Exam system 'diseased', claims former education adviser

I have already blogged here about the perilous state of the UK's education sector which can be found in my Blog Archives. Please see - Thursday, 12 August 2010 "What is happening to the UK education system?"; Saturday, 23 January 2010 "Worthless qualifications' give false hope to state pupils, says Harrow head"; Monday, 23 February 200 "If it looks like a duck…"; "Monday, 2 November 2009 "You are where you live"

It comes as no surprise to me that, with the exception of the Arts in general (which is always the first to have its funding slashed), education is always one of the areas where budgets are being cut across the world after a major economic disaster such as the Credit Crunch crisis of the last 2-3 years. There has been a clear and seismic shift from this global shortfall of money away from projects that inform or instruct and/or serve the soul of the ordinary citizen.

We saw this in America after Hurricane Catrina where new forms of schools, Charter schools, were created which in effect were privately funded schools. The government no longer had to pump money into them as they had effectively been privatised. I fear the same thing is on the cards for the UK. The present government is neither able to pay to maintain the present standards of education in the country nor seems to have the wherewithal to provide an adequate solution to the problem. Because of this, the UK is fast going to lose its pre-eminent status as one of the leading lights of the educational world which it has enjoyed for many years. Here are the top five reasons why this is so:

1. The reduction of the UK educational budget (from central government) by 35% over 5 years.

It's difficult to imagine the results of cutting an educational budget by 35% over 5 years. It is an un-imaginable idea, impossible to get your head around (like Descartes idea that you can imagine in your head a square (4-sided), a triangle (3-sided), a hexagon (6-sided), but there is a limit to how many sides we can adequately conceive of in our minds so that a shape with say 13 sides or 1,000 sides would be impossible).

That said, we have to try for the all too obvious reasons that to not do so would be to accept that the next generation of students, be they young children going through primary or secondary education, or young undergraduates hoping to polish off their formal educational experience in a UK university, won't get as much of an opportunity of a good education as others had in the past.

2. The reduction of a typical degree time period from 3 years to 2 years.

This in itself is a catastrophic acceptance that somehow UK degrees can't be all that valuable so "lets cut them down by 33%". In an era where most if not everyone agrees that knowledge economies are the way forward, why would a government reduce its education budget? Is there a contradiction at the heart of most relationships between elected officials and the people they are supposed to be representing? A certain dumbing down or "what they don't know can't hurt them" approach to education? This is a tactic used by many governments and since I have lived for a number of years in Thailand, I can tell you that it definitely goes on here, too.

3. The emphasis on an approach to education that promotes a "teach-for-the-test" method of teaching & learning

This has been going on for some time. As a teacher, I accept that it also goes on in many other areas as well, but in the UK, it needs to be stamped out and a focus on the creative potential of the students themselves supplanting it. Anyone who has read Sir Ken Robinson's amazing book, "The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything" will know what I mean here. UK children are categorised from an early age which stigmatises the most creative and scars them for life. It prepares them for tests that does nbot test their real abilities and which few teachers truly care about. Life is more than about answering questions to satisfy an examiner; it requires a truer grasp of the mysteries of the universe around us.

4. The acceptance of foreign students, mostly from Asia, onto UK courses primarily to rake in money at the expense of quality control

I have seen this first hand while teaching at two UK universities - the University of East Anglia (UEA) and the University of Birmingham. Mostly, the students come to attend initially on CLIL(Content & Language Integrated Learning) based language and business related subjects through what are known as in-sessional and pre-sessional courses. There are also foundation courses and pre-masters courses.

What happens though is that these students, mostly from China, Taiwan, and other parts of S E Asia, pay up to 8 times more than a local student, on top of the astronomical fees they have to pay the Home Office for education visas to remain in the country and in return are allowed to get through teh courses with only minimal fail rates. In some cases, 100% of the students pass. I saw this at UEA and to a lesser degree at UoB although I'm willing to bet that these universities are nothing compared to other practices going on elsewhere in UK universities..

5. The running of education like a corrupt business as we've seen in Mick Water's interview in "Reinventing Schools, Reforming Teaching".

After all the negative data coming out about about the sector, we now hear from Mick Waters in an interview in a book called "Reinventing Schools, Reforming Teaching" that there is clear collusion between ofqul and the exam boards, organisations like Edexcel responsible for standards in UK schools.

"In it Mick Waters, formerly a director at the Qualifications and Curriculum Agency, accuses exam boards of being "almost corrupt" and claims they make profits by publishing textbooks that practically tell teachers what questions will appear in the exams the boards set. He says exam boards boast that their tests are the easiest to convince teachers to pick their syllabus, and they tell schools that their students will pass as long as they buy and follow the textbooks."

Waters also accuses the official exams regulator, Ofqual of being cowardly in not challenging the exam boards particularly where and how and by who exams questions are framed and posed.

"I fully support having a regulator who can ask awkward questions. So, what I'd now want to see is a regulator asking the questions ... I don't think they've got the nerve. They should immediately look up whether the chief examiner should be allowed to write the textbook with regards to pupils' questions. That's insider dealing. You shouldn't be allowed to do that."

The are pretty strong words from what most would deem a former UK education insider. Whatever happens within the term of the present government, assuming of course that it lasts 4 years, is for it or any successor to do something to stem the tide and improve the overall standards of UK education.

Missing sailor found inside shark off Jaws beach

Now there's a way to go out in style...well...sort of! Yuk though, being eaten by a shark and all that saliva over you as you descend into its guts! Ok, on second thoughts...

Upon opening up a tiger shark, the remains of a sailor who disappeared off Jaws beach in the Bahamas, where the final film in the Jaws franchise was filmed, have been found inside. Fingerprints were used by authorities to identify Judson Newton, who was last seen on 29 August swimming for shore after his boat's engine stalled. It was his body body found inside the 3.6 metre (12ft) fish's belly.

"An investment banker on a deep-sea fishing trip caught the shark on 4 September. He said a left leg came out of its mouth as it was hauled on to his boat. When police sliced the belly open they found a right leg, two arms and a torso."

I can just see that Type A personality banker now - out hunting for tuna or marlins and finding something that defies all explanation. Try finding adjectives to describe that catch.

It's definitely one of them there sea shanty tales to tell your grandchildren like Uncle Albert used to in Only Fools and Horses. "Well, I was on a boat and I hauled in this great monster shark, as big as the moon, and then just as he pops on deck, a sailor falls out of his mouth!"

If you told that story, nobody would believe you!

Grandmother goes to bed with migraine... and wakes up speaking with a French accent

What would you do if you went to bed and woke up speaking another, completely foreign, language? Or rather, speaking the same language but with a foreign accent? It's hard to think that such things happen, but that they most certainly do!

A grandmother who went to bed suffering from a migraine was amazed to wake up speaking with a French accent. Kay Russell, 49, is now left with a voice that is unrecognisable to family and friends. Doctors say she has Foreign Accent Syndrome, a condition which damages the part of the brain that controls speech and word formation.

Can you imagine how many of your work colleagues and family would be bullshitting you for days because they simply refused to believe you?

"Oh God, Kay, not still speaking French again are we? You know we're not falling for that one right? Give it over, honestly!"

They must have been mortified when they realised that she wasn't putting it on as a stunt or anything, like the people who make jokes about handicapped people and find one right in front of them. (This actually happened to the Scottish comedian, Frankie Boyle, at a show in London. He was taking the piss out of handicapped people and there were two handicapped people right in front of him in the front row who started crying.)

Oh...er...um...is that the time, must be off!

The internet: is it changing the way we think?

According to the American writer Nicholas Carr, the internet is not only shaping our lives but physically altering our brains. This topic has sparked a lively and ongoing debate among denizens of the web and the more well-read literati.

"Over the past few years," Carr writes, "I've had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry, reprogramming the memory. My mind isn't going – so far as I can tell – but it's changing. I'm not thinking the way I used to think. I can feel it most strongly when I'm reading. Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy. My mind would get caught up in the narrative or the turns of the argument and I'd spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. That's rarely the case anymore. Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. I feel as if I'm always dragging my wayward brain back to the text. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle."

I'm sure we are all to some extent aware of this situation. I too remember times when I would have to unpick dense, complex words on a page but can't remember the last time I did that. So what is happening?

According to the writer of the article "The internet: is it changing the way we think?" - "The title of the essay is misleading, because Carr's target was not really the world's leading search engine, but the impact that ubiquitous, always-on networking is having on our cognitive processes. His argument was that our deepening dependence on networking technology is indeed changing not only the way we think, but also the structure of our brains."

Carr's article touched a nerve and has provoked a lively, ongoing debate on the net and in print (he has now expanded it into a book, "The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains"). This is partly because he's an engaging writer who has vividly articulated the unease that many adults feel about the way their modi operandi have changed in response to ubiquitous networking. Who bothers to write down or memorise detailed information any more, for example, when they know that Google will always retrieve it if it's needed again? The web has become, in a way, a global prosthesis for our collective memory.

You can't help but agree and and surmise that maybe it is a form of brain drain. Put it this way, if it were coming from a medical doctor, the prognosis wouldn't be good. We are not only reading less but we are reading material that has already been processed much of the time into bite sized digestible chunks leaving our brains free to do other less challenging tasks. This means our brains are being asked to do less and less, or does it? Couldn't it just mean we are seeing another leap in evolutionary terms? A kind of quantum leap with technology aiding us in rewiring or maybe hot wiring our brains to think and respond in different new and novel ways?

Could it be yet another example of the "use it or lose it" dynamic? Sarah Churchwell, academic and critic says - "...what I can attest to is that the internet is changing our habits of thinking, which isn't the same thing as changing our brains. The brain is like any other muscle – if you don't stretch it, it gets both stiff and flabby. But if you exercise it regularly, and cross-train, your brain will be flexible, quick, strong and versatile."

Overall, we have to decide whether it is a good thing or just just a symptom of our sanitised pop culture world? You be the judge...

What is happening to the UK education system?

This is going to make the UK education system a laughing stock around the world. According to the headline (click on the title to read the article) the UK education system is in freefall - "Universities face 'biggest cuts since Great Depression."

Vice-chancellors have been warned that funding may be slashed by 35 per cent over the next five years, it has emerged. The warning – delivered in a series of meetings between Sir Gus O’Donnell, the Cabinet Secretary, and university bosses – would represent the biggest cut in resources since the 1930s, it is claimed. It would be equivalent to the current £5,441 annual Government subsidy for each student being reduced to just £3,537.

Universities said the reduction would have devastating consequences for higher education in England – jeapordising the sector’s world class status. Many universities will seek to make savings by axing loss-making courses, closing libraries, cramming more students into lectures and failing to repair crumbling buildings. It is also likely to lead to an increase in the number of foreign students who can be charged much higher fees than British undergraduates.

How can a country as well developed and with a thriving education sector known throughout the world as "world class" be so shortsighted as to reduce the funding for higher education by a whopping 35%? The repercussions will be devastating and further erode the economic status of the UK which is already close to seeing a double dip recession.

This is on top of the reports that many 3-year degrees will be reduced to a 2-year program. You have to wonder where this is all leading - a surveillance state with more cameras than anywhere else in the world and with an education system that is going to the dogs!!

This is a very sad day for anyone coming through the educational system in the UK and who will be looking to get a good education. Not since the Great Depression has there been such widespread cuts in public funding.

When is rape actually rape?

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Stephen Hawking: mankind must move to outer space within a century

The human race must look to outer space within the next century or it will become extinct, Professor Stephen Hawking has warned. The renowned astrophysicist said he fears mankind is in great danger and its future "must be in space" if it is to survive.

In an interview he said threats to the existence of the human race such as war, resource depletion and overpopulation meant it was at its greater risk ever. Although a long advocate of colonising space in order to continue man's reign, this is his direst warning to date.

"It will be difficult enough to avoid disaster in the next hundred years, let alone the next thousand or million," he told the website Big Think. "Our only chance of long-term survival is not to remain inward looking on planet Earth but to spread out into space. We have made remarkable progress in the last hundred years. But if we want to continue beyond the next hundred years, our future is in space. That is why I'm in favour of manned, or should I say 'personed', space flight."

My question is whether we will again make a mess of any future planets or stars that we invade and colonise? Or should that be more like "how long" will it take before me mess up our existence elsewhere? We may be a special species when compared to the other animals on planet earth, but we are also the only species that can't seem to co-exist with other species. We have become so greedy we destroy the very fabric of our natural surroundings so that we can no longer inhabit it as well as the other species which have probably been there a heck of a lot longer.

Taken in this light, is there any point in space exploration at all and wouldn't it be better to work on the problem that caused this need to migrate in the first place? Human greed?