Archive for category Education
How to avoid another exam board scandal
Posted by Nick Cowen in Education on 15/12/2011
By David Green
The Telegraph’s brilliant exposure of the behaviour of some exam boards should not be dismissed with a couple of sacrificial sackings. It revealed profound flaws, not just in our school system, but also in the way our democracy is currently functioning. The attitudes behind the scandal are closely allied to the self-serving atmosphere in Parliament that led some MPs to fiddle their expenses. Deception of the people had became the norm, whether it was creative use of second homes, or manipulating exam results. The rot always starts at the top, and getting rid of the hapless examiners who got caught will make little difference unless we go much further.
Stephen Clarke: Why we need to manufacture a new kind of graduate
Posted by Stephen Clarke in Economics, Education on 07/12/2011
IT is not just higher borrowing and lower growth that is grabbing the headlines. Despite the Government’s attempt to rebalance the economy, Britain is struggling to increase goods exports and the resurgence in manufacturing hoped for by ministers is not coming.
It is a question seldom asked when discussing the country’s economic woes, but is Britain producing the right graduates to increase manufacturing output?
Read the rest of the comment piece in the Yorkshire Post here
Rise in STEM subjects disproportionately due to overseas students
Posted by Nick Cowen in Economics, Education, Press Release on 05/12/2011
Universities are educating 6,000 fewer British engineers a year than 10 years ago
British universities are adding fewer STEM subject graduates to the labour market than total student figures suggest, according to a new Civitas report. The STEM subject push by Stephen L. Clarke finds that the number of overseas students attending British universities to study engineering increased by 12,308 from 1997 to 2007, but that the number of British engineering students declined by 5,769. [p. 3] As a result, the British economy will struggle to find the skills necessary to drive a production-led recovery.
Knowledge is power, but only if someone’s listening
Posted by Stephen Clarke in Economics, Education, Politics, Social Cohesion on 27/10/2011
By Emily Clarke
The recent media interest in the Occupy Wall Street and Occupy London Stock Exchange movements has certainly been mixed. From sympathy to contempt to exasperation on the part of St Paul’s cathedral staff at least, the protests and people’s reactions to them are proving difficult to pin down.
Mind the Skills Gap
Posted by Nick Cowen in Economics, Education on 18/10/2011
By Emily Clarke
According to recent figures from the Office of National Statistics UK unemployment now stands at 2.57 million or 8.1%. Perhaps even more worrying is the news that the number of 16-24 year olds out of work has crept ever closer to 1 million, currently sitting at a record high of 991 000 or 21.3%. The Government and the public are naturally eager to bring down these figures, many hoping that it will simultaneously reduce the levels of youth disaffection that they saw as particularly apparent over the summer. However, rather than focussing on job creation alone it is perhaps important to take note of bodies such as the Skills Commission which has recently pointed out in their report “Technicians and Progress” that part of the problem is not lack of jobs but lack of skills with which to perform them.
Boundaries in teen relationships
Posted by Anastasia de Waal in Education, Family, Marriage and the Culture on 26/09/2011
The Coalition Government is seeking to address violent teenage relationships with a new advertising campaign. Meanwhile, new light has been shed on the prevalence of such violence. In view of this new information, are we responding to the problem satisfactorily, asks Therese Wallin.
