LETTERS ON DIPLOMAS

4/21/2008 7:40:00 AM

WE HAVE CONFIDENCE IN DIPLOMAS

Letter; The Guardian 21 April

As headteachers and principals delivering the new 14-19 diplomas, we do not recognise the picture painted in your interview with Jerry Jarvis, the managing director of Edexcel (Exam chief: rival to A-level in disarray, April 17). We are confident that we are on track for successful first delivery of the diplomas in September. Teachers and lecturers are preparing well for the diplomas. The three days of face-to-face training is only the start of an ongoing programme of training. From leaders to teachers to exam officers, all of us involved are working hard to be well prepared for successful delivery. Diplomas are being introduced in phases over four years. This will ensure that we are able to plan carefully and build understanding of the new qualifications among young people and their parents, as well as teachers, lecturers, employers and higher education. The diploma is certainly a stretching qualification, but we also should expect young people to achieve the basics in literacy and numeracy. All learners' achievements will be recognised, and we believe that the diploma will offer new opportunities for young people to realise their potential.

Richard Westergreen-Thorne Barnwell school
David Turrell Sir Bernard Lovell school
Jackie Fisher Newcastle College
Keith Elliot City of Bristol College
Phil Lambert Colton Hills community school
Lorraine McCarthy Moseley Park school
Rob Rossides Coppice performing arts school
Rev Huw Bishop St Peter's collegiate Church of England school
Christine McCann Notre Dame Catholic college, Liverpool
Phil Jamason The Alsop high school, Liverpool
Elizabeth Rushton West Herts College
Paul Harvey Hertford Regional College
Martin Bacon Swavesey Village college Claims that diplomas are "in disarray" or "worthless" distort the true position. In fact Edexcel itself has given strong support to diplomas and we are working with all parties to ensure the effective implementation of this exciting new qualification. The diploma has widespread support from schools, colleges, universities and employers because of its unique blend of applied and theoretical learning. It is precisely because we want to get the diploma right that we staggered the roll-out of diplomas and only schools and colleges that can demonstrate rigorously they meet all our quality controls have been allowed to deliver the diploma. Teachers will be well prepared for diplomas and we set up local consortia not to create complexity but to provide a powerful way of giving young people the widest possible choice to learn what they want to in the way they need to. I'm confident that the first diplomas we deliver from September will be a great success.

Jim Knight MP
Schools minister

SCHOOLS STRUGGLING TO KEEP HEALTHY MEALS ON MENU AS INGREDIENT COSTS SOAR

4/21/2008 6:58:00 AM

The Times 21 April

The drive to make school meals healthier is being jeopardised by the soaring cost of staple foods, leaving canteens struggling to provide nutritious and cheap dinners, local authorities say. Double-digit increases in the cost of foodstuffs such as bread, eggs and cooking oil have left local authorities struggling to maintain high-quality subsidised dinners. Dining hall managers have given warning that, if they pass on the rising costs of presenting healthy meals, parents may tell their children to eat less healthy food outside schools. They fear that, if the take-up of meals drops, the purchasing power of local councils will fall, raising costs further and causing canteens to disappear from schools completely. The average price of a school meal to parents last year in England was £1.64, according to the Local Authority Caterers Association (LACA) survey, but that conceals a subsidy averaging 43p per meal. John Freeman, director of children’s services at Dudley Metropolitan Borough Council, said that if food prices continued to rise the Government’s attempts to eradicate bad school food would be derailed. “The fact is the cost of providing healthy food is more than [the cost of] turkey twizzlers,” Mr Freeman said. “There will be a tipping point when the take-up of meals drops below a threshold and it’ll spin out of control. It could be within the year.” Times

General

PROJECT WILL HELP ‘THIRD SECTOR’

4/21/2008 6:59:00 AM

FT 21 April

Ministers have decided to remove a large obstacle to the provision by charities of crucial public services, by asking Whitehall’s statisticians to create a new system that measures the true value of services provided by the so-called “third sector”. The project, financed by the Treasury and Cabinet Office, deals with a problem that could stymie charity involvement in welfare-to-work and other important government policies – New Labour’s insistence on creating an “evidence base” before making decisions.Charities and other non-profit organisations have enjoyed an upsurge in interest from Whitehall. This is because ministers are looking for innovative channels to solve long-standing problems, such as Britain’s high level of worklessness. The Cabinet Office said: “The main reason for the project is to build an evidence base for the third sector so they can demonstrate their value.”The project will look at issues that are hard to quantify, such as “added value”. The aim is to create an all-encompassing system that would measure the quality of public services more accurately, on top of existing measures of quantity. It would enable a fair comparison between providers regardless of whether they were government departments, charities or companies.FT

General

TEACHERS' STRIKE COULD SHUT 1,000 SCHOOLS

4/21/2008 7:34:00 AM

The Guardian 21 April

More than 1,000 schools in England and Wales could be closed and most will have to send some children home when teachers take the first national strike action in 21 years on Thursday, figures obtained by the Guardian suggest. Schools in the urban heartlands of the National Union of Teachers will be particularly affected but most parents have not yet been informed of closures because of school holidays. The Guardian has surveyed 83 local authorities since Friday. Sixty-two responded and of those 25 could say how many schools would close, giving a total of 136. If the pattern is repeated across the country, nearly 2,000 schools could turn students away on Thursday. John Dunford, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said: "Most secondary schools will be partially closed; a thousand could close. It will be very, very difficult for schools which have been on holiday to organise themselves this week." Two out of three schools return from their Easter holiday today, leaving headteachers under pressure to establish how many staff will be absent on Thursday, how much of the timetable they can offer, or whether to start informing parents immediately to make other arrangements for their children. One local authority was "desperately" trying to establish how widespread the action would be in order to inform parents before Thursday.Guardian

Lead Story | General

LETTERS ON ADMISSIONS POLICY

4/21/2008 7:50:00 AM

FAITH SCHOOL ADMISSIONS CRITERIA ARE NOT SO PURE

Letter: The Guardian 21 April

Rabbi Abraham Pinter (Face to Faith, April 19) suggests that the religious teachings of faith schools are vital to our democracy so must not be interfered with by legislation on admission requirements. But the admission requirements practised by some faith schools are not so pure as he wants us to believe.For example, the current issue of the Jewish Chronicle contains a report discussing objections argued by various Jewish schools to government requirements. The Chronicle also reports the unpleasant experiences of some parents who had applied for places for their children. One mother, who described herself and her husband as Orthodox Jews, said she "was told by various different governors what they thought of us. One said he didn't like the way I looked. They didn't approve because my husband wore jeans to Shul on weekdays." Another mother was questioned about which rabbi she had consulted about the laws concerning menstruation. What such objections have to do with the freedom of religious education necessary in the interests of this country's democracy is surely open to question. On top of this, certain schools were strongly against admitting children of other faiths if they had vacant places.Such attitudes are not acceptable. These schools are largely paid for by us all as taxpayers. There must therefore be some limit to the conditions faith schools can impose. If a faith school wishes to impose admission requirements based on its own highly individualistic view of its religion, and if it is not prepared to admit non-faith pupils when it has space for them, then it has no right to expect the taxpayer to finance it.

S Walinets
Co Durham

Abraham Pinter pleads for state schools that educate children based on a religious faith of one's choosing in the name of freedom. Is he not forgetting the freedom of the taxpayer not to fund religious teachings with which he may profoundly disagree and may indeed deem to be socially harmful? Is he not ignoring the right of children to be free of exclusive religious doctrine, of having their minds shaped by such teaching, before they are able to judge for themselves? He speaks of children wishing to pursue an education which is conscience-based. Is he suggesting that a state education free of religious beliefs is unable to teach moral precepts based upon purely human social considerations? A perusal of freethought literature should disabuse him of this idea.

Francis Westoby
Hitchin, Hertfordshire

General

GCSES EXPOSE INCREASING GAP BETWEEN RICH AND POOR

4/21/2008 8:10:00 AM

The Independent 21 April

The glaring gap between the performance of poor and richer pupils is exposed by figures from last year's GCSE exams released today.They show that just over one in five children (21.1 per cent) on free school meals – a traditional indicator of poverty – obtain the Government's benchmark of five A* to C grade passes including maths and English. This compares to 49 per cent of those not on free school meals.The statistics also show that the gap between pupils on free school meals and the rest of the school population increases as they pro-gress from primary school to the first three years of secondary schooling. In 2002, the gap between the two groups in terms of reaching the required standard in English and maths in tests for 11-year-olds was 26 percentage points (richer) and 16 percentage points (poorer) respectively. When that same cohort took their national curriculum tests at 14, the gap was 27 points in each subject.Independent

Curriculum / Quality Assurance

LETTERS ON DIPLOMAS

SCHOOLS STRUGGLING TO KEEP HEALTHY MEALS ON MENU AS INGREDIENT COSTS SOAR

PROJECT WILL HELP ‘THIRD SECTOR’

TEACHERS' STRIKE COULD SHUT 1,000 SCHOOLS

LETTERS ON ADMISSIONS POLICY

GCSES EXPOSE INCREASING GAP BETWEEN RICH AND POOR

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