News and Updates

  • Proposed new SD indicators – it's almost too late to have your say

    Defra is consulting on a new SD indicator set.  So far, there have only been 80 responses and the consultation closes on October 15th. There are now 12 provisional headline indicators [ HI ] that are meant to be high-level outcome...

  • Come and meet Nick Clegg ...

    ... when the EAUC treats with the EDG on November 14th. Although meeting the diminished Clegg may now be a turn-off rather than the turn-on he once was, don't worry because he may not even be there. It's a proven,...

  • Meeting protocols in the digital age

    Another excursion yesterday into the slightly surreal and often intermittent world of the Skype conference call; six people in 4 locations.  It worked remarkably well, thanks in no small part to the computer moderator and everyone's patience.  I thought of...

  • Peas in our time

    I spoke briefly at a Food Growing in Schools Task Force conference the other day, offering a summary of the day.  I'll not trouble you with what I said, though you can see a few presenters' PPts here, other than...

  • It's university league table time again

    I see that the University is now 3rd in the Sunday Times League table (up from 5th).  My very limited straw poll yesterday suggests a degree of incredulity as to how this is possible, and puzzlement as to what it...

  • Tough on atriums; tough on the causes of atriums

    ... that is to say, architects.  According to the Guardian, dirigists in the DfE have clamped down on bendy walls, novel materials, open spaces, glass-substitutes, internal partitions, and glazed walls in the new design templates for their new, cheaper, Building Schools...

  • Another day; another journal

    So, welcome to the International Journal of Early Childhood Environmental Education (IJECEE) which is to be published by NAAEE which, I am told, is bearing all publication costs (except reviewing). Its blurb say it will publish scholarly written work, anonymously and...

  • Badgers, cattle and the rural economy

    This autumn, trials will go ahead in the South West of England to test the suitability of controlled shooting as a method of culling badgers in an effort to combat the problem of bovine TB (bTB) in England, to test...

  • On the streets again – defending democracy in New Zealand

    What an odd title, you might think, given that NZ was the first country to have universal suffrage.  However, you might like to read the admirable and utterly irrefragable Bronwen Hayward on the latest efforts in Christchurch to rebuild a...

  • Grade corruption in Wales

    It is hard to know which is the more disturbing – a politician ordering an exam board to raise candidates' GCSE grades, or the board meekly saying "Yes sir, of course, sir.  Very happy to oblige."  The latter, probably.  Both...