News and Updates

  • Fashioning something fabulous in silk georgette

    August was a creating month in our house.  I laboured over the construction of a book chapter, and my wife over the re-creation of a 1930s dress. Hers is in silk georgette; mine in duller stuff in every sense. The...

  • The Daly News ...

    ... carried a piece by Dan O'Neill recently on a post-growth economy in France. I’ve recently returned from France’s first high-level “beyond growth” event, entitled An Innovative Society for the 21st Century. The conference, which included five separate sessions for the 250...

  • Video diversity in Rhode Island – and Oldham

    Years ago, I saw a grainy VHS video that explored the wide range of primary schools that existed in Rhode Island.  What struck me was their diversity and how parents could choose a school to fit with how they thought...

  • Herman Daly on Fracking, Growth, and Limits

    Click here, to read Herman Daly on The Fracking of the Limits to Growth.  Here's a brief taste: The first Woodlands Conference in 1975 was a great success.  Its theme was “Alternatives to Growth.”  In addition to the Meadows, speakers...

  • Climate change is faster than education's response

    The ever-alert Learn from Nature pointed me to an article in a recent Observer on how the rate of climate change is likely to outstrip nature's speed of adaptation.  The article reports a paper in Ecology Letters, an on-line journal,...

  • New campaign from PlantsOut!

    PlantsOut! is a pressure group formed to resist the steady rise in non-English plants found in the countryside, gardens, planters, window boxes and vases generally. Today, their website announces a new partnership with UKIP to resist the flood of Bulgarian,...

  • Udi and Kelly go mainstream

    Those of us following Kelly Teamey and Udi Mandel's progress round the globe via their blog will not have been particularly informed by last week's piece in the THE, even though we might have been a little bit disappointed at...

  • Gove, the curriculum, and all that

    The Education Forum carried a sharp article recently on Gove, history and the history curriculum.  It's here. This will make pleasant reading for all those who despise Gove's overly-political influence on the school / national curriculum – and that not...

  • Ofsted, universities, and the baseball umpire story

    A recent THE carried a story about Ofsted and university ITT courses.  It runs, ... Universities have suffered under Ofsted teacher training inspections since Michael Gove unveiled plans to increase school-based training, in what some claim is a politicised inspection regime...

  • More goodies from QAAHEA

    The Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) and the Higher Education Academy (HEA) are working "with experts" (that excludes me) on the development of a new guidance document for higher education providers on Education for Sustainable Development (ESD).  An initial draft looms,...