nations, and has increased from 85% to 89% in the last 20 years. The Guatemalan government puts the figure at 95% – a jump, it says, from 89% eight years ago.
But, despite the improvement, a growing underclass of children is emerging, of which José is a part.
Very little – if any – of their "education" will be spent in classrooms. Most of what they learn will have been picked up on their country's increasingly dangerous streets.
At La Terminal, the bus station in Guatemala City where José plies his trade, shootings, thefts and gang violence are commonplace. Even the fried chicken joint now employs an armed security guard. José has had his daily earnings of about 75 Quetzales – £6 – stolen more than once.
In Guatemala, there are 52 murders per 100,000 inhabitants, compared to one murder per 100,000 in the UK and five per 100,000 in the US. Many predict this to increase this year, as tensions rise with the election of a new Guatemalan president in the autumn.
Guatemalans say more people are dying now than during the country's bitter 36-year civil war, which ended in 1996.
As José walks to the next bus, half a dozen vehicles sound their horns. He takes a side-step to avoid a man who is unstable on his feet, and holds out gold-coloured bracelets in his palm to passers-by.
It's nearly impossible to judge how many children in Guatemala are missing out on a formal education to work the streets as José does. Viva, an umbrella organisation for charities that help street children, says up to 1.5 million are consistently out of school – about a fifth of what the country's pupil population should be. Unesco's Education for All Global Monitoring Report, published this month, reckons one in 28 Guatemalan children are missing out on school.
José says he wants to be a teacher, but the closest he has come to entering a school is the informal one set up by Guatemalan charity Pennat. The school takes a few hundred children for a couple of hours of lessons each day above a shop in the capital's main marketplace. Classes start at 7.30am and end by 11am so the children can catch the mid-morning swell of customers.
A UK-based charity, Toybox, is providing the funds for another informal school to be set up. It will be run by El Castillo, Toybox's partner in Guatemala. El Castillo's 40 workers visit parents whose children work on the streets and try to convince them of the long-term value of sending the children to school. They encourage street children to start – or re-start – their studies, and buy them uniform and equipment. Children found living on the streets without adults are offered shelter in El Castillo's residential home, if there is space.
Jomara Pineda, head of El Castillo's rescue and prevention team, doesn't hold out much hope of José or his 11-year-old sister, Rosalita, going to a proper school any time soon. In fact, she thinks they are likely to stop going to the informal school before long.
"It's a lot to do with the parents," she says. "They have the opportunity to change the fate of their children, but they often don't seem to want to let the children stop earning. The children get used to earning, too."
José's mother, Laura, and grandmother, Rosa, sold fruit on the streets at José's age and see this as normal, although they admit that today the streets are more dangerous.
Guatemala already has one of the worst poverty gaps in the world. Here there are more private helicopters per capita than anywhere else in central America, according to the US Department of Commerce. Meanwhile, Guatemala has the fourth highest rate of chronic malnutrition in the world. And according to a study conducted last year by The Fund for Peace, a US-based research institute, the inequality is becoming worse.
José's family is among the 58% of Guatemalans who, according to the United Nations World Food Programme and the World Bank, live in extreme poverty, without even the means to afford to buy a basket of basic food. Five of them sleep on two beds in a damp shack that is much more like a cellar than a home. It has a corrugated iron roof, no windows and no running water. Plastic buckets are stacked on the stone floor and the only possessions visible are some clothes hanging over string and a couple of blankets folded in the corner.
Not far away, chickens nod their way into a space roughly three metres by five occupied by a family of seven – including two children. Dirty nappies lie in yellow puddles outside the door. Amid this acute poverty and overcrowding, family breakdown is common, as are violence and sexual abuse.
Miguel Angel Franco, a deputy minister in the Guatemalan government's education department, says he is well aware that some children can't continue their studies because of a lack of funds. But he points at the considerable success of a scheme started in 2008 called Mi Familia Progresa (my family progresses). It gives poor families cash if they regularly send their children to school. The government has spent 2.04bn Quetzales (£162m) on the initiative and claims it has helped an extra 800,000 parents – 6% of the population – send their children to school.
Franco also highlights the rising aspirations of many poor families – something Flora Suarez, a headteacher, has also noticed.
In Suarez's primary school, in a deprived neighbourhood in the north of Guatemala City, working-class parents are now daring to hope that their children will have middle-class jobs when they are in their twenties. The bricklayers are encouraging their children to become architects and engineers, she says.
"They think their children will be able to get these jobs if they have an education and they support everything the school tries to do – they have understood the value of going to school."
The parents who have stalls in the market haven't reached this stage yet, she says.
In 2000, world leaders vowed to ensure that, by 2015, every child would stay in school long enough to complete their primary education. There are 40 million more children who have been given this opportunity than when the promise was made, but 60 million are still missing out. José is one of them. He can barely write his own name. A future as a teacher is out of his grasp until he comes off the streets and goes to school.
Two teenagers from the UK are planning to tell thousands of their peers about the plight of street children over the next few months following a fact-finding trip to Guatemala.
Navdeep Bual, 15, and Yasir Yeahia, 14, spent a week meeting street children, politicians, teachers and charity workers in Guatemala City. The pair, from Seven Kings high school in Ilford, Essex, visited a primary school in a deprived part of the city and met the British ambassador to Guatemala. They travelled to the shanty towns where some of the street children live and were invited into their homes. The teenagers were introduced to young people their age who gave them an idea of some of the country's education problems.
Navdeep and Yasir were winners of the Steve Sinnott award for Young Global Education Campaigners. The competition was launched by a group of overseas aid agencies that believe education is the key to escaping poverty. Sinnott, who died in 2008, was general secretary of the National Union of Teachers and a passionate advocate of the Global Campaign for Education, an umbrella group of charities and teaching unions. The two students were accompanied on their trip by the charity Toybox and Education Guardian.
Yasir says he was shocked at Jose's life and living conditions. "He had to go to the bus station, which was filled with drug addicts. He worked tirelessly and went from bus to bus trying to sell. We then visited his home ... The flies, the smell and the black bags filled with rubbish, the chaos ... You had to go through narrow alleyways to even get there."
He says he has been struck by the responsibility young children have to earn money for their families. "It seems so much pressure to put on someone that young," he says. "I want to make people in the UK know that we've a lot to be grateful for. People our age may think they can't make a difference, when in fact they can."
Navdeep says she was upset at the response Jose's sister, Rosalita, gave her when she asked what she wanted to do when she was older. "She told me she wanted to work on the street and sell fruit, like her mum. It was heartbreaking to hear her because she had no real ambition, purely because she didn't know there was a world outside the one her family was trapped in."
Guatemalan teenagers told Navdeep and Yasir that being raped on the way to school is a major worry for girls their age. "It seems so inhumane that while that is happening, in other parts of the world, people live in mansions," Navdeep says.
"The sheer poverty was a shock to our system and definitely opened our eyes to the problems other children face purely because of where they were born. In the short term, education can't completely solve the problems that street children face. What it can do is afford girls like Rosalita an opportunity to see a life free of danger, poverty and injustice. Without education, countries like Guatemala can not develop and move forward."
Now the pupils plan to hold a peaceful protest in central London to remind the British government that international aid must be a high priority. They also hope to spark a viral online campaign to raise awareness of the poverty of children in Guatemala and the barriers they face to receiving an education.
For free school resources and details on the Global Campaign for Education visit www.sendmyfriend.org
Vocational course results will be opened up to public scrutiny in July when Edexcel publishes students' achievements
It looks like a bold decision. An exam board affected by controversy over the use of vocational courses to help schools rise up league tables is about to open up its data for full media scrutiny.
Edexcel is to hold a national results day in July, Education Guardian can reveal, when detailed statistics on hundreds of thousands of pupils' achievements in its increasingly popular BTec courses, which under Labour were controversially given equivalence to GCSE and A-levels in the rankings, will be published.
The publication plans aim to mirror the format of GCSE and A-level results days in August, which have become a staple of the annual news cycle and provoke now ritualised debates over rising and falling standards.
The board's decision, which may raise the profile of BTecs, represents an attempt by Edexcel to take the initiative in the ongoing and often bitterly contested publicity battle over vocational courses.
Last week's report on the subject for the government by Professor Alison Wolf, of King's College, London, said that league table pressures were pushing schools to encourage pupils to take non-GCSE courses that were of questionable worth to their futures, because of the qualifications' value to the school's statistics. This, she said, was "immoral".
Michael Gove, the education secretary, in the forward to the Wolf report said league tables incentivised schools to offer "inadequate" qualifications to 14- to 16-year-olds, although he did not name such qualifications and Edexcel can point to research suggesting that BTecs increase people's long-term earnings.
BTecs, coursework-only qualifications, which are offered at four levels in subjects ranging from applied science to health and social care, have been one of the fastest growing syllabuses in their GCSE-equivalent form. BTec Firsts, taken by 562,086 students, mainly aged 14 to 16, last year, have more than doubled in popularity over the past three years. This has been triggered, it is widely claimed, by a system that deems them to be worth up to four GCSEs for league table purposes.
Statistics published in the Wolf report showed that the contribution of BTec Firsts to national results figures for 16-year-olds, which incorporate both GCSE grades and results achieved in vocational qualifications, has been surging.
National figures for 2010 showed that 75% of 16-year-olds gained five or more A*-C grades at GCSE or vocational equivalent. Without BTecs, the figure would have been 65%, meaning these non-GCSE courses contributed 10 percentage points to this overall figure, compared to only 0.1 percentage points in 2005. BTec Firsts were the largest contributor to the national figures after GCSE.
The more advanced BTec Nationals, for 16- to 18-year-olds, which have a more established following in colleges and sixth forms, had 216,875 entries last year.
Edexcel's move is an attempt to redress another long-standing criticism around non-mainstream academic qualifications: that while GCSE and A-level grade data is available and scrutinised by the media every year, it has been impossible to gain similar information on other qualifications taken in schools and colleges.
There have been anecdotal claims that very high percentages of students pass GCSE-equivalent BTecs and another set of non-GCSE courses, OCR Nationals, run by the Oxford, Cambridge and Royal Society of Arts board.
Data revealed to the Times Educational Supplement last summer showed BTec First pass rates running at around 80%, although the same data was not made available for OCR Nationals.
In July, Edexcel will not only make information on BTec pass rates available in individual subjects, but also the proportion of entries awarded a merit or distinction grade; the relative popularity and success rates of individual subjects among boys, and among girls; and a breakdown of statistics by regions across the UK.
The data is to be released on the same day as the board announces the winners of a new awards scheme recognising outstanding BTec students, teachers and schools/colleges. Entries for these awards open today.
In recent years, the education charity Edge has run a national "VQ" (vocational qualifications) day in June, which celebrates successful non-academic learning. However, sceptics have said the fact that VQ day does not release detailed results data diminishes its impact on national reporting.
Rod Bristow, president of Pearson UK, which runs Edexcel, says: "We think it's high time that learners who are doing really valuable vocational qualifications like BTec are recognised for the excellence they achieve.
"We need an evidence-based debate, to try to discourage some of the snobbery that there is around vocational learning and vocational qualifications, and it's really important that we provide transparency."
The board acknowledges that the publicity the results day will generate may well be double-edged. GCSE and A-level results are certainly high profile, but the debate over "dumbing down" that ensues every summer is dispiriting for many young people.
However, sources at Edexcel say the board can no longer stand by a lack of transparency over BTec results, especially given the coalition's stated commitment to being open with data.
Anastasia de Waal, head of family and education at the Civitas thinktank, who has criticised schools' use of vocational qualifications, says: "This is welcome, not least because it is transparency that really is desperately needed when it comes to particular vocational qualifications taken in schools.
"The way the statistics have worked in the past, different qualifications have got bundled up in one measure so that it's been very difficult to find out what it means."
Alan Smithers, director of Buckingham University's centre for education and employment research, says he has struggled in the past to obtain BTec data from Edexcel. He says: "People are not aware of these qualifications in the way they should be. So anything that puts data in the public domain has to be a good thing."
The OCR board awarded 250,000 grades at GCSE equivalent last year through its OCR National vocational courses. But it appears to have no plans for a similar day, and pass/merit/distinction figures for these courses still seem not to be available to the public.
"OCR celebrates the achievement of all its students when they receive an award rather than picking out a few at a random point in the calendar. We congratulate Pearson/Edexcel on raising the profile of all vocational qualifications during the academic exam season."
Whether Edexcel's move towards transparency will be followed by other awarding bodies, then, remains to be seen. But, given reporters' general enthusiasm for statistics, it seems likely to generate media interest.
A new review of vocational education misses an opportunity to encourage the promotion of entrepreneurial skills so vital for our future, says Tom Bewick
Alison Wolf's review of vocational education is potentially a retrograde step in terms of making real progress; and not because her central desire to elevate the quality of vocational learning is wrong.
Her report, commissioned by the education secretary, Michael Gove, makes many laudable recommendations. But what is perhaps misguided is the perspective from which many of the assumptions in the report are made.
Wolf, a senior academic from Kings College, provides an academic perspective, and reaches broadly academic conclusions about what is going wrong.
Most would agree that Britain is historically weak in vocational education. We also struggle in the state system to really stretch some of our most able pupils, including ensuring more than 50% of them achieve the basics in both English and maths.
But it is a mistake to believe that the answer is a 1950s style of education. Gove welcomed this report so emphatically because it provides the intellectual fire power for his more traditionalist view of education: academic excellence for an elite few, better quality vocational training for everyone else.
The reality is that in today's world young people do not need an either-or approach – academic or vocational – they need both.
Wolf is a fan of the Enlightenment model and laments the fact that in recent years Britain has begun to leave this system behind. Her report highlights the countries that do better, but she omits the fact that they spend on average between 1% and 2% more of their GDP on high-quality vocational training and apprenticeships.
Disappointingly, the report is completely silent on how we develop more entrepreneurial mindsets and skills among our young people.
Worrying statistics released last week show that enterprise education is a task in which we, as a nation, are failing.
Make Money, Make a Difference: Backing Britain's Future, a new report from Enterprise UK with research commissioned from YouGovStone, reveals that 53% of young people do not feel they are encouraged at school to be entrepreneurial. One in four admit they get most of their knowledge about business from popular television programmes such as Dragons' Den.
Educators need to face up to the fact that our current model is broken. The common belief that a single pathway from school to university is the only way to get a good job no longer holds true.
We must challenge and inspire young people with the idea that they can make it happen for themselves, by nurturing a new culture of enterprise education, embedding the key ingredients of entrepreneurship in the curriculum.
Initiatives like Tenner Tycoon, which runs throughout March and loans 40,000 school children a £10 note, are vital to motivating the next generation of entrepreneurs. Over the next few years, the scheme will expand to over 1 million pupils.
In addition, we need to address how we invest in young talent, and this means ending the monopoly universities have over student loans provision.
George Osborne's budget at the end of the month should announce a new Youth Investment Trust to replace the Student Loans Company. This would provide young people with access to state-subsidised loans for purposes other than access to higher education, including capital for new start-ups.
Developing a network of truly inspiring entrepreneurial colleges should be our major priority.
• Tom Bewick is chief executive, Enterprise UK
David Willetts, the universities minister, has confirmed the government wants to open UK higher education to private, for-profit providers. But what will the educational costs be?
The universities minister, David Willetts, has confirmed the government's intention to make it easier for new, including private "for profit", providers to enter UK higher education. A white paper giving the details will be published in May.
If the government succeeds, what might be the consequences? Of course there are fundamental differences between "for-profit" and "not-for-profit" institutions. Whereas the basic purpose of "for-profit" institutions is to make money for their owners, the basic purpose of "not-for-profit" institutions is to provide the best teaching and research they can with the resources available.
But what contribution could each type of institution make to the structure and functioning of higher education? We must look at the benefits and costs, both public and private, both direct and indirect, of each type of institution to see how far they balance. What does overseas, especially US, experience tell us?
There is little doubt that many commercial courses meet needs that conventional ones do not. In particular, there is unfulfilled demand for post-experience courses for working adults in many applied professional areas. The typical private college student is a nursing manager in suburban Milwaukee, who is combining her career with bringing up a family, and who wants to improve her qualifications in a way that suits her living pattern. She prizes flexibility and cost over residence and institutional status. It is also claimed that, as well as flexibility and a relentless focus on customer needs, commercial providers are innovators, which is beneficial to the system. They may also be contributing to equity, because many of their students are from less favoured backgrounds.
It is this point that critics of commercial provision have picked up. There is a current Congressional investigation into the private providers' recruitment practices. Evidence has been presented that some organisations have put too much effort into enrolling students and too little into their subsequent progression and achievement. This has led to low retention and (since the students usually have to borrow to finance their studies) high loan default rates. Because a high proportion of this aid – and, indirectly, the colleges' revenue – comes from federal sources, this is producing a haemorrhaging of public funds, as well as offering poor value for taxpayer money.
This is not the only issue. Public or "not-for-profit" providers use the income from their more popular subjects and courses to support less popular ones. But, by definition, private "for-profit" companies will focus on those subjects and modes of study where they are most likely to make a good return. To the extent that they are competing with public or "not-for-profit" colleges, this may affect the ability of those institutions to maintain a wider range of subjects or modes through cross-subsidy. As a result, public subsidies may have to be introduced or increased to maintain those subjects or modes. In this respect, the paradoxical result of greater competition may be less, rather than more, consumer choice. We already see cutbacks in the provision of subjects like chemistry and physics, and this is even before we have truly variable fees.
All this suggests that we should be very cautious before we lower the entry barriers to admitting for-profit providers to a system that has served us well.
There are two particular areas of concern. The first is the government's proposal to allow organisations that do not teach to award their own degrees. It has long been accepted that the ultimate safeguard of quality is the existence of a "well found, cohesive and self-critical academic community that demonstrates firm guardianship of its standards" (to quote from the current criteria for degree-awarding powers). How will quality and standards be protected if this principle is abandoned or diluted?
The second is access to public finance, and especially the access of students at private institutions to state loans and grants. By the government's choice, public resourcing for higher education is heavily constrained. This may mean that the subsidies needed to tempt private providers into the market can come only at the expense of the public institutions.
Together, these considerations prompt the thought that we may be paying too high a price for the potential benefits of lowering the barriers to entry into the student education market.
• Roger Brown is professor of higher education at Liverpool Hope University and former chief executive of the Higher Education Quality Council
Is it possible for universities to avoid donations - like Gaddafi's to the London School of Economics - that embarrass them later?
The London School of Economics rarely finds itself in the same company as Nelly Furtado. However, like the Canadian singer, its relationship with Libya has given rise to controversy.
The LSE quickly moved to suspend its links with the Gaddafi International Charity and Development Foundation, run by Saif Gaddafi, son of Muammar Gaddafi. But this swift action failed to protect it from a torrent of criticism, including from David Cameron, and, last week, its director, Howard Davies, resigned. "I advised the council that it was reasonable to accept the money and that has turned out to be a mistake," he said. He had previously said: "I don't accept that the decision was taken without due consideration at the time," pointing out that the British government had encouraged him to engage with the Libyans on financial reform.
An independent inquiry led by Lord Woolf will now examine the LSE's links with Libya and will establish guidelines for international donations to the university.
But the LSE is not the only university to face criticism over links with Tripoli. Liverpool John Moores is facing questions from, among others, Robert Halfon MP, who tabled an early day motion criticising both institutions. The Liverpool Echo reported claims that the university signed research contracts amounting to just under £1.3m, but Professor Michael Brown, its vice-chancellor, told the paper that the partnership with Libya never got off the ground. "We've nothing to be embarrassed of whatsoever and our work in Libya was about improving medical facilities, which are woeful," he said. "You have to differentiate between a government you don't approve of and helping the people."
It's not the first time donations have stirred up controversy. Professor Anthony Glees of the University of Buckingham claimed three years ago in a report for the Centre for Social Cohesion that the Saudi government and other private sources had been systematically focusing funding on Islamic and Middle Eastern studies departments that were most critical of western foreign policy, distorting scholarship.
In the US, the foundation of a chair in economics by the former Enron boss Ken Lay at his alma mater turned into a nightmare for the University of Missouri. It was unable to find an appropriate candidate to fill the chair for several years, during which time it became a standing joke: the head of the economics department at the time said "It's not like it's the Osama bin Laden chair." In fact, other members of the Bin Laden family donated substantial sums to Harvard and Tufts University in the 1990s.
So how can universities avoid embarrassment? One answer is of course to be extremely cautious about whom they deal with. But that is easier said than done when global politics changes fast and when austerity requires ever more fundraising from external sources.
The LSE student union has called for "changes in the transparency" of future dealings and suggests establishing "a set of standards and a process of democratic decision-making, with student representation, that determines whether the school accepts money from controversial donors".
Dr Sally Hunt, general secretary of the University and College Union, says all universities should sign up to institutional codes on ethics and accountability. "A committee with student and staff representation could then be tasked with vetting substantial donations".
Nicola Dandridge, chief executive of Universities UK, says: "Of course universities will take into account political and ethical implications when they make decisions." However, she warns: "There are established academic, cultural and business links between the UK and countries overseas and it is essential we continue to engage with them."
Retired fundraiser Mike Smithson points out that many institutions have already developed effective mechanisms to examine donations. In the 1990s, Oxford established a committee, which included Lord Butler, the former head of the home civil service, to scrutinise donors. Smithson points out that this group consulted with external bodies, including the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. "Oxford decided to turn down several gifts, based on their advice," he says.
However, refusing donations can be difficult. First, donors' reputations are constantly changing in ways impossible to predict. When Lay endowed the chair that bears his name, Enron was voted America's most admired company in a Fortune magazine survey. Gaddafi's decision to end Tripoli's isolation meant that he was no longer viewed as a pariah by the international community, with his son, Saif, seen as a potential moderating influence. Fundraising consultant Adrian Beney, of Iain More Associates, contends that "most of those now complaining about the LSE have been happy to drive around with Libyan oil in their cars".
There is also the argument that engaging with donors in countries governed by authoritarian regimes may encourage political reform in those countries. John Sexton, the president of New York University, has defended his institution's decision to establish a satellite campus in Abu Dhabi with $50m (£31m) in funding from the United Arab Emirates on the grounds that NYU will be a "positive change agent".
In a recent statement the LSE wryly noted that in 2009 the student union welcomed the donation from Gaddafi's son's charity, stating that: "This is exactly the kind of organisation the school should be associated with – a group struggling for justice under what continues to be, despite reforms, a repressive and brutal regime."
Smithson believes that effective fundraising relies on development teams having an entrepreneurial outlook. Consequently, the more conditions imposed on those involved, the less effective any efforts will be. But he says: "The promise of funding can be extremely tempting for cash-strapped university departments. For example, there has been a long and acrimonious debate over whether those involved in cancer research should accept donations from the tobacco industry."
Many worry that cuts in university funding are forcing institutions to fundraise more aggressively, and to play down ethical concerns. Glees suggests that any money raised from sources the government considers unacceptable should be deducted from state funding. "I'm thinking in terms of the government saying 'if you accept money from despots, that money will be removed from what the state pays you, ie there will be no financial advantage in accepting money from tainted sources'." He says: "The cuts will make the problem even worse unless the government steps in and stops sharp fundraising practices."
It is clear that recent events will lead to soul searching in universities. However, many will say this should not be confined to academia, and that although the LSE's decision to accept Libyan money was a mistake, Whitehall must share some responsibility.
• Matthew Partridge is a PhD student at the LSE
Assessing the need for new school places is difficult, says Fiona Millar, but the government must come clean about its strategy
How should we decide what constitutes "need" for a new school? This, I predict, will be one of the most furiously contested issues of the next few years. Giving any willing group the chance to set up a school may sound appealing on paper, but the devil will be in the detail, and in some cases the detail could get very murky. Anyone who doesn't believe that should take a look at what has happened to Christ the King school in Merseyside.
This school was one of the first new Building Schools for the Future (BSF) projects. Its superb £24m building includes features about which many heads and pupils can now only dream. At its triumphant launch in 2009, Tim Byles, the chief executive of Partnership for Schools, a quango charged with delivering new school buildings, described it as an "exemplary BSF project".
The only slight problem with this exemplary project was that it quickly became clear that there weren't enough pupils to fill the school. By January of this year, it was barely viable, and complete closure has only been staved off by a fiercely loyal parent campaign.
One of the most puzzling aspects of the current "grow your own school" fad is the ongoing involvement of Partnership for Schools. This organisation's byzantine bureaucracy was undoubtedly the least attractive part of BSF and was cited by Michael Gove, the education secretary, as one reason why the entire programme needed to be scrapped. A better decision might have been to save BSF and scrap PfS – instead, it has a new role establishing free schools and even offers a "free school kit" on its website, to help parents understand their "educational landscape", including how many surplus places currently exist.
Assessing the need for new school places is notoriously difficult. Parent choice, demand, demographic change, location of existing schools (often on or close by borough boundaries), and pupil mobility are inextricably mixed. But in a time of rapidly diminishing capital budgets, rigour and precision are surely priorities. Quite apart from the economic cost of more Christ the Kings, there is a human cost to the pupils, staff and families involved in a school that has to close at short notice.
But PfS's past performance, and the Department for Education's own requirements on new school providers, do not inspire confidence. The free school providers Stage 2 proposal form contains one question about "evidence of parental demand". The answer is limited to 200 words, the evidence requested looks flimsy and the completed forms are notoriously difficult to come by, even using freedom of information requests (FOI).
Nevertheless, some local parent groups opposing free schools have already successfully challenged this "evidence" by exposing petitions signed by any parent, not just those in the relevant age groups, or local authority data showing that a new school may be needed in 10 or 15 years' time, but not now.
The point at which this mysterious evidence may become more highly charged is when the secretary of state decides to use the powers he is awarding himself in the Education Bill to requisition local authority land for free schools.
It isn't yet clear whether the land will be purchased, leased, at the full cost, or not, but the bill also states that he is required to assess the impact new provision might have on other local schools. If the impact is another school's closure, because surplus places already exist or are to be created, will the government's actions be justifiable, either morally or economically? And might the secretary of state find himself subject to yet another legal challenge?
Whether surplus places should be created to lubricate a market in education has bedevilled the question of school choice for decades and has always, ultimately, been resisted. If it is now the coalition's intention to pursue this goal and force some schools to close, ministers should be more open about this, and give parents in the threatened schools the evidence they need to mount a counter campaign – the government may be surprised by how ferociously parents will fight to protect existing provision regardless of its status or popularity.
If it is not the intention, that should be made explicit, too, before more time and money is wasted on projects that may themselves eventually prove not to be viable either.
www.localschoolsnetwork.org.uk
Studying abroad is becoming a real option as our students look for the right university
"My Dutch uni plans are going well," says Josh Kay, 17, one of five students Education Guardian is following through sixth form. Josh, who is studying four A-levels in history, German, sociology and English at Stourport school in Worcestershire, is applying to read international relations at universities in the Netherlands as well as the UK, to boost his job opportunities and save money.
Last month, he clicked "send" on his applications to Maastricht and Groningen universities via the Studielink portal, Holland's online application system, which works as Ucas does in the UK. "It didn't take very long to apply, there was no personal statement, and less of a competition element at Dutch universities," Josh reports. "I read somewhere it's designed like that to give a chance to a variety of students. Now I'm just waiting to hear back."
For Josh, the once pipe-dream idea of studying abroad is now seeming more realistic. "At the beginning, the prospect was slightly daunting. I thought it would be one of those ideas that gets forgotten, but now I've pushed myself, and the idea is becoming more exciting," he says. Back in the UK, he received offers from Birmingham, Manchester, Swansea and East Anglia universities, but is still waiting to hear from the London School of Economics. "I check Ucas every other day," he says. "They haven't rejected me yet! I have heard LSE can take longer to respond than other universities."
Josh, who lives with his 15-year-old brother, who wants to join the RAF, his dad, a carpenter, and mum, who works for an aerospace company, is turning towards revision. "The week before half term was focused on coursework, but now my drafts for English and history are in, so it's all revision at the moment," he says.
Any spare time is filled with university visits. Josh attended an open day at Manchester in the middle of February to check out its accommodation and course facilities. "It was useful and I got to speak to current students about the options in my degree, like studying a language," he says. "I have a subject day at Birmingham coming up too."
But money issues are also starting to come into focus. If he starts uni this autumn, Josh will be part of the last cohort to pay the current, lower university fees. "An information evening at my sixth form cleared up some issues about the new fees and confirmed that our year group will not be affected," he says. "But I do feel tuition fees are not fair on students. People complain about paying for us students, but we will actually end up contributing more to the economy through higher taxes for things like healthcare and mass education."
Josh is worried for next year's students, explaining: "My main concern is about the creation of a two-tier university system, with cheaper but poorer quality universities for poorer students, while students from more privileged backgrounds can go to the more expensive, elite universities."
All the talk about the fight for university places being harder than ever this year – with more demand but the same number of places as last year – is also making this sixth-former feel akin to a circus performer. "I've been aiming to get into university for many years, making sure I get good grades, do well in school, be involved, undertake work experience and all sorts of extra-curricular activities and all I've seen while doing this is more and more hoops being put in for students to jump though," he says. "I'm not saying getting into university should be easy, but students are doing so much more than previous generations had to do."
After all that hard work, Josh wants to take time out to relax this summer. "Friends are talking about various things, but nothing concrete has been decided yet. I'm thinking of going around Europe for a few weeks, possibly visit a few countries and spend some time somewhere hot. But it all depends on what friends are doing, plus whether I'll be going to Holland or not."
For year 12 student Danielle Fox, 17, the prospect of starting uni is still more than a year away, but it's nonetheless starting to grow more important. "I've made a lot of enquiries to universities recently, including looking at Leeds University for Japanese studies as I love Japanese art, and Falmouth uni for an illustration course," says Danielle, who is studying a two-year BTec subsidiary diploma in art and design, plus photography A–level, at Plymouth Marine Academy. "Uni is a big topic for me. At school, we've been put into groups with a teacher to help us look at courses and the Ucas site. We want to know what we have ahead, and organise the directions we're going to take to help our studies."
Danielle is currently interested in studying art, illustration or Japanese culture. She's already concerned about the debt she'll face from the new, higher tuition fees if she starts university next year, which could be as much as £9,000 a year. She expects to have to take on part-time jobs to afford university, but doesn't want the financial side to determine her uni choices. "I haven't looked at any details about costs at the moment, because I want to work out which path to take and the universities I may go to before having to worry about the fees," she explains.
At college, Danielle is enjoying her art and photography classes most. "I'm looking forward to a sculptor coming in soon to help our class with our current project, designing a sculpture for the National Marine Aquarium [in Devon]," she says. "I'm enjoying my A-levels – they're challenging, but I think I will pass with the right help."
She, too, is looking ahead to the summer, and hoping to take her first holiday with friends. "We're planning to take a trip out of Plymouth, staying somewhere on a caravan site for a week," she says. "We want to learn to be more independent so we've started saving up."
University technology colleges, the 'nappy curriculum' and Oxbridge admissions
Kenneth Baker's University Technical Colleges (Service with a smile, 1 March) will be no more successful than his long-forgotten CTCs and for the same reason that technical schools never amounted to more than 4% of all postwar secondary schools: because technical education is expensive and employers are unwilling to pay for it. When they did require apprentices, employers shared the cost with day release to FE colleges. In those days of full male employment, completion of apprenticeship guaranteed employment. Modern apprenticeships carry no such guarantee. Such realities go unrecognised by Baker and Gove, who seek to recreate an ideal postwar world in which all knew their place with Platonic divisions between men of gold, silver and bronze.
Patrick Ainley
University of Greenwich
• The UTC principles are alive and kicking in the form of FE colleges, which have been working in partnership with schools to deliver education and training to 14- to 16-year-olds successfully for some years. Why reinvent the wheel?
Phoenix50 via EducationGuardian.co.uk
Sceptics about the Early Years Foundation Scheme (EYFS) could hardly have asked for a more compelling corroboration of their concerns than was contained in Dorothy Lepkowska's eulogy ("Why I was wrong about the nappy curriculum", 1 March). The EYFS has led parents to believe – quite erroneously – that it is appropriate for young children to be relentlessly observed and assessed. The spectacle of "folders" of a baby's "work", and a 10-month-old child being labelled as "musical and a problem solver" illustrate just how much damage this adult-centric ideology is perpetrating.
Margaret Edgington (early years consultant/trainer); Dr Richard House (Roehampton University); Kim Simpson (The Montessori Studio)
• By contrast with Dorothy Lepkowksa I discovered with some surprise that I wasn't one bit fussed about the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) when it came to childcare for my son. I had thought that Ofsted's opinion would loom large. In fact, we chose a childminder with years of experience who'd brought up five children of her own, and is rated just "satisfactory" by Ofsted. She has no inclination to fill out diaries detailing daily observations according to EYFS criteria. Instead – revolutionary thought – we have a little chat about our son's day at pick-up time. I don't want my son to be whisked from one carefully evaluated activity to the next. I want him to be somewhere emotionally warm, attentive and fun where there's structure, discipline and a lot of freedom.
Louise Tickle
Woodchester, Gloucestershire
Last week David Clifford argued that universities should not be scolded for their lack of poorer students when government policy deters such students from applying
Last year, about 17,000 people applied to Oxford for about 3,200 places. Around 34,000 that year got AAA or better at A-level. Of this group of 34,000 (eligible candidates, we'll call them), about 20% will get a place at Oxbridge. Around 33% of the total are from independent schools. Since independent sector students account for only 7% of the population, it is no wonder that they receive disproportionately more places. The fact that there's such a disproportionately high level of attainment in independent schools isn't Oxbridge's fault. Government attempts to blame universities for the failings of the state system, and the failure of politicians to do anything about it, is hypocritical in the extreme.
logopolis via EducationGuardian.co.uk
Teachers give their verdict on the first episode of Jamie Oliver's new venture, getting accomplished public figures to teach young people who have given up on education
Jamie Oliver might not be everyone's cup of tea, but it's hard to fault his enthusiasm. His efforts to revolutionise school dinners, coax the British into cooking healthy food and get young people from disadvantaged backgrounds into employment through his Fifteen restaurants have turned the TV chef into something of a national treasure. His latest mission is to persuade 20 teenagers who left school without GCSEs to give education a second chance.
Jamie's Dream School brings together some of Britain's most accomplished people, including Andrew Motion and the athlete Daley Thompson. The brief? To deliver inspiring, engaging lessons to young people who have given up on education.
Episode 1, featuring lessons from the actor Simon Callow, scientist Robert Winston, yachtswoman Ellen MacArthur, artist Rolf Harris and the historian David Starkey (who called one of the students fat) was aired last week. Here, teachers give their verdict:
Rebecca Malone, head of English, Bennett Memorial Diocesan school, Tunbridge Wells, Kent
I was expecting Jamie's Dream School to take another pop at the profession, but it demonstrated why good teachers are such talented, good-humoured and skilled people. Jamie's teachers may have fantastic subject knowledge, but they haven't been trained and some of them would have certainly benefited from this before being exposed to a class of their own.
Wayne Redmond, maths teacher, Babington Community college, Leicester. He is also involved in Train to Teach, a government initiative to recruit more teachers
It was good to see passionate, accomplished people trying to inspire those without passion, but this was a showpiece. It wasn't anything like a school – it was just big fun party time, like Celebrity Big Brother or The X Factor.
I suspect the way the programme was edited made the students' behaviour seem worse than it was. While most teachers would recognise that kind of attitude, it's certainly not representative of what goes on in schools every day.
Jo Shuter is headteacher of Quintin Kynaston school in London
I love Jamie Oliver, but this programme made me really angry. What makes him think he has the right to play with children's lives like this? These young people may have been failed by the system, but it felt like the public were voyeurs watching a load of chimpanzees, waiting for them to misbehave. If Jamie wants to understand inspirational teaching, there are many headteachers who could help. If he wants to use his wealth to help with charitable causes, there are much better ways of doing it. I'm trying to set up a hostel for the homeless at my school. I'd welcome a couple of hundred thousand for that.
Sean Bradley, law teacher, Gloucester college
It was good to see the celebrities struggling. Teaching can be a tough job and it's good for the public to see that. My only disappointment was that Jamie didn't get involved with any of the teaching. He had the best rapport with the kids and I'm sure he would have made a really good job of it.
Catherine Bourne, assistant headteacher at Mascalls school, Paddock Wood, Kent
I was irritated by the programme because it was yet another example of young people being stereotyped negatively. There are many enthusiastic students in schools who want to do well, but this is never celebrated in the media.
The assumption was: bring a load of middle-class white males, middle-aged and beyond, and expect young people to listen to them, just because of who they are. It doesn't work like that; as a teacher, you have to earn children's respect.
People have praised Jamie for his rapport with the kids, but it's much easier to do that if you can slouch around in jeans and talk mockney to them.
Katharine Birbalsingh is a teacher and author of To Miss With Love, an account of life as a teacher in an inner-city school
The very first episode of Jamie's Dream School unwittingly exposed precisely what is wrong with our education system. David Starkey made a grave mistake at the start: he tried to be cool and hip. No doubt remembering how teachers behaved in his day, he called one of his pupils fat. The pupil hit back with venom, and was then lost for the rest of the lesson, and possibly forever.
Jamie and John D'Abbro, the headteacher, talked of possible disciplinary action and how to get Starkey to realise that his behaviour was unacceptable. But what about the pupil's reaction?
Starkey was wrong, there is no doubt. But for it not to occur to anyone that these pupils needed a conversation on how one should always show one's teacher respect, that one should always try to turn the other cheek … it is indicative of what is wrong with modern Britain.
Martin Waller, year 2 teacher at Holy Trinity Rosehill primary school, Stockton-on-Tees
The programme made some important points about teaching; it's not just about knowing your subject. You have to be able to engage children, and get them excited about learning. Rolf Harris was the most successful at this. He was the only celebrity "teacher" I heard calling a student by their name.
Starkey's attitude was shocking. There is never any excuse for ridicule.
Jane Waters, English teacher, Gravesend Grammar school
At the very least, the programme provides insight into how difficult it is to maintain a calm environment when faced with mutiny. My 12-year-old son said he had never seen such behaviour from fellow pupils, nor had he seen such bad teaching.
David Weston, maths and physics teacher, Watford Grammar school for boys
The programme clearly showed what heroes teachers are, day in, day out. When David Starkey's lesson didn't go well he put the blame completely on the students. As a real teacher, you can't do that. You have to take responsibility for your own actions. You can't just give up on your students, even when they are really testing.
James Williams, lecturer in science education, University of Sussex
Michael Gove wants to get teacher training back into schools and for all teachers to have at least 2:2 degrees, but Jamie's Dream School showed exactly why he is wrong. Seeing the celebrities trying their hand at teaching highlighted the fact that good subject knowledge alone is not enough. Of the four celebrity teachers featured in episode 1, I'd offer Rolf Harris and Robert Winston a place on a teacher training course. Winston had put a lot of thought into how he might engage the students, and Harris was able to analyse what went wrong and what he could have done better. I'd need to see more of Callow in action, but Starkey, I'm afraid, would not be offered a place.
Sunglasses have their uses, but research shows they are becoming much more important in western culture as a cool accessory suggesting power, prestige and mystique
There can't be many connections between Lady Gaga, Andy Warhol, the cows on yoghurt adverts and Father Christmas. But here's one: they've all been spotted wearing sunglasses and analysed by Vanessa Brown, senior lecturer in design and visual culture at Nottingham Trent University, as part of her theory into the "coolness" of shades and why we wear them. It's not, she can report, just to keep the sun out of our eyes.
A trip to the supermarket was the inspiration for Brown's research. "On the way home after decorating my new flat, I stopped at a supermarket to buy a pint of milk," she says. "I was wearing old painting clothes and was generally a bit of a state, so as I left the car I grabbed my sunglasses from the dashboard. But when I approached the store I caught sight of myself reflected in the glass façade, and realised I looked quite cool.
"Whether I did or not is obviously debatable, but it struck me how odd it was that the mere addition of one accessory could transform my perception of myself."
Brown has always been interested in the meanings of objects and their cultural values – she has previously studied Tupperware and the idea of the housewife – so "sunglasses seemed like an ideal next project", she says.
With the help of the British Optical Association and the curator of its museum, Brown began searching through thousands of images, adverts, films, fashion photographs, documentary photographs and optical industry journals to investigate the symbolism of shades. "I found that sunglasses were always strongly associated with the glamour and power of modern technology, control of emotion, control of the body and control of interactions with others," says Brown.
She then started to analyse the link between the wearing of sunglasses and the broader phenomenon of "what it is to be cool". Brown, who is 40, explains: "Sunglasses are appealing because they connote coolness, which is used to sell almost everything." That was obvious from the sunglass-wearing cows in the yoghurt ad. "Some other researchers say coolness is emerging as the highest value in western society," she adds. "This can be seen as a very worrying and profoundly antisocial shift, as cool characters display lack of concern for others, lack of respect for authority or social convention, and a focus on style above all else."
However, Brown's research suggests that cool, sunglass-wearing heroes and villains are not so worrying. The shades represent their composure, their "self-possession in the face of seemingly overwhelming forces", she explains. "This resonates with experiences many of us share – we're increasingly alienated from work, each other and the natural world, increasingly aware of financial, medical, environmental risk and increasingly faced with identity choices. By shading the eyes, we can appear detached from the chaos, either frankly unbothered by, or utterly on top of, the frantic pace of technology and fashion.
"Sunglasses, by covering those vulnerable eyes and implying that connection with sleek engineering and glossy surfaces, make it easier to pull off a truly cool demeanour." Brown says her research has highlighted the proliferation of sunglasses in DVD covers, music videos, fashion images and adverts. "There are thousands of examples of sunglasses being used in visual culture as a key prop," she says.
"Increasingly, images of shaded eyes are used to sell products by suggesting power and prestige. They are perfect visual copy, suggesting mystique and self-possession as well as the glamour of being immersed in light."
Lady Gaga, says Brown, uses sunglasses to suggest her chameleon, avant-garde identity. She also points out that people buy sunglasses for their avatars to wear in the online game Second Life – where there is no sun. "They experience their idealised, more glamorous identity in Second Life from behind another glass barrier which hides the 'real' them – their computer screen," Brown explains. "My research demonstrates how many challenging aspects of modern life are negotiable through the shading of the eye."
Back in the real world, other sunglass-wearers that came under Brown's scrutiny include the jazz musician Miles Davis, "who decided to wear shades to avoid eye contact with racists and squares", and Andy Warhol who, Brown says, used sunglasses "as a means of glamorous detachment".
As for the fashionista, often shrouded in big sunglasses à la Vogue editor Anna Wintour, Brown says this represents disdain for others and being "unmoved" by the latest shocking model to strut down the catwalk. "Sunglasses also reflect light – which itself has been a metaphor for modernity, as in 'enlightenment'," she adds. "But that reflecting light also represents the success of modern celebrity and glamour – either flashbulbs, studio lights or the sun of exotic holidays."
Brown dismisses criticism that the value of her research on sunglasses could be questioned. "The study of fashion and popular culture is always open to question because it appears to address the less serious issues of life," she says. "But my dedication to studying popular cultural images and objects comes from a conviction that the things that people do 'without thinking' are the most telling about their fears, desires, motivations and concerns."
McGonagall and McIntyre, two of Scotland's 'persistent bad poets', are remembered with new public recitals
There's news about the bad poet William Topaz McGonagall. It's of absolutely no importance, but of great and goofy enjoyment to many in the English-speaking world. Several poems that have never been published in any book will soon be recited in public for the first time in more than 100 years, and maybe ever.
McGonagall, born in Edinburgh, lived much of his life in Dundee, by the river Tay. His most famous poem is called The Tay Bridge Disaster. One cannot help but try to admire the opening lines:
"Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silv'ryTay!
Alas! I am very sorry to say
That ninety lives have been takenaway
On the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember'd for a verylong time."
McGonagall fashioned other poems of comparable quality and worth. Many of them praise cities (The Beautiful City of Perth), towns (Beautiful North Berwick), villages (Beautiful Monikie), products (Sunlight Soap) or people (Lines in Praise of Mr J Graham Henderson, Hawick) that the poet hoped would be moved to give him money. Audiences often chose, instead, to pelt him with peas.
Scotland must take credit for producing – at almost the same moment – two of the world's most persistent bad poets.
In 1828, three years after McGonagall was born, the town of Forres welcomed a newborn named James McIntyre. McIntyre moved to Canada, where he milked, churned and ripened the poems that eventually got him known as The Cheese Poet. McIntyre's most famous is called Ode on the Mammoth Cheese – Weight over seven thousand pounds. It begins:
"We have seen thee, queen of cheese,
Lying quietly at your ease,
Gently fanned by evening breeze,
Thy fair form no flies dare seize."
McIntyre produced many other poems of comparable quality and importance, among them: Hints to Cheese Makers; Fertile Lands and Mammoth Cheese; and Prophecy of a Ten Ton Cheese. He died in 1906, again following McGonagall by a very few years.
The neglected McGonagall poems will be revealed on 19 March at the University of Dundee. Steve Farrar, who researches and writes materials for Scottish historic sites, recently happened upon them. Norman Watson, author of a new book called Poet McGonagall: The Biography of William McGonagall, also will take part in the Dundee ceremony. At evening's end, all will rise, and together declaim the concluding lines of The Tay Bridge Disaster.
That will be the highlight of the final event of this year's Ig Nobel Tour of the UK, from 13-19 March.
A month later, at the Edinburgh Science Festival, the other poems will be given their modern premiere, followed by a walk to Greyfriars Kirkyard, where McGonagall is buried. His nearest neighbour, for eternity, is Walter Geike (1735-1837).
A plaque next to McGonagall's explains that Geike is deaf.
• Marc Abrahams is editor of the bimonthly Annals of Improbable Research and organiser of the Ig Nobel prize For information about the Ig Nobel Tour of the UK go to http://improbable.com/improbable-research-shows/ig-uk-tour
