Four separate irreconcilable stories in the news today. First, a complaint that it is so difficult for Chinese tourists to get visas to visit Britain that they are not coming, and Mayor Boris says we need another airport. But we also read that airport expansion and holiday flights have a very bad effect in relation to carbon emission and climate change.
Next we read how important it is for all schools to retain their sports fields and ensure that children play plenty of sport in school hours. But the same paper says that there is such a shortage of school places that schools are being forced to build extra classrooms on playing fields. Are sufficient classrooms more important than sport for the schoolchildren?
Third, the A level results were out today, and David Willetts, Minister of State for Universities, urged Oxford and Cambridge to make more room at the last minute for additional high achieving students. Universities are free to take on more students than the allotted number if they got AAB. But those two universities are already full with students who scored 3As or higher. And Oxford city puts barriers in the way of expansion. The city will not allow any more houses to be taken over for student accommodation, but wants all the students to live in college-built purpose accommodation. But when the colleges apply for planning permission to build student housing, the city makes it very difficult and asks colleges to make a financial contribution towards affordable housing elsewhere in Oxford as the price of permission. Ironic when you consider that students have been the most successful business in Oxford city for 800 years.
Finally, the government calls on universities to reassure students that they will be able to afford their education and to give them bursaries. But in the budget this year the same government removed zeroVAT on the alteration of listed buildings (nearly every university has listed buildings on campus), and it is estimated that this will cost the sector £150m in additional tax over the next 5 years, money that could have been spent on bursaries.
Solutions on the back of a postcard please.
It’s too late.
It goes back to your financial illiteracy.
If you hide debts off the books, don’t be surprised that you can’t pay for things when those debts fall due.
So you have a government who will try any for of extortion in order to keep the Ponzi going.
From 30 million in extra tax (enough to fund the deficit – not debt – for 2 hours)
Same as S106 agreements. Just another form of extortion.
Government and the mafia have set upon the same path, for the same reason, personal enrichment.
The 150 could easily come from abolishing the lords, paid for in just a year.
The solution is in your hands, not ours, because you won’t let us have a vote on issues, let alone a vote in your lording it over us.
Just familiarise yourself with the officially neglected, repressed, and discouraged individual health and human development advances*,
affordably available even to many of Britain’s poverty-lined peoples,
and you will quickly come to see that your back-of-a-postcard solution would become eminently possible,
as :
“(1) Start making the Workplace-Employers pay for all the Training-for-Work
Costs, Fees and Infrastructures:
whilst also
(2) Starting to Means-wise provide egalitarianly generic Individual-Human-Development, and Neighbourhood Mutual Group-
Lifeplace-Education;
(3) This 75% Lifeplace education could easily and very cost-effectively be conducted 24/7, three 13 weeks terms per 52 weeks year;
via recordable home TV and DVD purchasable courses;
“revolving” and progressively tiered.
(4) And, I would add to this huge latter Lifeplace innovation, Participatory-Democratisation & Earth-Citizenship training.
++++++++
* see lists I have already been submitting to different Lords of the Blog Posts
[ e.g. “Natural Vision Improvement” (Goodrich); “Six thinking Hats” (de Bono); “Inner Focus, Outer Strength” (Franklin) ].
@Baroness Deech:
A solution needs more time to find its way into this brain. The way I see it, this predicament only leaves room for the situation to worsen. The reason is simply ‘government,’ past and present, refuses to face up to its responsibilities in full or even in part in this respect. Yet it continues to exacerbate the situation.
The problem lies in a massive growth in population. Which although encouraged by the State, the same State refuses to accept that facilities required for such human expansion cannot be serviced by ignoring the facts of need created by it.
Too many people is the problem and will continue to be the problem which will grow bigger with additional weight.
There simply isn’t enough money, staff, space or ‘will’ to expand at this incredible rate.
Growth means additional infrastructure of every kind. And the organization to expand in order to keep up with these chosen policies are totally inadequate.
So, until the acceptance of ‘growth’ being against rather than for the good of society, there can be no solution. As the condition will simply go on growing along with the required ‘growth.’
Collective mismanagement is at the root of this problem along with denial of the facts. Surely when ‘growth’ was planned the persuaders of this policy understood what was needed to accommodate us all. Perhaps if that is now considered and addressed in haste, then ‘change’ in the right direction may flourish.
Do you really expect that kind of enlightenment in that direction in the near future? People at the top have an enormous fear of facing misconceived schemes. Head in sand comes to mind.
affordable housing elsewhere in Oxford as the price of permission. Ironic when you consider that students have been the most successful business in Oxford city for 800 years.
Shall we say “was” the most successful?
http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/
Imperial and University college provide everything and more that Oxford provides, with a larger budget between the two, except that Imperial College is now a University in its own right, being marginally smaller than
Oxford University itself.
I can not imagine any body in his right mind wanting to go to such a snotty university like Oxford, compared with the world class facilities at Imperial!
http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/interactivemap
For once we agree!
A tutorial in careful reading would not come amiss. I said that Oxford students were and are the most successful business in Oxford. I did not say that Oxford was the best university in the UK, although in fact, together with Cambridge, it tops all league tables year after year. It is also much more affordable than London. The accommodation is heavily subsidised by the colleges; Oxford gives more bursaries to students from low income families than any other university. It is not at all “snotty”. The numbers of candidates applying rises year on year. It caters for all types with every sort of activity and support, and the amount of care that is taken over each student is admirable. I know London University and the colleges are academically wonderful, but life in London is tough and expensive. A student has to decide what suits them best.
Now for a look at a devastating oxymoron that is not raised here on this thread but is as important, if not far more so, to be raised.
It’s the threatened removal of the Habeas Corpus Act first marginally addressed by Magna Carta. We read that although government confirmed they would not change the law in this matter, in fact, they are sneaking changes in respect of this via the back door.
Two matters stand out as hugely devious in this accusation opened up today and that is:
1) Why does government perpetually feel it necessary to hide from the public what they are up to? Their need to cover action they know will be unacceptable, if the truth is out, is peculiar and devious. Any government who pulls this kind of swizz is one that must be removed in a hurry. It cannot be working on behalf of or for the good of the people. So what is it up to?
http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/takingliberties/staritems/25habeascorpusact.html
B) Why does such a government want to incarcerate its citizens without offering a reason or an open trial in order to reveal the charges made? That is a very serious and downright tyrannical concept for any modern government to want to take. It sounds as if we are being overtaken by a secret society who wish to impose an inquisition rather than a democratically elected administration.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inquisition
Why is this being seen as an acceptable way to proceed? Does anyone know? Why have the Commons and the Lords considered such a move in the first place?
Did you know that since 1998 all of our children have been crows? Yes, we have a nation full of high fliers that journey every day from home to school in a straight line.
Its part of the statutory basis for the schools admissions code issued under Section 84 of the School Standards and Framework Act 1998. The code was made following a consultation under Section 85(2) of the SSFA 1998 and after being laid before Parliament for forty days. The latest code came into force on February 1, 2012 and applied to admission arrangements determined in 2012 and for admission in school year 2013/14.
As secondary legislation the Code imposes mandatory (legal) requirements but the house has never given scrutiny to its contents because formally it can’t. The ‘as the crow flies bit appears’ under section 1.13 ‘Distance from the school’ and states:
“Admission authorities must clearly set out how distance from home to the school will be measured, making clear how the ‘home’ address will be determined and the point in the school from which all distances are measured.”
The word ‘must’ is in bold typeface denoting a legal requirement. The problem is that admission authorities have deliberately NOT published just how just that straight line distance will be measured because they are using a dodgy measurement system that would not stand up in a court of law.
Parents are given the distance with no accompanying precision or accuracy. Authorities cannot say whether the error of measurement is metres or hundreds of metres because their software providers are unable to give this with any certainty.
Our children are not crows but people that deserve the dignity of a sensible and reliable measurement. Google Earth will not give an accuracy of straight line measurement and state that their software is for entertainment use only.
Ref: GPS Accuracy and Measurement
http://earthmeasurement.com/GPS_accuracy.html
@Senex:
I had not heard of crowing… But to my astonishment I saw a group of children tied together on a school outing in a pretty, quiet, no traffic village, in the Cotswolds. They were aged about eight years.
And a group of people had stood watching these children walk along as if on a chain gang. They were openly disturbed. It was the most horrendous scene. And it spoke volumes about how our society has become not simply paranoid to the point of psychosis, but, subjugated by officials into allowing this to take place. These children were supposed to be born into freedom but their lives from start to eighteen or more, are caged or penned into a system that is resigned to indoctrinating them with fear.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/velouriadark/771918705/sizes/l/in/photostream/
How has this been allowed to continue? Why are people willing to accept this kind of mental and physical oppression?
The saddest realization I have presently is the young will never know what freedom feels like, or, understand the concept. What a hellish expectation of life. And, of course, it is designed to do just that.
Home school is the only answer. Unless you have thirty thousand + a year to spare.
BD: “But the same paper says that there is such a shortage of school places”
There appears to be an unhelpful interaction between the needs of the ‘Schools Admissions Code’ and the freedom of head teachers to represent the best interests of their school and the problem starts at nursery school with children age 3.
Primary schools run nursery classes and operate a selection process that is beyond the scope of the schools admissions code or its supporting Act of Parliament. Head teachers use their common sense by placing children nearest to the school but should places remain children from ‘out of area’ are considered for placement. Competition for places can be fierce so the school may operate a positive vetting system by making home visits to validate home address authenticity something that does not happen under the code.
The next obstacle for parents is to get their child now approaching age 5, a placement at the same school in a reception class. Here things get difficult. The head teacher has no control over whether nursery children will actually get into reception class because admissions code requirements override his or her authority to act in the best interests of their school. The potential victim here is the child who has bonded both with teachers and pupils at a very formulative time of life.
A criterion for admission to reception class is the straight line distance measure often expressed to three decimal places to infer accuracy. Parents are advised by letter of this measurement when a child fails to get into their intended reception class.
Let’s say child A has a distance of 1.609 kilometres but child B has a distance of 1.611 kilometres a difference of 3 metres. Both children attend the same nursery class and live next door to each other on the same road. Child A gets to go to reception class but child B is unceremoniously dumped by the ‘Admissions Authority’ even though keeping the child, a potential high achiever, may have been in the best interests of the school.
Child B at age 5 has to attend another school full of strangers.
Legal difficulties arise when the parents of child B write to the ‘Admissions Authority’ claiming that the distance is actually 1.608 kilometres and within the range of error associated with the measurement. How would a court deal with this when the measure has been expressed as an absolute without error?
There is a need here for post legislative scrutiny to remedy what is happening all too often to parents in this free for all approach to reception class placements. A child deserves, nay demands, continuity of placement at the same school but how can a head teacher predict the outcome of an open market approach to placements?
It must be some consolation that Crows are carrion and not raptors.
Raptors kill the living but
carrion gladly in this instance only
eat the dead.
There is frequently some discussion above my home as to what precisely is dead and what is not, and three or more crows will see the raptor off!
I mentioned this on a learnéd bird website and an otherwise knowledgeable correspondent described it as fanciful and wishful thinking,in reference to me not the birds, I add.
Little do the District Council Education Committees know, who exercice this kind of devious diplomacy!
Maude, in a way you make my point. The carers of the children in the photo want to make sure they are physically safe. But what of the baby, and I use the term in the Edwardian sense (3 to 4) that is ripped from its comfort zone into a world of strangers. This has been going on for 14 years now and nothing has been said.
What triggered me to post was ongoing human rights abuses caused by self propelled smart bombs and drones and the fact that my in-car satnav will insist that I have arrived at my destination long before I actually do so. Couple this with some earache on the issue…something needs to be done.
Since I posted I have been reliably informed that head teachers are not placing these babies into nursery, it is the Admissions Authorities (AA) often the Child Services department of a local council. Again the same issues apply, if this department places a baby into nursery using the straight line rule how can it predict the outcome of a free market for reception class placements? In the example I gave of baby A and B, natural justice demands that both babies should have been allowed into reception class together, after all they are bound to be very close friends as neighbours.
The satellites used to produce the maps are American owned and so is the data. There are two grades of data available. One is classed as ‘munitions grade’ and the other is classed as low grade and its this that is used commercially by US companies to supply the world with mapping data that needs a software human interface. In the link, notice that the actual position is derived from a scatter plot. So the actual position is not real but probable. Even if the software provider had access to the original data would this have allowed them to provide a probability associated with the measure? I think not.
Before the new school year starts in September parents apply to send their children to a particular primary school. Infant class sizes are set at 30 maximum but the school is free to set a limit below this to allow for in year placements. The free market then operates and each application is tested against criteria which changes depending on whether the school is over subscribed. Let’s say the oversubscribed school had set the limit at 25. A set of dynamic radii then expand outwards until the 25th baby is placed but not each baby is associated with a radius. So simply moving into the area will not guarantee a placement at the school. If funds are available a school may run one or more reception classes. In the example given, baby A was number 25.
Once in year the AA is ‘free’ from the code to place 5 prospective infants in the way that occurred with the babies. This provides a sibling guarantee for the next school year and one that has escaped the rigours of the out year applications process. There is anecdotal evidence that this is being abused by the either the school or AA especially if there is more than one reception class.
I was a supply teacher in Maths/Science in the 80s and 90s in many primary and secondary schools in many Boroughs in London.
I appeal to the parliamentarians to widen the curriculum in secondary schools to include social sciences: psychology, sociology, economics, law, etc. Student behaviour will greatly improve, performance in the workplaces will improve, social violence will decrease, etc.
Instead of having too many exams we should have enough sharing of knowledge.
I was also shocked to find that many teachers don’t belong to professional bodies and some have not even heard about them! When we hire a builder or a plumber, we ask for evidence of membership of professional organisations !!