January 2016

  • Christmas message from Ofsted

    Thanks to Chris Southwood for alerting me to the Christmas message [ actually, a school inspection update ] to all Ofsted Inspectors from its national director (education), Sean Hartford.  By and large, it is not full of festive cheer. The update...

  • The power of the SDGs as a means of exchange

    I have been a bit critical of the bloated nature of the new sustainable development goals, but that should not blind us to the potential that they have for focusing attention on solutions to the world's problems. In particular, the...

  • A backward defensive stroke from the DfE

    Back in the mists of time – it was October 2103 – I wrote about a letter I'd received from the DfE explaining what it wasn't doing about sustainable development.  I commented, with what I felt were pleasing cricket metaphors ... This...

  • Bye Bye to the HEA?

    A gloomy report in last week's THE about the not quite market-ready HEA, now that it is increasingly bereft of taxpayer funding. Not only are institutional fees set to double, but academics will have to pay "modest fees" to be...

  • Outdoor learning seems just as incoherent as I feared

    I've been reading the research report on outdoor learning recently published by the Blagrave Trust, UCL, the IoL, and Giving Evidence: The Existing Evidence-Base about the Effectiveness of Outdoor Learning. It will not make comfortable reading for anyone who has been banging on...

  • What NUS did next

    The NUS published two new reports this week.  One is a national status report on university investments in the fossil fuel industry (based on Freedom of Information [FoI] requests); the other is a report on student and staff attitudes towards...

  • TEESNet Conference 2016

    The focus of the 2015 TEESNet Conference was Monitoring Education for Global Citizenship: A Contribution to Debate.  I didn't go as it seems to me that trying to introduce EGC is just as bad as encouraging ESD – that is, it diverts...

  • The GEEP is launched

    I wrote a while back about a meeting I went to about the GEEP – pronounced jeep – the Global Environmental Education Partnerships.  The website has now been launched. The idea is that GEEP is a platform where people can learn...

  • Donald is trumped by the Env. Agency

    I dreamed the other night, in that random way you do, that I was taking tea with Mr Trump – and that I upset him by what I said, and rendered him speechless.  Not sure life can get much better than this....

  • Schools for Future Youth

    As part of the Schools for Future Youth Project, a report was published in January on a youth participatory approach to global citizenship education across Europe. The report by Doug Bourn, Director of the Development Education Research Centre, at UCL,  reviews current literature, policy...