March 2011

  • What some students have to put up with

    I have just read, with some despair, an academic's post-UK budget posting to the SHED-ACT [Sustainability in Higher Education Developers Act Network] list serve.  This is what it said: I'm sure by now many of you will have picked up the...

  • UK Census Form Illustrates the Chaos that is FE

    As I read through the 2011 Census form I found myself having many of the thoughts about it that have been widely aired in the press, in particular wondering just how useful such a process really can be for social...

  • OECD Confirms UK School Grade Inflation

    In its recent economic survey of the UK, the OECD devotes a significant part of its comments to a critique of how grade inflation in tests and public examinations [SATS & GCSEs] has obscured a poor performance when compared internationally...

  • The Trouble with DfID is ...

    I've lost count of the number of discussions and conversations I have these days where someone starts a sentence in this way – and it usually ends, one way or another, with a complaint that DfID is [shock] promoting current...

  • London School of Epicaricacy

    I have done my level best to take some vicarious satisfaction at the plight of the London School of Economics in its dealings with the offspring of Libyan dictators, but try as I might, I can't do it.  So it's...

  • The Calculus of Needs and Means

    At a meeting the other day, I heard myself say, without really thinking, "Social justice always trumps equality".  This was in response to a half-hearted complaint that someone (not me) had a bigger mug of tea than everyone else.  It...

  • An Expert Review Disowned

    Hot on the heels of UNESCO's UK funding problems comes a report from UNESCO in Paris: Education for Sustainable Development: an expert review of processes and learning Its Preface says: "... UNESCO has commissioned this expert review on processes and learning...

  • Jamie's Nighmare

    I watched Jamie Oliver's Dream School unfold last night with the same sort of awful anticipation that is normally reserved for a slow-motion crash: a totally debilitating mixture of fascination and horror.  Of course, it was all set up for...

  • Unesco in "Special Measures" Shock

    Such is the reach of Ofsted's special language games that it has even reached Unesco in the Spotlight which emphasises links between the USA and UNESCO.  Spotlight uses this phrase in its report of the very recent DfID review of...