Yes, he does.
Lecturers’ union UCU will call on the government to abolish all university tuition fees – and force big business to pick up the tab. The demand is made in a new report highlighting Britain’s status as one of the cheapest countries for firms to do business.
Currently British businesses only pay [...]
Entries Tagged as 'Education'
Ritchie says that Big Business should pay for universities
March 9th, 2010 · 1 Comment
Tags: Education
There’s an easy solution to this
March 8th, 2010 · 10 Comments
Thousands of primary school children are being taught in supersized classes of more than 40 pupils, according to figures.
There are tens of thousands of qualified teachers (and I wouldn’t be surprised at all if it were 100,000 or more) who already work for the education system but never actually do any educating.
They’re sitting in the [...]
Tags: Education · Your Tax Money At Work
Ritchie, academia and corporate taxes.
March 3rd, 2010 · 3 Comments
If anyone’s at a loose end tonight would they fancy going along to the House of Commons? There’s an interesting question that should be asked.
R. Murphy Esq will be speaking:
I am speaking at a meeting tonight in the House of Commons organised by the University and Colleges Union.
The aim is to abolish university fees [...]
Tags: Education · Ragging on Ritchie
Girls are ready to have children at 14
February 28th, 2010 · 7 Comments
So says Hilary Mantel.
The 57-year-old novelist said that society ran on a “male timetable” which dictated that women should have babies at an older age.
“Having sex and having babies is what young women are about, and their instincts are suppressed in the interests of society’s timetable,” she [...]
Tags: Education
This does not tell us what Maddy thinks it tells us
February 22nd, 2010 · 6 Comments
It’s year 10’s English class in a London comprehensive. Forty kids are debating the purpose of a school. “Teaching social skills,” they suggest. Why do you need them? I ask, playing devil’s advocate. “To get a job.” Is that the only point of having social skills? “Yes, what else is there?” [...]
Tags: Education
Valuable education
February 16th, 2010 · 4 Comments
finishing a master’s thesis on narratives of queer youth activism
Tags: Education
Too much higher education
January 21st, 2010 · 5 Comments
If prices are falling then we’ve a sign that there’s over-production relative to demand.
The pay premium earned by postgraduates and those who take masters degrees is in decline as the market becomes flooded, research suggests today.
The study, commissioned by the British Library and the Higher Education Policy Institute (Hepi), found that the benefit [...]
Tags: Education
Getting excited about the Finnish school system
January 19th, 2010 · 5 Comments
Yes, excellent, let’s do it, eh?
Finnish schools are the inspiration behind some of the Conservatives’ planned education reforms to raise the qualifications and status of teaching in England, turning it in David Cameron’s words into a “noble profession”.
So, what are the distinctive bits of the Finnish school structure?
Education after primary school is divided into vocational [...]
Tags: Education
The state of education today
January 19th, 2010 · 4 Comments
Fiona Millar says something that rather blows my mind. OK, she’s talking about Boy Dave’s silliness about teacher qualifications but this does still shock at tad:
With its explicit condemnation of non-academic courses taken in non-Russell Group universities,
What in buggery is any university, that epitome of academia, doing teaching non-academic subjects?
That’s the whole point of a [...]
Tags: Education
Just what we need, yes….
January 11th, 2010 · 1 Comment
Peter Preston:
Why did schools take wildly different decisions about the snow? Because Ed Balls passed the buck
More centralisation in the British education system.
Oh yes.
The Minister in Whitehall really does have the knowledge to decide upon the weather conditions at each and every school in the country by 8 am each day.
Oh yes.
Tags: Education
Willy Hutton on private schools
January 10th, 2010 · 2 Comments
Yah, y’know, it’s all about class innit?
Private schools perpetuate privilege and thus we should….well, what?
How about sorting out the State schools so that those with any aspiration for their children don’t flee them?
How about even demolishing the distinction? Get the State out of the provision of education and leave it to simply finance it? Then [...]
Tags: Education
The state of education today
January 2nd, 2010 · 7 Comments
They could be plunged into “special measures” by Ofsted under new rules that place equality on a par with exam results and child safety for the first time.
Are we entirely sure that when a startling number leave 11 years of compulsory education without being able to read, write or [...]
Tags: Education
So how’s that State education system coming along then?
December 4th, 2009 · 17 Comments
Almost one million Scots are unable to read and write properly, according to an influential group of educationalists who have called for an overhaul of the country’s approach to literacy.
According to the Literacy Commission — which also includes business leaders and the novelist Ian Rankin — about a fifth of adults do [...]
Tags: Education
Horrors! Disaster!
December 2nd, 2009 · 2 Comments
Britain has plummeted to the foot of an international league table for the number of young people remaining in education beyond the age of 15, according to research. It has been overtaken by Portugal, the Slovak Republic, Hungary and New Zealand in major rankings showing the number of teenagers in college and university.
The University and [...]
Tags: Education
Quelle Surprise
November 23rd, 2009 · 9 Comments
All children should be taught in mixed-ability classes to boost standards and self-esteem among all students, according to a report.
Uhn hunh……where does this come from?
The study, by Teach First, which recruits top graduates as trainee teachers in tough inner-city schools,
Hmm….and of course “top graduates” who go off and work [...]
Tags: Education
Guarantees on schools
November 18th, 2009 · 2 Comments
An education Bill to be unveiled in the Queen’s Speech on Wednesday will create a set of pupil and parent “guarantees” for the first time – outlining what families can expect from the state school system in England.
D’ye know, looking through them, I can’t actually see that they’re promising [...]
Tags: Education
How to eviscerate tertiary education
November 3rd, 2009 · 4 Comments
My Noble Lord Mandelson of Fop seems not to understand the very basics of what he is doing.
He said universities would have to engage more with business, and involve employers more in both course design and the funding of degrees. “Universities are not islands, they are not ivory towers, they have to respond to the [...]
Tags: Education
Well, no, not quite
October 27th, 2009 · 7 Comments
Any link between skin colour and brain power was long ago disproved by science.
Hesitant though I am to argue with a scientist of Steve Jones’ standing, this isn’t actually true.
We can see links between average brain power of this group as against that group very easily. And yes, many of those groups are delineated by [...]
Tags: Education
Class preference in education
October 27th, 2009 · 1 Comment
Israel Moiseevich Gelfand was born into a Jewish family in the small southern Ukrainian town of Okny (now Krasniye Okny) in what was then the Russian Empire, on September 2 1913. Although he showed early brilliance in mathematics, he was expelled from school in his mid-teens [...]
Tags: Education
OK Polly, OK, you win
October 1st, 2009 · 7 Comments
Channel university savings into intensive one-to-one help for the youngest: once every seven-year-old can read, write and add up, the rest of education is easy.
The second part of that sentence actually makes sense. Congratulations.
So, let’s look around the world and see if there are any other education systems that manage this, getting every 7 year [...]
Tags: Education · Newspaper Watch