The Guardian on Saturday April 12 carried an article by Polly Curtis, their Education Editor, entitled “Elite rival to A-levels wins backing from exams body”.

It refers to the Cambridge Pre-U diploma drawn up by the University of Cambridge International Examinations, which has won official backing from the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority. It will be funded by the Government in State schools but only six of the thirty schools intending to teach the Pre-U from September are state schools. Since private schools educate only 7% of the school-age population, this is leading to fears that a two-tier examination system is being created.

It is described as being a return to a more traditional style of A-level course and this will certainly make it attractive to University admission tutors. Despite Government assurances to the contrary, A-levels are definately getting easier, one has only to compare modern text-books with those used twenty or more years ago to see that. There is a reason for this though, beyond the needs of successive Education Ministers to look good.

Far more students stay in full-time education than used to be the case. Consequently the A-level has to cover a far greater ability range than used to be the case so naturally it is easier to achieve a top grade. If the Universities do not wish to lower the standards of their degree courses this means it is that much harder for them to select those students who would benefit from studying their courses.

This might make it seem that the answer to the titular question is “yes” but there is a risk that taking an examination geared to university entry may not be much use to students if they decide against going to university. There already exist means of identifying the more able without devising new exams i.e. the Advanced Extension Award offered by many independant and state schools.

Education is the means by which people can improve their lot in life. Despite Government propoganda about choice, if you come from a run-down council estate your chances of getting into an elite state school are slim to non-existant. At the moment capable students at schools with a low pass-rate can still be one of their school’s success stories an attain a qualification that is recognised across the board. If elite schools offer a different qualification from the rest that will no longer be the case and those born in the mire will be doomed to stay there.

The ludicrous “Brain Gym” got the Paxman treatment on “Newsnight”.

You can watch the “Newsnight” broadcast featuring “Brain Gym” here. The relevent item starts 18 minutes in. You can also find a YouTube link on Ben Goldacre’s blog. A commenter on the blog makes some interesting points about the school, of which more anon.

While I am glad television has discovered that this nonsense is being peddled in our schools, it has to be asked what took them so long. Ben Goldacre initially covered it almost five years ago. He followed with columns on 21 February 2006, 18 March 2006, 25 March 2006, 13 June 2006, 16 February 2008 and the above mentioned appeared today.

Brain Gym starts off with the useful but hardly paradigm-busting ideas that not getting dehydrated and regular excercise breaks will help kids concentrate on their lessons but dresses it up with a lot of gobbledy-gook about “pressing brain buttons” and moving blood to the frontal lobes and so on. If you haven’t already, go back and click a link to watch the video, otherwise you might think I’m making this shit up.

The rituals make it seem almost cult-like (well, it was invented in California) and the headteacher’s comments about “brain gym coming into her life” reinforce that impression - replace “brain gym” with “Jesus” and she would sound just like an Evangelical Christian.

One of the commenters on Dr Goldacre’s most recent blog post points out that this school is underperforming and is not in a deprived area, so the Brain Gym does not seem to be working too well. Indeed, at one point the Brain Gym guru working at the school refers to “languaging” so it’s not done her much good either.

This is bad enough but the real scandal is that the Government DOES NOT KNOW how many schools use Brain Gym and thus how much tax-payer’s money is being poured into this whacky scheme. Part of the problem is that schools now have their own staff training budgets and science-ignorant Management Teams and governors can be targetted by snake-oil salesmen.

I would say give control of spending back to the LEAs but as Durham demonstrated, they can’t be trusted either.

Since it is public money they are spending schools should be rquired to publish full information about all money paid to contractors, consultants, gurus etc so at least taxpayers and parents can see what is happening to their money.

By that I mean the continued message given to pupils that they have no responsibility for looking after themselves, that if they screw up there will always be someone to bail them out.You might think that you don’t do that and maybe your school doesn’t but I’ll give you a couple of examples and be honest, do they not seem just a bit familiar?

Firstly, coursework. Deadlines should mean deadlines but they don’t. If pupils don’t hand their work in they get an extension, then an extension to the extension. When they get out in the workplace and the boss says “I want this done by the thirty-first” s/he means by the end of the month, not half-way through the next. Trouble is the office junior has been shown at school that deadlines are flexible, optional things and before s/he knows it s/he’s on a disciplinary.

Something at my school that is increasingly bugging me is the issue of calculators. Our Department bought some cheap ones, initially for emergency use in exams. Fair enough, candidates should not be penalised for unforseen circumstances.

Trouble is, when pupils turned up to class without calculators (a breach of their learning agreement) instead of putting them on report as they should, the teachers sent for the department calculators. Pretty soon they were booking a class set of them. Which meant they were not available for other classes so more were bought. Now we have three class sets and it is not enough.

And there has been “supply creep” too. Now pupils are issued with pencils and rulers in class because they do not bother to bring their own. Please spare me the “oh they can’t afford it” crap as well. We are talking about kids who can remember to bring their £100 camera-phone and when you see them outside of school they are wearing hundreds of pounds worth of designer clothes. You can get a really good scientific calculator for under a tenner.

These are 14, 15 and 16 year-olds I’m talking about. “Young adults” to use the pc term but they are being taught to be as incapable of self-reliance as primary school children.

I thought that we were supposed to be trying to get more school students interested in science? I must have got that wrong because that’s not what the Government’s policies will achieve.

I read this today.

That’s right; to save a measly two and a half million pounds per year the Science & Technology Philistine Council is proposing budget cuts that will almost certainly result in the closure of the Jodrell Bank Observatory. 

That sort of money is a lot to an individual but it is a drop in the ocean in the context of Government spending. Listing things one does not like that the Government continues to fund is a game we could all play but the most significant one to my mind is this:-

Under the Academy scheme, businesspersons can get Government subsidies of £20 -25 million to build and run their own schools. The creationist Peter Vardy has taken advantage of this largess and has built a number of pro-creationist academies in the North East of England. The subsidy for oneof these would pay for the running costs of the Jodrell Bank - MERLIN network for a decade.

I have not done a proper survey but anecdotal evidence suggests that dinosaurs and astronomy are the subjects most likely to get children interested in science. I don’t think you learn much about dinosaurs at a Vardy Academy and if astronomy becomes a does-not-happen-here subject we could lose that hook for an entire nation.

So. Are the Government trying to turn the youth of today away from science or are they totally incompetent?

I’m sure people think I’m getting a little obsessive about the Twenty First Century Science syllabus. If you do then this post will confirm your thoughts because I’m returning to it. In my defence I should point out that it is such a wonderful source of dubious science.

Section P5 covers electric circuits and parts of it cover the heating effects of electric currents. Activity AP5.28 covers domestic fires caused by electricity and includes a commentry by Tony Meade, a Fire Safety Officer in South Yorkshire.

Much of it concerns the dangers posed by over-loaded sockets, high current cabling left wound on its drum so that heat cannot dissapate, fuses replace by nails (!), and attempts to by-pass the meter and cannot be argued with. Some, however, seems to be venturing into the area of urban myth. I hesitate to argue fire-safety with a qualified professional but I would not deserve to use the name Kelvin Throop if I was not prepared to challenge authority occasionally so here goes. Tony Meade says:-

“…One that sticks in my mind particularly is one that was started by a telephone charger that was left on. The heat that was built up eventually caused it to melt, which set fire to the carpet, which then went on to set fire to the furnishings of the room…”

I have to say that Mrs Throop is in the habit of leaving her phone charger plugged in (and the television on standby, of which more anon). I have checked it a few times and it does not feel any hotter than its surroundings. It is possible that sensitive temperature probes might record a temperature above ambient but if it is not enough to be felt by touch it is not enough to melt the plastic.

Internet investigation has turned up cases of faulty chargers over-heating (and even one case of a faulty device being prone to explosion!) and I rather suspect it was one such that caused the fire to which Tony Meade refers.

Elsewhere he says:-

“…TV’s have been left on standby because [people are] too lazy to get up and switch it off. The heat that’s generated from that electricity that’s still going to the TV set has been enough to cause fires…”

I can find no confirmed case where this has happened. I have found speculation that dust might get in the vents and catch fire. This might have been true in the case of old technology televisions that had banks of thermionic valves but I do not think it would happen with modern televisions.

In any event, if TVs generate thismuch heat on standby, how much more would they generate in actual use? Given that children (we are told) are watching hours and hours of TV each week, you would expect televisions to be combusting all over the place.

 I cannot help suspecting that Mr Meade has been subconciously influenced by the current wooly thinking that suggests that we can save electricity and the planet by turning equipment off at the wall rather than leaving it on standby. Obviously, if such savings can be made, the current drawn on standby must be huge.

Actually, it is not, and by mixing myth in with good advice, the risk is that the good advice will be ignored. Look how successful lies and exaggeration have been in discouraging children from taking illegal drugs.

…is from Dylan Williams of the Institute of Education for his idea that, according to today’s Metro, “Millions of pounds could be saved on educational spending if a ‘traffic light system’ showing pupils’ understanding was used”.

To be fair to Dylan Williams I tried to find more about this, given the tabloid press’ ability to get things totally wrong. Unfortunately I was unable to find anything on the Institute’s website or on-line research database.

According to the Metro, children would hold up a red, amber or green card. Red would mean that they did not understand what they had been taught, amber would mean partly understood and green would mean fully understood. How this is meant to save millions of pounds is not made clear, especially as Williams himself would appear to believe that it would cost £2,000 per class to implement.

Call me old fasioned but I believe that the current system whereby students put their hands up and ask for further explanation, or the teacher determines from the students written work whether or not they have understood, works well enough.

I do not know how much Williams’ work cost to undertake but frankly, if savings are to be looked for, there is the place to start. 

In last the Dispatches programme of 11 February, former headteacher James Wetz made a case for the proposistion that secondary schools are too larfe and that this is the reason why they are failing many children.

He points out that many children fail to acieve the academic success indicated by their Key Stage two SATs (taken at the end of primary school). He puts this down to the fact that secondary schools are much larger and much less nurturing than primary schools.

The size difference is only one issue, however. There are a number of confounding variables. Two spring immediately to mind:-

1. The primary school SATs results may not be honest. I have covered this  in “An Incentive to Cheat Part 2″. Although only a few primary schools have been stripped of their SATs results, anecdotal evidence (ok, staffroom chat) suggests that the problem may be much more widespread. I have heard of pupils leaving primary with 4s at Key Stage 2 despite having serious difficulties reading and writing.

2. Pupils hit puberty at secondary schools. Raging hormones and a developing interest in sex are not conducive to concentrating on academic studies.

Having  said that, Wetz does make some interesting points and looks at a couple of cases in the USA where large secondary schools have been split into smaller, though linked, units.

In primary schools, children are usually taught by the same teacher in the same room for most subjects. Wetz points out that this allows a stable learning environment to be created and compares this with vastly larger secondary schools where pupils might be taught by over a dozen dfferent teachers in rooms scattered around a much bigger site.

It may be reasonable to expect one teacher to cover all subjects at primary level but at secondary, where more subjects are covered at greater depth, this is just not possible.

As for the size issue, the American examples he picks do suggest that smaller schools are better for children. One, Boston Arts Academy, with 423 pupils on roll, had a 93% attendance record and 96% of pupils went on to post- High School education. He also mentions how such schools are integrated into the community.

Personally, I’m all for community schools but there is the issue of parental choice which often results in schools being attended by children who live nowhere near it.

One point which struck me forcefully about Boston Arts was that it has one member of staff for every ten pupils.. With such a ratio, the schools we already have could achieve much more. But such staffing levels would cost billions nationally. With the Iraq War and the Northern Wreck bail-out to be paid for, I rather doubt the necessary funds will be forthcoming.

Today’s media oulets all seem to be carrying the story that McDonalds is going to be offering A-level equivalent courses. See here, for example.

According to the Guardian, the McDonalds course is a “basic shift manager course” to train staff in everything they need to run a McDonalds outlet, including marketting, human resources and customer services.

This would appear to be an internal McDonalds training course being granted national recognition. Gordon Brown has said that the intention is to create apprenticeships in order to produce the skills the economy needs. Other company’s being mentioned as potentially offering such courses are Network Rail and the budget airline Flybe.

I suspect that there will be some opposition to this but personally, I have no problems in principle with private companies training and educating their staff. I think there are going to be problems in practice, though. In the past, most school-leavers did employer-based apprenticeships which included on the job training plus one day or a couple of evenings a week at college. The qualification they received, be it City and Guilds, ONC, OND, HNC or HND was nationally recogised and the employers themselves did not set the standards.

Unfortunately, as I understand it, the Government’s proposal is that the employers themselves will become recognised examining boards, so they are hardly going to disapprove of their own courses, which are at risk of being over-specialised - too orientated to the needs of the particular company that set the course. Finishing up with a set of such qualifications will not enable employees to compete in the job market. They risk having qualifications that are only useful to one employer and thus being tied to them.

Does the Government actually have a coherent policy on Higher Education, or is my perception - that the “policy” is in fact a random series of poorly thought out initiatives - correct?

We are told that education is the key to the “knowledge economy”, yada, yada, yada. Then they decide that Universities should be run as businesses - so they offer courses that make them the most money; the market is king, dontchaknow? Result includes lots of media studies degrees and even a “Bachelor of Science” in Homeopathy (I kid you not!) offered by one of the new universities.

Now one can say a lot about media studies but at least students on such courses are studying modern culture, something real. But homeopathy, FFS? Why don’t they offer degrees in astrology or voodoo while they’re about it?

The Government says it wants 50% of school-leavers to go on to Higher Education. They then go and make getting a degree financially arduous by making the students pay full fees and requiring students to take out loans to pay said fees, other course costs and their living expenses.

When I, and indeed most members of the Cabinet, went through HE we got grants to fund basic living expenses and our fees were paid by our LEAs. The Government claims that the country can’t afford it now. What crap.

Have they forgotten their own spiel about the “knowledge economy”? Surely pay for Higher Education would be an investment?

The Scots seem to think they can afford it.

If the country is so hard up, how come billions are being spent on the invasion and occupation of Iraq, not to mention £24billion to £60billion bailing out Northern Rock?

It’s also rank hypocrisy. THEY got a free education. Why should our children not do so?

And the loans themselves. Interest is payable on them. The interest is tagged to the rate of inflation. Trouble is, there are two inflation rates; one is calculated taking the cost of mortgages into account and the other ignores mortgages. So the annual inflation rate is either 2% or 4.5%.

When the Government is cosidering public sector pay, they use the lower figure. When the interest on a student loan is being calculated, the higher figure is used.

So if you are a graduate earning £25,000 p.a. with a £10,000 student loan to pay off, when the Government is calculating how much pay rise you should have, inflation is 2% and to avoid inflationary pressure you get 1.9%. After deductions, this is about £330 per year extra. When the loan company is calculating your interest, inflation suddenly becomes 4.5% and so your debt increases by £450, so you actually have £120 per year less than you did last year. For this you studied for three years?

But look on the bright side. At least you don’t have a mortgage to pay - the cheapest flat is ten times your salary.

In Saturday’s Guardian, Julian Glover concluded an item on the recent problems on the railways by writing:-

“…that points to the real reason for the mayhem: there are not enough engineers in Britain. The education system, as much as the rail industry, should take the blame for that.”

On first reading I thought that this was more neoThatcherite blaming teachers and schools for all society’s ills but then I realised he wrote “the education system” and not “teachers” or “schools”. While teachers and schools are obviously part of the system, they have very little say in what is taught or deciding the system’s aims and priorities. Syllabuses are dreamt up in ivory towers by people who are no longer in the classroom. The aims and priorities of the system are handed down in Whitehall diktats.

One such diktat resulted in science being compusory from age 5 to 16 instead of 11 to 14 as had previously been the case. As a result primary school teachers, who for the most part had not had a science education, suddenly had to become experts in science. Being taught by someone unfamiliar with the subject matter is not going to help the student develop an interest. Secondary science teachers used to teach students who were interested and usually had an aptitude for the subject. Now they have to spend time trying to teach it to students who do not want to be in the lab and thus have less time to spend on students who actually want to study science.

As a result of this, science education is suffering and students who might have had the ability to become engineers are not gaining the necessary qualifications to get onto engineering courses.

The education system does not exist in a vacuum, however. Its direction is determined by people who themselves have not been educated in science or engineering. We have been told that education must be “relevent” but the current science syllabuses do not mention the link between science and engineering.

More importantly, the education system reflects the society of which it is a part. Engineering is not valued - going back to the rail companies, if they are feeling the financial pinch they cut back on construction and maintenance and thus the work available for engineers. How many engineers do they employ as opposed to personnel officers or accountants and how do their salaries compare?

Ultimately, if the rail chaos is due to a shortage of engineers, the fault lies with a society that values making money by dealing in shares and the money-markets over and above producing something of real use.