Guest post by Adam Ramsay

Last week, around 7000 students voted in their union elections at Southampton. This broke the UK student union turnout record set at Edinburgh last year. Not to be outdone, Edinburgh students came back on Thursday night, and re-broke the record. Around 7,200 cast ballots – four times as many as eight years ago.

This trend has continued in the other campus elections that have taken place so far this term: both Reading and Queens Belfast have broken their own records.

This time last year, I wrote a piece for The Herald pointing out how university after university had smashed turnout records, how Britain had seen the first wave of lecture theatre occupations in 30 years, how students were fast becoming the backbone of many of Britain’s progressive movements: how politicians should take notice. continue reading… »

I don’t usually do requests, but at the prompting of Watchman in comments, this is part four of my trilogy of posts on teenage pregnancy, and this time we’re looking at whether educational performance makes a difference.

I’ll keep this one short and sweet.

To try and answer Watchman’s question, I went back to the area data for local authorities in England (using data from 2007) and mapped the conception rates and percentage of pregnancies ending in abortion, for women under 18, against GCSE grades, using standard DCSF categories, e.g. the percentage of school levers gaining 5 GSCEs or better at grades A*-C, etc.

The main results are pretty much what most people would expect.

There is a positive correlation between conception rates and the percentage of young women leaving school without any qualifications at all, although the Pearson coefficient (PMCC = 0.4) indicates that the link here is not, perhaps, as strong as many people would expect.

For young women leaving school with at least some qualifications to their name, the correlation between educational performance and conception rates is a bit stronger (PMCC = -0.5 to -0.6) for most of the performance categories.

In general terms, areas with better GCSE results have lower conception rates in women under 18, although the link is a fairly moderate one.

There was, however, one very interesting result in the analysis. continue reading… »

contribution by Sam Bumby

An article in yesterday’s Independent highlighted the failings in the Conservative school policy. Personally I think it was a rubbish idea to start with. Allowing parents, charities and trusts to run schools?

It sounds to me just like an idea to privatise the school system, an idea which allows any idiot with a ton of money to influence and indoctrinate youngsters with their own opinions.

Obviously that is still the case today, but in small isolated specialist schools which provide top quality education for the highest fee payers. Imagine if that was the only choice for your kids (minus the massive bill of course)?

The wonders of a central education system mean that every child has access to the same basic education and whilst it may vary regionally, what is taught is practically the same.
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It’s not just Conservative Central Office who’re having a few graphic design problems at the moment.

This is the actual poster that The Spectator are using to promote an upcoming education conference called ‘The Schools Revolution’ at which the Tories Education spokesman, Michael Gove, is the headline act:

Does it remind you of anything? Like, say, this…?

Or perhaps this…?

Maybe this makes things a bit more explicit…?

Memo to the Spectator’s design department… not the best choice of colour scheme there guys, D’oh!

I spent this evening watching a black labrador slurpily lapping the shoes of a major think-tank director whilst its owner thought up ways to lie to me about his party’s attitude to the poor and needy. In a speech given in conjunction with Progress, David Blunkett MP set out to demonstrate just why the Tories are so very, very different from New Labour.

The former Home Secretary quoted Aneurin Bevan, who described the Conservative party’s habit of using government policy to shore up the assets of the privileged as “sucking at the teats of the state”.

“That sums it up pretty well”, said Blunkett, who went on to describe how the evil, ghoulish Tories, are planning to reduce the size of the state by selling off central and local government functions to private companies in an effort to save money, because they, unlike Labour, care about money more than about people.

Mr Blunkett omitted to mention the small matter of the Welfare Reform Bill 2008, with its stated aim of saving cash by getting a million people off sickness benefits and back into work whether they are up to it or not.
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For an Old Etonian to promise a ‘brazenly elitist’ approach to state education – as Tory leader David Cameron has done this week – is nothing if not brazenly cheeky.

It’s a nice catchphrase of course, chiming as it does with the popular perception that something is wrong with the system, and that sex-crazed pothead Sirs and Misses of the type parodied in that Channel 4 comedy-drama a few years back bear most of the blame.

To be sure, there is nothing wrong in principle with offering more money to attract people to a sector where vacancies are hard to fill. That, the economics textbooks tell us, is how labour markets are supposed to work.

But let us not even pretend that any government is going to provide state school teachers with the kind of starting salaries that Oxbridge graduates can pull down in the City or at a City-oriented law firm.

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At the weekend Peter Oborne treated us to a treatise on how the Conservatives have put together the most radical program for government since Oliver Cromwell, or words similar to that effect.

But in reality, as yesterday’s launch of the party’s education policies showed, somehow managing to be even worse than Labour at reforming our benighted education system.

After all, it really ought to be an open goal. Even after almost 13 years under New Labour, still barely 50% manage to get 5 “good GCSEs”, a record so appalling that it can’t be stressed often enough.

There have been improvements made, although considering the amount of money pumped in it would be incredible if there hadn’t been, and diplomas as introduced by Ed Balls, is one of the few reforms which has been a step in the right direction.

So when Cameron then immediately decides that the most important thing which will decide whether or not a child succeeds is not their background, the curricula, the type of school or the amount of funding it receives but the person who teaches them, he’s on the verge of talking nonsense on stilts.
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It’s always a sure sign that the Tory faithful are happy when Tory bloggers start posting long extracts from one of Cameron’s policy speeches.

We’re going to begin at source – at recruitment – and make sure we get the best people into the profession. At the moment, not enough of our brightest people consider going into teaching, especially those in the subjects we need – like maths, and in the schools that would benefit most from their knowledge – tough inner-city ones…

We can get round this problem – we just need to learn from abroad. Finland, Singapore and South Korea have the most highly qualified teachers, and also some of the best education systems in the world, because they have deliberately made teaching a high prestige profession.

They are brazenly elitist – making sure only the top graduates can apply. They have turned it into the career path if you’ve got a good degree…

So we will end the current system where people with third class degrees can get taxpayers’ money to enter postgraduate teacher training. With our plans, if you want to become a teacher – and get funding for it – you need a 2:2 or higher.

But can you be sure that any of these high-flying graduates you want to attract can actually teach?

It’s also interesting to see Dave picking on Finland as one of the three countries cited as having an excellent education system.
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In a speech today the communities secretary John Denham will say that ethnic minorities are no longer automatically disadvantaged in Britain, but that disadvantage is more linked to poverty, class and identity.

New trends are emerging linked to the way that race and class together shape people’s lives and this makes the situation much more complex. That does not mean that we should reduce our efforts to tackle racism and promote race equality but we must avoid a one dimensional debate that assumes all minority ethnic people are disadvantaged.

This should be welcomed and I’ve been arguing for a multi-dimensional approach for years, one of the reasons why I opposed ethnic minority shortlists. Class is indeed one of the primary factors affecting minorities, especially in education where middle class boys of Indian and African backgrounds do better than working class kids from white, Caribbean and Bangladeshi backgrounds.

To say that a person’s race affects their opportunities in society less than factors such as class and gender is now, I think, to state the obvious. In a way it is also a welcome development because it shows our society has become much more progressive on race issues: though it’s still a problem that how much a child’s parents earn still matters.

I can predict some comments and headlines on the right: ‘see, it shows why multiculturalism and political correctness should be ditched and Richard Littlejohn spoketh the gospel‘ etc.
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contribution by reader ‘Donut Hinge Party’

Some time this month everyone’s expecting David Cameron to release his manifesto. The conventional narrative, “the Tories have no policies other than the inheritance tax one,” frankly isn’t true.

A quick skip over to conservatives.com will show a vast swathe of information about policy. Admittedly, much of it is woolly thinking about encouraging this and fostering that, but there are a few hard commitments, too.

I thought it might be interesting to fisk it and see how much actually makes its way to the final manifesto.

Now, I’m no partisan, so let me say here and there; not ALL of the policies are a load of rubbish. Although most of their ‘new’ policies are already in action: ensured support of those on Incapacity Benefit, minimum tariffs for crimes, councils publishing expenses online, flexible working hours for parents.

I like their energy ideas; get farmers to use their fallow land for wind turbines and biofuels. However, these are vastly outweighed by some of the ill conceived policies writ large.
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Maybe it’s a good job that newspapers don’t matter, because even the so-called quality ones carry appalling errors. Via Tim and Danny, here are two in the Torygraph.
First, it tells us that:

A low income household is one that lives on less than 60 per cent of the average UK household income

No. Low income is defined, for official purposes, as 60% of the median household income. If you’d read the Joseph Rowntree report, or even just the summary of it, you’d know this*.

Second, Janet Daley writes:

The Office for National Statistics points out that the amount spent on state education has risen by 43 per cent since 2000 but school “productivity” – measured by GCSE and stats results - has actually declined by 7.5 per cent. There is what statisticians call an inverse correlation between the amount of money spent by the state on schools and their academic success.

This is just gibber.
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What’s to stop a bunch of North London Trot parents scraping two million quid together and sponsoring a secondary school with, as the jargon has it, a distinctive ethos? I have asked this question, semi-seriously, of people with a better understanding of New Labour educational policy than I can personally claim. As far as they can tell, such a project would technically be within the rules.

After all, Evangelical car salesmen with a few bob to spare have set up educational establishments that inculcate creationism. So why not Karl Marx Comp, where students get to study permanent revolution alongside evolution?

Of course, cynics will take one look at the political composition of the average inner city National Union of Teachers branch and argue that we are as near as dammit there already. And what of the omnipresent risk of a serious split in the sixth form, with a Reesite faction convening  clandestine meetings behind the bikesheds to discuss major analytical differences over the potential for a united front orientation towards year seven?

I make these points, of course, after David Cameron attempts to embarrass the government over alleged state support for two schools run by the Islamic Shakhsiyah Foundation backfired humiliatingly, largely on account of half-arsed research. The claim of Hizb ut Tahrir involvement is, at best, not proven.

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Fact: The population of the UK rose by 3.737 million people between 1990 and 2007.

Fact: Total net migration to the UK between 1990 and 2007 was 2.097 million, 56% of the total increase in population. Of that figure, 1.859 million stems from the period from 1997-2007.

Fact: Between 1997 and 2007, 1.292 million people were granted the right to settle in the UK.

Fact: Between 1997 and 2007, 1.646 million former migrants became British Citizens.

Fact: Net immigration rose significantly under New Labour. There is no denying that fact.

For some people those figures, alone, are sufficient reason to put up the shutters and declare that Britain is full, even if they barely scratch the surface when it comes to telling the real story of immigration over the last 12-18 years.

For example, although total net migration amounts to 1.859 million between 1997 and 2007, the number of people currently living in the UK with full settlement rights has risen by only 480,000. Britain is a net exporter of its own citizens, 811,000 in the period from 1997-2007 on top of the 297,000 (net) who left the UK between 1991 and 1996. So somewhere in the world right now, possibly Spain, someone is sitting down to read today’s copy of the Daily-o Mail-o and complaining bitterly to themselves about all the bloody Brits who’ve been going over there to take their jobs.

Migration is not a zero sum game. The net increase in Britain’s migrant population stems from population movements involving 12.454 million people between 1991 and 2007 (9.076 million since 1997) into and out of the UK. Of the 4.586 million foreign nationals who entered the UK between 1997 and 2007, 1.838 million had moved on by the end of 2007 and a further 1.51 million were still here only on a temporary basis, including 454,000 whose immigration status remains uncertain as they await a ruling on an asylum application. Of those pending applications, the data suggests that. A quarter, may be granted the right to settle or extended leave to remain in the UK, although it may be less than that as the UK tightens its approach to dealing to asylum seekers and most may eventually have to leave.

Once you drill down into the data, past the few scraps of information that make the tabloid headlines, the picture becomes ever more complex. It’s that picture we are endeavouring to present.

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When New Labour’s election strategists sat down to look over the results of the 2005 general election, in which the party lost more seats than they expected, they quickly came to two very clear conclusions.

One was that middle-class opposition to the war in Iraq had spawned a protest vote from which the Liberal Democrats had been the main beneficiaries and had cost them a number of marginal seat. The other was that working class antipathy towards immigration was costing the party votes in its traditional heartlands.

Six weeks later, the government joined the race to the bottom on immigration in earnest with the publication of a new Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Bill, which become law in 2006, restricting the right of appeal against refusal of entry that had previously been afforded to students, dependants and visitors to only human rights and discrimination grounds and imposing fines on employers who employ migrant workers who lack the necessary paperwork, i.e. entry clearance, leave to remain and/or a work permit.

The Conservatives may have spawned the mantra that ‘it’s not racist to talk about immigration’ but it was New Labour who gave it legitimacy.
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London’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) was established in 1916 as the School of Oriental Studies, with the specific remit of training future colonial administrators in the language and culture of the people they were destined to rule.

Nearly a century later, at this institution founded on racist, patriarchal principles, straight white males account for less than 20 percent of the SOAS student body – a fact that has prompted calls for them to be recognised as a minority group by the students’ union, and granted their own exclusive welfare strategy. On Thursday 19th November, as part of their Diversity Week, SOAS will debate whether or not to appoint a ‘Straight White Men’s Officer’.

University life often comes as a shock to the privileged sons of this country. Higher education is the time in their lives when young men are most likely to experience minority status; white men may dominate the world of work, top-level management, politics, administration, the arts, culture, the military and the media, but as undergraduates they make up only 36 percent of the student population. White males are also less likely to graduate with a first or upper second class degree and find immediate employment than their female classmates, where by contrast, less than thirty years ago, white males appeared to dominate every mixed-gender campus. At university, unlike in other environments, straight, white young men cannot pretend that they represent the standard for normal humanity – instead, they are required to confront their roles as members of a privileged minority on the world stage. Nowhere is this sea-change more evident than at SOAS. continue reading… »

There’s a revelatory short post at the Adam Smith Institute yesterday. Here’s the most salient part:

You will never streamline the public sector by Treasury ministers bullying departments over money. Instead, you need a complete review of what government does, what it has to do, what it can do better, and what can be done better by other people and by the public. All departments need to buy into that, and it needs a reform, not a finance minister in charge if everyone is going to trust the process and be a part of it. After all, the process may find that spending in some areas should be increased, even if other departments are found to be doing a lot of pointless stuff.

In other words, the influential Adam Smith Institute wants to see an immediate post-election push towards savage public spending reductions in every single government department.

In one respect, of course, none of this is new. We know that the Conservative will cut public services, even if they are not as explicit as the Adam Smith Institute about the range of cuts.
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Since my last article on Steiner-Waldorf education in which I argued, that pseudoscience is not a valid educational choice, things have moved on somewhat.

In the last week or so Plymouth University has discontinued both its BA and Foundation degree courses in Steiner education, the only such courses in the UK.

Unlike Stockholm University, which took the same decision after concluding that the course literature contained ‘too much myth and too little fact’, Plymouth University have decided to axe their course due to poor recruitment and retention of students, although it is looking at incorporating a Steiner option into its existing BA course in Education Studies. They blame the government’s decision to withdraw funding for second degrees for the demise of these course. The excellent UK Anthroposophy blog has a rather more prosaic take.

Despite this obvious setback, the Steiner-Waldorf Schools Fellowship is pressing ahead with its efforts to get its nose into the state-funding trough by arranging a ’special pre-election seminar about possible developments in the state funding opportunity for Steiner schools’. This will take place on the 17th November 2009 at the Charity Centre in Euston.

And if you haven’t already guessed the ‘possible developments in state funding opportunity‘ are those already indicated by Tory Shadow Education Minister, Michael Gove:

Under the Tory proposals, new schools entering the state system would be free from the constraints of the statutory national curriculum.

Mr Gove believes many parents think the particular teaching styles “and atmosphere of the environment” at Montessori and Steiner schools would suit them and their children.

This event has, to say the least, an interesting line-up of guest speakers.
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The Government has announced plans today to make sex education in schools compulsory for all pupils between the ages of 15 and 16. Under the new proposals, all schools will have to teach personal, social, health and economic education to pupils from the age of five, but until those pupils reach 15 their parents will retain the right to withdraw them from classes. Staggeringly, considering the age of consent in this country is actually 16, that right currently exists for parents right up until their children hit 19.

Predictably, a good proportion of the commenters over at the Daily Mail have got their knickers in a twist about all this, as has Norman Wells, the director of the Family Education Trust, a group which believes that “behind the plausible-sounding arguments and innocuous-sounding words there is a specific agenda at work to undermine the role of parents and to tear down traditional moral standards” and that “Sex education is an ideological battlefield on which a war is being waged for the hearts and minds of our children.”

And equally as predictably, I wholeheartedly disagree. In fact I think sex education, or PSHE (or is it PSHEE now?) should be compulsory for all pupils, including those still at primary school.

That’s not to say that I think children as young as five should be learning about sex, but I do believe that even the very youngest children have a right to know some basics, like the correct terminology for parts of the human anatomy for instance, or the fact that it’s perfectly normal for both boys and girls to feel emotions and to cry. (I also believe it’s tantamount to neglect that in this day and age a girl of 16 can find herself pregnant because she “only did it the once and everyone told me I couldn’t get pregnant the first time,” as happened to a friend’s daughter.)

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When set against the context of the number of children you’ll teach throughout a school year, incidents of violent, abusive or threatening behaviour are actually quite rare. The occasions when a pupil dreams up allegations of abuse by a teacher are rarer still, and the occasions when those false allegations result in disciplinary action or a criminal conviction are even more infrequent.

That said, everyone’s heard at least one horror story about a teacher who’s been the victim to a malicious allegation. It does happen, and more can be done at school, local authority & central government level to ensure that good and safe teachers are protected from career-destroying fairy tales. Ending the atrocious policy of isolating accused teachers from contact with their colleagues would be a good place to start.

So it’s not like I’m ambivelent to or dismissive of a problem which does prey on a lot of teachers’ minds, and the general thrust of Jenni Russell’s piece on the topic is generally correct. Still, it is a Jenni Russell piece, and so every article must contain at least one moment of eye-watering idiocy:

Classrooms are becoming more difficult to manage because the policy of inclusion means that children with emotional, mental or physical difficulties are being put into mainstream schools without the extra support they need to cope.

Whether Russell is basing this on any actual evidence is unclear, but unlikely.
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Further to my recent blog on Michael Gove and his education policies, there was one other part of Gove’s speech at party conference I found pretty irritating:

The body responsible for writing the curriculum – the QDCA – spends more than one hundred million pounds every year – and after hiring an army of consultants, squadrons of advisers and regiments of bureaucrats they still wrote a syllabus for the Second World War without any place for Winston Churchill.

I guess it’s always possible that he’s right. Maybe there’s some secret document doing the rounds, written by scores of ‘unaccountable quangocrats’ which does indeed remove Winston Churchill from the history curriculum. But it would have to be a secret document, because when you hop over to the QCDA’s website, you’ll actually find quite a few references to Britain’s Greatest Ever Tory.

He’s mentioned here, here and here, in these guidance notes for teachers and, rather inconveniently for Mr Gove, in this rather unwieldy PDF (p22):
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