GOVERNMENT ORDERS INQUIRY INTO TEACHING OF CHILDREN WITH DYSLEXIA

5/6/2008 7:40:00 AM

The Independent 6 May

Ministers will today announce a major review of the way an estimated 300,000 dyslexic children are taught in state schools.Sir Jim Rose, the former Ofsted inspector heading an inquiry into the primary school curriculum, will be asked to review help offered to dyslexic pupils.Announcing the review to The Independent, Ed Balls, the Schools Secretary, said he believed Sir Jim's review would provide "firm evidence of the way forward, convince the sceptics that dyslexia exists and tell us how best to get these children the help they deserve"."If a child falls behind, their life chances can be blighted. What I'm announcing today will ensure we put the needs of dyslexic children first and ensure every child has the best start in life."Mr Balls' call for a review comes after The Independent revealed how a ground-breaking project which achieved major success in helping hundreds of dyslexic children and others struggling to read and write at primary school was to be introduced across Britain.Springboard for Children, an education charity backed by the British Dyslexia Association, has achieved a 90 per cent success rate in returning children with severe literacy problems to mainstream classrooms. The scheme, which involves one-to-one teaching sessions with every child struggling to read, is being used in a dozen schools in Manchester and London. It will be introduced in up to 10 other inner-city areas, bringing a lifeline to 10,000 children suffering from dyslexia and other difficulties with reading and writing.Independent

Lead Story

SELF-HARM AND EATING DISORDERS ON RISE AMONG UNDER-10S

5/6/2008 6:40:00 AM

Daily Telegraph 6 May

The apparent unhappiness of British children has been reflected in figures showing that hundreds of girls and boys under 10 are going into hospital with self-inflicted injuries and eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia. Official figures showing a rise in self-harm and eating disorders among children follow a warning that many youngsters are depressed and obsessed with their appearance.The Children's Society has said that three million children in Britain regularly feel depressed because of peer pressure and the need to conform to impossible ideals dictated by modern celebrity culture.Statistics from the Department of Health show that more than 3,800 people under 18 have been admitted to hospital with eating disorders in the past four years, with the number of cases increasing in that time by almost 10 per cent. Among them were 270 boys and 163 girls under 10.DT

General

WHEN THE LIGHTS GO ON

5/6/2008 7:33:00 AM

Fran Abrams; The Guardian 6 May

A neuroscience study shows the value of taking a break from the strictures of the national curriculum. Fran Abrams reports . A few weeks ago Chris Haworth, the deputy head of Our Lady's RC Sports College in north Manchester, fetched a bin and threw his lesson plans into it. Then he threw the national curriculum after them. It was just a bit of drama, of course, and he had to retrieve them all after the staff training day was over. Otherwise Ofsted, who visited last month and found the school improving fast, would have had very stern things to say. Haworth was trying to illustrate his view that our knowledge-driven, exam-focused education system does not cater adequately for the needs of the fast-developing adolescent brains of the pupils he teaches. "Our national agenda is really knowledge-driven," he says. "I want to put that to one side, to make young people confident learners so they can come at problems and offer solutions to them." Teachers in the UK have expressed this frustration for years. But now Haworth and his colleagues are spurred on by the knowledge that science is on their side. A new report from a major international research project has issued a challenge to the content-heavy, exam-based orthodoxy that has dominated UK education. The report from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) is the result of nine years' work by neuroscientists. Using new magnetic resonance imaging technology, scientists can watch the physical processes by which we learn. "At neural network level it's now possible to observe much better than it was before, so, for instance, we can document different sorts of learning processes by measuring the blood flow in the brain," says Bruno della Chiesa, leader of the Learning Sciences and Brain Research project. So we now know, for example, that dyslexia is frequently associated with atypical features in the left side of the brain, and that children are born with a pre-wired ability to become numerate. In the future, it may be possible to use brain-imaging to map windows of opportunity, when people's brains are particularly receptive to different types of knowledge - language or numeracy, for example. We also know that our brains continue to develop for much longer than previously thought.Guardian

Curriculum / Quality Assurance

TEENAGERS ON COURSE FOR GCSE IN DRIVING SAFETY

5/6/2008 6:55:00 AM

The Times 6 May

Teenagers will soon be able to sit an exam in driving science as part of a road safety initiative to curb the excesses of speed and risk among boy – and girl – racers. The new BTEC qualification, worth the equivalent of a GCSE, has been formally accredited by the Edexcel examination board. It will use video simulators to get students to respond to risky situations, including travelling with a car full of partygoers or negotiating rush-hour traffic while late for work and in a bad mood. They will also have to undertake virtual car journeys in different weather conditions and provide a live commentary on the hazards encountered on a video-taped journey. Students will be required to undertake computer-based brain-training exercises designed to improve their eye-scanning and risk-assessment skills and impulse control. Since 2000 there has been a steady rise in the number of fatal accidents involving novice drivers and more than 14 young drivers are killed every week in Britain. Government figures from last year show that drivers under the age of 21 were responsible for 15 per cent of all motoring convictions. A government consultation paper to be published this week will propose that learner drivers should be forced to have professional tuition and to prove that they have acquired key skills before taking the practical test.Times

Curriculum / Quality Assurance

THESE PROTESTERS ARE NOT DINOSAURS

5/6/2008 7:24:00 AM

Peter Mortimore; The Guardian 6 May

In persisting with ill-thought out reforms, the government risks damaging, possibly irrevocably, the education system, says Peter Mortimore . The latest results of key stage 3 tests show that English pupils continue to improve in English and science. Yet paradoxically, the latest Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa) tests in the same subjects show a systematic decline. One explanation is that the national curriculum-based tests are a better reflection of pupils' achievements than the broader competences of the international tests. An alternative view is that the English "high-stakes" testing regime (a term borrowed from the US to describe tests that have significant repercussions for pupils, teachers or schools) has conditioned teachers to teach to the test, endlessly rehearse pupils and, of necessity, relegate their most imaginative teaching to whatever time is left over. If this interpretation is correct, it suggests that many of the reforms introduced by recent governments might be counterproductive. Coincidentally, critics of the US high-stakes testing reform agenda, such Arizona professors Audrey Amrein and David Berliner (the latter a former president of the American Educational Research Association), also claim the US evidence points to failure. "If the intended goal of high-stakes testing policy is to increase student learning, then that policy is not working. While a state's high-stakes test may show increased scores, there is little support in these data that such increases are anything but the result of test preparation and/or the exclusion of students from the testing process." Once again Goodhart's law, formulated by a onetime chief adviser to the Bank of England, seems to have been confirmed: when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure. And, as Warwick Mansell has documented in his book Education by Numbers, all those involved collude in meeting specified targets. It seems increasingly likely, however, that these targets will bear as much likeness to reality as did the production goals of the former USSR.Guardian

General | Curriculum / Quality Assurance

OXFORD IS AN ELITE UNIVERSITY, NOT ELITIST

5/6/2008 6:36:00 AM

John Hood: Daily Telegraph 6 May

Are the right students going to our best universities? It's a simple question but an important one, because it impacts on so many things: personal opportunity, social equity and international competitiveness among them. The more confidently we can reply "yes", the better shape we can claim to be in as a society.For a university such as Oxford there is another powerful reason for wanting a positive answer. It is inconceivable that it could maintain its standing as one of the world's best centres of teaching, study and research if it were not attracting the truly outstanding talent.That's why I'm amazed to hear the idea still trotted out that there is some kind of Oxbridge conspiracy to keep out sections of the population. If a university with aspirations to global and national pre-eminence ever wanted to write a suicide note that would be a sure way of doing it.As one of our students at a recent meeting with parliamentarians put it, Oxford is an elite university, not an elitist one. Oxford is elite, as Manchester United or Real Madrid are elite. We are spending in the region of £2 million a year on programmes designed to broaden student participation at Oxford, and more on related initiatives. We have overhauled our admissions processes and are putting more than £6 million a year into what's already the most generous undergraduate bursary scheme in the country. DT

FE/HE/ Skills

PEOPLE NOT WORKING NEED PROPER SUPPORT

5/6/2008 7:17:00 AM

Graham Hoyle; The Guardian 6 May

Gordon Brown wants 400,000 young people to start apprenticeships in England, which is very welcome, but a big ask when there are just over 250,000 apprentices currently training. At the same time, the government is facing a challenge in reducing the proportion of 16- to 18-year-olds not in education, employment or training (the Neet group), which began to rise again last year to above 11%. Independent providers and colleges would like to work with the government to see if more Neets could be attracted to an apprenticeship programme, but many of these young people need proper support before they are ready to embark on a full apprenticeship. For more than two years, member organisations of the Association of Learning Providers (ALP), who start their annual conference in Nottingham today, have been waiting for a comprehensive strategy outlining the support available for young people and adults not yet capable or ready to engage in a full apprenticeship. Our expectation was that the proposed Foundation Learning Tier (FLT), which was set out in last month's consultation document from the Department for Children, Schools and Families on 14-19 qualifications, was to be this strategy. It is not. The proposals appear to reinforce a policy, and therefore restrict government support, solely to the achievement of predetermined approved qualifications. This approach has merit, but in reality will prove unhelpfully restrictive in moving young people, especially on to, and through, a skills ladder that will take them to a full apprenticeship.Experiences over the past three years from the successful Entry to Employment programme have clearly demonstrated that the most positive outcome for a large proportion of the pre-level 2 qualification group is getting them successfully ready to gain employment, with or without formal qualifications.Guardian

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