When pupils misbehave, how can a teacher get on with the job? Rachel Williams visits a school where the solution is to bring in a behaviour management consultant

Late last year, Paul Dix went into a staff meeting at Portslade community college and put £50 in cash on the table. Anyone who could list the school rules, he said, could have it. Easy money, you might think – a gift for overworked, underpaid teachers. But not one of them could manage it.

Eventually – after Dix, an education trainer specialising in behaviour management, said they were staying put until that changed – the staff worked out that Portslade's pupils were bound by no fewer than 38 regulations. It was something of a watershed moment. "Paul's point was, if you can't remember the rules, how do you expect the kids to follow them?" says the assistant principal, Mark Deacon.

Getting the kids to follow the rules is a critical issue for Portslade, a secondary school and sixth-form centre in the suburbs of Brighton. Last year, and the year before, only 25% of its GCSE students achieved the benchmark of five A*-C grades including English and maths. It was placed in the government's National Challenge programme as a result, and last January was declared inadequate by Ofsted.

Now it is crunch time as it waits for the inspectors to descend again any day. If it fails to get a satisfactory rating this time, it is likely to go into special measures.

The 1,100-pupil school has brought in Dix in an attempt to help turn around what Deacon describes as a problem with low-level disruption. No one's chucking chairs, but that doesn't mean it doesn't have a major impact, he says. "There's very little really awful behaviour. There is a lot of backchat. In the end that's the stuff that's going to give a teacher a nervous breakdown."

Portslade had been stuck in the past, he believes. "When I joined the school 18 months ago it felt as if I'd gone back 20 years – it was very old-fashioned, with perhaps 1970s values."

Ofsted reflected that in its report, saying there was insufficient breadth to the curriculum, while the teaching was lacking in challenge. The school's management decided that changing behaviour, to help teachers feel able to be more inventive and take more risks in the classroom, would be a significant part of reversing the decline. So when the local authority offered to finance the sessions with Dix, they jumped at the chance. A day's coaching session one to one with up to four staff is £900, while a day for 150 people is £2,000.

A leader in a growing field of consultants going into schools aiming to sort out such problems, Dix has given training to teachers on how to handle difficult behaviour, and spent a day doing a drama workshop with a year 9 tutor group teachers had found particularly challenging.

And then there are those rules. In the end, the staff stripped them down to five basic instructions. They can be seen on freshly minted posters throughout the faded corridors of the cramped 1920s building.

One of Dix's key messages, outlined to Portslade staff at a training session in December, centres on remaining un­ruffled and steely in the face of misbehaviour, in contrast to offering warm praise and reward at other times.

"The core of the training we do is about sucking the emotion out of difficult situations," he says. "Traditionally what teachers have done is shouted at students. We're trying to get them out of the idea that it's about being the biggest lion in the jungle. You need to use positive management.

"The way you turn the culture around is teaching students that if you're rude, you're not going to get the reward of [the teacher] going red in the face, you're actually going to get a cold, pretty emotionless response."

Graded sanctions, beginning with sitting out from the group for a minute, should be used, with pupils being given clear choices between righting the situation and what will happen if they don't.

Dix gets the staff to pair off and play "assertive tennis", with one pretending to be a lippy student and another acting as a teacher trying to come up with a response that will silence them. The exercise is designed to get them to take their time before answering back.

He also encourages them to imagine how their pupils may feel at times, presenting them with a passage of seemingly impenetrable dialect and asking them to continue it for another 200 words. Within minutes, staff are playing with their mobiles, doodling and generally mucking around.

"Every single teacher that I give this to reacts in the same way," Dix says. "They're experienced, qualified people, they meet a learning challenge they can't understand, and within two minutes they're refusing to do it. They're the same as students. You say to teachers, can you imagine having a reading age of 11 at the age of 14? That's what it feels like, every minute of the day. Is it any wonder that you kick your chair back and say 'fuck it, I'm off'?

"The point we're trying to make is about what the core of bad behaviour is. It's not bad parenting, or drug culture, or 24-hour news coverage. It's people being bored and disengaged."

He also outlines an alternative system of punishments based on restorative justice that Portslade will trial with its year 7 pupils from the summer term. Instead of being given detention, students take part in a 15-minute "reparation" discussion about their behaviour with a teacher, agreeing how to make amends and make up for the lost learning. If they break the deal, they will face sanctions.

Dix urges the staff not to get the idea they are going down a "fluffy route" with this relatively easy-sounding option. "It's not soft, it's not leftie, it's not fluffy and 60s. It can still be rigorous. Getting people to engage in a conversation with teachers is not airy-fairy. But it works because it forces people to sit down and ... deal with the incident calmly. Detention doesn't work. Never has done."

The first few weeks, he warns, will be tricky. But then it will start to calm down. He urges the staff to persist through the hard times, and accept there is no quick fix. And they seem to lap up his words of wisdom. "It's been fantastic," says science teacher Paul Meredith. "I think the school had maybe lost its way a bit. It needed an injection of fresh ideas."

Stuart McLaughlin, who was appointed as principal in September and is driving the process of change, says he feels nothing but support for the work from his staff.

Dix, 40, taught for 10 years before setting up Pivotal Education in 2001 with a colleague. Primary-trained, he started out as a head of drama, at the age of 22, at a tough comprehensive in Nuneaton, and was a head of faculty in inner-city Birmingham by the time he quit. He did so, he says, not because he was fed up with teaching, but because he thought things could be done better, and he could influence more children by going into training.

His early years inform his current work. Excluded from school and in trouble with the police as a teenager ("all the problems of an angry young man") he can remember only one teacher who could manage his behaviour – "and lots who just wanted to be the biggest lion, and they wouldn't win".

From the team of just two, Pivotal has grown to a staff of 19, including 14 trainers offering workshops in areas ranging from safeguarding to stress management.

And business is booming – it has doubled in size every 12 months for the last few years, with recent increases fuelled partly, Dix reckons, by Ofsted's recent toughening of its requirements on behaviour. The company's website is awash with glowing testimonials; he has recently become Teachers TV's behaviour expert and is set to talk to the education select committee about initial teacher training.

There are around four or five big players in the area, says Dix, so it's still what he describes as a niche market. But demand is rising and more people are "tinkering round the edges".

Is what's being offered a miracle cure, or just common sense – as Dix himself suggests? Alan Steer, the government's "behaviour tsar", believes that while there is a place for challenging external training, it shouldn't take precedence over what is really important for producing good behaviour: good teaching.

"There's this constant belief that we've got to find the magic button, but the truth is we know what works," he says. "What we don't always address is the fact that we don't always do it." He also urges schools to examine the credentials of any prospective trainers carefully: "There's a lot of people selling snake oil around education."

Following the inset day with teachers, Dix returns to Portslade for his session with the year 9 group. He has ditched his suit for a hoodie and odd socks.

At first, the students are attentive, enjoying the trust games he gets them to play and his performance in a larval mask. Dix offers praise and encouragement. But when they have to put the masks on themselves, the rumbles of discontent begin. While many of the group take to the character acting, several of the girls – their makeup and hair immaculate – kick up a fuss. One refuses to put on a mask.

There is a growing air of dwindling concentration, with girls constantly slipping away from the group to have a sip of water, touch up their makeup or check their mobile phones. Some of the boys are now playing up. Dix calmly warns them about their behaviour and begins using minor sanctions. They seem bewildered by his approach more than anything, and, increasingly, exasperated.

By the end of the lesson, at least four pupils are no longer taking part. Two have been told to sit out by Dix after using up all their chances, and two have dropped out of the activity of their own accord. Dix gathers the remaining participants around and congratulates them.

But he adds: "It's really clear as a stranger that you've got 90% working and 10% who haven't got those behaviours that enable you to learn."

Afterwards, he admits he was surprised by what he saw. "It's the bailout that's unusual – there's work to do there. The culture change has got to be that if you step out, that's a really serious thing to do. We need to give them other strategies.

"The teachers need to challenge the kids more, but as soon as you challenge them, they bail out. It's more polite than what some children do, but it's just as destructive."

Nonetheless, Dix thinks Portslade can change. "I describe it as the Manchester City of schools, the sleeping giant. The community love it, the kids love it. What's missing is not the belief or the pride."

Deacon is already encouraged. Later in the day, he reports passing a classroom to see a teacher calmly explaining to a pupil why he was in trouble, and her target cry out furiously: "You're always talking about the fucking rules, miss!"

He might have broken rule 4 ("be polite and speak kindly"), but for Deacon the outburst was a result. "The message is getting through."

• Pupil behaviour
• Secondary schools
• Schools

A new scheme aims to boost learning among older people by persuading them to write their memoirs

After a lifetime of writing for pleasure, Kate Kinsella knows the trick to getting started. "It's really very easy," says the 87-year-old former nurse. "Get some paper, take the pen in your hand and start at the beginning. It's no use looking round and saying, 'I can't do it'. You have got to make an effort. There's nothing difficult about it because the words come into your head as you write."

Kinsella, from London, took a computer course at her local Open Age centre to make it easier for her to pursue her hobby, and two years ago, at the age of 85, the autobiography she had written for her family was made into a book.

The independent reading charity Booktrust is hoping that Kate and other older writers like her will prove an inspiration to the over-60s, who are the target for a major new literature project.

Bookbite, which is launched this week by Booktrust, aims to encourage older people to become more involved in writing and reading, for the sheer pleasure of it and for the social and health benefits of learning. The scheme, funded by £400,000 from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, is also designed to encourage older people to make use of the internet to access support and resources.

Participation in adult learning is in decline. Last year, a study by the National Institute of Adult Continuing Education (Niace) found that the number of adult learners had dropped to its lowest level since Labour came to power. The older people were, the less likely they were to be involved in learning. For 20- to 24-year-olds, 61% said they were currently learning, compared with 18% for the 65-74s. And last week colleges learned of a £200m cut to funding for adult students.

A Bookbite website has been set up, and more than 100,000 magazines will be distributed to the over-60s throughout England via partner agencies such as the WRVS, UK Online centres, library services and Age Concern. The magazine, which gives advice on getting started, research and creative writing tips, can also be downloaded from the Bookbite website. The scheme has the support of a number of well-known authors and poets, including Andrew Motion, Pam Ayres and Val McDermid, who have contributed their own work. The author Gervase Phinn, a former Ofsted inspector, will act as writer in residence for the initiative.

The project was launched after a study showed growing interest among the older generation in writing, initially about themselves and their families. "We knew from the focus groups we run that there was a lot of interest in finding out about writing," says Viv Bird, Booktrust's chief executive. "We are about supporting a lifetime love of books, and there was a sense of older people having a story to tell and wanting to find a way to do that."

Bird acknowledges that the demographic requires a unique approach and level of support. "We have such a wide spectrum of older people. Some will be very clued up as to using the internet, researching and writing. Then you will have those who are less confident about reading and writing and maybe don't have the opportunity; they are isolated at home.

"But over 50% of the population are now old people. There needs to be a huge cultural and social change: not just thinking that because people are not of working age there is no point investing in them, but supporting them and encouraging them to play a community role."

Phinn says he was delighted to become involved with the project. He will act as writer in residence, liaising online with participants. "When I was a schools inspector I used to go to a lot of residential homes and speak to older people who had incredible stories to tell," says Phinn. "They had stories about their childhood, the war years, evacuation, that really deserved to be written down. What Bookbite will do is get older people involved as writers. I really think it is a marvellous opportunity. We are going to be very sensitive and supportive of these people. We are going to help them to interact online. This is social history, too, and the best way of doing that is putting it into words."

Kate Kinsella had her first piece of writing published when she was eight years old. She was paid five shillings for a short story about a Hoover that she submitted to a local newspaper in Cumbria. In her later years, she also wrote the lifestory of a close friend before tackling her own memoirs.

"When I got to be 85, I wrote about my life for my grandchildren and great grandchildren," she says. "That was the real ­reason I did the book. I have lived a life that they will never know."

Like Kinsella, Joe Moisey, from London, had his first book published in his 80s. Now 87, Joe had written about his life in a series of letters to a young cousin. He had endured a harsh upbringing after his mother died, and went on to serve in the RAF and to work as a movie extra. Two years ago, with the help of the Furzedown project, a self-help service for older people, he saw his memoirs made into a book.

"I felt quite proud when I saw it," says Moisey. "I never intended to write a book. I didn't think there was anything of interest in my life. If I had not had my cousin to write to, I would never have got started. It's just a matter of having the confidence to do it. I would say to people, give it a try. Imagine you are writing to someone. Think of them and tell the story."

Vera Waters, a former teacher and health service trainer, now a life coach and public speaker, has four books to her name. She prefers not to reveal how old she is, but says age is no barrier to starting something new. "It is about a state of mind," she says. "I have always believed that nobody needs to know how old you are. You are as old as you encourage yourself to feel. But I think the person who said that old age is a very difficult time, was right. When you get older your confidence seems to run out through the soles of your shoes for a lot of people. We live in a very ageist society and that makes a difference as well."

Waters says older people need to realise that everyone has stories to tell. "It is about believing that whatever you have done in your life is worth looking at. Story­telling has gone on since the beginning of time, and people remember stories. You can have a fancy PowerPoint presentation, you can show people graphs and figures and all of that, but tell a story that links into it and they will never forget it. That's why storytelling is so powerful. Older people need to realise that this is something they can be part of."

• www.bookbite.org.uk

• www.booktrust.org.uk

• Further education
• Older people

The current situation, says Patrick Ainley, where education is blamed for economic failure, needs to be replaced by reform of the youth labour market

Further education was forgotten in academic reaction to government-announced university funding cuts. Yet FE has one in 10 of higher education students, not counting those in mixed economy further and higher education colleges, as well as the foundation degree students who graduate to one-year top-ups in local universities. The cut-price, two-year undergraduate degrees Lord Mandelson proposes could shift many of these students out of FE into HE.

At the same time, raising the school-leaving age to 17, and then 18, will re­inforce schools' tendency to send their academically less successful and more disruptive pupils to college so that, in an increasingly stratified system of post-16 providers, colleges are the new tertiary moderns.

Now funded for their under-19s by local authorities, colleges are not a high priority for local or national politicians. Despite this, FE will deliver the apprenticeships all politicians promise, even though most private employers have no need for them, and so they will cater mainly for the pared-down public sector.

However, FE still provides skills vital to the economy and offers a second chance to those failed by selective schooling, including special-needs students, adults (increasingly expected to pay), second-language learners and much prison education. English FE alone has 4,756,500 full- and part-time students, mainly mature and female. This includes sixth-form colleges but not work-based learners, and is more than twice as many as all under- and postgraduates combined.

Nevertheless, mergers – or more likely confederations – of colleges are already pressurising staff to deliver more for less. This could accelerate existing differences between colleges.

Certainly, in FE, more provision will be outsourced to state-subsidised private training providers, just as it is elsewhere in the semi-privatised, post-welfare state – whichever government next manages UK plc.

The crisis upon which the latest cuts are an additional infliction is endemic and is a product of more than 20 years of competition for "the best" students; ie those scoring highest in tests of literacy. So Oxbridge dons who complain that their 800-year-old tutorial system of educational perfection is being reduced to cramming sessions for students desperate for exam success are only the apex of a national obsession with league tables of competitive tests.

In the new working-middle of society, this obsession hides the fear of downward social mobility into a growing "underclass" as – far from Gordon Brown's "expanding middle class" – the class structure is going pear-shaped.

With syllabuses narrowing and practitioners directed to "teach to the test", students in schools, colleges and universities are studying more, but learning less, as devalued qualifications leave them running up a down escalator. Overschooled but undereducated, they graduate from all levels of education to a labour market for which they are overqualified, but in which they find themselves underemployed.

A new competition for jobs is "graduatising" a fresh layer of employment, particularly in retail, pushing the next tier of applicants who used to do these jobs into the "underclass", with over a million 16-25s now unemployed.

As unemployment rises and employers who annually recruited graduates can no longer afford to do so, record numbers apply for degree courses in hopes something will turn up to repay their debts in three years' time. The 50%-plus who do not enter some kind of higher education are promised apprenticeships without jobs, replaying the youth training schemes of the 1980s. Or, if they are lucky, six months' employment in the new "jobs fund", replaying the "job substitution" of the 1930s.

Mandelson and other politicians' ­proposals to cut back on post-compulsory education avoid the question of what else to do with the "lost generation" of students. The current situation – where education is subordinated to the needs of the economy, but is still blamed for economic failure – needs to be replaced by wholesale reform of the youth labour market.

• Patrick Ainley is professor of training and education at the University of Greenwich

Lost Generation? New Strategies for Youth and Education, by Patrick Ainley and Martin Allen, will be published by Continuum in March

• Colleges
• Further education
• University funding
• Students
• Higher education

Mathematicians have made progress in transforming the lazy bureaucrat into a collection of formulas, theorems and proofs

The lazy bureaucrat problem is ancient, as old as bureaucracy itself. In the 1990s, mathematicians decided to look at the problem. They have since made progress that, depending on your point of view, is either impressive or irrelevant.

Four scientists at the State University of New York, Stony Brook issued the first formal report. The Lazy Bureaucrat Scheduling Problem, by Esther Arkin, Michael Bender, Joseph Mitchell and Steven Skiena, appeared in the journal Algorithms and Data Structures. The study describes a prototypically lazy bureaucrat, transforming this annoying person into a collection of mathematical formulas, theorems, proofs, and algorithms.

This bureaucrat has a one-track mind. His objective, as Arkin, Bender, Mitchell and Skiena describe it, is:

"To minimise the amount of work he does (he is 'lazy'). He is subject to a constraint that he must be busy when there is work that he can do; we make this notion precise ... The resulting class of 'perverse' scheduling problems, which we term 'Lazy Bureaucrat Problems', gives rise to a rich set of new questions."

Other mathematicians and computer scientists took their own whacks at managing lazy bureaucrats.

Arash Farzan and Mohammad Ghodsi at Sharif University of Technology in Tehran presented a paper in 2002 at the Iran Telecommunication Research Center. Titling it New Results for Lazy Bureaucrat Scheduling Problem, they announced that, in a mathematical sense, lazy bureaucrats are nearly impossible to manage well. A good solution, they said, is even "hard to approximate".

In 2003, Ghodsi and two other colleagues presented a new study. What would happen, they asked, if one imposed some tighter constraints on the lazy bureaucrat? The answer: the problem would be only slightly less nearly impossible to manage, even in theory.

These and other studies at least demonstrate that annoying people, some of them, can be described mathematically. And that on paper (or in a computer), there might be better – although not necessarily good – ways to manage them.

Managing a problem, though, does not necessarily solve it. The mathematicians who tackle these lazy bureaucrat problems take the lazy approach. None does the hard work necessary to actually solve the problem – they give no advice about getting rid of the lazy bureaucrats. Like most non-mathematicians, they let the lazy bureaucrats career on, forever clogging the system.

For a hard worker, to read these studies is to take a descent into maddeningness.

But not everyone feels that way. The Royal Economic Society issued a press release in 2008 bearing the headline Lazy Bureaucrats: A Blessing in Disguise. Touting a study by Josse Delfgaauw and Robert Dur at Erasmus University, Rotterdam, the Royal Society says: "Hiring lazy people into the civil service helps to keep the cost of public services down". The study itself is, as the saying goes, more nuanced.

• Marc Abrahams is editor of the bimonthly Annals of Improbable Research and organiser of the Ig Nobel prize

The Lazy Bureaucrat Scheduling Problem

New Results for Lazy Bureaucrat Scheduling Problem

Common-Deadline Lazy Bureaucrat Scheduling Problems

On Lazy Bureaucrat Scheduling with Common Deadlines

• Research
• Higher education

The youngest member of the Browne review panel into higher education funding talks to John Crace about the burden of responsibility

Nearly an hour into our conversation, Rajay Naik drops his bombshell. "On the football field I'm naturally right-footed," he laughs, "but at cricket I bat and bowl with my left hand. And at tennis I serve left-handed then swap the racket over and play my ground strokes with my right."

Suddenly everything falls into place. How someone just 22 and barely out of university can become the darling of the left and right, the go-to man of the youth voice for almost every quango in town.

Since leaving school in 2005, Naik has worked for Coventry council, where he coordinated the city's Youth Opportunity Fund, taken a politics degree at Warwick University, chaired the British Youth Council and been the youngest member of the Learning and Skills Council.

There's more. He has also been a trustee of the national youth volunteering charity, V, has co-authored Learner Voice (a publication commissioned by Nesta), is a governor of City College in Coventry, is trustee of the charity Changemakers, is a board member of the Big Lottery Fund and has been appointed to the NHS Standing Commission on Carers.

It's the kind of CV that can leave you feeling seriously inadequate: Naik has done more in five years than many people manage in a lifetime. And yet, as high-profile as many of the jobs have been so far, he's had a comparatively easy ride. Third-sector work just doesn't attract a high level of flak and controversy.

All that may well change now that Naik is one of the seven panel members of Lord Browne's review of higher education funding and student finance, which began taking evidence in December. Although not a student, Naik is the closest thing the panel has to a student representative.

In theory, the panel is non-political: a cross-party body with the backing of both Lord Mandelson and David Willetts – which is just as well, since it won't be publishing its findings until after the next election and it's odds-on there will be a new government.

In practice, though, the review is anything but. The future of higher education is the hottest political potato in education right now. The government is committed to reducing its own contribution to university funding, the Russell Group lobbying to get rid of tuition fee caps, and there is no agreement on the balance between the marketisation of higher education and equality of opportunity. Whatever the Browne review comes up with, several important lobby groups are likely to be outraged.

If he's feeling the pressure, Naik doesn't show it. He's the model of charm and diplomacy. "Of course, it's too early to talk about what our findings might be," he says, "as we are still in the process of taking evidence. But I do feel the responsibility deeply and when we do make our recommendations, they will be in the interests of students, the economy and the country."

Yes, but ... more often than not the nitty-gritty of independent reviews is not the evidence given in public. It's the horse trading done in private. And several interested parties have suggested that Naik has been chosen as a concession to the youth voice, someone who can be sidelined by the other panel members.

"I totally reject that," he says. "I don't feel at all as if I represent only the student constituency, just as the other members aren't looking out for special interests. We may all have different areas of expertise, but we will come to a collective decision."

Naik has been fending off criticisms of tokenism ever since he started getting involved in political life. "It's a question people often ask," he says. "But I honestly wouldn't bother to get involved with an organisation if I thought my function was mainly cosmetic. And I certainly wouldn't stay if it turned out I was being treated that way. Life's too short to be patronised."

Naik admits to having affiliations with the Labour party, but he's no apparatchik. "If I was interested in becoming an MP, I would have hung around Westminster and become a special adviser," he says. So has he ever been asked to be one by a minister? "I'd rather not answer that." We can probably take that as a yes.

Rather, Naik is one of that increasingly rare breed of people who gets stuck in because he believes in what he's doing and wants to make a difference. Some of his jobs – the Big Lottery Fund, for instance – are paid. But most aren't. "My mum sometimes rings me up and asks if anyone has given me a proper job yet," he says.

"And it's not just the big things, such as accompanying the prime minister and the foreign secretary to the Commonwealth heads of government conference in Uganda in 2007. It's the little things, like seeing someone who you've managed to train up after being excluded from school go on to make something of their lives.

"Don't get me wrong. I'm not some rabid preacher for volunteering. It's just worked for me. I know most people have already got enough on their plate dealing with family, job and mortgage; what matters is we create an environment where they feel they can be engaged if they want to be. I feel I have been blessed in my life and I just want to put something back."

Up until his GCSEs, he was just a normal kid at a Coventry comprehensive, whose only civic act was to run the lunchtime football club. Then his dad saw an advert on Channel 4 for volunteers to appear on That'll Teach Them, a reality show in which 30 16-year-olds were sent off to six weeks of 1950s boarding school – complete with cold showers and Saturday lessons.

"I loved it," he says, "and it had a huge effect on me. First, it got me thinking what else I would have done with my school holidays; the answer being 'not very much'. But it also taught me the benefits of volunteering. All my mates assumed I was paid to go on the show. But we weren't. And I had got so much out of it."

As a result of the show, Naik was asked to talk about his experiences at the local youth council and his career has snowballed. One trick he will have to learn – now that he will soon be too old and too experienced to be pigeon-holed as merely a youth voice – is to find himself a new niche.

The other will be to not let himself be ground down and embittered by the inevitable routine of the job. "I'm not naive," he says. "I know I have to make compromises in my home life, and it's certainly no fun missing the last train back to Coventry. And there are some politicians – no names – who drive me mad. But I love what I do, I think it matters and there's nothing else I'd rather be doing." I believe him.

• University funding
• Higher education
• Tuition fees
• Student finance

Aberdeen University is radically changing its courses in 'the single most important step in its modern history'

When officials at the University of Aberdeen first considered overhauling their curriculum in an attempt to break into the world's top 100 universities, they started at the end point, launching a major consultation to discover exactly what constitutes an ideal graduate.

The responses from industry, politicians, students, parents and staff were remarkably similar. The ideal graduate was "intellectually flexible", a critical thinker and a team player; someone who could see their discipline in a wider context; someone who was, above all, employable.

With that in mind, Aberdeen – one of the UK's oldest academic institutions – has become the first university in the country to significantly re-shape its curriculum. From this year, new undergraduates will find their study options transformed, with an eye to easing their way into the workplace.

It's a bold move for such straitened times. Universities will not find out their individual 2010-11 funding allocations until next month, but earlier this week, the Higher Education Funding Council for England announced cuts of £215m in teaching budgets.

Aberdeen started on the road to reform prior to the recession and officials won't divulge the overall cost of the exercise, beyond saying there will be a "bulge" in expenditure. Core changes, they insist, will be met through existing budgets. It's understood the university has put in a separate bid to the Scottish funding council for £5m to help towards the cost of recruiting leading academics.

Other UK universities and colleges are following Aberdeen's lead and there are some within the sector who say the ­question is not, "How can we afford to do this?" but, "How can we afford not to?"

Undergraduate applications to Aberdeen for this year, meanwhile, are up by 27%, compared to around 8% in previous years. "I think it is the future," says Professor Bryan MacGregor, vice-principal for curriculum reform. "I would be surprised if many universities were not at least giving it serious consideration."

Aberdeen took its lead from the University of Melbourne, which initiated a radical restructuring exercise in 2007 to broaden out its undergraduate curriculum; what became known as the Melbourne model. Harvard, Hong Kong and Yale have all undergone similar reforms.

Officials felt that effectively tearing up the syllabus and starting again, as ­Melbourne did, was too risky a move for Aberdeen, which, at 129 in the QS world university rankings, is further down than Melbourne, at 29, and did not have the same domination over the local market.

But the changes at Aberdeen are sweeping. Sir Duncan Rice, principal and vice-chancellor of Aberdeen, has described it as the "single most important intellectual step that the university has embarked on in its modern history".

The university has retained its traditional four-year degree, but alongside their core discipline, new students will be required to study at least one course each year from what are known as "sixth-century courses" (so named because the university, founded in 1495, is in its sixth century) – topics include risk in society, science and the media, the health and wealth of nations, and sustainability. They can also choose sustained study programmes that will run parallel to their main subject, in languages, science or business.

Flexible entry and exit points have been introduced for students, allowing them to take a break in a course, or leave with some form of qualification if they don't finish their degree. There will be wider opportunities for placements, and overseas and voluntary work, all of which will appear as credits on a graduate transcript. ­Student support services have been streamlined to make them more accessible.

"It's about enhancing what we do and ­making sure students are ready for the needs of the 21st century," says Rachel ­Sandison, head of student recruitment and admissions at Aberdeen.

"The degree programmes we will offer still have the same quality and depth as the traditional degree. We are getting students to think of the context of their core disciplinary area, giving them more opportunities and wider opportunities."

Others within the university would go further. "The consequences of not addressing the curriculum at this time would be quite dire for students," says Dr Elizabeth Macknight, of the school of history. "Employers are encountering a very difficult environment at the moment with diminished resources. They will need employees who are able to think in very innovative ways. We are taking a bold step and one that needs to be taken at this time."

Macknight, who previously studied and worked at the University of Melbourne, says there is a growing recognition that higher education is becoming more global and students more mobile. "We need to make sure they are fit for purpose, that they can work anywhere in the world," she says.

Aberdeen has been offering advice to other institutions in the UK, including the universities of Manchester and Southampton, the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, and Glasgow School of Art.

Officials from Southampton, one of the Russell Group of universities, travelled to Melbourne last year, and are involved in their own research and consultation exercise to identify graduate attributes.

"We are at the early stage of the process, but the idea is to open up choice and opportunity to students progressively from 2012 to 2013," says Professor Debra Humphris, pro vice-chancellor at Southampton. "We are adding breadth to depth. It seems obvious that we should prepare our graduates for a complex and challenging work environment."

Humphris says Southampton has already introduced a number of initiatives to improve the employability of students, including the graduate passport, which details a student's non-academic involvement and achievement.

Officials at Aberdeen, meanwhile, are hoping the changes will secure the university a position in the top 100 universities in the world within the next few years. "It is the duty of any group of scholars to reflect on what they teach and how they teach it," says MacGregor. "There is also the more prosaic reason – our strategic plan to be in the top 100 universities in the world – we have to be at the leading edge."

• Higher education
• University of Aberdeen
• University of Southampton

The construction industry's comeback, ignoring Britain's talented children, and the costly burden on further education students

The job market for young people in ­construction is indeed challenging, to say the least (A failure to do the maths, 2 February). However, in the recession of the 1990s, training budgets were slashed and a devastating skills gap appeared in the sector when the economy shifted from stagnant to buoyant. Our latest forecasts demonstrate that although return to growth will be slow in construction, the sector will be out of recession by 2011. That is why we must continue to train the workforce, so that we have the right workforce with the right skills at the right time.

Mike Bialyj

ConstructionSkills, London EC1

As headmistress of an independent school for girls, I believe the government's decision to scrap the National Academy for Gifted and Talented Youth (Nagty) is completely misguided (And so farewell, 2 February).

While I welcome the fact that additional funding is being made available to support pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds as well as pupils with learning differences, is it not of equal importance to support those pupils who are either academically gifted or talented in music, drama or sport?

Here at Gateways school, we introduced our own scheme in 2006. Pupils identified as gifted or talented are set more challenging tasks, monitored by staff, and given extra independent learning opportunities. Pupils are also encouraged to participate in relevant extra-curricular or enrichment activities.

The Nagty was often described as elitist but that is not the case – in our experience, pupils aspire to participate in the programme and work harder as a result. Just as we should always commit to supporting those with learning differences, we should never be embarrassed about encouraging ­academic excellence.

Yvonne Wilkinson

Headmistress, Gateways school

Harewood, Leeds

I was pleased that Neil Merrick's perceptive article (No such thing as a free course, 26 January) highlighted the fact that individual learners are being squeezed out of further education. Far from the demand-led system espoused by the government, further education has become a finance-led subsidy for employers who don't want to pay for staff training. Putting a greater burden on individuals to pay for courses will see a further drop in numbers. And, although students in higher education are bearing a larger share of the costs, they have a loan scheme: a choice not available to most FE students.

Martin Freedman

Association of Teachers and Lecturers

London WC2

Our website reported that lecturers at Leeds university had voted in favour of strike action in protest at job losses:

There are also threats of job losses at Kings College London, where all humanities staff have been told they will have to reapply for their jobs with the aim of making 27 people redundant. The professor of palaeography (the only chair in the UK) and three people in the philosophy department have been issued with redundancy notices. This has been met with shock and disbelief throughout their subjects worldwide. The petition Save Palaeography at Kings has 1,700 signatures; the Facebook group has almost 2,750 members at the time of writing. The Save Philosophy Facebook group has a similar number.

acme

Schools that acknowledge that not all pupils come from a faith background - and tailor their religious education classes accordingly - are to be celebrated

The stack of small yellow cards in the centre of the table do not appear to hold much promise. But to the teenagers at Crown Hills community college in Leicester, they are nothing short of a revelation.

The school has 1,200 pupils – 94% of whom are Muslim. It accommodates pupils who fast, pupils who pray and pupils who cover themselves – so encouraging them to consider and debate atheist and humanist beliefs might seem impossible.

They are among the first students in the UK to study humanism as part of a religious education GCSE and, despite the overwhelmingly Islamic identity of the student body, they enjoy grappling with the concept of non-belief. Each yellow card bears a phrase such as "the universe is an accident, not a plan" and "science has disproved God". The sentences are intended to provoke discussion and reflection.

Without pausing for breath, Kulsum Ali, 13, explains what impact such discussions have on her. "If you have a watch, you see it, someone made it, it didn't just get there by itself. You can say the same thing about the world. It didn't just happen. But if God made the planet, then who made God? It's like a tree, isn't it? It just goes on and on. It makes my head hurt."

Tolerant and transparent

While the price to pay for existential debate is a migraine, the efforts of Crown Hills to introduce atheism and humanism into the classroom has nonetheless earned it a place on an awards shortlist. The inaugural Accord prize celebrates diversity of not only religious but also non-religious beliefs. The award, launched last November by a coalition of religious groups, humanists, trade unions and human rights campaigners, is open to all state-funded schools and is judged by a panel led by Rabbi Dr Jonathan Romain. He says Accord, which campaigns against the expansion of state-funded faith schools and challenges discrimination, is seeking out and rewarding schools that are "inclusive, tolerant and transparent".

"Not all of Britain is 'broken' – there are also many examples of remarkable success and cohesion – so it's time to praise those schools."

For the pupils at Crown Hills, the conversations present a rare opportunity to break taboos. Kulsum and the others agree they would never be able to talk about the big bang and the existence of God at home, at least not where their own religion is concerned. Zunaid Patel, 15, says: "As a Muslim, you believe in Allah. You don't question it. It's a command, you're just told to believe it."

He and his family are Muslim. "My parents understand that you need to know where other people are coming from. You can't judge people because they don't believe the things you do. You can be good without God. You can't think you're better than someone because you have religion and they don't."

The debates are equally stimulating and rewarding for the teachers, who work in a city projected to have a non-white majority by 2020. The staff is diverse too – atheist, Christian, Sikh, Muslim.

Most teachers say they are open about discussing religion and non-belief with pupils. Liz Hewitt, who teaches religious studies, says open discussions make children more aware of society. "They will meet a much broader range of people when they leave Crown Hills. These kind of debates mean they can talk about faith in a more informed way."

Bernadette Green, headteacher, says: "We're not in any way challenging their beliefs. We're very sensitive to them. Our students like RE and it's very popular at GCSE.

Teachers take a thematic approach to teaching religious education. Pilgrimage is important in the many world faiths and similarities are stressed at every opportunity. But there is also a focus on rites of passage such as birth, marriage and death that span all faiths and none.

A similar approach can be found in Barnet, north London, where children of all faiths and none are encouraged to adopt a broad-brush approach to the important things in life – symbols, celebrations and inspirational figures. Manorside primary, which is also on the Accord shortlist, starts from the personal before broadening it out to the religious.

Inclusive

Dianne Cohen, who provides religious education support, says not all Manorside pupils come from a faith background and religious education has to recognise that. "It makes it more inclusive. We always start with the children's own experience so nobody feels left out." One worksheet asks about the children's morning rituals. Answers include brushing teeth, eating breakfast, getting dressed. Some children have written "praying", others have not.

Kwame, who is nine and a Christian, says it is good to learn about other religions. "If every­one was the same the world would be a boring place. People can share what they do during festivals." His friend Frankie, who is also nine, says he has "no religion". "I don't feel left out," he says.

And what do the churches think about the award?

The Church of England says it is "fairly relaxed" about different belief systems – including non-religious – being taught, but that it would "expect" Christianity to be the principal religion taught unless it was a faith school [of another religion].

The Catholic Education Service describes religious education as being "vital, with much knowledge and intrinsic value to offer people". Oona Stannard, its director, adds: "They learn not only about religion and belief and to probe the bigger questions of life, but also about the importance of faith in the lives of others."

The Accord award-winners will be announced at the end of this month. accordcoalition.org.uk

• Schools
• Religious studies and theology
• Faith schools

Paul Dix offers 10 tips for teachers in managing pupil behaviour

Get in and get out quickly with your dignity intact

We know that to effectively deliver sanctions the message needs to be simple, clear and non-negotiable; in practice it is easy to get caught up in a lengthy argument or confrontation. Focus on moving in, delivering your sanction as discreetly as possible and then moving out quickly. Choose a phrase that you will withdraw on 'I need to see you working as well as you were in yesterday's written task, thank you for listening' or 'I will come back and give you feedback on your work in five minutes'.

Avoid waiting around for the student to change their behaviour immediately; they may need some time and space to make a better choice. Engage another student in a positive conversation or move across the room to answer a question and only check back once the dust has settled. No one likes receiving sanctions and the longer the interaction the more chance of a defensive reaction or escalation. Get in, deliver the message and get out with dignity; quickly, efficiently and without lingering.

Countdown

A good technique for getting the attention of the whole class is to use a 'countdown' from 5 or 10 to allow students the time to finish their conversations (or work) and listen to the next instruction. Explain to the class that you are using countdown to give them fair warning that they need to listen and that it is far more polite than calling for immediate silence. Embellish your countdown with clear instructions so that students know what is expected and be prepared to modify it for different groups:

'Five, you should be finishing the sentence that you are writing

Three, excellent Marcus, a merit for being the first to give me your full attention

Two, quickly back to your places

One, all pens and pencils down now

Half, all looking this way

Zero, thank you.'

Some students may join in the countdown with you at first, some will not be quiet by the time you get to zero at first but persevere, use praise and rewards to reinforce its importance and it can become an extremely efficient tool for those times when you need everyone's attention. You may already have a technique for getting everyone's attention, e.g. hands up. The countdown technique is more effective as it is time related and does not rely on students seeing you.

Closed requests

Prefacing requests with 'Thank you' has a marked effect on how the request is received.

'Thank you for putting your bag on the hook' or 'Thank you for dropping your gum in the bin'.

The trust in the student that this statement implies, combined with the clarity of the expectation, often results in immediate action without protest. It is almost a closed request which leaves no 'hook' to hold onto and argue with.

A similar technique can be applied to requests for students to make deadlines or attend meetings that they would rather ignore, salesmen would call it an 'assumed close'.

'When you come to see me today get as close to 3.30 as you can so we can resolve this quickly and both get home in good time'. As opposed to, 'Meet me at my room at the end of school'.

'When you hand in your coursework next Monday, meet me by the staff room so that I can store it securely'. As opposed to, 'I want your coursework in on Monday'.

You are assuming and encouraging a positive response; making it awkward for the student to respond negatively.

Get out and about

Perhaps your greatest contribution to managing behaviour around the school site is your presence. If you have your coffee in the playground, your lunch with the students (what % of your students eat at a table with an adult every day?) and are ever-present in the corridor outside your classroom students will see consistency in your expectations for behaviour both in and out of class.

They will grow used to your interventions in social areas and your presence will slowly have an impact on their behaviour. The relationships you forge will be strengthened, with opportunities for less formal conversation presenting themselves daily. In more challenging institutions there can be a tendency to avoid social areas or stray too far away from teaching areas. For a while it may seem that life is easier that way but by taking the long way round to the staff room to avoid potential problem areas and you risk being effective only within the confines of your classroom.

Jobs for the boys and girls

At primary level students' mutual trust is encouraged through sharing and delegating jobs in the classroom. A well organised year 5 teacher will have students handing out resources, clearing and cleaning the room, preparing areas for different activities, drawing blinds etc. The students learn how to share responsibility with others and accept responsibility for themselves.

It is often said that primary schools teach students to be independent and secondary schools teach them not to be. Year 7 students in their new schools are often surprised when their responsibility for the classroom is removed, 'Right I am counting out the scissors and I will come round and hand them out, don't touch them until I say', and their freedom of movement restricted, 'Do not get out of your seat without written permission!' etc. The tasks and responsibilities that you are able to share may seem mundane and trivial but by doing this an ethos of shared responsibility can be given a secure foundation.

Proactively developing relationships with students

It's not about trying to get down with the kids. Get the image of the teacher in a baseball cap skipping up to a group of gnarled year 11s with a 'Yo mothers wahgwan, dis new Phil Collins is safe man', out of your head. It is certainly not what I am suggesting, although it would be fun to watch.

Chose your opportunities to build a relationship with a student carefully. Open up casual conversation when the student appears relaxed and unguarded. Try asking for help or advice, giving the student something you know they are interested in (a newspaper cutting, web reference, loan copy of a book) or simply say hello and pass the time of day. You may choose to wait until you find a situation that is not pressured or time limited. Aim for little and often rather than launching into a lengthy and involved conversation.

Remember, your intervention may be unwelcome at first. Your aim is to gently persuade the student that you are committed to building trust. Be prepared for your approaches to be rejected. The student may be testing you to see how committed to developing the relationship you really are. He may not welcome any informal conversation with you because it is easier for him to deal with a conflict than a relationship of trust. Or quite simply, he may have decided that all teachers need to be given a wide berth.

Give your time freely and expect nothing in return; in time and with persistence your reward can be a positive relationship that others will be amazed at... "How do you get him to behave like that? In my lessons he has made a home under the table and is refusing visitors."

"Chase me": What to do with secondary behaviours

Secondary behaviours are those that occur during your intervention or as you leave a conversation with a student. They are 'chase me' behaviours designed to push your buttons and gain a furious response. When you have exhausted all of your positive reinforcement, redirection techniques, warnings and sanctions and need Darren to leave the room, the secondary behaviours are the chair being thrown back, or door being slammed, or the infuriating smile that slowly cracks across his face. He may want to divert the conversation away from the original behaviour or encourage an adrenalin fuelled confrontation in the corridor. Don't allow him to take control of your behaviour. Resist the temptation to address the secondary behaviours in the moment. Instead record them and deal with them later on.

The fact that Darren has left the room means that he has followed your instructions; the dramatic trail of disruption that he has left in his wake can be dealt with when he is calm. Your calm and considered response will be closely observed by the rest of the class and they will be impressed by your confidence even in those emotionally fuelled moments. Darren may slowly begin to realise that his usual pattern of behaviour will not work with you.

Don't just get down, get way down!

It is often said that getting down to students' eye level is important when delivering praise or sanctions to students. This can often be interpreted as leaning over a student rather than standing above them or sitting down next to them. I often observe teachers who think they are at the student's eye level but are actually still demanding that the student looks up at them. I prefer the student to be looking down at me; teachers who do this know that crouching down lower than eye level is not weak but assertive and confident physical language.

When you are delivering sanctions there is less chance of a defensive/aggressive reaction, and when praising, you create a more private space in the room. If you are teaching in an open space or would prefer to speak to students standing at the side of the room, double the personal space that you allow the student or stand side by side with him (or her) and it will have a similar effect.

Duty at the school gates

Duty at the school gates is not a popular pastime for many teachers. The complications of unwanted visitors mixing with students as they arrive or leave is compounded by the confusion of where the teacher's jurisdiction lies. Yet just as you can nurture a positive atmosphere in the classroom by standing at the door welcoming students or reinforcing positive behaviour at the end of the lesson so you can have an impact at the school gates. Your physical and verbal language is read by students as they pass; if you are calm, confident, positive, smiling, softly spoken and can reinforce students who are following the rules, it will set the right tone. Patrol like a cartoon policeman and you will attract negative responses and aggression.

It is your behaviour that has the greatest single impact on how safe students feel. It may not be wise to try and challenge every incident of inappropriate behaviour immediately and in such a public arena so arrive at the gate prepared; a pen and paper to record when you choose not to intervene and a walkie talkie as back up for when you do.

Classroom makeover

With the growth of the interactive whiteboard and use of computer screens for teaching, many classrooms are reverting to students in rows with the teacher's desk at the front and in the corner. Thirty years ago the classroom was arranged for students to see the blackboard, now technology has replaced chalk but the difficulties of inflexible classroom configurations remain.

When designing the layout of your room you also need to consider the management of behaviour. With students in rows and the teacher sitting behind their desk there are many hiding places for students to escape to. If you cannot get to students quickly and easily then the classroom becomes an arena where conversations about behaviour are broadcast for everyone to hear. Confrontations become more frequent, delivery of praise less subtle and as the teacher retreats behind the desk the physical divide can easily develop into a psychological one.

As a reaction to the overuse of the blackboard much work was done to encourage teachers to use more dynamic classroom configurations. Desks in rows with the teacher's desk at the front makes the management of behaviour harder, stifles gentle human interaction and forces most conversations to be broadcast publicly. They may be able to see the screen but are they engaging with it or with you?

• All tips Copyright Paul Dix

• More tips and resources at www.PivotalEducation.com

• Pupil behaviour
• Teaching
• Schools
• Family

Forget about parent choice, says Fiona Millar, the free market in schools will just let some succeed at the expense of pupils in others

The debate about free schools, new school places and parent promoters rumbles on. Having now had the dubious privilege of discussing these proposals with several protagonists for what is rapidly becoming the centrepiece of opposition education policy, the ulterior motive is becoming clearer.

Forget about parent choice or even diversity; this policy is the fulfilment of a long-standing dream. Free marketeers have always wanted to run the school choice experiment in its purest form, with enough surplus places to prove that competition and the unlimited movement of "consumers" will drive up standards, expand and close individual schools. The result of the general election may mean that Christmas comes early for them this year.

Of course, if you think of school places as a commodity, like baked beans or sliced bread, it is obvious that you can't satisfy all consumers unless supply is elastic enough for numbers to be expanded and contracted at will.

One reason why so many parents feel cynical about promises of more choice is that they know that, with limited places in the most sought-after schools, the majority end up disappointed. Places are rationed and schools in effect do the choosing, often in a way that creates barriers to the neediest families.

However, in free markets, supply and demand of beans and bread is determined by many factors; quantity, price and the need and desire of suppliers to make a profit.

Once the "experiment" is under way, anything is possible – be warned. But at the moment, the price of school places doesn't float freely, the resources that fund them are limited and suppliers don't make profits, quite rightly, because the children who fill them aren't tins on supermarket shelves, they are human beings with feelings, pride, self-esteem, individual needs and certainly not commodities to be traded.

So, my prediction about "the experiment" is as follows. Money will be diverted into new schools. Popular and oversubscribed schools will continue to do well, but will be unlikely to expand significantly. Why should they?

The parent promoters I meet all claim they want small schools, and existing schools will almost certainly feel their success and popularity lies in their size. If a school has five applicants for every place, the logic dictates year groups of up to 1,000 pupils. Moreover, if schools grow exponentially, they will cease to be the school parents chose in the first place.

And the schools that are least desirable? They will slowly die, and for the children within them, it won't be a pleasant experience. Rolls will shrink, and because the money follows the pupil, so will the budget. Staff will be cut or will leave and become hard to replace. Empty places will be filled by children at early stages of learning English or disaffected youngsters excluded or transferred from other schools.

They may be good schools in which children continue to achieve and which some local parents will fight to save, but they will inevitably become subtly demonised in their communities, with unavoidable effects on the self-esteem of pupils. Re-badging them as academies may be a form of life-support, but if there aren't enough children to go round, the underlying problem will remain.

If schools shut down completely because shiny new competitors have opened up down the road, the experiment will be self-defeating because parents' options will be as limited as they were before.

In some parts of the country, expansion or contraction of places may be necessary in the next few years, and new schools may have a part to play in that. But the process of change needs to be properly planned with buy-in from the whole community, not just the most vocal and mobile members, with funding and support offered fairly to protect the interests of all children as the transition takes place.

Most young people carry their experiences at school with them through life. Governments, especially those that claim concern for parts of society that are "broken", have a responsibility for the wellbeing of every one of them during that formative time. Allowing the market to rip, and letting some schools succeed at the expense of pupils elsewhere, is irresponsible and morally wrong.

• Secondary schools
• Parents
• Schools
• Education policy

New universities, which do not have the safety net of endowments and research income to fall back on, must look at new ways to fund their courses

The savage cuts that are about to permeate the entire higher education sector have provoked fierce reactions, with university leaders warning the sector faces "meltdown". Writing in Education Guardian, Lord Mandelson attempted to assuage the panic by claiming that "tighter budgets can be a spur to further diversifying the funding of British universities", which is a bit like claiming that having your leg lopped off is a good thing because it will force you into building up your biceps.

Clearly, the groups that represent the interests of universities, staff and students have a duty to fight the cuts. But the writing is on the wall. The days of plenty, when money from the public purse flowed into universities and colleges, are gone. The government is strapped for cash and the lion's share of the education budget will be fed into schools.

Yet there is some logic behind Mandelson's argument. We need to find new ways of delivering higher education, he says. Maybe we have dodged the issue for too long. The older-established universities such as Oxford and Cambridge have their donations from wealthy benefactors and endowments, research income, and proceeds from sources such as publishing to fall back on. But many of the newer universities lack such a safety net, which is why some of them have developed innovative ways of delivering higher education and generating income.

Typically, these include developing consultancy services, full-cost courses for businesses, hire of facilities and knowledge-transfer partnerships. The University of Derby, for instance, has been working with other universities in a consortium to meet the training needs of the RAF by providing a work-based foundation degree. The University of Chester continues to develop learning solutions that are work-based, validated university awards for the Department of Work and Pensions.

Another approach is to rethink how higher education is delivered and come up with new solutions that are cheaper, but still maintain quality. For instance, some universities – Buckingham and Greenwich are just two examples – have designed degrees that can be fast-tracked in two years instead of three.

A more radical model is being pioneered at my own institution, Middlesex University's Institute for Work Based Learning. The university offers degrees that are not only based partially or entirely in the workplace, but are jointly designed with employers.

The Higher Education Funding Council for England (Hefce) has provided £8m as encouragement to Middlesex to further develop this work. The result is the Middlesex Organisational Development Network, which brings together a range of partners from across the private, public and voluntary sectors – notably FE colleges, specialist training providers and national training bodies – to meet the needs of businesses.

Putting professional knowledge and experience gained in the workplace at the heart of a university award is central to this model. Rather than focusing on accessing knowledge through the study of traditional university-controlled subjects or disciplines, people are given the opportunity to gain a degree based on the expertise they acquire at work.

Courses lead to foundation degrees, BAs, master's and doctorates. This ensures a genuine employer-led agenda from the outset, utilises the workplace for delivery, and requires minimal use of university services and estate (90% of work-based learning students at Middlesex don't come on to campus at all).

The icing on the cake is a 10-15% cost saving when compared to a traditional on-campus course. But it also supports inclusion and throws open the door to a new mass market of people already in work. Hefce recognises this and supplies part of the funding; the rest comes from fee income from employers or individuals.

Some degrees are developed specifically for companies. Marks and Spencer and Dell are just two examples. Others are designed for individuals – many of them wanting qualifications to give them a competitive edge.

It's a radical approach that academics wedded to a supplier-driven model will undoubtedly be uncomfortable with. But it can be done. There are currently more than 1,000 students at the Institute of Work Based Learning and an ever-growing demand from employers.

Given the looming skills shortage, employers are keen to develop their in-house talent. A recent survey by HE@Work confirms the growing market for HEI work-based learning. The same survey reports that over 80% of respondents consider that training and development is important to themselves and their employers.

Canny universities will adapt their offer to meet this need – and supplement their shrinking budgets.

Professor Simon Roodhouse is director, HE@Work, Middlesex University

• Higher education
• University funding

There's a lot of history in a surname. A new project will put the origins of thousands online

Are you called Longnose or Sheepshanks, Vuggles or Halfknight?

Whether one of the last remaining bearers of a rare surname, or just a Smith or Jones, most people have a curiosity about where their surname came from and how it evolved. My surname – Tickle, it turns out, comes from the place called Tickhill in the old West Riding of Yorkshire, and isn't quite as rare as you might think.

Thanks to an £835,000 grant from the Arts and Humanities Research Council, it's a curiosity that may soon be satisfied. The money is for a research project into UK family names to be launched in April at the University of the West of England (UWE), which will provide a publicly available, online database of the meanings and origins of up to 150,000 extant surnames.

Avid perusal of the database may confirm individuals' hopes of links to an aristocratic past; alternatively, UWE's researchers might pinpoint your name as having been given sometime in the Middle Ages to the local squire's favourite pig-keeper.

There are already various surname dictionaries, explains the principal investigator, Richard Coates (pictured right), professor of linguistics, but the question is whether previous researchers have made accurate interpretations of old forms of a name. "My current judgment is that often they haven't," he says. "Another major problem is where the suggested interpretation doesn't tie up with the known history of the families bearing it."

Though thousands of names are already known, in collaboration with lexicographer Dr Patrick Hanks, Coates and three researchers will want to find the ones that got away. They will soon be poring over old county rolls, medieval records and parish registers to find a sprinkling of names never before included in any database.

In order to build a profile for each name, information will be collected on the ways it was spelled, when and where it was first recorded, and its social and regional distribution, as well as its frequency.

At first, explains Coates, people simply didn't bother with surnames. "The need for surnames came from inherited wealth. You needed to be able to leave your money down the family line and make sure it went to the right Edward, Henry or William," he says. "That wealth was also taxable and the right Edward had to be taxed."

"There were far more given names in Anglo-Saxon England than in the 12th and 13th centuries. At the end of the Anglo-Saxon period, only the aristocracy have second names. As the number of given names reduces, so the need for distinctive second names grows."

Once the fashion for second names got started, aristocratic naming patterns filtered down to the lower classes relatively rapidly in most of England.

"For most of the country, surnames came during the late Middle Ages, and the trend spread from south to north," says Coates. "It's interesting that in certain regions, eg Lancashire and Wales, their widespread use is only seen much later."

There are, it turns out, four broad categories of surname. The first identifies someone by their relationship to other people. "This usually involves adopting the father's given name, giving rise to Jackson or Jacks or even just Jack; or Macdonald, in Gaelic Scotland," says Coates.

The second identifies a person by where they might be found; Hill or Green are examples, as is Coates's own name. "It literally means 'cottages' in Middle English. It is also applied as a place name, and in my family research, I discovered that Cotes is the name of a small place in my grandfather's ancestral county of Staffordshire, so that's probably where it comes from."

A third way surnames are formed is through description of a person, often relating to hair or skin tone: for example White, Short, Armstrong or Russell.

Finally comes occupation, with names such as Naylor (a nail maker), Leech (a doctor), Wheelwright (a wheel maker), Baxter (initially denoting a female baker) and Frobisher (a polisher). Sadly, Coates says the funniest name he's come across is unsuitable for publication in a family newspaper.

Decoding how names changed as people moved from place to place, and with different styles of spelling, will be part of the task facing the research team. Nor is it the case, says Coates, that women have always taken their husbands' names.

"Then there's the question of illegitimacy. In one sense it wouldn't matter what an illegitimate child were called if there was nothing to inherit, but, if you and your mother were abandoned, an identifying surname would be crucial to establish which parish was responsible for paying to look after you."

The most academically demanding part of the research will be interpreting the oldest names, and working out which language they were first formulated in: Norman French, Scots, Gaelic, Welsh, English, Dutch, German and Yiddish could all be sources. "The background assumption is that language change is regular," says Coates."So when you collect evidence and interpret one name, you can be reasonably confident you will see the same patterns in other words and names in the same language."

The bonanza moment in this type of research, he says, is when you realise you have gathered enough information to make a judgment that's never been reached on how a particular name came about.

Are there some surnames whose origins the team won't manage to work out?

Coates grins. "Undoubtedly some will be uninterpretable. If we can explain every name with more than 100 bearers we'll be happy. If we can explain lots with less than 100, we'll be very happy indeed."Lickerish by name?The names below all had up to 200 bearers in 1881. It is not known how many, if any, are still in use today.

Bolus Old Norse for 'poleaxe'

Champflower From a village in NormandyGwatkin Apparently a Welsh-influenced form of Watkin 'little Walter', from the Herefordshire area

Halfknight Maybe one who held half a knight's fee, or maybe just abusive

Lickerish 'Randy'

Marmion Old French for 'monkey'

McCambridge Anglicised Gaelic for 'son of Ambrose'

Pitchfork Rare variant of Pitchford, place in Shropshire

Prettyjohn Variant of Prester John, a fabled oriental ruler of the 12th century

Puddifoot 'Fat vat'

Slorance Scots, of uncertain ­meaning

Stiddolph From the Old English 'hard', 'wolf'

• Higher education

Ros Asquith on the rise in cheating in exams

My friend Betty Tadman, who has died aged 88, was a gifted artist and inspirational teacher. Her career was largely spent in two posts: first as a class teacher at Queen's House school in Hampstead, north London, where many of her pupils were the daughters of Holocaust survivors, and then at Kingsway College, where she set up and ran the textile department in the 1970s and 80s. Her students there included the Sex Pistols' Johnny Rotten and Sid Vicious, with whom she got on well – her anarchic streak was every bit as strong as theirs.

She possessed a true talent for drawing out strengths that her pupils did not know they possessed. Beautiful and charismatic, she had a gentle way of helping them to conquer their self-doubt, having overcome the uncertainties of her own childhood.

She was born in Sale, Cheshire, the illegitimate child of the woman she grew up believing was her sister. To avoid social stigma, Betty's grandmother raised her as her own daughter, and as a fun-loving eccentric who prized the latest Hollywood movies above time "wasted" on homework, she passed on to Betty a lifelong appetite for entertainment. But Betty often said it was Dickens, whose novels she discovered at a very early age, who really brought her up.

Betty was 16 and had just won a scholarship to Manchester School of Art, when, in the course of a family row, she discovered the truth about her real mother. She learned nothing about her father, but secretly believed that when she came of age, as in a Dickens story, he would seek her out. It didn't happen. But it was never in Betty's nature to dwell on disappointment.

As a born comedian and raconteur, Betty naturally gravitated to the theatre, at first working backstage, dressing a young Julie Andrews, doing ­Vivien Leigh's hair, and generally assisting the actor-manager Sir Donald Wolfit. Later, with her husband, the music critic Michael Church, Betty co-wrote her own plays.

But painting remained her first love and she never stopped producing ­pictures. Her style was eclectic and she could achieve – seemingly without effort – any virtuoso effect she wanted. She was much inspired by Greek mythology and the Mediterranean. She despised the values permeating the London fine art scene, and never courted fame. Appreciation by connoisseurs and friends was quite enough.

Michael survives her.

• Teaching

Legal and financial disincentives stop people getting checked. Compulsory testing would halt the spread of chlamydia and HIV

We all know the risks of unprotected sex, thanks to public education campaigns. And there have also been efforts to encourage people to seek an STD test, notably for chlamydia, which can cause infertility: another 200,000 people were diagnosed with it in the UK in 2008. Yet important elements in our society seem to encourage people not to find out whether they have an STD. Their sexual partners, meanwhile, would prefer not to contemplate it. So STDs are transmitted to people who have not had the opportunity to consent to that risk of infection. Draconian as it may sound, the only way around this might be mandatory testing for STDs.

Private medical coverage has become widespread, and companies often encourage members to improve their health, such as by using a gym regularly, through discounts on their premiums. Yet those same companies are effectively discouraging STD testing by the way they treat potential customers who have been infected. Health insurance is particularly difficult to obtain for those with HIV. Premiums may be greatly increased for those with other STDs. A person who has engaged in risky behaviour is incentivised not to discover his or her status for fear of falling foul of these companies.

Criminal law offers similar disincentives. A person may be prosecuted if, knowing they have a disease, they engage in unprotected sexual intercourse and infect his or her partner. Prosecution will depend on whether the other party was told of the STD before intercourse took place, giving them the choice to consent to risk of infection. Failure to disclose may result in a charge under the Offences Against the Person Act 1861. Spreading diseases requires heavy sentencing, for both deterrent and punitive reasons. Criminal law becomes asinine where it deals with diseases spread by a person ignorant of his or her status. Such persons can defend a charge on the basis that lack of knowledge negates the duty to disclose.

In the event of an epidemic, various methods are used to contain the threat and prevent its spread. Isolation, mandatory treatment and other measures may be introduced. The spread of sexually transmitted diseases – including HIV, which is again on the rise in England – can be classed as an epidemic. Mandatory testing, knowledge of status and the legal incentive to pass on that information, would limit that spread. Tests could be carried out at annual GP check-ups, or when a person seeks other medical treatment from doctors or in hospitals, and the results kept on their confidential NHS records.

Mandatory testing would not necessarily mean that STD carriers cannot engage in unprotected sex. It would result in carriers knowing their status, and requiring them to tell the other person of, and obtain their consent to, the risk of infection. Informed consent may allow unprotected sex depending on the STD's classification under the different criminal "harms", as serious diseases like HIV cannot be consented to under current law. Criminal convictions would deter failure to disclose, and punish those ignoring that duty.

An individual's right to decide whether to find out their status is trumped by other people's rights to know the risk of infection. Would compulsory tests be unpopular? Probably. But while insurers continue to discriminate against people with STDs, and advertising and educational campaigns will only go so far in preventing further infections, mandatory testing would enable people to stop infecting others without realising it.

• Sex education
• Insurance
• Health
• Sexual health

Useful phrases for booking a hotel in Mandarin

Useful phrases for meeting people in Mandarin

A zero-risk childhood is impossible. Any vetting scheme must be proportionate and not pander to fear

The sorry mess of the government's Vetting and Barring Scheme, which aims to stop unsuitable people from gaining access to children and vulnerable adults, is a textbook case of where we reach when judgment gets clouded by emotion.

In asking what we should do in the wake of a terrible abuse tragedy, we find it all too easy to take the perspective of the victims and their loved ones: to ask ourselves the question: "How would I feel if it were my child?" The media has a vested interest in keeping it that way. Not because journalists are malicious or sadistic, but because they know that fear grabs our attention like no other emotion.

When the cry comes that "something must be done", this insistence on taking the victims' point of view leaves politicians in a terrible bind. Even if they privately believe that the measures being put forward are disproportionate or unworkable, they fear that anything less than a full-blooded response will be portrayed as heartless or penny-pinching.

It is quite clear that the nonsensical position on vetting last autumn – when it emerged that among those needing to be checked were authors visiting schools and parents regularly driving other people's children to clubs – came about because no politician wanted to be seen to be "soft on paedophiles".

Where do we go from here? The first step is that politicians need to recognise their pivotal role in this farcical tale. It is simply not good enough for them to continue relying on the empty rhetoric of "this must never happen again", "we will do whatever it takes", and "if we stop one child being abused it will be worth it". Last autumn's outrage shows that the public is ready to move on from that position.

We should start with looking at the extent of the risk, and the fact is that the risk is comparatively low. The best available research shows that abuse by those in positions of trust, in contrast to abuse from within the home, friends and peers, barely leaves a blip on the radar screen.

In response to this risk, the Independent Safeguarding Authority (ISA) will employ up to 250 staff in its Darlington base. Its sole job is to assess the 9-million-plus applicants to join the scheme. We know now that the cost will be nearly £280m over the next three years. How can the government possibly maintain that this is proportionate?

What is now needed is a fundamental, thoughtful, broad-based review. Because while the government's recent climbdown may have shrunk the footprint of the new scheme, it has left the architecture intact.

The fact that ISA chair Sir Roger Singleton did not explore why the system ended up where it did only shows that his review was little more than a quick fix to take the political sting out of the issue. All the fundamental questions remain. Questions about cost. About due process. About data protection. About checks giving a false sense of security. About malicious accusations and people being wrongly identified as paedophiles. And, most profoundly, about the wider implications of living in a society in which casual, freely given offers of help are met not with appreciation but with deep suspicion.

Common sense tells us that the ideal of a zero-risk childhood is untenable, if not impossible. Of course, children have a just claim for a degree of protection from harm. But when it comes to protecting them, our responsibility should surely be to tackle the most serious threats first and foremost.

So as a parent, my response to the question "how would I feel if it were my child?" is as follows. We would all want to feel that our collective efforts to keep children reasonably safe in an uncertain world were well thought through, proportionate to the risk, and effective. On all these counts, the vetting system is still wholly unfit for purpose.

• Tim Gill is appearing on Panorama tonight, debating the government's vetting scheme

• Child protection
• Schools
• Children

Richard M Kavuma explains how the education system in Uganda works

This is the pre-school level of education in Uganda. Children usually start at the age of three and complete nursery school by the age of six. Until recently rural areas like Katine sub-county did not have nursery schools. But more and more villagers, inspired by the early start in the education of children in towns, are wanting nurseries for their children. Katine has at least one nursery, located within the premises of a charitable organisation.

In areas like Katine, most children never attend nursery; they start their education at the age of five or six at the nearest primary school. In Uganda, there are seven primary school years, from primary one to primary seven. With normal annual progression this means primary school should last seven years, but many pupils drop out part way through and return later, so it is not unusual to find teenagers sitting primary exams.

At the end of primary seven, pupils sit their first major national exams – the primary leaving examinations (PLE). Presently PLE has four examinable subjects – English language, mathematics, science and social studies. The best possible mark pupils can achieve is a total of four (which means one point - a distinction - in each subject), while the worst is a total of 36 (nine points for each subject, which means a fail).

Students with between four and 12 points pass the PLE with a first grade, or division one.

Those with scores between 13 and 23 get a second grade; 24 to 29 get a third grade, while those with 30 to 34 pass with a fourth grade.

Katine has at least 13 primary schools with a few other little community-owned schools not yet recognised by the government. For the last three years Katine sub-county has not had a single candidate passing the PLE in grade one. This year the top student passed with 13 points, in second grade, just one away from the top scores. Last year, the best candidate achieved 14 points.

Primary school tuition has been free in government schools in Uganda since 1997. But pupils, especially those in rural areas like Katine, face serious challenges to finishing their education – for example, they lack scholastic materials, like books and pens, they often have to study all day on an empty stomach since no meals are provided at school, and schools often have poor teaching methods.

Besides government schools, there are many expensive day and boarding private schools at all levels, where wealthier or more ambitious parents send their children.

Pupils who pass their PLE can progress to secondary school. This has two stages; the first four years, senior one (S1) to senior four (S4), constitute the O-level period. At the end of S4, students sit the second major national exams known as the Uganda Certificate of Education (UCE) or simply O-level examinations.

Students who pass their O-level exams may progress to A-levels or the Higher School Certificate (HSC). This lasts two years, S5 and S6, after which students sit for the Uganda Advanced Certificate of Education (UACE) examinations, also known simply as A-levels. All these three annual national exams are sat between October and December.

Katine has only one secondary school and at present it is only able to offer education up to O-levels. The government abolished tuition fees in public secondary schools in 2007 to increase access. However, only students who have scored 28 points or higher can be admitted to this universal secondary education programme.

Students who pass their A-levels may choose to progress to university, where they can study for degrees, or to other tertiary institutions that award diplomas and certificates. Some wealthier parents send their children to universities and colleges abroad.

The government gives about 4,000 university scholarships each year, and sponsors thousands of other students in other tertiary institutions. But tens of thousands of students who do not get the competitive government scholarships depend on their parents and guardians to pay their tuition and upkeep.

Some tertiary institutions, like primary teachers' colleges and some nursing schools, also admit students who have only completed their O-levels.

• Education
• News
• Uganda
• International education news

Hundreds of thousands will be disappointed after a cut in the number of undergraduate places

Hundreds of thousands of would-be students are likely to be left without a place at a UK university this year, as undergraduate applications reach record levels for the fourth year running.

Applications for university are almost a fifth up on last year, according to the latest figures from the university admissions system Ucas. So far, over 570,000 students have applied for a place at university this autumn, an increase of more than 100,000 on the same time in 2009. Applications close in June.

Last year, about 480,000 people got a place at university, after 633,000 applied. This year, the Higher Education Funding Council for England (Hefce) has confirmed there will be 6,000 fewer places for full-time undergraduates, meaning that hundreds of thousands will not be accepted on to a undergraduate degree course. UK applicants are up 22.1%, while overseas applicants have risen from 55,245 to 71,105 (up 28.7%). The biggest increases are among students from Lithuania (102.3%), Ireland (50.4%), Germany (23.7%) and China (22.4%).

Mary Curnock Cook, Ucas's chief executive, said: "This cycle will be very challenging and competitive for applicants. There has been a steady increase year-on-year since 2007, but this year shows a sizeable leap in applications.

Part of the increase in demand for university places may be due to the recession. Applications from the over-25s jumped 63.4%, while those from 21- to 24-year-olds rose 44.8%. There was also a 45.5% increase in people reapplying.

Curnock Cook believes "the current economic situation is causing people to apply to higher education as a way of retraining to ready themselves for the job market once the economy picks up. For instance, social work has seen a 41.3% increase and nursing a 73.7% rise."

Professor Steve Smith – president of Universities UK, the body that represents vice-chancellors – said: "With this further jump in demand and the continued cap on student numbers in England, it's inevitable that we are going to see even more pressure on places this year – and the strong possibility of many well-qualified students missing out."

The figures have fuelled calls on the government to halt its planned higher education cuts.

Sally Hunt, general secretary of the lecturers' union UCU, said: "The government is abandoning a generation who, instead of benefiting from education, will find themselves on the dole alongside sacked teaching staff."

Paul Marshall, executive director of the 1994 Group of universities, said the government must not respond to the record demand with unfunded expansion. "With universities already having to cope with significant funding cuts, unfunded expansion could leave universities unable to ensure the high quality experience that students rightly demand. Any further expansion must be fully funded.

And the presdent of the National Union of Students, Wes Streeting, backed his call: "Last year, the government urged universities to expand without providing the funding to match, leading to a serious applications crisis. This year there must be no unfunded expansion, or the situation will be even worse.

But Professor David Green, vice-chancellor of theUniversity of Worcester – where applications are up 35% on last year – said many other universities would be happy to take on additional students for no extra funding if it meant "giving more people the chance to enter higher education at this time of national economic stringency".

"Universities and higher education colleges need to be allowed to recruit more full-time undergraduate students, without penalty," he said.

"Many will do so, even if we receive no additional government funding for these additional students, as we appreciate the real needs of the potential students concerned. We are fully committed to the policy of widening participation in higher education and we are prepared to make sacrifices at a time of real economic difficulty."

The minister for higher education, David Lammy, said: "There is a record number of students – over 2 million – at university. That's 390,000 more than in 1997 and next year we expect there will be more students than ever before.

"But getting a place at university has always been, and should be, a competitive process. Not everyone gets the grades and some decide university is not for them. It's early days and students haven't even sat their A-levels yet.

"University is not the only choice for young people. The government has hugely increased the range of equally worthwhile opportunities for young people: 100,000 foundation degree places; 35,000 new advanced apprenticeships over the next two years; and 104,000 new jobs through the Future Jobs Fund."

• Access to university
• University funding
• Higher education