MINISTERS AIM TO MAKE BETTER USE OF INTERNET

4/1/2008 7:05:00 AM

FT 1 April

Ministers are to harness the power of the web to make government better, by using popular consumer websites to dispense tips and gather ideas on how to govern more effectively. Tom Watson, Cabinet Office minister for transformational government, told the Financial Times he had set up a Whitehall taskforce to look at how to use the internet so that “we can make our own decisions quicker and better”. Mr Watson, who claims to have been Britain’s first blogging MP, expects the taskforce to meet for the first time next week.The blogging minister says: “If you look at NetMums [a popular website set up by mothers to swap problems and solutions], there are 101 good ideas that government could scoop up.”But he also sees the internet as an effective vehicle for the government to give advice – using NetMums, for example, to suggest the right vitamins for the under-fives.FT

General

WANTED: FAITH IN THE FUTURE

4/1/2008 8:27:00 AM

The Guardian 1 April

More than a third of British Muslims have no qualifications. Is the entire school system failing large numbers of students and what can be done? Riazat Butt investigates .The Qur'an was revealed over a period of more than 20 years, with the prophet Muhammad receiving the first revelation in AD610 in the Cave of Hira, near Mecca. He was told: "Read in the name of your Lord who created, created man from a clot. Read, for your Lord is most generous, Who teaches by means of the pen, teaches man what he does not know." Muslim scholars therefore see the pursuit of knowledge as a duty, with the Qur'an containing several references to the rewards of learning. This sacredness is, however, lost on a third of British Muslims - or if they see it, they are not being empowered to achieve it. According to the Office for National Statistics, around 33% of British Muslims of working age have no qualifications - the highest proportion of any religious group in this country - and Muslims are also the least likely to have degrees or equivalent qualifications. Why is the education system apparently failing so many people, and what can be done? Attempting to reverse the statistic is a group of theologians and educationists who meet this weekend in Leicester to discuss the underachievement of Muslim pupils. The Learning Education Forum of the International Board of Educational Research and Resources (Iberr) draws teaching professionals from all over the world to share ideas that will raise attainment in school and beyond. Speakers will come from as far as the US, Nigeria and South Africa.Guardian

General

'SPECIAL CONSIDERATION' FOR EXAMS: THE RULES

4/1/2008 8:28:00 AM

Daily Telegraph 1 April

Candidates could be eligible for ''special consideration" marks if they were fully prepared for an examination but performance was affected by something beyond their control such as a recent bereavement, serious accident or illness.Five per cent•Terminal illness of student
•Terminal illness of a parent
•Recent death of a member of the immediate family
•Serious and disruptive "domestic crisis" leading to acute anxiety about the family Four per cent•Incapacitating illness suffered by candidate or family member
•Major surgery near the examination
•Severe illness
•Severe car accident
•Recent death of extended family member

Three per cent•Recent traumatic experience such as death of a close friend or distant relative
•Recent serious illness
•Severe congenital conditions such as epilepsy, diabetes or severe asthmatic attack
•Recently broken limbs
•Organ disease
•Physical assault before an examination
•Witnessing a distressing event on day of examinationTelegraph

General

A TONIC FOR THE PHONICS QUEEN

4/1/2008 8:30:00 AM

Peter Wilby: The Guardian 1 April

In the reading wars, Ruth Miskin is riding high as her method for learning to read takes centre stage . I have before me a set of flash cards, sent by helpful people at Oxford University Press. They are, the cards promise, "a fun way for your child to learn the letters and sounds that make up words". Before the child can learn to read, they instruct, he or she must learn "to say the sound that is represented by each letter or group of letters" and also "sound out the word, eg c-a-t, sh-o-p, s-t-r-ee-t". So I have a drawing of a polar bear, puffing away (do polar bears puff?) and, beneath, the words "blow the snow". On the reverse of this card, I have, in large letters, "ow" which, I am informed, is a "stretchy sound". Then I have another card, with blow, snow, slow, show, know and flow. These are "green words". There are also red words, challenge words, speed sounds, and pink and purple banners. There are stories, too, in which, for example, a gingerbread man ran away from Dan, past a cat and a man in a van, and then got on Fran's pram. This is the latest method for learning to read which, to older folk, will be uncannily similar to the method once used almost universally, and then unceremoniously rejected - amid much mockery of Dan, Fran and the cat who sat on the mat - around the time of the Beatles' fourth or fifth LP. It comes from Read Write Inc and, the accompanying leaflet explains, it is "Proven Synthetic Phonics as seen on Channel 4". Its author is Ruth Miskin, a former primary school head and star of several TV programmes on reading, including a Channel 4 series last autumn called Last Chance Kids, which the Sunday Times columnist Minette Marrin described as "one of the few documentaries that have made me cry".Guardian

Curriculum / Quality Assurance

VOCATIONAL QUALIFICATIONS TO GO UNDER A LEVEL REFORMS

4/1/2008 6:40:00 AM

The Times 1 April

Thousands of vocational qualifications, including basic-level awards for cake decoration, nail art and parking control, face the axe from state schools and colleges in a bonfire of certificates, the Government has said. Plans to introduce an elite International Baccalaureate examination for sixth-formers in state schools have also been abandoned. The reforms, announced yesterday, are widely seen as promoting the importance of a new diploma for pupils aged from14 to 19 and hastening the demise of the A level as the gold-standard qualification. Jim Knight, the Schools Minister, said that the reforms aimed to replace an “alphabet soup” of 6,500 qualifications with a streamlined structure that would be more easily understood by students, their parents and employers. Under the system, every 14-year-old pupil will have to choose from three routes — academic (for those taking GCSEs and A levels), vocational (for those doing apprenticeships) or a mixture of the two (for students taking the diplomas). A fourth “foundation learning” route of core subjects, such as English and maths, will be taken by all pupils. The proposals include the creation of the Joint Advisory Committee on Qualification Approval. It will do for qualifications what the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence does for medicine, by deciding which ones deserve state funding. Times

Lead Story | Curriculum / Quality Assurance

INTERNATIONAL BACCALAUREATE PLEDGE DROPPED

4/1/2008 7:13:00 AM

Daily Telegraph 1 April

A promise to allow all teenagers in England to take tough international qualifications has been abandoned. Ministers dropped Tony Blair's plan to ensure one school or college in every area teaches the International Baccalaureate (IB) - the Swiss-based course favoured by many independent schools - as they attempt to divert students on to new diplomas. The Government also said it was preparing to axe hundreds of other qualifications, including some long-running City and Guilds courses. It will be seen as a further move to drum up support for controversial diplomas - the Government's flagship qualification combining classroom study and work-based training.The courses are being introduced from September this year and ministers eventually hope they will become the "qualification of choice" for all teenagers.Jim Knight, the schools minister, said: "There is good national coverage of IB but we have decided that we are not going to force those authorities that do not want to come forward and accredit the IB to do so."Telegraph

Curriculum / Quality Assurance

GROW YOUR OWN DIPLOMA

4/1/2008 8:28:00 AM

Liz Lightfoot: The Guardian 1 April

A qualification quietly being piloted bears a striking resemblance to ideas in the Tomlinson report on skills. Three years after Tony Blair kicked the Tomlinson diploma into the long grass, it is back in a new guise, sneaked in under the wire by a college principal and a canny exam board. While public servants and examiners work against the clock to deliver the government's three new academic diplomas on top of the original 14 vocational lines of learning, AQA, one of the three exam groups in England, has quietly gained accreditation for its own version. The AQA Bacc is being piloted by hundreds of sixth-formers at 36 schools and colleges this year, and the board is confidently predicting a fourfold increase in September, following the decision by the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority to approve it two weeks ago. Students take their usual three A-levels (depth of study) plus an AS in general studies, critical thinking or citizenship (broader study). They then clock up 100 hours of enrichment activities such as community work, debating, drama, music or the Duke of Edinburgh Award, and submit a 5,000-word report on a research project of their choice to demonstrate their skills of independent learning. Once, sixth-formers had to worry only about the choice of subjects. Now they must choose from the confusing array of qualifications that have sprung up since February 2005 when the recommendations of the 14-19 review, chaired by Sir Mike Tomlinson, were rejected by the government. Tomlinson, a former teacher and head of Ofsted, wanted to eradicate the historic divide between vocational and academic qualifications by including them within an overarching diploma umbrella that would also include key skills, an extended project and enrichment "extra-curricular" activities.Guardian

Curriculum / Quality Assurance

REMEMBERING 1993 AND ALL THAT

4/1/2008 8:32:00 AM

Peter Kingston : The Guardian 1 April

After 15 years of freedom from municipal control, colleges face a return to local authority funding .To compare the freeing of further education colleges from municipal control 15 years ago today with the fall of the Berlin wall would be absurdly disproportionate, but is tempting. "Back in 1992 if you wanted to upgrade a secretary - bring them on to a higher salary with more responsibility - you had to apply to the local education authority and six months later you might get permission," recalls David Collins, then and now principal of South Cheshire College. "I remember at my previous college in the late 1980s we wanted to put up a very small ramp to help disabled students get into a building. Half of the education committee, including its chairman, came to the college to look at where we were proposing to put it. The cost of the ramp was about £250." Like other people who were running colleges before they were "incorporated", Collins, now president of the Association of Colleges, remembers feeling a tremendous sense of liberation. "Local authority involvement in colleges was very restrictive," he says. "We were all very happy to be set free." Ted Parker (pictured), who was appointed principal of Barking College in Essex in January 1992 to take it into independence, says: "You had the feeling that you had to defer to the local authority about curriculum, the physical development of the college - even about staffing. There isn't much else, actually." Michael Oakes, principal of South Downs College, in Waterlooville, Hampshire, said: "I'm not terribly sure what principals did before incorporation but I suppose they were busy." Colleges and sixth-form colleges were incorporated on April 1 1993. Fifteenth anniversaries normally pass without remark, but this milestone has piquancy. The government announced last summer that from 2010 colleges will get their funding not from the Learning and Skills Council, but once again via local authorities. The big question is to what extent they might try to reassert the dead hand of municipal bureaucracy on a sector that has been transformed almost beyond recognition since independence. All the principals spoken to admitted to some anxiety about the move, but they also believe councils would be crazy to attempt to interfere with their operations. For a start, they reckon authorities would be unlikely to have the staff to do it.Guardian

FE/HE/ Skills

JUST THE JOB FOR LEARNING

4/1/2008 8:31:00 AM

Anthea Lipsett: The Guardian 1 April

The government is looking for employers to foot more of the bill for universities by tailoring their courses. "Employer engagement" - or getting employers to foot more of the bill for higher education - is the policy catchphrase of the moment, and one the government is pushing. Professor David Eastwood, chief executive of the England funding council, Hefce, announced £105m to back it up in February, telling the Conference of Northern Universities it was "about a rediscovery of roots and a vision deeply etched in universities' history". Hefce plans to create 5,000 new places part-funded by employers by 2008-09, rising to at least 10,000 new places in 2009-10, today it unveils the first three projects to benefit. Staffordshire, Cumbria and Teesside universities will share £8.3m to spur on more employers to help set up and pay for courses with universities. All three already have good links with local business. But Eastwood insists that employer engagement is not just for business-oriented universities. "The projects we are funding today reflect the changing and quickening pace of engagement, which is now becoming part of the core business of higher education," he says. They will create additional student places for courses tailor-made for collaborating companies. Most will be for part-time study, often delivered in the workplace or electronically. Staffordshire has £3m to develop a business centre in Stoke-on-Trent, jointly with Stoke on Trent College, that will cater for more than 3,000 learners by 2011. Cumbria has £188,000 for two new foundation degrees from 2008 - one in policing and one on supply chain logistics - providing for 890 students by 2012. And Worcester College of Technology will work with the Institute of Payroll Professionals towards a foundation degree in payroll management for 3,200 learners by 2010.Guardian

FE/HE/ Skills

MINISTERS AIM TO MAKE BETTER USE OF INTERNET

WANTED: FAITH IN THE FUTURE

'SPECIAL CONSIDERATION' FOR EXAMS: THE RULES

A TONIC FOR THE PHONICS QUEEN

VOCATIONAL QUALIFICATIONS TO GO UNDER A LEVEL REFORMS

INTERNATIONAL BACCALAUREATE PLEDGE DROPPED

GROW YOUR OWN DIPLOMA

REMEMBERING 1993 AND ALL THAT

JUST THE JOB FOR LEARNING

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