Bill Scott
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Bill Scott2 April 2011
Lament for History's Lost Narrative
Sitting in a Hay-on-Wye tea shop, reading (what else?) The Guardian, I come across Niall Ferguson's recent blast at school history teaching in the face of what seems like complacency by Ofsted who said in a recent report: "There was...
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Bill Scott1 April 2011
ESD in Schools to be Compulsory
In a surprise move today, Michael Gove has announced that a study of sustainable development is to be made compulsory in English Schools from September 2012. The Department for Education has confirmed that there will be three elements to this:...
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Bill Scott24 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...
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Bill Scott18 March 2011
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...
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Bill Scott18 March 2011
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...
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Bill Scott10 March 2011
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...
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Bill Scott10 March 2011
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...
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Bill Scott5 March 2011
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...
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Bill Scott3 March 2011
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...
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Bill Scott3 March 2011
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...