Bill Scott's blog
Thoughts on learning, sustainability and the link between them
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HEA soon to be free from public influence and accountability
I wrote the other day about the steady reductions in tax-payer funding from to the Higher Education Academy [HEA] from the Higher Education Funding Council for England [Hefce]. One consequence of this is that when the funding stops entirely,...
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New environmentalism and the circular economy
The other day I watched EU Environment Commissioner Janez Potocnik give a presentation on TEDx. He was supposed to be talking about “New environmentalism and the circular economy” – but he didn’t. The talk was full of scary data, mostly around...
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Mr Gove's been up on the roof
Secretary of State for Education, Michael Gove is clearly a Drifters fan – well, aren't we all; I'm always thinking about being somewhere under the boardwalk, down by the sea. However, the cerebral Mr Gove, as you might expect, rather...
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New OECD report praises Welsh schools
Sadly, however, the OECD only praises them for minimising gender differences in attainment. Boys and girls now do equally badly, it seems. This is not what equal opportunities was supposed to be about. I searched the report in vain for...
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The EU and our money are soon parted
UE4SD – University Educators for Sustainable Development – is a new project on professional development and ESD in universities, working across Europe “to locate and capture recent efforts to support the development of ESD capabilities of university teaching staff.” The...
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Moral Panic in E14
Every once in a while, some Think Tank or other publishes a report (the contents of which it usually takes pains to accept no responsibility for) about the brain / green washing of delicate young minds by politically-motivated teachers and...
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EFA and ESD – illiteracy and sustainability
In my time, I have sat through many a cheerless meeting trying to fathom the relationship between ESD and EFA, with Venn diagrams and other aids to understanding usually thick on the ground. It’s a popular myth that EFA /...
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Are you looking for a global learning case study?
Well, if you are, and you are open-minded about globalisation, and want to help your students be the same, you might well look at this week’s Schumpter column in The Economist. But, if you’re not, and you want youngsters to...
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Sara Parkin joins the HEA Board
I hear that the redoubtable Sara Parkin has been appointed to the Board of the Higher Education Academy [HEA], and the welcome sound of feathers being ruffled is already audible. This is evidence I'm told, by those who know about such...
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Defra continues to appease the NFU over badgers
Thursday evening's BBC Radio 4 PM programme had an interview with the Defra secretary of state, Owen Patterson, on England's failed pilot badger culls. You can listen to it here, at around 40 mins in. The consistently admirable Eddie Mair...
