Teachers for Supply

If you’re hoping to begin university inside the autumn, you may well be feeling anxious about student finances. The price of doing some extent suddenly soared when tuition fees increased to up to £9k for college kids starting university last autumn.

So nowadays, students must get a grip on their finances as quickly as possible. From finding definitely the right bank in your student account to planning how much part-time work you will need to take during term time, there’s plenty to think of before starting your course.

You’ll have to know the way tuition fee and upkeep loans work, and what sort of you find yourself paying back once you’ve graduated.

As portion of the National Student Money week, we’ve brought together student experts and the National Association of Student Money Advisers (Nasma) to reply to your questions. Start posting them within the comments section now, and take part the discussion between 1-3pm on Thursday.

The panel

Rob Ellis is a financial information and support advisor at Swansea University. He is also also Welsh coordinator for Nasma.

Esta Innes is welfare and equality officer at Newcastle University Student Union.

Megan David is welfare and community officer Cardiff University Students Union.

Jon Gleek is welfare officer at Sheffield University Student Union.

Pamela Bell-Ashe is director of student services at Birmingham City University.

The legend of the polar bear Knut, who became the darling of the zoological world before his death two years ago, is to live to tell the tale in a lifesize model to be unveiled on the weekend.

The model of the bear will go on display on the Natural History Museum in Berlin and is predicted to draw thousands of fans. The museum will open a unique entrance only for the Knut visitors, who can be ready to see the model without cost.

The model, manufactured from a dermoplastic, covered with Knut’s fur and given glass eyes, was moulded from the bear’s corpse after the speculation of stuffing the body have been deemed disrespectful.

Museum staff said Knut was first modelled in clay, and from this model plates were created and full of plaster, which was later replaced by a polyurethane foam. The tactic is increasingly replacing the normal taxidermy procedure.

Knut became one of the vital biggest stars of the animal world after being rejected at birth by his mother, Tosca, a retired circus bear. His brother died but Knut was rescued by zoo staff in an operation that split opinions within the animal rights world, with several organisations saying it could were better to have let the bear die.

Instead, the animal was stated by humans, and have become Berlin zoo’s star attraction. Knut’s first public appearance, in December 2006 at only a month old, was a world media sensation, attracting thousands of tourists.

Knut became essentially the mostsome of the most commercially successful – for the zoo, no less than – animal in history. His image was reproduced on bedware and T-shirts, and as everything from soft toys to ice scrapers. He became a UN climate change symbol, or even appeared at the cover of self-importance Fair with Leonardo DiCaprio.

But the bear was diagnosed with psychological problems early on. He died in front of holiday makers in March 2011 when he fell into the pond in his enclosure and drowned. A postmortem examination diagnosed a brain defect.

Johannes Vogel, the recent general director of the Natural History Museum, said he hoped Knut would attract a brand new wave of museum-goers. “We’re accustomed to the strong symbolism this animal possesses,” he said. “He stands for the safety of an endangered species and the fight against global climate change.”

A museum spokeswoman, Gesine Steiner, said the model was “the real thing”, although Knut had not been stuffed.

“You have to indicate that we’ve got not stuffed Knut,” she said. “Rather, it is a plastic form, true to the unique and covered with Knut’s own fur.”

The museum didn’t say what had become of Knut’s flesh but said his bones were being preserved separately.

Statue of James Clerk Maxwell and his dog Toby, with Saltire flying within the background. Photograph: zelenykabinet used under Creative Commons licence

Let’s face it: few people on all sides of the Scottish independence debate usually are swayed by arguments in regards to the impacts independence might need on scientific research. Yet science is a policy area where major changes would follow from a “Yes” vote for an independent Scotland. Nonetheless, the commentator Colin Macilwain passionately argued that Scottish science is able to go it alone in a contemporary Nature opinion column.

He’s right, needless to say, it should. There are small European countries with strong science policies: he mentions Switzerland and Austria as enviable examples, although both are rather larger than Scotland, and Norway and Ireland might make for more appropriate comparisons. Although science policy is an influence reserved to London, university funding has long been administered by a separate council, which now answers to the Scottish government. Scotland has long deployed its own funding to commission research in support of policy-making.

And, a method or another, Scotland should continue to learn from European research funding – if not as a member state (because Scotland, seceding from an existing member state, could have to use for entry) then as an associated country.

But there’ll inevitably be costs and risks to Scottish science of “going it alone”. These transcend the apparent issues linked to making the transition to independence and developing new institutions and new practices; the continued additional challenges of funding science in a small country also needs to be considered.

Macilwain accepts that losing access to the united kingdom-wide research councils – probably the longest-standing autonomous structures for funding investigator-driven research on earth – might sound like a major loss, but he argues that the autonomy of these councils was eroded lately and in spite of everything, it’s possible to create credible new funding institutions in a brief space of time. He overstates the lack of autonomy of the united kingdom research councils, but he’s certainly correct that it’s going to be possible to set up a brand new funding agency or agencies with robust processes, especially with all that UK (and other) experience to attract upon.

But it will become essential to tread carefully here, because getting the processes and the underlying principles right, and maybe even establishing them in law, can be vital when you consider that the autonomy of funding decisions is usually more likely to be harder to defend in a small political system than it’s in an oversized one. There’s also the danger of one of those referendum blight for Scottish science within the run-as much as and aftermath of the vote: UK funding agencies might be reluctant to make significant investments in Scotland’s research infrastructure and scientists could also be reluctant to go there while the post-independence arrangements remain unclear.

At least these must be short-lived issues. Of long run concern should be the undeniable fact that the hot Scottish research system could be a totally small world indeed. Currently, applications from Scottish researchers to the united kingdom research councils are peer-reviewed by a pool of reviewers drawn from across (and infrequently beyond) the united kingdom. However, with a smaller domestic pool of peer reviewers, small country research funders ought to look abroad for almost all of the peer review effort expended in making decisions about which research (and which researchers) to fund.

This is already recognised by the Scottish Funding Council, that may, as Macilwain notes, operate a distinctively Scottish policy in regards to college teaching funding, but which has long chosen to cooperate with its English, Welsh and northerly Irish counterparts to run the regular peer-review-based Research Assessment Exercise (now the Research Excellence Framework). If an independent Scotland created new funding agencies, a better proportion of Scottish research spending would need to go on administering the method of peer review, including the necessity to pay primarily foreign reviewers: domestic reviewers could have an incentive to check totally free, as likely beneficiaries of an identical funding body, but foreign reviewers have none.

Alternatively, an independent Scotland could prefer to continue to sign up for the united kingdom research councils within the same way that associated non-EU countries pay to participate within the European research programmes. It will have a sturdy moral claim to continued access, and it’d be difficult to determine how a UK government could refuse such an arrangement. Continued access to the prevailing research councils would allow Scotland making sure that a various range of funding sources remains available to its scientists, and can also help encourage UK research charities to continue to fund research inside the country.

So, while Macilwain is definitely right that Scottish science can go it alone, those working in Scottish science may conclude that the extra costs of running a small country research system, the extra risks of maintaining autonomy for funding decisions in a far smaller political world, and the ensuing reduction in diversity of funding streams together outweigh the attractions of establishing an entire new research system from scratch.

Academic research, even the kind that appears at issues closest to ‘real life’, often remains distanced from public debate. Academic voices, especially those stimulating critical reimagination, are hardly heard. But we have to encourage the media, and ultimately the general public, to seem more critically at employability – a theme this is discussed from quite a lot of angles, but is put under little critical scrutiny today.

The concept of employability – or no less than the only most familiar to us – appeared within the 1980s. It was introduced by corporations, marketed as a response to the necessity to be flexible within the face of world competition, adapting to the unstable economic environment. Companies, it’s been claimed, could not offer job security to employees and introduced ’employability’ instead, because the new psychological contract. As such, it forms section of ‘the new spirit of capitalism’ (outlined by Luc Boltanski and Eve Chiapello in 2005), substituting a lifelong career in a single organisation by a career of diverse temporary projects which promise to make individuals employable to take in further short-term projects.

Employability was met with suspicion even within mainstream business schools, and was considered an idea that employees, even HR managers, doesn’t buy into. Clearly it was not an equal substitute for job security. Yet, it gained the higher hand. Employability was taken up by governments who joined hands with the business world, and, not with the ability to influence labour demand, they built the full government policy around labour supply – or employability.

This meant that governments, in preference to creating jobs, helped the unemployed to enhance their employability, in addition to making unemployment benefits depending on it, with getting out of unemployment becoming the individuals’ responsibility. These policies were also criticised, both within academia and on public levels. Within the Guardian there have been also articles that did this, as an example criticising employability as an “unworkable theory”. This was in 1999.

So what has happened since then with this ‘unworkable theory’ The employability agenda have been at the rise, boosted with the deterioration of conditions within the labour market, specially across the time of the commercial crisis. It has entered areas where it didn’t have one of these role before, most notably becoming a vital portion of the brand new university agenda, even something at the basis of which university courses might cease to exist.

As employability gains in positive connotation and becomes a growing number of normative in practice, let’s take into account that it is a neoliberal project that emphasises individuals’ responsibility for his or her successes and screw ups within the labour market, and making people believe that it can be as a result of their insufficient employability that they can not get a role, instead of the condition of the final market.

More than that, the language of employability (skills, flexibility, adaptability, marketability) works towards shaping people in certain ways, with people whose personal values falling out of what employability asks for deemed as unemployable.

The idea that came into use because of labour market insecurity became the answer to a different labour market insecurity, entering not just employers’ practices and government policies, but people’s daily lives and identities. While its alluring guise was recognised and debated then, it’s hardly the case now.

Employability have been addressed lots over the last decade but there’s a definite loss of articles observing it critically. There are articles on means which make people more employable and employability of various groups of folk. There are even seminars organised with employability specialists mostly discussing its functionality and implementation, but not covering its problems, where it comes from or whether universities and other educational bodies really want this move towards employability.

Despite being denounced by some voices within the 1990s, employability has since become a largely unquestioned portion of the media realm, becoming “naturalised logic”, in Norman Fairclough’s 1989 terms, with its ideological nature stronger than ever.

What we now may even see in materials published by the media is an absolute acceptance of employability, talking about it in almost a neutral way. The sole area where employability continues to be challenged are certain strands of educational research (for instance the forthcoming special issue of Ephemera, ‘Giving Notice to Employability’), but this critique continues to be marginal compared to the dominant discussion.

The discussion of employability, including questioning its undertones, ought to be brought back into public debate. It must also be linked with other important issues in society (job cuts, austerity measures, consequences of the crisis) and viewed from a unique angle – not as a remedy for these kind of issues on the individual level, but as section of the issue.

Ekaterina Chertkovskaya is a PhD student on the School of commercial and Economics at Loughborough University – follow it on Twitter @lborouniversity

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The ‘will he, won’t he’ coverage of the call to not abolish GCSEs has understandably interested by the politics of the placement. The sharply different priorities of the principle political parties (within government up to between government and opposition) was outlined sharply, and the Whitehall watchers have found plenty to interest them.

Ultimately, though, a much bigger question for the rustic than what all of it means in Westminster is what it means for the way forward for education reform and for schools. Do the sighs of relief in staff rooms around the country reflect a weariness with change, an apprehension of more demanding qualifications or something else

I think that maybe the excuses run deeper.

There are some areas of public life – pensions reform is a great example – where a factor of political consensus isn’t just desirable but essential. If the problems are sufficiently long run and complicated, the collection of people affected is big enough and if those people must have confidence in a consistent framework, then stability across several elections is important.
Some elements of education policy are like that too. They may be the ‘tectonic plates’ of the system – both the principles on which everything else is built, and the reason for earthquakes if moved too quickly. Among these foundations are the national curriculum, the examinations and testing systems and the faculty funding model. Think back over the past twenty years and each newsworthy education crisis – the periodic strikes and delivery problems related to SATs, the curriculum 2000 A-level problems, the college funding crisis of 2003 – were linked to movements in these ‘tectonic plates’.

But the cause of caution in reform in these areas runs deeper than a political ought to avoid bad headlines. Changes to funding, curriculum, testing and examinations are sufficiently fundamental from a school’s perspective that they absorb much of the energy and a spotlight of teachers, and especially of faculty leaders, for a long time frame.

You can imagine that if as a college you’re having to rethink and re-plan everything you teach, year group by year group, it is possible for you to to highlight little else. As a pace-setter, you should be sure that your school’s schemes of labor comprehensively prepare children to reach new syllabuses and that each teacher properly understands the content and the expectancies. So that you will gear the educational days you’ve at your disposal, the workers meetings and the management of performance to ensuring this occurs. For a time, the job of improving the standard of classroom teaching gets less attention to that end.

Unfortunately, to maneuver a number of of the ‘tectonic plates’ is the very best and most rational reform for a central authority to undertake. It really is far easier to peer the way to make a serious impact through that route than through every other. Consequently, in every period of 3 years for the reason that Education Reform Act of 1988, as a minimum this kind of areas was undergoing fundamental reform.

Of course, a number of this reform was of significant importance. And you can actually see more generally why, seeing real problems in schools, successive governments have calculated that the advantages of reform outweigh the fees. However the cumulative effect have been that very great time and effort have been expended on managing and implementing these changes, a number of which reverse earlier reforms either wholly or partly.

Compare that to lots of the highest performing school systems on the earth. Finland, where following deep reform of curriculum and teaching within the 1960s, there was great stability for some decades; Singapore, where a consistent and only slowly evolving strategy have been followed because the 1950s; Ontario, where a 2007 White Paper commencing the government’s programme for the four years which have been to follow was a straightforward 10-page document detailing how the approach of the former four years will be maintained and deepened. Creating the exceptional school system that the rustic needs will undoubtedly require a level of political consensus and stability of policy that doesn’t yet exist.

The key task of improving an education system is to make it much more likely that more teachers succeed with more children tomorrow than they did today. Creating a reality of that requires a stable context wherein school teachers and leaders can discuss the duty: raising expectations (of teachers and pupils), allowing time for teachers to increase their subject knowledge, improve their pedagogical skill and have interaction with the evidence and with the intention that more of teachers’ energy is targeted on pupils, their work and their progress.

So every body working in education should take the call to stay with GCSEs as a prime opportunity. With less ought to specialize in a completely new qualification, we have now the chance to teach that the drive to lift standards and improve the education system might possibly be led better by the teaching profession than by the federal government. The energy that could had been absorbed by preparing for a brand new qualification can now be dedicated to the largest thing of all – continuing to enhance teaching and learning.

If we are able to make a hit of that, then perhaps will probably be possible to drive a brand new political consensus: that reducing the quantity of presidency-led change and creating greater stability for teachers to steer reform and improve their practice may be a higher strategy to create better schools.

Jon Coles is CEO of United Learning, and formerly Director General for Education Standards on the DfE.

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