Teachers for Supply

Is the govt. doing enough to support school sports and promote the Olympic legacy When reading this query something automatically sticks out like a sore thumb – the phrase “doing enough”. As a trained teacher of physical education and someone who’s exceptionally captivated with school sport, I miss out on the govt doing anything to support and develop school sports and the Olympic legacy.

2012 was undoubtedly an exceptionally successful year for sport inside the Uk, full of many highlights. The triumph of the London Olympics is something I, at the side of many other British citizens, are very pleased with. Astonishingly i’ve got read recently that the govt. are cutting the funding given to certain sports that did not achieve medals in the course of the Olympics; here is outrageous. How the heck is a sport presupposed to develop its facilities, increase the number and quality of coaches and promote opportunities when its funding is being taken away

For years the govt. was focused on ensuring children participate in healthy and active lifestyles and ensuring that levels of obesity are minimised, that is great and something I passionately believe in too. However, the govt. seems to believe it’ll all be possible while cutting funding for varsity sports over again. This can have a huge impact on school sports and the Olympic legacy as progressively more children will drop out of participating in curricular and additional-curricular sport and exercise. i myself believe funding ought to be made available to put physical education specialists within primary schools in a whole-time, permanent position, instead of the occasional coach who will take maybe two hours of additional-curricular ‘club’ a week.

Lord Sebastian Coe has provided numerous youths and adults with inspiration that sport and exercise grants motivation and enable success. Cutting funding and overlooking sport and physical education within education is an awful mistake. i myself believe Michael Gove has no clear sight or objectives concerning PE and college sport and that is having a negative impact at the children currently within the education system. i want to determine some clear objectives and statements from the govt. on what it’s exactly they’re doing. It is going to certainly make interesting reading.

Nathan Walker is a PE teacher currently working for Randstad Education, a teaching supply agency. He has taught PE in numerous schools in Devon, in addition to working at International Summer Schools in Oxford and Hertfordshire.

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The smell of warm herbs and sound of clattering plates waft in from the subsequent-door room, where a vegan lunch for 70 is being cleared away, and where every so often a child loses balance and thumps against the door.

But, bent over pieces of scrap paper, students on the Thursday afternoon script-writing course within the Brighton Unemployed Centre Families Project are concentrating hard on today’s assignment.

There are two of them – Richard Ince, 72, and Ben Woodling, 38 – and so they were meeting their tutor, Niall Drennan, a performance writer and previous probation officer, for 2 hours another week since early summer, although nobody can remember exactly when. Tutoring them within the alternate weeks is Alison Fisher, a former scriptwriter for EastEnders. Others have attended on occasion – they recall a Spanish group under the impression it was about improving English language skills, and a French woman who was living in a tent and writing a unique – but Ince and Woodling are the regulars.

“I’ve always been a pretty good reader and prefer words,” says Ince, who first came to the centre eight years ago to volunteer after retiring from his job as an administrator with IBM. “At my age i have never the drive to do something with it, but it’s something I’m fascinated about.” Woodling, who studied geography at Hull University greater than 10 years ago, says he likes learning, but being on incapacity benefit meant he couldn’t afford adult education. He has done a music course on the centre after which drama, “which was very challenging for my mental health issue s and shyness”, and he just happened to be around when the scriptwriting course started. “It has been interesting and fun and made me consider things, simply by entering into the heads of characters,” he says. “So I’ve just kept coming.”

The scriptwriting course is one in all dozens of free courses, workshops, lectures and discussions advertised by the hot Free University Brighton, tagline “education for romance not money”.

The “free university” is the brainchild of Ali Ghanimi, a Green party activist who has worked within the public sector managing organisational change The speculation, she says, is to give “something for the complete community, irrespective of their financial means or previous education”.

Recent free learning opportunities advertised at the website range from a lecture at Sussex University by philosopher Simon Glendinning on “The top of history”, to a knitting group at Hove Library. It also has a wish list of subjects that folk wish to learn more about, from introductory philosophy, to the Brighton sky at night, to furniture upholstery, with an appeal for potential tutors to return forward.

Many have already got, and when the FUB officially launches in May, Ghanimi will put them involved with their students in spaces offered, without cost, by local libraries, community centres and cafes around Brighton. In addition they have the usage of a caravan and 1950s Airstream trailer.

“It’s nice to do things in a gaggle and learn and share skills and information,” says Ghanimi. “But it is also really important within the current economy.”

This year has seen rising interest in alternative university models, inspired not just by a troublesome economy, but additionally by the upward thrust in tuition fees to as much as £9,000 and by the success of Tent City University, which organised lectures, discussions and workshops with anti-capitalist protesters occupying the realm around St Paul’s in London last winter.

Funding changes in higher education were encouraging different ways of observing learning for the past couple of years. The Social Science Centre in Lincoln, which welcomed its first nine students this term, was conceived by Mike Neary, dean of training and learning on the University of Lincoln, in 2010, by way of proposals to chop the teaching grant to arts, humanities and social science subjects. It charges no fees, but stude nts and teachers, who meet at locations around Lincoln, may be able to pay one hour in their income a month through PayPal. On the end of 3 years of research, students are promised the equivalent of a better education degree.

The Free University of Liverpool, which also operates from different locations around its city, offers courses delivered voluntarily by academics and others in culture. It was also a protest against the privatisation of better education. the same project, the Really Open University, was started round the same time in Leeds.

Just before Christmas, the movement even had its own first conference, Sustaining Alternative Universities, which happened in Oxford. Its organiser, Joel Lazarus, says: “plenty of people are motivated by the exclusion of an increasing number of people from education, and especially higher education opportunities. It is a response to the commodification of education and privatisation of university.”

Tim Huzar, a Phd student in philosophy at Brighton University, who has helped to establish the FUB, says the response also is practical. “You need to realise an alternate and demonstrate it,” he says. “However it is not just a political act. It is a real service. It gives people access to education and it makes them realise that learning is something they need to expect lifelong – not only something you do in the event you can afford £9,000 when you find yourself 18.”

Organisers of other models insist they decline to threaten existing universities. Both Neary and Lazarus, who teaches international politics and international development at Oxford, Reading and London, indicate that they continue to work inside the system to switch things, and plenty of of these interested in these projects hope they’ll encourage more people to think about higher education as something potentially open to them.

The want to make learning more accessible to these without the time or resources to wait a proper course is additionally prompting many traditional universities to place materials online, and has inspired other online projects, equivalent to the tutoring-free University of the folk, founded in 2009. But Ghanimi argues these cannot replace the advantages of people meeting face-to-face of their local area and learning together. “It is a way for folks to share common interests and build relationships,” she says. “That’s about building stronger communities.”

Hostile takeover

Education Guardian has seen a transcript of a gathering for oldsters at a Croydon primary school wherein attendees got an insight into what critics see because the dictatorial nature of the method of forcing some institutions into academy status.

The school is Roke primary, in prosperous Kenley, Surrey, which, because the Guardian revealed two weeks ago, is on the centre of a brand new row over Michael Gove’s move to show more schools into sponsored academies. The previously “outstanding” school was identified for closure and re-opening as an academy under the Harris chain following weak test ends in 2011 and a single “notice to enhance” verdict from Ofsted here May.

The governors’ meeting for folks was told that the school’s head, Caroline Phillips, and chair of governors, Malcolm Farquharson, were summoned to the dep. for Education in September, where they were told of the Harris plan. Following better test results last summer and what it sees as a concerted improvement effort, the faculty reportedly asked the DfE to attend until a follow-up monitoring visit from the inspectorate, expected later inside the autumn, had taken place.

The transcript records Farquharson as telling parents: “On the meeting [with the DfE], we said, ‘Don’t you’re thinking that it is advisable to wait until the Ofsted monitoring visit takes place’ They usually said, ‘No, we wish to move now … and in the event you don’t agree we’re going to get the local authority to fireplace you, all of you, all of the governors. If the local authority don’t do it, we can. We’ll installed our own board of governors who will do what we are saying.’ “

The DfE also reportedly told the school’s head and chair of governors to not share with parents details of the DfE meeting. They didn’t accomplish that until the DfE decision was reiterated in a letter received at the final day of last term. Ofsted inspectors didn’t arrive until this month.

A vociferous campaign against the plans was launched by parents.

The DfE said that no final decision had yet been made at the school, although academy sponsorship under Harris remained its preference. However, on Friday came news that Ofsted now deems the faculty to be making “satisfactory progress”. Watch this space.

An give you might refuse

Staff on the centre of an extended dispute following the hole of a free school in Sefton, Merseyside, were facing an agonising choice as Education Guardian went to press.

Following a disagreement we first reported on last year, around 80 former staff from St George of britain engineering college (formerly St George of britain highschool) and St Wilfrid’s Catholic highschool were left without redundancy or jobs last September when The Hawthorne’s free school opened of their stead.

Five months later, the dispute took what the local authority hopes would be its final turn every week ago, when Sefton council and the free school – which have been at odds over whether jobs within the new school or redundancy were owed to the workers – came forward with a proposal to their unions.

But a source among former St George’s staff said the move was compounding the tension for lots. The offer letter sets out separate terms for many who managed find work shortly after the recent school opened and people who didn’t, while even as asking that unions refuse to support anyone who fails to agree terms. The letter gave unions just a week to make a decision. Sefton council said the offer could see a settlement for the workers without the need for litigation.

Transparent as mud

Three weeks ago, we cited that the DfE had still not published minutes of its board meetings since September 2011, despite a page existing for this purpose under the heading “Transparency”.

Lo and behold, eight days later, summary minutes of 7 meetings appeared. But they may be seen as lower than illuminating.

Each set of minutes runs to not more than four tantalising bullet points, similar to “The board received an update and discussed problems with industrial relations”, and (our personal favourite, offered with none further information) “Ministerial priorities – it was agreed that the policy and delivery objectives indicated were the proper ones”.

Perhaps this page must be filed under “Opacity”.

Eighteen months ago the reason for gender equality in UK universities got a great addition. Medical schools seeking biomedical research grants worth millions of pounds don’t need to bother applying unless they’d proven credentials in supporting women’s career progression, the manager medical officer, Professor Dame Sally Davies made clear. For the primary time, the pursuit of equality was explicitly associated with major funding streams.

Institutions could only expect to be shortlisted for the National Institute for Health Research cash, Davies said, in the event that they had a silver award from Athena Swan – a scheme founded in 2005 that awards bronze, silver and gold charter marks in accordance with universities’ work tackling the under-representation of girls in science. Since then applications for the awards have increased significantly.

But Athena Swan (Scientific Women’s Academic Network) remains the sole nationwide initiative aiming to enhance women’s representation on the highest levels of academia. It’s currently focused solely at the sciences, and there’s no such scheme for black and minority ethnic (BME) academics.

Given the findings of a brand new report by the University and faculty Union, that could come as a surprise. Figures released by the better Education Statistics Agency last week reveal that numbers of ladies and BME professors in our universities remain woefully low: only 1 in five professors are women (20.5%), however they make up almost half (47.3%) of the non-professorial academic workforce. Just one in 13 (7.7%) of professors are from BME backgrounds; BME academics fill 13.2% of alternative posts. The figures, for 2011-12, show only marginal increases at the previous year.

Using Freedom of data requests, UCU looked into the applications process. In line with data from 21 institutions with among the biggest gaps between representation at professor and other levels, it found that white applicants were 3 times likely to secure a professorial role than BME ones. The knowledge on women told a distinct story: they really had a more robust success rate than men, but weren’t going for the roles within the first place. Over four times as many men as women applied for professorial posts.

Why don’t women apply for these positions Many ladies feel the chance is just not there when they have children. “I don’t know if i may ever rack up enough papers to become a professor now,” says Frances (not her real name), a senior lecturer in biosciences at a post-1992 university, who has three children. “I’ve spent too a few years changing nappies. I work part-time and feature had two nine-month maternity breaks. My department was very supportive of my work to maintain my research alive, but there are still only such a lot of hours within the day. Most of my colleagues would probably perform a little of it at weekends or within the evenings. But i can not do this.”

There is a well-recognized story, too, of girls worrying that they do not have the mandatory credentials to use for jobs. “Women are inclined to undervalue what they’ll do,” says Jenny Daisley, chief executive of the Springboard Consultancy, which runs development programmes for girls at various levels in 40 universities.

What to make of the low success rate of BME academics They made up 26.2% of applicants for professorial positions on the institutions studied, 18.6% of these shortlisted, and just 10.5% of these appointed. That gave them successful rate of seven%, against 21.1% for white applicants.

Some might argue that they have to be applying for positions they don’t seem to be qualified for. But that seems unlikely at this type of high level, says Heidi Mirza, emeritus professor of equalities studies in education on the Institute of Education. She became one of the most UK’s first black female professors within the 1990s. “It must be a discriminatory process,” Mirza says. “Higher education is ready peer review and has a fundamentally nepotistic way of operating. It’s about networking and folk supporting people they know who’re like themselves, who they feel will mirror their very own areas of interest. BME people often don’t fit into that.

“Universities within the UK are still greatly white, male institutions of privilege and self-reproduction.”

Alison (not her real name), a respected senior academic, believes her exclusion from crucial informal networks is what has allowed white colleagues to drag prior to her through the years. “It has taken me such a lot longer than my white peers to get to where i’m now,” she says. “You need to generate a large number of grant income from external funders, but to be able to try this you should be invited directly to research teams, and that i feel i have not had the identical opportunities to be a part of that as my white colleagues have.

“People let you know to visit conferences, join professional networks. But oftentimes to get to the following stage of turning into a professor it’s more about informal networks – such things as being invited to the dinner parties and other social gatherings. i believe that BME people just do not get those invitations – maybe because we’re still seen as outsiders. Therefore, you have not got that level of support that white colleagues have. You actually ought to fight for yourself.”

It seems incredible that universities, of all places, full of the brightest and best, haven’t cracked this problem. UCU wants institutions to introduce transparent professorial grading structures, in addition to setting concrete targets for improvement, with specific time frames, and make sure progress is monitored on the highest levels. Too some of the stated equality schemes at institutions with above-average “representation gaps” lack measurable objectives, the report says.

Simonetta Manfredi, joint director of the Centre for Diversity Policy Research at Oxford Brookes, believes the executive medical officer’s announcement provides a clue to 1 way forward. “The instant you link gender equality issues to funding, all universities will do it,” she says. She’s encouraged that the Equality Challenge Unit (ECU), which goes on equality and variety for employees and scholars, is piloting an Athena Swan-inspired scheme for ladies in arts, humanities and social sciences, with the University of Reading.

Last week, Research Councils UK said it expected institutions that receive its funding to offer evidence of the ways equality and variety were managed; it stopped wanting demanding formal accreditation, but warned that it’d consider such measures if there has been no improvement.

On the BME side, the european is targeting unconscious bias, says head of policy Gary Loke – getting people to recognise it exists after which institute training to counter it. UCL and Leeds Metropolitan was piloting such schemes, and the unit has commissioned an educational literature review at the subject to be published this year, to get people “to take it seriously”. “We all know that to steer academics to think of this stuff they should have empirical evidence,” Loke says.

Karen Jochelson, director of economy and employment on the Equality and Human Rights Commission, says institutions which have identified that a selected group seriously isn’t applying for jobs should consider positive action to widen the pool, similar to the mentoring, networking or training schemes already in place at some places. “In sectors that work through personal networks, if people do not have the networks they will not necessarily understand what’s needed at that next level,” she says.

The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine has one of the crucial highest rates of girls in professorial roles, with 28 (33%) of its 85 posts held by women (in October 2012). It has a raft of policies in place that encourage women to construct their careers on the school, from working from home and term-time contracts to transparent criteria for promotion. There need to be no less than one woman on boards making academic appointments, and half the present senior leadership team is female.

“i feel there is a snowball effect,” says Laura Rodrigues, the school’s equality and variety lead, and a professor of infectious disease epidemiology. “The more the junior female staff and scholars see female scientists directing courses, leading seminars, being in positions of responsibility, the simpler it really is for them to determine themselves in those positions. Being a senior scientist is not any longer seen as a privilege reserved for white men.” The very fact the gender balance is healthier among professors promoted from throughout the school than appointed from outside suggests their policies are paying off.

For Jochelson, UCU’s report shows “some very real problems”. If institutions are thinking about improving their record, step one is collecting and analysing the information, she says.

But the standard of knowledge provided according to UCU’s FOI requests varied hugely, in line with the researchers, with an important variety of 35 institutions originally contacted unable to supply the info because they didn’t collate or retain it. The ethnicity of greater than a 3rd of professorial applicants, or even 9.1% of these actually appointed, was unknown.

Jochelson was surprised by the gaps within the data, saying they suggested some institutions is probably not complying with the general public sector equality duty (PSED), under which English universities are required by law to publish information regarding their employees and objectives for areas needing improvement. “It was quite shocking,” says the report’s author, Jane Thompson. “plenty of institutions said providing that information was voluntary, so it wasn’t their fault if people didn’t provide it. That’s a cop-out.”

But the coalition is reviewing the PSED as portion of its “red tape challenge” to minimize bureaucracy, and that worries UCU’s general secretary, Sally Hunt. “It’s becoming much more difficult to believe that institutions left to their very own devices might be committed to creating the required changes,” she says.

Alison still desires to become a professor. “i feel it is vital that folks see a black woman achieving that,” she says. “But it’s totally difficult, isolating and wearing. i did not expect it to be like this: in the event you start you observed in the event you do everything you’re purported to do, your talent would be recognised and you may progress. It isn’t like that.”

The education secretary, Michael Gove, was accused of narrowing young people’s choices as he revealed plans to bring back traditional two-year A-levels with end-of-course exams.

Under a main overhaul of the system, AS-levels might be separated from A-levels to become a separate qualification.

Teenagers taking A-levels will not sit exams after 12 months, and should instead be tested on the end in their two-year course.

The proposals were specified by a letter from Gove to the exams regulator Ofqual.

In it, the education secretary says he has concluded there’s a compelling case for a move to A-levels with final exams.

But the shadow education secretary, Stephen Twigg, said Gove was “turning the clock back” and the proposal would chop young people’s options.

Brian Lightman, general secretary of the Association of faculty and school Leaders (ASCL), also sounded a note of warning, saying the union was not convinced that AS-levels needs to be a separate qualification.

In his letter, first reported inside the Daily Telegraph, Gove says the AS-level is considered a valuable qualification.

“i’ve concluded that it’s going to be retained, but that its design must be reconsidered to be able to establish it as a high-quality standalone qualification,” he says.

The new AS-level must be as intellectually demanding as an A-level and canopy half the content of an entire A-level. Students could take the qualification over one or two years, he adds.

On the way forward for A-levels, Gove says inside the letter: “Alongside a standalone AS-level qualification, I actually have concluded that the case for a completely linear A-level is compelling.”

The move will address concerns about pupils sitting exams in modules, and re-sits resulting in grade inflation, he argues.

“This may allow students to develop a stronger understanding in their subject throughout the greater maturity so that they can be developed over two years of analysis – something that i do know teachers believe may be particularly important for college students from disadvantaged backgrounds.”

The new A-levels could be taught from September 2015, a year later than the unique timetable of September 2014.

Twigg said: “Over again Michael Gove is all about turning the clock back. This plan would cut the choices for youngsters.”

He said there has been a necessity for more “high-quality options” available at 16, including all teens studying maths and English until 18.

Lightman said that preparation for university was “only 1 a part of the point of A-levels” and the qualification had “much more purposes than that”.

“Schools leaders could have no problem with adjusting or extending A-level specifications in order for on the highest levels these examinations prepare students for the main demanding university courses, but we aren’t convinced by the case for wholesale reform of this exam, that is a terribly successful qualification,” he said.

“The AS-level is valued in schools as a fashion of broadening the curriculum. We aren’t convinced that it will be a separate qualification.”

Under the present system, sixth-formers often sit four or five AS-levels, taking exams after 12 months before deciding which to drop and which to continue to A-level.

AS-levels, and both-stage system, were introduced by the last Labour government under the Curriculum 2000 reforms.

Gove’s new proposals effectively move the A-level system back to where it was before Curriculum 2000.

The plans, which come the day before the publication of GCSE and A-level league tables for schools in England, could raise concerns among some universities which use AS-level marks when making decisions about making offers for degree courses.

In his letter, Gove says there’s clear dissatisfaction among leading university academics about how A-level students are being prepared for further studies.

“i’m concerned that some natural science degrees are getting four-year courses to make amends for issues of A-levels. Linguists complain concerning the inadequacy of university entrants’ foreign language skills. Mathematicians are concerned that current A-level questions are overly structured and inspire a formulaic approach, in preference to using more open-ended questions that require advanced problem-solving.”

Gove also reveals that the Russell Group, which represents a collection of 24 leading universities, is to establish an organisation so that it will provide Ofqual with advice at the content of A-levels. It is going to consider the topics that are probably required to realize entry to a top university, he says.

Ofqual conducted a 3-month consultation into the way forward for A-levels last year. In November, the regulator announced plans to scrap January exams, and to provide students fewer chances to re-sit papers.