Cribsheet 18.03.2011

Cribsheet's top tips to celebrate Red Nose Day and World Story Telling Day

Artworld celebs set up fund for students fighting cuts

Brit art's enfants terribles Jake and Dinos Chapman are launching a fund to support students protesting against fee hikes under the banner "Can't pay your fees? We'll pay your fines".

Jake Chapman told the Evening Standard:

"I really don't believe it's an austerity measure. I think it is at the very root of Right-wing thinking, which is to disempower social mobility.
It's like frame-breaking - there's some kind of attempt to destroy the infrastructure, so that it is irreversible."

Artworks by Jake and Dinos Chapman regularly sell for seven figure sums. The Tate bought a work by them for £1.5m in 2007, but Jake says he wouldn't have be able to go to university at today's prices.

"There is no way I would have been able to go to college [otherwise], my parents wouldn't have been able to afford it. Someone paid their taxes for me to go to college. If they hadn't I wouldn't have gone. And I happily pay my taxes so that other people can do the same.

He describes the decision to set up the fund as an act of score settling.

"In a way, it's just settling a score with the Coalition, by saying that we are supporting people who are fighting for their futures."

The Chapman's have roped in celebs from across the arts and Jake is confident the fund will easily reach a six-figure sum.

"I am sure we can do six figures. You look at the pedigree of people on this list - we have got people in there who could sign their knickers and sell them for more than that."

Education news from the Guardian

• Surrey has become the sixth university planning to charge the maximum £9,000 tuition fees from next year, along with Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial College London, Exeter and Durham.

Professor Christopher Snowden, the vice-chancellor, said the proposed fee reflected the financial uncertainties for English universities and the "substantial cuts" the government had made to grants for teaching and building refurbishment.
"We have to accommodate a cut of over 60% in our annual teaching grant and, in addition, a 70% cut in our annual capital teaching grant, whilst supporting students from low-income families as part of our access programme," Snowden said.

• As part of the Guardian's New Europe series - an in-depth look at how our near neighbours do things - we carried this commentary by Aylin Selcuk on multiculturalism in the German education system.

• And, are universities in danger of scaring away overseas students?

Education news from around the web

• Hero of the day is 27-year-old Robert Bailey, a British teacher living in Japan who saved his 42 teenage students from the Tsunami. Bailey had just eight minutes to get evacuate his class when the quake hit.

"I ushered the students outside on to the baseball field so they wouldn't be hit by falling debris."

The students huddled together in terror as they watched the Tsunami coming towards them.

"We didn't know whether we were safe. All we could do was to watch it come towards us and pray we were high enough above it to be okay," he said.

Sadly the school's 137 other students remain unaccounted for, Sky News reported.

• Law firms are to look beyond Oxbridge for recruitment in order to diversify the talent they pick up, reports Legal Week.

Linklaters is to add Southampton and Leicester universities to the roster of colleges it visits each year, taking its total list to 26. Freshfields, meanwhile, is developing links with seven new universities including Leicester, Sussex, Essex, Queen Mary University of London and The School of Oriental and African Studies. The firm will visit 28 universities each year.
Hogan Lovells is adding Queen's University in Belfast, Trinity College Dublin and St Andrews in Scotland, with Bird & Bird adding Cardiff, Birmingham and Manchester. The additions mean Hogan Lovells will visit 18 universities, with Bird & Bird visiting 14.

Judging from the comments posted on the story it's not a moment too soon. Hans says:

Thank you but...
I did not study at Oxford and the LSE to then end up working with people who graduated from Leicester or Queen Mary. I hope it's just a sham to make it look like they increase their diversity.

• Independent schools are considering giving up their charitable status, believing it to be over-rated, according to the Times. It says dozens of schools are considering switching to not-for-profit status instead, although the move would "probably require legislation".

An ode to Cribsheet?

Could your charges write an outstanding ode, a bonzer ballad or a high class haiku? If so they might like to enter the Poetry Society's annual young poets of the year award - the deadline isn't until 31 July. And there is lots of teaching material on the website. Poems can be of any length and best of all the competition is free to enter, so there really is no excuse. (They'll even send you a free anthology of last year's winner if you ask them nicely.)

Are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin

This Sunday is world storytelling day. The theme is water and the aim is to promote oral story telling. You can watch story telling videos here. And on their Youtube channel. The twitter tag is #wsd11

And while we're gathered together

It's Red Nose Day! And it's never too late to inject some serious fun into your lessons. Why not try the Red Nose Day Quiz? Or, bake a Gruffalo cake and eat it while you are listening to some stories!

Meanwhile, researchers have found that...

"Most British teachers are not famous enough to be able to inspire their pupils" according to a new report by the Daily Mash.

"Professor Henry Brubaker said: "Schools need to accept that we live in an age where if you haven't at least been on an ITV2 panel show about penises you aren't worth listening to. Although a few teachers had achieved some limited notoriety - like geography master Stephen Malley in Kent who got a fifth former pregnant and ended up sleeping in the CDT block, or science teacher Tom Logan who is rumoured to have been a weightlifter despite clearly having a draggy leg - pretty much none exhibited a television-recognised talent."

Nuff said. You know what you've got to do. You could start by posting video of yourself on here, and maybe, just maybe, the great blond tousely-haired one will honour you with a TV appearance.

Insight into journalism seminar for teachers

A unique opportunity for teachers to spend a day at the Guardian, find out how a national news media organisation works and get ideas and resources that can be used in the classroom.

Multimedia 31 March Writing for a news website, web editing, blogging, the use of social media, video production; podcasting.