Private sector’s role on jobs to grow

2/29/2008 8:13:00 AM

Nicholas Timmins, The Financial Times; 29 February

The role of the private and voluntary sectors in getting people off benefits and back to work is “here to stay and set to grow”, the work and pensions secretary said on Thursday as he took the first step towards creating a multi-billion pound welfare-to-work business in the UK. James Purnell announced a commissioning strategy that will see independent-sector providers, who already run employment zones and parts of the New Deals that help people find work, given longer and larger contracts. By far the biggest part of their payments will depend on keeping people in work for six months rather than the current 13 weeks, with this period extending to 18 months and in time perhaps to three years. Moves will be made to tie the welfare-to-work programmes into the government’s learning and skills agenda, so that people are moved off jobseekers’ allowance and incapacity benefit not merely into entry-level positions, but to ones where training can lead to better jobs. Prime contractors will take the financial risk, sub-contracting with voluntary-sector and smaller private providers, and will operate under a code of conduct that requires performance data to be published under a “star rating” system.

FT

More city academies on the way

2/29/2008 11:10:00 AM

The Guardian 29 February

Ed Balls, the children's and schools minister, will today announce that he is sanctioning a further acceleration of the city academy programme in the next two years. Speaking to activists at the three-day Labour spring conference starting today, he will say: "The evidence is clear: academies are turning round low-performing schools in disadvantaged communities; with fair and comprehensive admissions and even more disadvantaged intakes than their catchment areas; delivering faster-rising results than other schools." He will also announce plans for an extra five academies a year, bringing the annual total to 55. The acceleration is to be achieved by speeding the decision-making process and cutting consultancy fees. The progress is also a tribute to the schools minister, Lord Adonis, who has acted as the arm-twister to secure sponsors. Balls's speech, when taken in conjunction with radical welfare proposals confirmed by the work and pensions secretary, James Purnell, yesterday, suggests Gordon Brown has no intention of allowing himself to be painted as a roadblock to reform. There has been repeated speculation that Balls and Brown were opposed to city academies, but his speech today will scotch any such suggestion. Balls believes he has made the changes to their governance, curriculum requirements and sponsorship regime to remove concerns that they are going to be selective, or totally outside the local authority structure. Almost as soon as he was given his cabinet post in the summer, Balls announced that universities, high-performing schools and colleges would not have to pay £2m before they can sponsor an academy. Many previously sceptical local councils, including Manchester, are now embracing the academies. A Cabinet Office review gave academies a clean bill of health, dismissing claims that the intake was becoming skewed against the poor, or those on free school meals. The government's current objective is for 400 academies.

Lead Story

Labour's view on welfare reform

2/29/2008 8:09:00 AM

Frank Field The Daily Telegraph; 29 February

The goal of the new Work and Pensions Secretary, James Purnell, is to revolutionise Labour's position on welfare. Forget all the claptrap in the statement he made yesterday: here is only one more step on a road to reform which is marked by a string of successes. Since Labour took office over three million new jobs have been created. All too few of these jobs have been taken by British citizens standing in the welfare queues. The numbers on incapacity benefit have actually gone up. When the Government opened up our labour market to Eastern Europe in 2004 an avalanche of workers came to this country and were successful in finding work. Currently 85 per cent of new jobs are filled by newcomers. This figure is so devastating that even the present government has been forced to rethink its position on welfare reform. The centre of political gravity on Labour's backbenches has also changed. Ten years ago most Labour Members of Parliament did not believe that there was an ample supply of jobs which people of working age on benefit could take. Mass immigration has thrown this well-meaning but muddled thinking out of the window.

Daily Telegraph

General

Billie’s dawn patrol

2/29/2008 8:08:00 AM

Hannah Frankel The TES: 29 February 2008

The 24-hour school may seem a nightmare for some teachers. But for this Year 10 pupil, the flexi-timetable means she can be at school for breakfast club by 7am and learning only 30 minutes later. Fed up with having to work an extra day this leap year? Well imagine having to go into school on Boxing Day, during the holidays or at 8pm. This is not fiction: round-the-clock schools, already established in the US, are fast becoming a reality in the UK as heads attempt to increase choice and personalisation within a notoriously crowded timetable. Flexi-timetables recognise that young people do not learn the way they used to. The internet ensures that pupils can access any information anytime, anywhere. Research also indicates that older pupils work better in the afternoons, while younger pupils are more receptive to numeracy and literacy first thing. Yet the school day remains frozen in the 19th century, argues Paul Mortimer, who has been experimenting with school timetables since his first headship in 1989. The traditional school year is modelled on factories, he says, where children of a similar age are split into manageable groups of 30. They are clocked in and out during daylight hours for the same five days a week, 38 weeks a year, more out of convenience than any pedagogic considerations.

General

Children's mags 'damage writing'

2/29/2008 8:14:00 AM

BBC 29 February

Lightweight fiction and magazines could be damaging children's ability to write good English, a government report says. It added that teachers felt the "informal style of pupils' personal reading diets" pervaded some pupils' writing - making it too colloquial. And there were claims that the language of texting and e-mailing was being used when a more formal style was required. The report looked at how best to boost the performance of children who were falling behind in the core subjects. The latest results show that four out of 10 14-year-old boys failed to achieve the expected level in last year's national English, maths and science tests. A third of 14-year-old girls also failed to make the grade. The Department for Children, Families and Schools report offers voluntary guidance for schools on how best they can help pupils who are at risk of not meeting these standards. BBC

General

Let’s keep fat in proportion

2/29/2008 8:07:00 AM

Adi Bloom The TES: 29 February 2008

Being overweight and eating fatty food is a normal part of growing up. It’s our obsessing constantly about children’s weight that is the real problem. Harry worries constantly about getting fat. Before bed, he regularly looks down at his stomach, grabs at his flesh and wonders aloud if he is putting on weight. Harry is six years old. “He thinks that if he suddenly developed a belly, it would be a reason to tell him off,” his mother said. “He’s looking for confirmation that he hasn’t been naughty. And I think: how dare anyone put that into his head?” Harry is tall, skinny, active, and a casualty of the obsession over obesity. Organisations specialising in eating disorders worry that the focus on young people’s weight – and the way some adults demonise certain foods – is creating a generation obsessed with growing fat and increasingly guilty about eating.
Since Jamie Oliver fought his first battle against turkey twizzlers, the Government and the media have been on the warpath against childhood obesity. For schools, it has meant altering what they serve in kitchens and changing the contents of their vending machines.

General

Research councils reject new assessment system

2/29/2008 9:36:00 AM

Anthea Lipsett Thursday February 28, 2008 The Guardian

The UK's seven research councils have openly rejected proposals to replace the system for judging research quality. Research Councils UK (RCUK), which represents all the discipline-specific councils, told the Higher Education Funding Council for England (Hefce) that its proposals to replace the research assessment exercise with a statistics-based "metrics" system were "not acceptable to RCUK in their current form". The new system - the research excellence framework (REF) - would rely more heavily on statistics and treat the sciences and arts and humanities separately. The sciences will be assessed on bibliometrics, which measures the extent to which research papers are cited by other publications, while arts and humanities will retain an element of peer review - where academics judge each other's work. But the research councils, which invest around £4bn each year in university research, said it would prefer to see a single system for all subjects, including peer review.Guardian

General

Early Easter makes an unholy mess of holidays

2/29/2008 8:07:00 AM

Irena Barker The TES: 29 February 2008

The earliest Easter since 1913 is playing havoc with school planning and teachers’ personal lives. Easter Sunday falls on March 23 this year. More than two-thirds of authorities will close schools over the public holiday and delay the two-week break until early April. But many are still taking their main break from Good Friday onwards and will face a longer, potentially exhausting, summer term. There are also concerns that a spring half-term of fewer than five weeks in some authorities will mean unruly pupils will barely settle back into work. One languages teacher at a Hertfordshire secondary said: “The school will never get into a rhythm. You can write off the first week and the last week of term. We will get very little done. “It’s going to feel like we’re cramming a lot of exam preparation into a very short space of time and I dread our 14-week summer term – the autumn term was 15 weeks and it almost killed me.”

General

Girls 'more skilled on computers'

2/29/2008 8:14:00 AM

BBC 29 February

Girls are more confident than boys about using a computer, a survey of more than 1,000 children suggests. The research by the Tesco Computers for Schools programme found girls were more likely than boys to be able to perform key tasks, such as creating documents. It also showed three-quarters of the seven to 16-year-olds polled used a computer every day, with half spending at least two hours a day online. Meanwhile, the survey suggested parents relied on children for help. By the age of seven, nearly three quarters (73%) could use search engines and well over half (62%) were able to edit documents, the research found. It also showed the level of skills among teenagers meant 70% could confidently create a social networking profile, 59% could download music and more than a third (35%) were able to edit and manipulate photography. Among the girls in both groups only 6% said they lacked confidence using a computer, compared with 10% of boys. Many parents also lacked confidence, the survey suggested. More than half (57%) of parents said they relied on their children for advice on how to use their computer and the internet, and only 40% of parents thought they were the most proficient computer user in their household. BBC

Curriculum / Quality Assurance

Teachers back compulsory sex education in primaries

2/29/2008 8:15:00 AM

Adi Bloom and Helen Ward The TES: 29 February 2008

Two thirds of primary teachers believe sex education should be compulsory for pupils in their schools, and many of those recommend it for children at seven. A TES survey of almost 2,000 teachers showed three-quarters of them want compulsory sex and relationships lessons. More than 60 per cent in primaries, but only 35 per cent in secondaries, felt it should start in Year 5 or 6. A quarter of primary staff would like lessons to begin in Year 3. The survey results come as the Government this week launched a review group to investigate sex education, a vital part of its drive to make pupils lead healthier lives. At present, sex education is only statutory as part of the science curriculum for 11- to 14-year-olds. Our survey was carried out to launch a TES series, called The Big Five, examining the ambitious outcomes for children that schools are expected to meet: these are for young people to be healthy, stay safe, enjoy and achieve, make a positive contribution in life and reach economic wellbeing. These aims were first introduced five years ago as part of the Government’s Every Child Matters policy, and form the basis of its Children’s Plan for the next decade.

Curriculum / Quality Assurance

Private sector’s role on jobs to grow

More city academies on the way

Labour's view on welfare reform

Frank Field The Daily Telegraph; 29 February

Billie’s dawn patrol

Children's mags 'damage writing'

Let’s keep fat in proportion

Research councils reject new assessment system

Early Easter makes an unholy mess of holidays

Girls 'more skilled on computers'

Teachers back compulsory sex education in primaries

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