'Phenomenally saddening': inside the sordid world of America's for-profit colleges

November 9, 2018, 2:00 am

≫ Next: Scotland to embed LGBTI teaching across curriculum

≪ Previous: Why is my university forcing me to see colleagues as "customers"? | Anonymous academic

The new documentary Fail State, executive produced by Dan Rather, tells the 50-year tale of profit-driven colleges scamming society’s most vulnerable

In 2014, film-maker Alex Shebanow read about Corinthian Colleges, one of America’s largest for-profit college companies, while working on a documentary about student loan debt.

Relying heavily on federal student loans, from which it took $1.4bn in yearly revenue, Corinthian was on the brink of collapse after the department of education halted the company’s flow of federal funding due to evidence of rampant fraud in its reporting of grades and job placements.

↧

Scotland to embed LGBTI teaching across curriculum

November 9, 2018, 2:12 am

≫ Next: Paper Tigers review – moving documentary portrait of troubled students

≪ Previous: 'Phenomenally saddening': inside the sordid world of America's for-profit colleges

Equality campaigners hail new inclusive curriculum as ‘monumental victory’

Scotland will become the first country in the world to embed the teaching of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex rights in the school curriculum, in what campaigners have described as a historic moment.

State schools will be required to teach pupils about the history of LGBTI equalities and movements, as well as tackling homophobia and transphobia and exploring LGBTI identity, after ministers accepted in full the recommendations of a working group led by the Time for Inclusive Education (TIE) campaign. There will be no exemptions or opt-outs to the policy, which will embed LGBTI inclusive education across the curriculum and across subjects and which the Scottish government believes is a world first.

↧

Paper Tigers review – moving documentary portrait of troubled students

November 9, 2018, 4:00 am

≫ Next: We can’t let poorer pupils be frightened off higher education | Claire Hynes

≪ Previous: Scotland to embed LGBTI teaching across curriculum

James Redford chronicles the attempt by one US high-school to implement a ‘trauma-sensitive’ approach to education

It’s no disparagement to say that one highlight of this moving, cautiously optimistic film is the freak show staged by the problem students at its centre. “Tremble in fear at the terrible nature of this horrible, twisted little girl,” loudhails ringmaster Aron, an elvish-featured, once-withdrawn teenager who has recovered his vim to introduce fellow pupil Eternity, who has cerebral palsy. Capering and gurning in the face of adversity, their performance is an affirmation of difference; in lockstep is James Redford’s 2015 documentary, which shadows the pupils’ progress through the alternative, “trauma-sensitive” education method being roadtested at Lincoln high school in Walla Walla, Washington state.

Redford concentrates on six pupils, all of whom have chalked up a fistful of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) such as verbal, physical and sexual abuse and parental abandonment. Established in the late 1990s, this metric says that chronic trauma at a young age causes permanent and detrimental changes in brain structure. And dangerous susceptibility to emo side partings, if Lincoln high is anything to go by – but the school’s revolutionary gambit is to mostly ditch censure and punishment, and replace it with scrupulous emotional care. “Steven know this above all else,” texts the science teacher to one pupil freaking out over the prospect of leaving the school behind, “I value you unconditionally.”

↧

We can’t let poorer pupils be frightened off higher education | Claire Hynes

November 9, 2018, 6:47 am

≫ Next: My kids have started school – and are giving me a lesson in class politics | Emma Brockes

≪ Previous: Paper Tigers review – moving documentary portrait of troubled students

University offers tremendous benefits, to the individual and for society. It must not be so costly that it is only for the privileged

Back in the days when higher education was mostly for the benefit of a select group of middle-class kids, I had a meeting with my school careers teacher, who asked me what I wanted to do in the future. When I told her I was thinking about furthering my studies and finding a job that involved writing, she declared that a suitable plan for me was to leave school at 16 and train to become a secretary. Apparently I didn’t look like the sort of person who should attend university.

Over time I’d come to believe these attitudes belonged to the past – a bygone age of middle-class privilege now thankfully over. Now, though, it seems that thinking has become core government policy.

↧

My kids have started school – and are giving me a lesson in class politics | Emma Brockes

November 9, 2018, 7:12 am

≫ Next: Morris Gleitzman, beloved children's author, meets his new editors – children

≪ Previous: We can’t let poorer pupils be frightened off higher education | Claire Hynes

While the children usually resolve their disputes by the end of the day, we parents look at one another with murder in our eyes

Two and a half months ago, when my kids started school, I imagined the biggest challenge would be socialisation. At nursery they’d had “friends” in the way it might be imagined slow-moving animals in a field have friends – which is to say animals doing the same thing as them but several feet over there. At school, by contrast, they have to choose whom to sit with. And so the rigmarole of popularity begins. What I hadn’t realised was how much this process was going to involve me.

The socialisation – or rather resocialisation of parents who experienced classroom politics approximately 300 years ago, and have to rapidly dust off the machinery – has been shocking. I am 42, and, like everyone else of that age, screen my calls, ignore my voicemail, use my children to get out of doing things I don’t want to do, and am extremely agile at avoiding those I dislike. Well, those days are over. In the interests of protecting my children’s social life, all of a sudden I have to play nice.

↧

Morris Gleitzman, beloved children's author, meets his new editors – children

November 9, 2018, 2:48 pm

≫ Next: 'I feel a lot of hope': the school for bullied children

≪ Previous: My kids have started school – and are giving me a lesson in class politics | Emma Brockes

‘It’s hard to select the stories because all of them are so good,’ says a primary student editor of Early Harvest magazine

When it comes to talking about his newest editors, beloved children’s author Morris Gleitzman doesn’t have a bad word to say – perhaps because all of the “bad words” he originally put forward have been carefully weighed, considered and, for the most part, cut out. Children are conscientious editors.

Gleitzman is used to writing for children. He’s not used to being edited by them, with the possible exception of his own children, who comment on everything he does. But giving kids the opportunity to edit is precisely the point of Early Harvest, the annual publication put out by 100 Story Building, an organisation based in Melbourne that centres around providing opportunities and programs for young writers. Each year, an editorial team of Grade 5 and 6 students comes up with a theme – this year it’s “Dreams” – and then oversee the production of a book filled with short stories, illustrations, games and activities.

↧

'I feel a lot of hope': the school for bullied children

November 9, 2018, 10:00 pm

≫ Next: Ministers can’t ignore the UK’s higher education debt crisis | Phillip Inman

≪ Previous: Morris Gleitzman, beloved children's author, meets his new editors – children

Every year, 16,000 children leave school because of bullying. Hannah Letters was one of them. She talks about how she got back on track

The bullying started when Hannah Letters was 11. “I struggled with the transition to secondary school and found it hard to make friends.” Her classmates made snide comments about her appearance. When her mother was diagnosed with cancer, the comments got worse. She was sent messages on social media, telling her that no one liked her. “One of the girls turned and said to me, ‘If you had looked after your mother better, she wouldn’t have got cancer.’ I had such low self-esteem by then, anything she said I believed. I started to blame myself.”

By the time she was 13, Letters was self-harming. The bullies were constantly on her mind and she would wake up screaming from nightmares. She wasn’t happy with the response she got from her school, and “each time my mother or I complained, the bullying got worse”. When the bullies physically attacked her, it was the last straw for Letters’ mother. She took her off the school roll. That meant her school was absolved of its legal responsibility to provide her with an education. She became yet another statistic: one of the 16,000 children aged 11 to 15 who, each year, “self-exclude” from school due to bullying.

↧

Ministers can’t ignore the UK’s higher education debt crisis | Phillip Inman

November 10, 2018, 2:43 pm

≫ Next: Student loans company: Milan's age-defying solution to high rents

≪ Previous: 'I feel a lot of hope': the school for bullied children

UK universities may soon struggle to repay billions in borrowing but the government can’t afford to let them fail

It should be one of the bright spots in the British economy, one that shines through the Brexit gloom, but the higher education sector has become a pin on which balances the most enormous mountain of debt.

And with speculation that institutions may be in financial trouble circulating around the sector, ministers are nervous.

↧

Student loans company: Milan's age-defying solution to high rents

November 9, 2018, 11:30 pm

≫ Next: ‘Devastating’ cuts hit special educational needs

≪ Previous: Ministers can’t ignore the UK’s higher education debt crisis | Phillip Inman

The Adopt a Student cohabitation programme brings young and older people together in Italy’s most expensive city

Every evening Dora Grazzini waits for Maria Urbani to return to the sixth-floor apartment they share in an upscale neighbourhood on the outskirts of Milan so they can have dinner together. “We seldom meet in the morning, because we have different schedules, but dinnertime is when we chat and tell each other of our days,” says Grazzini.

Their routine is not unlike that of many roommates, but differs in one important way: Urbani is 26 and Grazzini, 83.

↧

‘Devastating’ cuts hit special educational needs

November 10, 2018, 11:53 am

≫ Next: ‘It’s hard to watch your child struggle. All you can do is chase people’

≪ Previous: Student loans company: Milan's age-defying solution to high rents

Many local authorities are plunging into the red to meet their obligations as spending trebles in three years

‘It’s hard to watch your child struggle. All you can do is chase people’

A crisis in funding for children with special educational needs is plunging councils across the country deeper into the red and forcing parents into lengthy legal battles to secure support, according to an Observer investigation that reveals a system at breaking point.

Council overspending on children’s special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) has trebled in just three years and is continuing to increase, with councils having to raid hundreds of millions from their overall schools budget to cope. The Observer has identified 40 councils that have either cut special needs funding this year, are considering making cuts or are raiding other education budgets to cope next year.

↧

‘It’s hard to watch your child struggle. All you can do is chase people’

November 10, 2018, 12:15 pm

≫ Next: University alerts students to danger of leftwing essay

≪ Previous: ‘Devastating’ cuts hit special educational needs

As council budgets are slashed, desperate parents speak about their exhausting battle in the courts to protect the forgotten victims – their children

‘Devastating’ cuts hit special educational needs

As a former bouncer working in north London nightclubs, John Roden thought he knew a thing or two about stressful situations. But taking on the care of his five-year-old granddaughter Hope brought his greatest confrontation. Hope is disabled, and her rare condition means she cannot walk unaided and communicates using a form of sign language.

“Caring for Hope is stressful at the best of times,” says Roden, one of a group of carers to launch a legal challenge heard in court last month against proposed cuts to special educational needs funding in Hackney, east London. “Hope came to me when I was 57. I’m 62 this year. All this is heaping a lot more pressure on us. It grinds you down. There’s so much going through my head that I’ve been forgetting simple things. You spread yourself thin and something has to give. But we can do it.”

↧

University alerts students to danger of leftwing essay

November 11, 2018, 1:00 am

≫ Next: The students I taught were reactionary, not revolutionary | Letters

≪ Previous: ‘It’s hard to watch your child struggle. All you can do is chase people’

Prevent critics slam Reading for labelling ‘mainstream’ academic text as extremist

An essay by a prominent leftwing academic that examines the ethics of socialist revolution has been targeted by a leading university using the government’s counter-terrorism strategy.

Students at the University of Reading have been told to take care when reading an essay by the late Professor Norman Geras, in order to avoid falling foul of Prevent.

↧

The students I taught were reactionary, not revolutionary | Letters

November 12, 2018, 10:00 am

≫ Next: Oxford’s Stormzy snub is not the only thing wrong with the university | Lucas Bertholdi-Saad

≪ Previous: University alerts students to danger of leftwing essay

In over a decade of teaching ethics, Dr Stephen Dorril found the attitudes of his students became increasingly authoritarian

According to Dorian Lynskey, the young are “quiet revolutionaries” (Journal, 8 November). Really? I have just retired from university having spent more than 10 years lecturing on ethics to third-years. I found the attitudes of the 100 students I dealt with annually in lectures and seminars deeply shocking. Over that period their views became increasingly authoritarian.

More than 80% believed that the use of torture was acceptable. Their views on drug addicts, prostitutes and women in porn were deeply reactionary and illiberal.

↧

Oxford’s Stormzy snub is not the only thing wrong with the university | Lucas Bertholdi-Saad

November 12, 2018, 8:37 am

≫ Next: If spending on poor pupils seems lavish, it’s a drop in the bucket compared with cuts | Fiona Millar

≪ Previous: The students I taught were reactionary, not revolutionary | Letters

Evidence shows ethnic minority applicants and students are treated unfairly. Does the institution only recognise white talent?

It looks like someone, or a few people, within Oxford University didn’t know what to do with Stormzy, or get back to him, when he offered to fund a scholarship for black students in January. As the musician revealed last week, he went instead to Cambridge University, where his proposal was taken up. This was simply a mistake by Oxford, I am sure, and not necessarily evidence of malice; an error of this sort might be OK, generally, if it was unique. But it isn’t. In my experiences as a student, and now a student union leader on access, it has become clear to me that Oxford has a widespread problem with recognising talent if it doesn’t come in lily-white packaging.

The problems start long before students even get to the university. It is no secret that, at Oxford, applicants from ethnic minorities are less likely to get a place than white applicants. The university has lots of excuses for this: black and minority-ethnic students apply to more competitive courses (true); or inequalities in the British education system start much earlier (also true).

↧

If spending on poor pupils seems lavish, it’s a drop in the bucket compared with cuts | Fiona Millar

November 12, 2018, 10:44 pm

≫ Next: What to put in your Ucas personal statement if you don’t have grade 6 flute

≪ Previous: Oxford’s Stormzy snub is not the only thing wrong with the university | Lucas Bertholdi-Saad

Social class has a huge impact on children’s life chances. Schools alone can’t fix it

There are many tricky questions facing education policymakers but here is a conundrum: why, if funding for poorer pupils is now outstripping money spent on those who are better off, is it proving so hard to narrow the attainment gap?

The funding figures revealed last week by the Institute for Fiscal Studies mask a complicated set of indicators. The shift in spending over the past 20 years includes more children from poorer homes staying on in higher education as well as the money committed to schools by successive governments for the worst-off pupils.

↧

What to put in your Ucas personal statement if you don’t have grade 6 flute

November 12, 2018, 11:00 pm

≫ Next: The only gay female Mexican mechanical engineer in Hereford is opening a university

≪ Previous: If spending on poor pupils seems lavish, it’s a drop in the bucket compared with cuts | Fiona Millar

You may not have a Duke of Edinburgh gong but you can still impress university admissions tutors

The hardest part of applying to university via Ucas has to be the personal statement: your one chance to define yourself to your potential tutors and persuade them you are worth an offer. It seems like a minefield. What’s the right tone – boasting or humble? Does two days at your mum’s office qualify as work experience? And for some students it is extra challenging. What if you don’t have grade 6 flute, or even grade 1, or a Duke of Edinburgh award, and didn’t have the contacts for a work placement?

↧

The only gay female Mexican mechanical engineer in Hereford is opening a university

November 12, 2018, 11:15 pm

≫ Next: Pakistan's schools crisis has 'devastating impact on millions of girls'

≪ Previous: What to put in your Ucas personal statement if you don’t have grade 6 flute

You don’t need A-level maths to study engineering at Elena Rodriguez-Falcon’s university – but poetry or music would be handy

Hereford, some local folk say, could have had a university in the early Middle Ages and become like Oxford or Cambridge. But it was then considered a dangerous frontier town, a war zone between England and Wales, and today Herefordshire is one of the few English counties lacking a university. Next year, however, some seven centuries later, Hereford will have a brand new university. There will be just 50 students at first, 200 in 2020 and 5,000 in a decade. It will be Britain’s first new “greenfield” university – one not upgraded from an existing institution – in 40 years.

The university, we are promised, will be like no other. For one thing, it will focus, at least initially, entirely on engineering. (Until it gets a royal charter, it will be known, not very snappily, as New Model in Technology and Engineering, or NMiTE.) For another, it won’t have lectures, syllabuses, exams, or academic terms. Even the engineers who emerge won’t be engineers as we know them. They will, it is said, be “humanist” or “Renaissance” engineers who have dabbled in poetry, music or philosophy.

↧

Pakistan's schools crisis has 'devastating impact on millions of girls'

November 12, 2018, 11:42 pm

≫ Next: Tell us: What impact is private tuition having on education?

≪ Previous: The only gay female Mexican mechanical engineer in Hereford is opening a university

A third of girls are unable to attend primary school due to lack of facilities, research by Human Rights Watch reveals

Pakistan’s school system is in crisis, with a lack of government facilities creating “education deserts” for poor children, especially girls, according to a new report by Human Rights Watch.

A third of girls across the country are not attending primary school, compared with 21% of boys. By the ninth grade, just 13% of girls are still in school, it said.

↧

Tell us: What impact is private tuition having on education?

November 13, 2018, 6:07 am

≫ Next: English primary schoolchildren face times tables tests

≪ Previous: Pakistan's schools crisis has 'devastating impact on millions of girls'

We’d like to find out from parents, teachers, students – and tutors about why private tuition is on the rise. Share your experiences

In recent years there has been a sharp rise in private tutoring of children from infant school to university. Research from the Sutton Trust this year found that more than a quarter of state-educated 11 to 16 year olds in England and Wales pay for private tutoring. The charity, which measures social mobility, found that in London as many as two out of five children had been given private tutoring at some point.

It’s not just pupils facing public exams that are being tutored; infant and junior school children are also having private tuition, sometimes from as young as five. And at the other end of the age spectrum, university students are also receiving one-to-one tuition to help with essays and exam revision.

↧

English primary schoolchildren face times tables tests

November 13, 2018, 8:04 am

≫ Next: Small Yorkshire school helping some of most needy pupils faces axe

≪ Previous: Tell us: What impact is private tuition having on education?

Every nine-year-old in a state school to be given compulsory multiplication check

Nine-year-olds across England will soon have to brush up on their times tables, as the government announced details of its compulsory multiplication check to be taken in primary schools.

From June 2020, every state school pupil in year 4 will be quizzed on their times tables up to 12, answering 25 questions in an online test using a computer or tablet, with six seconds allowed per question.

↧

Latest Images