News and Updates

George M’s latest dyspeptic vision of the future – at least for benighted folk north of the Wall –  has been seen off by Brian Wilson for the “patronizing rubbish” it clearly is.  Wilson asks where are the progressive ideas in nationalist politics,...

England's Department for Education has bowed to pressure from Ofsted and agreed to appoint 8 regional education commissioners (and a super, 'national' commissioner to keep an eye on the other 8).  Their role is to oversee the ~4000 free schools and academies in...

On Monday the 4th of August, at 2300, a small group of people from the village I live in met to plant an oak tree to "remember the start of the 1st world war in 1914".  This was the day and time the British...

The Economist's Schumpeter column reports that Deep Knowledge Ventures, a Hong Kong venture-capital outfit, has appointed an algorithm to its board of directors.  VITAL (Validating Investment Tool for Advancing Life Sciences), having run the numbers, gets to vote on which...

Why is it so difficult for most institutions to do well in both the NSS national student satisfaction survey, and in the green league?  Only Exeter has managed to get close to squaring this circle recently by being 13th in the green league (2013) and...

The transport system is so good here, and my expectations of it, so low, that I arrived at my first meeting over twenty minutes early.  I then made the mistake of looking at my map for the building I was...

This is an extract from the latest e-message from Think Global’s Chief Executive, Tom Franklin: As you may know, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) will be including ‘Global Competence’ in its ‘PISA’ international measurement of different countries’ education...

I am at the ECER conference in Porto – my last.  This is the first full meeting of the new Network 30 – environmental and sustainability education research, which has been guided into existence by the commendable Per Sund. The...

The girls and boys who run People & Planet have always tended to take themselves rather too seriously, falling into the trap of thinking that their Green League has had far more influence than it really has; they have also been far...

There's a new report from the HEA on: The Role of Hefce in Teaching and Learning Enhancement: A Review of Evaluative Evidence.  It does not make good reading. This report was commissioned by the HEA in 2013 at Hefce's request, with the...