Education Guardian
Student grant firm fired for delays, Capita to replace
The company blamed for delayed grant payments to thousands of college students has lost its six-year contract, it has just been announced.
Liberata's contract was scrapped by the Learning and Skills Council (LSC) five years early after the company failed to pay thousands of teenagers education maintenance allowance (EMA) grants of up to £30 a week to continue studying.
Capita has been appointed by the LSC and will take on all its learner support services, including the EMA and the Adult Learning Grant (ALG).
On November 28, it will take over learner and provider helplines, processing and payments and bring in a new senior management team to oversee the staff and operations in Coventry, Manchester and Darlington processing centres.
Payments will continue and during the transfer period outstanding applications will continue to be processed, the LSC said.
In a statement, the LSC said learners had suffered weeks of delay in receiving payments as a result of Liberata encountering technical difficulties in processing EMA applications.
At one stage the backlog of applications was in excess of 200,000.
It is now at 12,016 and the remaining applications should be cleared within the next few weeks.
But the LSC said a change of supplier was the best way forward regardless.
Mark Haysom, the LSC's chief executive, said: "We have said throughout that it is unacceptable for young people to have their EMA payments delayed.
"Capita has a long history of working on programmes such as EMA and we are delighted they are able to take this contract forward and provide learners with the service they deserve.
"We are working with Liberata and Capita to make the transfer as smooth as possible.
"Although the transfer will not immediately fix all of the helpline and processing problems, it will help us to improve the future service for young people, colleges and learning providers."
The National Union of Students further education spokeswoman, Beth Walker, said the LSC should make sure the remaining backlog is cleared and all back payments are made.
"We fear that many students have been forced to drop out of their courses by the delays and there is an urgent need for the government to conduct a full inquiry into this catastrophic failure."
The shadow schools minister, Nick Gibb, said: "Yet again, Ed Balls' department has presided over the shambolic administration of services that directly impact on children's education.
"If anything, this latest debacle is the most damaging yet as it directly undermines the educational prospects of some of the poorest children in the country."
He demanded to know how much taxpayers' money Liberata had been paid and whether it would be forced to pay it all back.
"But most importantly we need to know when the vulnerable students who have been so badly let down by this fiasco will receive the money they are entitled to," Gibb said.
The EMA contract is the second in education sector the government has been forced to terminate this year.
The US firm ETS Europe lost its £156m five-year contract to handle the Sats exams in August after test results were delayed. Capita also took over the contract.
In 2004, the National Audit Office blamed Capita for the near collapse of the Criminal Records Bureau when it was launched, causing chaos in schools who could not vet staff.
Around 600,000 hard-up teenagers signed up to the EMA scheme, which was designed to help them carry on with their education after age 16.
The contract to pay the allowance and other payments is currently worth more than £1m a month.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More FeedsChief inspector says vulnerable children are being failed by schools, care workers and children's homes in attempts to prevent abuse
The most vulnerable children are being failed by "patently inadequate" standards of care in the networks of schools, care workers and children's homes established to protect them from abuse, according to the chief inspector of schools.
Councils have systematically failed to learn from the mistakes made in dozens of the most serious cases of child abuse and schools and health workers are still failing to pick up signs of child abuse. It comes amidst intense public concern after the death of 17-month old Baby P in Haringey who died from 50 injuries despite being in regular contact with child protection officers and medics.
In the first annual report from Ofsted since it took responsibility for inspecting children protection facilities and practices, the watchdog raises urgent concerns about the system of serious case reviews, which are launched in the worst cases of child abuse to help councils learn from mistakes made in their child protection teams.
Between April 2007, when Ofsted assumed responsibility for assessing child protection procedures, and August this year local authorities reported 424 serious incidents including 282 child deaths, 136 of serious harm and six the outcome of which are unknown. One in four involved babies under the age of one. Of 92 serious case reviews conducted, 38 were rated inadequate and 34 just satisfactory – a rating Ofsted says is not good enough.
This led to serious delays in judging what went wrong in the child protection system in "almost all" cases, the report warns. In one case it took a local authority four years to conduct a single serious case review during which time other children could have come to harm. The report warns that some of the most serious cases of child abuse involving child deaths are going unreported by local authorities. One in four local authorities didn't report a single case.
Gilbert said: "This report leaves me encouraged by the recognition that so much is going well for so many children, young people and adult learners; but frustrated that there is still too much that is patently inadequate and too many instances where the rate of improvement is unacceptably slow. Too many vulnerable children are still being let down by the system and we are failing to learn from the worst cases of abuse."
Referring to the case of the death of Baby P in Haringey afterwards, she said: "I wish I could guarantee that such a case would never happen again. I can't give that guarantee. Everyone working in child protection has to stop, take stock and look at what they are doing."
The symptoms of child abuse are still being missed by "front-line" staff such as teachers and health workers who are still too ready to "accept at face value" signs of abuse, she said.
Some 8% of children's homes are "shockingly" inadequate with concerns about children's safety in centres that are failing to vet and train staff properly. Bullying was going unchallenged in 7% of settings. Procedures designed to ensure that all staff working with children talk to each other – a key recommendation that was supposed to be implemented after the death of Victoria Climbie – are poor in many areas. "Consequently, necessary actions may not be taken to reduce the risks to children of sexual exploitation and drug or alcohol misuse," the report says.
The report, which also covers education from nurseries to schools and colleges, finds that although the number of inadequate schools has decreased since last year, there was a "stubborn and persistent" problem of underperformance in secondaries where 9% were judged inadequate.
Gilbert said: "There is a strong link across every sector between deprivation and poor-quality provision. This means that children and families already experiencing relative deprivation face further inequity in the quality of care and support for their welfare, learning and development. In short, if you are poor, you are more likely to receive poor services: disadvantage compounds disadvantage."
Michael Gove, the shadow education secretary, said: "This OFSTED report underlines what we have been saying – the education system is failing poorer children. The gap between the privileged and disadvantaged is not being closed. That is why a Conservative government would shift resources to spend more money on the education of pupils from more deprived backgrounds."
Jim Knight, the schools minister, said: "There is a lot of good news in this report for frontline staff who are working hard to improve children's lives, to help them learn and achieve, and to keep them safe. But as we set out in the Children's Plan, we won't be satisfied until every school and every service is meeting the standards set by the best."
Beverley Hughes, the children's minister, added: "I am pleased that the large majority of children's homes and social care services are doing well. However, I am very concerned that the report says that staff in some services are not equipped to recognise and respond to signs of abuse and neglect. Everybody working with children has a clear duty to keep them safe – there are no excuses for ignorance."
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Tories would give colleges more freedom
Colleges will get greater freedom to choose what they teach if the Conservatives get back into government, they were promised today.
The government should give further education the sort of leeway universities get, and trust it to respond to local needs, said David Willetts, shadow secretary for skills.
He promised college principals an end to the frequent policy switches that Labour had forced on them. "We trust further education colleges to serve their local communities - they have deep roots there," he told the Association of Colleges (AoC) annual conference in Birmingham.
Though careful to avoid spending commitments, Willetts pledged to use £100m of Labour's Train to Gain budget on addressing the Neets problem (youngsters not in education, employment or training).
The Tories would use a further £100m from the same source to "kick start" adult education, and repair some of the damage suffered with the loss of 1.5 million publicly-funded course places.
"What's happened to adult education is a disaster," Willetts said. "It's extraordinary that having built it up, the government has demolished it in the last four years."
The Tories want to preserve the autonomy from local government that they granted colleges in 1993. "I don't believe that further education colleges should revert to being dependent on local authority funding."
The government has ruled that colleges will be funded by their local councils from 2010.
The Conservatives would restore a funding agency for further education. Unlike the Learning and Skills Council, this would not have responsibility for school sixth forms, which would be funded by local authorities.
"We are sometimes told that further education is not sufficiently responsive. My view is that that's the opposite of the truth. If anything colleges have been too responsive."
Under Labour, colleges have been subjected to frequent policy U-turns. Under a Conservative government, colleges would be required to draw up a plan of what they would teach, having consulted their local communities.
"The plans would be submitted to the funding agency. Colleges would be funded to deliver them, and assessed on their performance."
Some central oversight would be needed because public money was involved but colleges would be much freer to respond to local demand.
"Funding of FE colleges should not depend on the production of paper qualifications," Willetts said. "Skills are not the same as qualifications."
The serious Neets problem would not be solved by insisting youngsters get level 2 NVQs as a funding condition. If a college could attract disaffected youngsters by allowing them, for instance, to work on motorbike engines, that could qualify for cash support.
Get these young Neets interested in something first, and then think about more structured training, he said.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More FeedsHow well do you know the world?
Geography survey finds people don't know much about the world
How many countries make up Great Britain?
If you know the answer, you're among the precious few in the UK that do.
A study to raise awareness of geography found that two thirds of people (65%) mistakenly believe Britain is made up of four countries, rather than the correct three: England, Scotland and Wales.
Half of the 2,000 people surveyed (51%) wrongly believe English is the most spoken language in the world, as opposed to Mandarin Chinese. And one in 10 think Everest is Britain's highest mountain.
Struggling with the "how many countries" question, 6% said Britain was made up of five countries, 3% thought one and 2% chose two.
Yet asked what profession they would most like to be out of list of six, 23% of respondents said explorer, compared with doctor (22%), painter (16%), teacher (15%), journalist (14%) and banker (11%).
Geographic technology company, Esri (UK), commissioned the survey to coincide with geography awareness week and geographic information systems (GIS) day.
Dr Rita Gardner, director of the Royal Geographical Society, said: "The poll raises some questions about how engaged people are with the many geographical issues in the wider world and about geographical factual knowledge.
"Good geographical knowledge and skills are vital for all of us, as responsible citizens, if we are to fully understand the nature of change in the world's people, places and environments."
Esri's community programmes manager, Angela Baker, said it was remarkable how few people knew simple facts like how many countries make up Great Britain.
"Geography helps us make sense of our local surroundings and the world's bigger challenges like climate change, war, energy and poverty," she said.
"The survey shows the nation knows less than expected about the world we live in."
"New technologies in the classroom are helping modernise geography – making it more relevant to children and helping them develop new marketable skills."
GIS is used to create interactive digital maps and to understand spatial information. Since September it has been part of the curriculum at key stage 3, GCSE and A-level, with pupils using it to question geographical data and study relationships and patterns.
• How well do you know the world? Take our quiz
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More FeedsLiberata reportedly to be dropped from college maintenance allowance contract
The company blamed for delayed grant payments to thousands of college students is likely to have its six-year contract terminated by the end of the week.
According to reports, Liberata's contract will be scrapped by the Learning and Skills Council (LSC) five years early after the company failed to pay thousands of teenagers education maintenance allowance (EMA) grants of up to £30 a week to continue studying.
The EMA contract will be the second in the field of education the government has been forced to terminate this year.
The US firm ETS Europe lost its £156m five-year contract to handle the Sats exams in August after test results were delayed.
Around 600,000 hard-up teenagers signed up to the scheme, which was designed to help them carry on with their education after age 16.
The contract to pay the allowance and other payments is currently worth more than £1m a month.
A spokeswoman for Liberata refused to comment on any of the details of the case.
"As a private company, it is Liberata's policy not to comment on rumour and speculation regarding either itself or its clients.
"We can disclose that we continue to work closely with the LSC and other government bodies to resolve the situation with the LSC and its EMA student payments."
She added that Liberata continues to provide outsourcing services to public and private sector clients and would ensure they were unaffected by the LSC contract situation.
"Liberata is continuously focusing on improving the quality and efficiency of its service offerings to all of its clients across the public and private sector," she said.
A spokesman for the Department for Children, Schools and Families said: "Liberata has been performing badly and the LSC has contingency plans in place but at this moment no contract has been signed or unsigned."
The Association of School and College Leaders' deputy general secretary, Martin Ward, said: "This is welcome news and the right response when a contractor fails to deliver.
"The colleges and schools that have seen students' education put at risk by Liberata's mistakes will undoubtedly feel some sense of vindication. However, it will not help those students still struggling to make ends meet because they have not yet received their payments. Sorting out the problems still remaining from this year must be the priority.
"The government must do all it can to help ensure that these colleges and their students do not end up out of pocket. Colleges should not have to pay for the failures of a government-appointed contractor."
The Liberal Democrat schools spokesman, David Laws, said government action was "long overdue".
He said: "The administration of the EMA has been an utter shambles and follows the earlier problems that the education department had with ETS, the contractor for the key stage tests.
"Ed Balls must explain why the government appears to have been employing contractors who haven't displayed the basic competence to manage their responsibilities.
"This chaotic situation has led to real problems for many students. We urgently need to know who is going to take over the contract and how the government is going to get back the money already paid to Liberata."
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More FeedsAnnual report by Ofsted says socially excluded receive 'inadequate' education
Too many schools are providing education that is "patently inadequate" and people in the most disadvantaged areas of the country are being let down the most, according to the chief inspector of schools.
Overall, children's services spanning childcare, schools colleges and children's homes are good or outstanding, says the Ofsted annual report, but a significant minority are being let down by inadequate provision.
The report, published today, also highlights failures in child protection systems, under intense scrutiny since the death of Baby P in Haringey. The report says that 8% of children's homes were judged inadequate at their most recent inspection.
It highlights failures of staff to identify child abuse and judges 38 out of 92 serious case reviews, conducted after the death or serious injury of a child, as inadequate.
Between April 2007 and August 2008, Ofsted received notifications from local authorities of 424 serious incidents, relating to 282 deaths of children, 136 incidents of significant harm or injuries, and six incidents of which the outcome is not yet known.
Four in 10 incidents involved babies under the age of one.
There are often long delays in producing review findings, limiting what can be learned from them, and improvements are not always made as a result.
In problem areas, staff lack experience and are poorly supervised, Ofsted says.
Looked-after children's education attainment also remains "unacceptably low" and slower than for their peers.
"The relationship between poverty and outcomes for young people is stark," the report warns.
"The poor outcomes for young people living in the most disadvantaged areas are seen at every stage of the education and care sectors."
There is a higher proportion of good or outstanding childcare and early education than ever before, with nursery education of particularly high quality.
But people living in deprived areas have access to fewer good childcare settings.
And while the attainment of disadvantaged children and young people has risen, so have standards nationally. Children from poor families are missing out.
Services for disadvantaged children are poor, and across England, the opportunities available to them fall well short of those available to others, Gilbert said.
Despite effort and investment, the educational attainment of looked after children and their levels of participation in post-16 education, training and employment remain "unacceptably poor".
Gilbert said: "There is a strong link across every sector between deprivation and poor quality provision. This means that children and families already experiencing relative deprivation face further inequity in the quality of care and support for their welfare, learning and development.
"In short, if you are poor you are more likely to receive poor services: disadvantage compounds disadvantage."
She added: "There is still too much that is patently inadequate and too many instances where the rate of improvement is unacceptably slow. Too many vulnerable children are still being let down by the system and we are failing to learn from the worst cases of abuse."
Ofsted found two-thirds of state schools to be good or outstanding – up five percentage points since 2005-06.
A total of 9% of secondaries and 4% of primaries are inadequate.
Three out of the 10 academies inspected this year were judged outstanding, five good and two satisfactory.
Two-thirds of children's social care services were also judged good or outstanding as well as over 70% of further education colleges.
Secure accommodation for children and young people continues to improve and behaviour is better.
Initial teacher-training programmes are designed well and trainees are highly motivated and enthusiastic.
But the report suggests that "all is not well" despite the improvements.
One in five 11-year-olds transfer to secondary schools without the expected skills in English and maths.
And more than half of secondary age pupils leave compulsory education without grades A*-C in five subjects at GCSE, including English and mathematics, compared with two-thirds a decade ago.
There is an attainment gap between children on free school meals and others.
And the progress of children whose first language is not English remains "uneven".
The GCSE achievement gap between black, Pakistani, Bangladeshi and white pupils has narrowed.
But poverty has a greater impact on white British and black Caribbean secondary pupils.
And the attainment of poor white British boys remains particularly low, blighting their opportunities to participate in higher education.
The Liberal Democrats schools spokesman, David Laws, said: "Some of the issues being raised may have been relevant in the Baby P case.
"Ed Balls must explain why action on these matters has not already been taken, given that Ofsted is repeating earlier criticisms."
He added that a third of schools failing to give pupils a good education was "unacceptable".
The shadow children's secretary, Michael Gove, said: "This Ofsted report underlines what we have been saying – the education system is failing poorer children.
"The gap between the privileged and disadvantaged is not being closed. That is why a Conservative government would shift resources to spend more money on the education of pupils from more deprived backgrounds."
Christine Blower, acting general secretary of the National Union of Teachers, said: "Children from deprived backgrounds are three times more likely to underachieve than their peers from well-off backgrounds. This is a fact, not an excuse.
"It is vital, therefore, that this gap narrows, but it can't be achieved by lambasting schools in the toughest areas. That simply creates demoralisation and discourages committed staff.
She urged the chief inspector to outline the support schools need in the toughest areas, including how to encourage staff to work in those schools and how to provide them with the necessary additional resources.
Dr John Dunford, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said the report painted a picture of "an improving system against a background of rising expectations placed on schools and colleges".
He praised schools, colleges and their leaders for improving standards – particularly behaviour in a society where pupils have more freedom outside school.
"Demanding high standards of behaviour is never easy and schools need strong support from parents if they are to be successful in this," he said.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More FeedsBring a Fit Jew? How stupid can clever students be?
Obituary: Frank Walbank
Response: Gap years don't have to involve foreign travel or be unaffordable
Quarter of 11-year-olds missing maths target
Nearly a quarter of 11-year-olds are failing to reach the expected level in maths at the end of primary school, according to a report from the National Audit Office that says the Labour government's drive to improve the nation's mathematical skills has "levelled off".
Girls are falling behind boys and need particular attention, the report says. Some 6% of 11-year-olds - a total of 34,000 - have skills worse than the average seven-year-old. The report suggests the £200m-a-year drive to improve maths in primary schools is stalling in part as a result of teachers failing to spot children falling behind because they are not doing enough high-quality testing.
Meeting a 2011 target of 85% of 11-year-olds making the grade in maths will be a "considerable challenge", it warns. Last year 77% of pupils achieved a level four, the expected result for their age, in Sats.
Ministers insisted plans to target those at risk of falling behind with specialist and one-to-one teaching were already in place, but the report says thousands of pupils are arriving at secondary school without the basic skills they need to progress. Of pupils who did not reach the expected performance level in maths and English by the end of primary school, only 3% achieved the government's target of five GCSEs at A*-C including mathematics and English when they reached 16, the report says.
There are also gaps in achievement between boys and girls, children of different ethnicities and different socio-ecocomic groups. The report says: "Pupils from Chinese and Indian ethnic groups do consistently better than white pupils. Pupils from black African, black Caribbean, Pakistani and Bangladeshi ethnic groups do significantly less well, though the gap has narrowed in recent years.
"There is a very large gap in attainment between pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds and their peers. At key stage 2 the difference is currently 20 percentage points, with only a small narrowing of the gap over the past three years."
Edward Leigh, the chairman of the committee of public accounts, said: "The bottom line is that improvements in mathematics results since 2000 have been unimpressive. And, most worrying of all, nearly a quarter of all primary school children are not reaching the levels they need to in basic maths before moving on to secondary school."
Sarah McCarthy-Fry, the schools minister, said: "Maths is one of our key priorities and that's why we raised results from only 59% of 11-year-olds achieving the expected standard in 1998 to 77% in 2007, a big jump. It's true that in recent years the rate of improvement has slowed - we're impatient to do even better and that's why we are taking further decisive action to help all children reach their potential."
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds£500m for training to combat recession
Colleges will get an extra £500m next year and greater freedom to teach what they want in the face of the worsening economic situation.
To help people get back into work, colleges and training companies will get public cash for more basic levels of training than are presently permitted, John Denham, secretary of state for innovation skills and universities, said.
This will increase the total further education budget to £12.1bn next year.
Ministers will expect colleges to show ingenuity and innovation in the training courses that they devise to help the unemployed, he told the Association of Colleges (AoC) annual conference.
"When someone is facing redundancy or, often these days, they are let go at the end of a contract, they need to know that colleges will be there to help them with advice and support as well as education and training," Denham said.
College principals cautiously welcomed the relaxation of funding rules, but said government now needed to make it easier to move money between provision for adults and 16-19 year olds.
In recent years, the government has increasingly narrowed the sorts of training that qualifies for public cash.
Most money has been funnelled towards level two qualifications – the equivalent of five good GCSEs – and basic literacy and numeracy.
Now colleges will be able to claim for training schemes below level one and they will not have to carry an approved qualification, Denham said.
"I want to free up mainstream capacity and funds from within the system so that you are able to help," he said.
Denham re-affirmed the government's commitment to its Train to Gain programme, which applies to people in employment.
The budget will be increased by £130m to £925m and there will be a special £30m fund to help them use it.
Once a jobless "learner" had got a job they would be expected to continue training towards a qualification approved under Train to Gain.
Denham paid tribute to colleges for the work they do that is not publicly funded, in particular, initiatives to counter gun and knife crime.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More FeedsTories promise to link exams to world benchmark
The Tories are to promise that, if they become the government, they will link exams to international benchmarks to ensure standards are maintained.
In a speech this evening, the shadow schools secretary Michael Gove is going to say that he will give the government's new exams regulator, Ofqual, a statutory duty to guarantee that England's exams and pass marks are comparable with the world's best.
This would reverse the "devaluation of exams", he will say.
Ofqual says England already has "world-renowned qualifications" but it should be given powers to direct exams boards if it feels standards are at risk.
"We strongly believe we should have such powers, and we have been working with government on how they can reflect this in the legislation to establish Ofqual," a spokeswoman said.
Gove will draw attention to the way Ofqual told an English exam board, AQA, to lower the grade-C pass mark in one of its science GCSEs this summer to align with other boards.
AQA's chief executive, Mike Cresswell, said he reluctantly agreed to do so.
Gove will accuse Ofqual of "bullying" and failing to ensure the integrity of the exams system is upheld.
"Ofqual's first significant intervention in the examination system has not been an injection of greater rigour, an upholding of standards or a defence of knowledge, but the precise opposite.
"Ofqual's debut performance in the examination arena was a bullying of one exam board - AQA - which led to a deliberate lowering of standards."
Gove will say: "The sad truth is that our examination system is no longer a reliable guide to achievement.
"Our students work harder than ever. Our teachers not only work harder, they are better at what they do than ever. But they are increasingly failed by an examination system that no longer guarantees academic excellence."
He will claim that exams in England are no longer worth what they were.
"What looks like great performance in our state-run exams turns out to be below par when compared internationally, just as claims about the robust health of our economy are shown up for the empty boasts they are when we are measured against our competitors in the markets," he will say.
"Like our currency, our exams have been devalued - under Labour."
Increasing numbers of private schools are opting out of state exams and the Tories would allow state schools to choose the exams they offer their students from an international menu, Gove will say.
"We think schools should be free to decide which exams they offer and parents free to choose which schools they think are making the best offer.
Gove has asked Sir Richard Sykes, the former rector of Imperial College, to review England's system of assessment and qualifications in response to the problems schools faced with delayed Sats results this summer.
The Ofqual spokeswoman added: "Maintaining standards is at the heart of Ofqual's role and we take it very seriously.
"We have confidence that the results this year reflect the real achievements of young people and that standards have been maintained.
"The regulator's reviews of standards over the past 20 years have shown that, while the content of exams changes over time to ensure that qualifications remain relevant and engaging, there is no indication of an overall fall in exam standards.
"The issue of comparing qualifications is a complex one, because all qualifications are different in terms of content and approach, which makes direct comparisons difficult," she added.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More FeedsBritain talks down geoengineering as a solution to climate change
Research into drastic solutions to climate change such as cloud seeding, sun shades in space and ocean fertilisation risks hampering global climate negotiations by giving some countries an excuse for not agreeing to short-term emissions reductions, a UK government minister warned today.
The remarks by Joan Ruddock, a minister in the Department of Energy and Climate Change, appear to be a thinly veiled dig at the Bush administration, whose delegation attempted to insert a section into last year's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report on developing technology to block sunlight and cool the planet. The proposed text referred to it as an "important insurance" against the impacts of climate change.
Speaking to MPs on the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills select committee, Ruddock was defending the government's unwillingness to fund research into so-called geoengineering – large-scale, untested interventions that either soak up carbon dioxide or prevent sunlight warming the planet
"The concern is that people who don't want to enter into agreements that mean they have to reduce their emissions might see this as a means of doing nothing, of being able to say, 'science will provide, there will be a way out'," she said, "it could be used politically in that way which would be extremely unfortunate."
She added that funding research on such projects would deflect engineers away from more pressing solutions to climate change such as carbon capture and storage – extracting carbon dioxide from the emissions put out by fossil fuel power stations and injecting it underground.
The science minister Lord Drayson added that many of the proposals – such as launching huge mirrors into space, adding particles into the atmosphere to deflect light or seeding algal blooms in the ocean using iron fertiliser – were extremely costly and had risks that were poorly understood. "Some of the projects that are being postulated under geoengineering do strike one as being in the realm of science fiction," he said.
But Steve Rayner, professor of science and civilisation at the Said Business School in Oxford, pointed out that not all options were expensive. Some such as iron fertilisation would be within reach of wealthy individuals - he called them, "a 'Greenfinger' rather than 'Goldfinger'."
Currently, the research councils – which decide how public science funding is spent – do not fund any projects into geoengineering directly, although the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council has allocated £3m for an "ideas factory" into potential projects next year.
According to Dr Phil Williamson at the University of East Anglia, who wrote the Natural Environment Research Council's submission to the select committee hearing, around £50m of the government's research spend is peripherally related to geo-engineering.
The select committee's chair, the liberal democrat MP Phil Willis, said he was disappointed with the government's position of adopting only a "watching brief" over the emerging field. "That seems to me a very very negative way of actually facing up to the challenge of the future," he said. "It's a very pessimistic view of emerging science and Britain's place within that emerging science community."
He said government should support many different avenues to tackling climate change. "There have to be plethora of solutions. Some of which we do not know whether they will work, but that is the whole purpose of science."
But the chief scientific advisor to the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Prof Bob Watson, said that funding should be focussed on the most immediate solutions. "I think the question is whether [geoengineering] is the highest priority at the moment given scarce resources.
"First [priority] is actually putting investment into current technologies and pre-commercial technologies such as carbon capture and storage," he said, "Clearly I think this is something which has to be move quickly. I would call it an Apollo-type programme... we need to go in parallel and try multiple approaches simultaneously." He advocated that the EU, US and Japan work together on research into CCS.
Some scientists and engineers will also be disappointed with the government's dismissal of the field. In the introduction to a collection of scientific papers published by the Royal Society in September on the topic Prof Brian Launder of the University of Manchester and Prof Michael Thompson of the University of Cambridge wrote: "While such geoscale interventions may be risky, the time may well come when they are accepted as less risky than doing nothing... There is increasingly the sense that governments are failing to come to grips with the urgency of setting in place measures that will assuredly lead to our planet reaching a safe equilibrium."
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More FeedsAndrew Brown: The headteacher of Cheltenham Ladies College is right: less materialism could improve society
Mrs Vicky Tuck is the head of Cheltenham Ladies College; and you can practically hear the swish of hockey sticks as she pokes her metaphors into line. In her speech to the Girls' Schools Association yesterday she said that headteachers were operating "in a moral vacuum" and "gardening in a gale".
She also welcomed the "bracing" effects of the coming recession:
Perhaps it will spell the end of the conspicuous and ultimately unfulfilling materialism of the me, me, me, me, society. Let's hope so.
There is something gloriously unworldly about the idea that a recession will make people less greedy and materialistic. But it is glorious as well as unworldly because the kind of values she is talking about and trying to defend are superior to those of simple greed and selfishness.
Part of her speech, since it was made to the trade association, is a defence of private education: to that extent we are entitled to discount it as special pleading. Besides, lots of private schools offer expensive and exclusive – if high-achieving – sleaze rather than the kind of wholesomeness Mrs Tuck wants.
But the market she identifies is one that really exists. Lots of parents want to protect their daughters and their sons for that matter from the coarse and pitiless culture of exploitation spread by celebrity culture. The trouble is that in a society with Britain's curious class system, it is always assumed that the danger comes from below and that is those children poorer and more inner city than ours who are the dangerous and contagiously depraved ones. In fact, of course, the rich can be just as depraved and selfish and often they are. When that happens, their example is more dangerous.
My daughter went to a good suburban comprehensive and her best friend from primary school to a well-respected single-sex public school. Both of them made it to a good university, still sane and without drug habits or pregnancies; but there was a lot more drug-dealing at the expensive school.
Talking to other parents of teenage children, I noticed something painful and worrying: they see their children doing things which they consider squalid and dangerous; and which they would not themselves have done at that age, yet which they take for granted that they are now powerless to prevent. Obviously, at some stage, everyone has to make their own mistakes, but that stage is some time after they can vote, not years before. Until it is reached, stopping children from doing harmful things they might want to do is an essential function of a parent; if that function can't be exercised then society is quietly destroying itself, for it is preventing the transmission of the habits of mind and self-discipline that make it what it is.
This may sound horrendously old-fashioned, like Mrs Tuck herself. But it is an old thing coming into new fashion. We have tried the alternative and it hasn't worked well at all.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More FeedsDiplomas 'need overhaul to succeed'
The government's flagship diplomas need major changes if they are to have a viable future, the nation's college heads were warned today.
Colleges must be granted the power to teach diplomas without having to form partnerships with schools, Dr David Collins, president of the Association of Colleges (AoC), told its annual conference.
Until this happens and the newcomers have proved themselves, older tried and tested post-16 qualifications must be kept going, he said.
"We support the new qualifications but there will need to be some significant adjustments if they are really to succeed on the scale that is envisaged," he said.
"Most importantly of all, we must not allow recognised weaknesses in the 14-16 school curriculum to drive out existing successful provision post-16."
A "skills element" must be introduced to the diplomas if they are really going to attract young people in the numbers necessary to get them properly established.
And government must relax the rule that diplomas can only be run by partnerships of colleges and schools, Collins said.
Some "excellent examples of good practice" can be found among the limited number of locations where the first five diplomas have been available since September, he said.
But as the take-up increases "it is difficult to see how the operational complexities implicit in the present arrangements can be sustained," he said. "We must face up to that fact sooner rather than later."
Launching the AoC's 13th annual conference in Birmingham, Collins noted that colleges and not sixth-forms were now the first choice for most 16-year-olds. Last year, 737,000 16- to 19-year-olds chose to go to college and 460,000 to schools, and almost a third of colleges were judged outstanding on inspection.
He quoted John Hayes, the Conservatives' further education spokesman, who said: "Colleges are the unheralded triumph of the education sector."
And he welcomed what he said was unprecedented praise in a recent joint letter from the two education secretaries, Ed Balls and John Denham, in which they wrote of the "fantastic work" colleges do.
But the establishment of the two departments – children, schools and families, and innovation, universities and skills – were a funding headache, he said.
"The nonsense of having no additional funds for over-recruiting 16- to 19-year-olds - a government priority area - yet having money taken away in year if we fall short of our adult targets is an unnecessary threat to the viability of some institutions and one which we must challenge."
And the ongoing funding gap between colleges and schools for the same work was "completely unacceptable", he said.
"We will continue to press for an even speedier resolution of this issue than presently envisaged. Fairness and equality of treatment are fundamental values of our college system and the status quo in these areas run contrary to both."
This September, 12,000 youngsters signed up to start the first five diplomas in engineering, construction, IT, media and health. But in some areas the take up has been very low. Official figures obtained by the Tories last week found that fewer than 10 pupils have signed up for the diplomas in some parts of England.
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Headteachers should plan for their legacy
Headteachers must start thinking about who will take over from them as soon as they take up their post, the National College for School Leadership (NCSL) said today.
NCSL chief executive Steve Munby said headteachers should pick out those teachers with the potential to take up the top posts to avoid "boom and bust" in school leadership.
Munby – a government adviser on school leadership – has warned that up to 55% of headteachers could retire within four years and that schools face a demographic time bomb.
He told delegates at the NCSL's national new heads conference in London today: "We need legacy heads, who plan for their legacy from the outset.
"We need to avoid the boom and bust, we are not thinking ahead enough and we need to do that from the outset.
"We need to find teachers who have the potential to step up and grow with their headteacher's support."
He warned that with 28% of headteachers over the age of 55, around a quarter of them will be lost to schools over the next five years.
"We need young teachers who want to become heads. Heads shouldn't wait to think about their legacy," he said.
The number of young teachers who want the top jobs has gone up by 10% in recent years alone.
Munby called on teachers to work collaboratively with other schools to nurture teachers with potential leadership qualities to take up the top posts in the future - at whichever school they choose.
He said: "It's about a number of things, it's about giving them confidence and giving them opportunities to lead with support.
"The reason why heads need to work collaboratively is so they can see what is happening in other contexts, in other schools."
"You have a duty to develop school leaders not just in your own school but for the wider system," he told the conference.
"We're all in leadership because someone believed in us and encouraged us to be a leader.
"We need legacy heads that spot the potential for headship in others and ensure the leadership problem is not cyclical," he said.
"The best organisations take pride in the fact that they grow more leaders than they need and are a net exporter of leaders."
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Are fashion students being stitched up?
Imtaz Khaliq describes herself as a tailor and a designer. The dual label is important because she believes that the practical craft skills needed to put together a garment are just as critical as the vision.
She says too many students are coming out of fashion design courses in universities and art colleges lacking these skills, and her view is shared by other leading figures in this sector.
She knows this because as well as being a name in the fashion world, Khaliq is equally in demand as a teacher. In particular, she finds herself being asked to plug the gaps that she, and those who come to her for help, feel should have been filled by the education system.
Fashion students who realise that universities are not teaching them the basic skills they need to work in the fashion industry, and graduates who have found this out the hard way when applying for jobs, are trooping to her studio in Dalston, east London, to learn basic techniques such as pattern-making and even sewing.
Serious consequences
The consequences of this are serious for the young people finding it difficult to get employed, and for the UK's fashion textile industry, which faces worsening problems in recruiting new blood with the right skills, according to Skillfast, the sector skills council for fashion and textiles.
Its chief executive, Linda Florance, points out that the UK's textile industry, which brings in £10bn a year, is holding up while other manufacturing output is falling because its businesses compete at the top end of the market through luxury brands, technical innovation and design.
"The UK model for competitiveness requires highly skilled people with a broad range of practical talents, but the education and training system just isn't delivering enough of them, and employers are increasingly concerned," she says.
Despite the fact that UK universities turn out 3,000 fashion and textiles design graduates each year, employers complain of a skills shortage because these graduates lack the ability to turn a drawing-board design into a 3D garment.
Khaliq shares this diagnosis. Many of the young students and recent graduates she sees have not been equipped with the minimum skills they need for careers in the industry, she says.
"I had one young person who'd recently won a competition at university," says Khaliq. "She spent the entire day with me drafting a bodice block, in other words making a pattern from scratch." This process is a sine qua non for anyone embarking on a career in fashion and textiles.
"It's pretty poor that these students are paying fees on courses that are not providing them with the skills they need to work in industry," she says. "And when they are getting into industry, it's sending them back out to get the training."
One student who graduated in fashion design this year from a Midlands university, and who has just spent a day at Khaliq's studio, endorses this view. "I wasn't able to do a basic block and yet it's the first thing you need to learn," she says. "With the tuition fees you're paying, the universities should teach you what you need to know."
Helen David, a co-founder of English Eccentrics, a small fashion house specialising in hand-printed and hand-embroidered clothing and scarves, shares Khaliq's view. David became concerned last year after she interviewed for an assistant. "They all had 2:1s in fashion and textiles but the disparity of the skills they showed was alarming," she says. "Even a very creative company like mine needs technical skills. Technical skills aren't boring - they are essential. "
Some courses are obviously very good, and take pains to place students in work opportunities, she concedes. "The best are sandwich courses where the students have to work for a minimum period of six months in industry.
"Fashion design is partly academic, partly vocational. I've no problem with that. But a lot of students don't know how to sew or pattern-cut. They can do wonderful research into undergarments of the 19th century, but it's not much use."
For Khaliq, the inadequacies of some graduates have been put into sharp relief by the high quality of trainees who have come to work with her from Denmark and Germany. "They have seemed much better prepared. In Denmark, for instance, they have been trained on the job."
British students are, by contrast, often told by staff at colleges and universities that other people will manufacture the designs they come up with, an inaccurate and damaging message, Khaliq says. "Everybody's being trained to be this glorified designer but only 1% make that. The rest have to scrabble around to get work, and they are not equipped to do that."
Damaging imbalance
There is a damaging imbalance in the amount of public funding that goes on educating fashion designers to the detriment of the skills that the industry needs, according to Florance. "£110m is spent on fashion and textiles courses, of which £80m is on fashion design."
This imbalance is not new, says Sara Layton, a freelance pattern cutter who graduated in 1998. "There's too much emphasis on being a designer," she says. "There are a lot of designers who would like to start their own businesses. In a small business you have to do everything - pattern-cutting, machining and making up garments."
Layton quickly realised after graduating that she would have to go to evening classes to pick up these skills. And although she is now established in her career, she still feels the need to come to Khaliq for extra training.
Research by Skillfast on more than 2,000 fashion and textiles employers has found that 5% of the workforce - 17,000 people - have stayed on beyond retirement age because their businesses cannot find suitably skilled younger replacements.
Pattern-cutting, sample-making and other key skills are being squeezed out of fashion degree courses because they are expensive to teach and require large amounts of space and specialist equipment, says Florance.
Skillfast's campaign, Behind the Seams, is trying to convince politicians that the problem is serious and that funding should be taken from courses that don't meet employers' needs. "Our industry's products feed at least 20 other industry sectors, and our ability to be competitive has a major impact on the wider economy," Florance says.
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