Number of schools branded 'inadequate' by Ofsted doubles
More schools fail Ofsted checks
Funding 'a barrier' to good education for Katine children with special needs
Limited funding having an impact on the achievements of Soroti district's 5,000 children with special needs
Inadequate funding is a major barrier to a decent education for children with special needs in rural communities, authorities in Soroti have said.
The number of children with special needs is on the increase every year, but little is being done by local and central government to beef up funding for the sector, said Soroti district education officer Moses Etoyu.
"My sector receives UShs 10m (around $4,880) per year. This money has to be shared amongst four departments: sports, inspection, administration and special needs. This amount is very small," he said.
The government has policies and structures – from central government's Ministry of Education to district level - regarding the promotion of special needs education and monitoring any issues that arise.
Around 5,000 children in Soroti district, in which Katine is located, have disabilities.
The Guardian has learned that in most cases it is the children with special needs who miss out and achieve poor results because of the limited funding. Out of the UShs 10m the education sector receives, only UShs 1.5m is allocated to special needs. This means that, on average, each child with disabilities receives UShs 300 ($0.15) from the state to fund their education, less than a cost of a 500ml bottle of soda.
Children with special needs are usually assessed to determine who will attend a mixed school, under the country's inclusive education policy to avoid stigma, and who will study at a special school, such as St Francis school for the blind in Madera, which, along with Katine primary school, is taking part in the British Council's Connecting Classrooms school link programme.
Development partners like the African Medical and Research Foundation (Amref), which is implementing the four-year Katine project, Sightsavers International and Uganda Society for the Disabled are supplementing government funding.
According to Etoyu, Amref has provided training for Katine teachers to improve the way they teach children with special needs. It has also worked with the district to ensure inspections of special needs education are carried out.
Amref's education officer, Lillian Viko, says one of the objectives of the Katine project is to improve access to quality primary education, and that includes promoting the inclusive education of girls, children with disabilities, orphans and other vulnerable children. These children tend to have the highest school drop-out rates.
"There are 1,613 (766 female, 847 male) orphans and vulnerable children documented in Katine. Among these 38 are children with disabilities, four blind, 10 deaf, five lame and deaf, and 17 with physically disabilities, and two epileptic. The rest are orphans," said Viko.
The project has held community awareness seminars that attracted 3,600 people on how to care and support orphans and vulnerable children (OVCs). The aim was to raise awareness of the importance of enrolling and supporting marginalised children in school and outside.
Parents and guardians have been reminded how to play an active role in the education of their children so they know their own responsibilities of those of the government. "The communities have now provided information on OVCs in the whole sub-county so that they can be included in sub-county plans," said Viko.
According to Viko, the project has reproduced and distributed to all schools materials for children with hearing impairments. These are expected to help teachers and children work and perform better.
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Why university standards have fallen | Geoffrey Alderman
The disempowerment of academics and a corporate model of governance have driven down standards, not Blair's 50% target
The new "manifesto" – Talent, Opportunity, Prosperity – published by the Association of Graduate Recruiters (AGR) deals with a number of core issues in the current debate about the future shape and direction of higher education in the UK. Here I want to concentrate on just one of them, namely academic standards.
What the AGR says is that the nebulous commitment made by Tony Blair in 1999 – in which (to quote him) he "set a target of 50% of young adults going into higher education in the next century" – has actually devalued the currency of a degree and driven down standards by forcing thousands of students to enrol onto programmes that lack academic rigour and which are delivered by "below-average institutions".
More specifically, the AGR manifesto declares that government-imposed targets designed to increase the number of students from deprived backgrounds risk being met only by lowering the academic standards of the institutions that meet them.
I believe that there has been a decline in academic standards overall in British higher education over the past two decades, but not for the reasons advanced by the AGR. The evidence for this decline is contained in the 2009 report, Students and Universities, of the then select committee on innovation, universities, science and skills. In my written and oral evidence to this inquiry, I identified the following factors as fundamental to this decline:
First, the league table culture that has permeated the senior leaderships of many British universities, resulting in intolerable pressures on academic staff to pass students who should rightfully fail and to award higher classes of degrees to the undeserving.
Second, pressures to maximise non-governmental sources of income, primarily from "full fee-paying" non-European students, to whom it is deemed prudent by these same senior leaderships to award qualifications to which they are often not entitled, so as to ensure future "market share".
Third, the increasing and increasingly stupid use of students' course evaluations as pivotal factors in the academic promotion process. To put it bluntly, a conscientious academic with poor student evaluations may find it difficult or even impossible to obtain promotion because her/his students do not like getting the low grades they may well richly deserve.
Fourth, the breakdown of the external examiner system, due partly to the near-universal modularisation of degree programmes and partly to the abysmal remuneration for work of this sort. The evidence given to the select committee of improper pressure on external examiners makes exceedingly grim reading.
Fifth, the relative leniency shown towards academic dishonesty, coupled with the tendency of university administrators to insist that plagiarism be viewed through the prism of what I believe is termed "cultural relativism".
So, let me be quite clear: I do not believe that "more" necessarily means "worse". But I do believe that more has come to mean worse because of the toxic combination of factors I have listed above, and which are obviously interrelated.
At bottom, more has come to mean worse because of poor quality university leadership, aided and abetted (it is true) by even poorer quality government oversight. David Lammy's call to university vice-chancellors last September to "get better at telling your story" betrayed a fundamental misunderstanding of the problem, which is not about perception (or PR) but about a reality that Lammy and his department seem unwilling or perhaps unable to confront.
If there is, perchance, any spare cash for education, it should go into the primary and secondary sectors, where it is needed most. The current cap on university tuition fees should be removed, but the removal should be accompanied by a comprehensive system of financial aid, so that admission to university is "needs blind".
At the same time, academics must be re-empowered, and the pseudo-corporate model of university governance imposed by Conservative and Labour governments since 1979 must be replaced by the collegiate model, which alone has the capacity to restore national and international confidence in the high standard of the British university degree.
- Higher education
- Students
- University administration
- University funding
- University teaching
- Education policy
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Tesco director: British school leavers 'can't read or write and have attitude problems'
More schools likely to be failed
Baby P rules 'may increase risks'
£10m to get students into sport
Social work needs an independent college
Forget a government-funded college - we need our own profession to create a institution led by, and accountable to, social workers, says Hilton Dawson
The 12,500 members of the British Association of Social Workers (BASW) are being urged to give a resounding "yes" vote in a referendum next month on the organisation's proposal to create a UK College of Social Work.
We want to transform our profession by creating an independent college to which all 105,000 social workers in the UK will be offered free registration. The college would set its own high standards for entry to the profession, accredit continuing professional development, license all employers of social workers, and set standards for a social work career structure.
This is in stark contrast to the rather puny suggestions of the Social Work Taskforce, which recommended a government-funded college that would give a stronger voice to social work, exercise influence over policy-making, and help improve public understanding of social work.
What we need from the government is not interference or money, but the legislation and the amendments to statutory guidance that would embed the college in critical decision-making about entry to the profession, training, professional development, the fitness of employers, and a career structure that retains the best qualified, most experienced social workers in social work practice.
We need devolved governments that will recognise the critical importance of social work to people's lives – that they are just as good as doctors, nurses, teachers and police officers. But, above all, we need our own profession to create a college led by, and accountable to, social workers.
This is not a case of the BASW taking over anything. It is a bold and historic move, but it is also a moment of considerable humility. It is the BASW putting our democracy, our organisation, our resources, our 40 years of experience, our skills and our international standing at the disposal of all social workers. Now is the time to take our profession into our own hands in order to take it forward.
If we do that together, we will transform the profession, ensuring that people can have great careers doing the best work in the world, and ensuring that social work serves people very well.
All we are doing is what every other successful and highly regarded profession would do. There is no other profession that would accept the government creating a college for it.
We reject criticism of "going it alone" because we want all organisations with social work members to join, in association with the BASW and, hopefully, with the college. We will ensure a UK college works with all governments and organisations in the best interests of social work.
To those who whisper that the BASW isn't up to it, we point to a growing membership and, as a consequence, independence, financial sustainability and coherent investment plans. We have access to world-class resources, and knowledge about the highest international standards of practice.
And as for those who say this is too bold, it remains to be seen whether the BASW members will support their own council and whether social workers will join their own college. My view is that support for a college is a compelling matter of professional and personal pride. This is such an important time for social work that we can hardly be too bold.
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School-leavers: they can't read, write, keep time or be tidy
Lucy Neville-Rolfe attacks the quality of education received by many of the young Britons recruited by the retailer
A main board director of Tesco will today attack the quality of school-leavers and the standards achieved by A-level students and university graduates.
Lucy Neville-Rolfe, the retailer's director of corporate and legal affairs, says school-leavers have basic problems with literacy and numeracy and that many also have "what you might call an attitude problem". She adds: "They don't seem to understand the importance of a tidy appearance and have problems with timekeeping ... Some seem to think that the world owes them a living."
Neville-Rolfe also says: "There are growing questions over various aspects of our exam system." She adds that grade inflation makes it difficult to identify the highest achievers: "There seems to be a fair amount of evidence now that [exams] are getting easier and failing to stretch people. The proportion of firsts and 2:1s has risen enormously so it's much rarer to get a 2:2 than a first. People who are clever today are achieving the grades of the very clever a couple of decades ago."
Tesco is the largest private sector employer in the country, with 280,000 UK employees, and Neville-Rolfe, 56, is one of the most powerful and well paid women in British business. An Oxford graduate and former civil service high-flyer before joining Tesco, her total pay package last year was more than £1.6m.
Her broadside, in a speech to be delivered at a London conference, is the second time in under six months that Tesco has publicly criticised the education system and the quality of school-leavers. Last October, the grocer's chief executive, Sir Terry Leahy, said: "Despite all the money that has been spent, standards are still woefully low in too many schools. Employers like us ... are often left to pick up the pieces."
His comments were echoed by Richard Lambert, director general of the CBI, which represents business leaders and by Sir Stuart Rose, chairman of Marks & Spencer. Rose said millions of school-leavers were unfit for work because: "They cannot do reading. They cannot do arithmetic. They cannot do writing." Lambert said the education system was failing poorer children and producing "exam results we ought to be ashamed of".
Neville-Rolfe, says part of the problem is that there are too many agencies and oversight bodies and too much paperwork: "Our education system seems very complicated to me. I would guess that the paperwork mountain with which teachers have to struggle is even worse than the red tape we face in business. There are lots of agencies and bodies, often issuing reams of instructions to teachers. It isn't surprising if teachers sometimes get distracted from the most important task at hand: teaching children well in the classroom."
She says Tesco store managers are the "equivalent of a headteacher in a school" and that senior supermarket staff would make good school governors.
Heads should also be given more power and rewarded better. "Why don't we give heads and teachers more freedom to take responsibility and use their professional judgment?"
She also points to wider problems among the young and their attitudes to work, authority and discipline: "The truth is that a certain humility and an ability to work hard are important for success ... More broadly, a society where people don't feel the need to work to gain material possessions will not be a stable or successful society."
In her speech to the Institute of Grocery Distribution's conference on skills, she says that education "is set to be an important point of debate at the general election" and that the supermarket industry should come up with a "manifesto for education and skills which we can give to whoever wins".
The government and teaching unions have repeatedly dismissed the attacks by business leaders on educational standards, pointing out that they have never been higher.
- Tesco
- Confederation of British Industry (CBI)
- Terry Leahy
- Sir Stuart Rose
- Marks & Spencer
- Education in crisis
- A-levels
- University teaching
- Schools
- Graduation
- University of Oxford
- Graduate careers
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California's Living New Deal project
The Living New Deal project was first conceived to mark the 75th anniversary of the New Deal. The driving force behind it, California academic Gray Brechin, likens it to a society-wide "archeological dig".
£10m sports drive to get students out of the pub
A £10m drive to coax university students out of the bar and on to the sports field will be launched today after a survey showed that half of undergraduates had gained weight since starting their course and a third had put on more than a stone.
Frustrated pupils 'bored by their factory schools'
Pupils are being turned into "a seething mass of bored, frustrated, alienated children" by today's education system, a leading professor will claim tonight.
Implement peer review or resign, controversial journal’s editor told
Ultimatum spells end for Medical Hypotheses in its current form. Zoë Corbyn reports
Iranian suitors offered online marriage course
Prenuptial training for young people aims to tackle country's rising divorce rates
There was a time when Iranian women seeking husbands prioritised job status and financial security – not to mention love – at the top of their list of needs.
Now potential suitors face the prospect of having to fulfil a daunting new requirement before asking for a bride's hand – having the right government certificate.
Acquiring the appropriate official qualifications before popping the question is part of a plan for prenuptial training courses approved by the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, with the aim of reversing declining Iranian marriage rates and rising divorce statistics.
From next week, online courses will be offered to young people to prepare them for the pitfalls of married life. The three-month courses, involving weekly tests, will be run by the state-governed national youth organisation, and those who successfully complete them will receive a certificate as proof of their readiness for matrimony. Mohsen Zanganeh, the head of the national youth organisation for Tehran province, said the courses would provide young people with an understanding of the "alphabet of life" and were intended as an essential gateway to marriage.
"We intend that within the next two years, if a boy attempts to woo a girl, she will answer only if he has finished his course," he told the Fars news agency. "We are trying to increase the level of information among young people concerning marriage."
Zangeneh said the course would run along similar lines to a universityand have a panel of 40 experts serving as its scientific board. The idea has been partly prompted by the rising divorce rate.
Iranian decision-makers are also alarmed at a rise in the average marrying age, which scientists say is leading to an increase in premarital sex and abortions arising from unwanted pregnancies.
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How Neil Baldwin became Keele University's mascot
As a boy, he walked into Keele University – and never left. And he counts bishops, sportsmen and politicians among his friends. So just who is Neil Baldwin?
Last weekend, Keele University celebrated Neil Baldwin's 50th anniversary there. It was a splendid two-day affair, with speeches from distinguished alumni, a dinner, a testimonial football match, and a service of thanksgiving for his work conducted by the Bishop of Lichfield, a Keele graduate.
But Baldwin has never worked at Keele in any capacity, or been a student there, or had any formal connection with the place. He walked into the students' union in 1960, an engaging schoolboy with learning difficulties from the local town of Newcastle-under-Lyme, and became a fixture. "I liked the campus and the chapel and the people," he tells me on the phone.
When, four years later, Malcolm Clarke walked nervously into the students' union on his first day at university, this stout, jovial young man ambled towards him and said: "Welcome to Keele. I'm Neil Baldwin." Clarke says today: "I appreciated his warm welcome, but who exactly was he? As always with Neil, his exact status was unclear."
Most Anglican bishops have met Baldwin at least once. A keen churchgoer, he turns up at their homes for tea like an old friend, and, though a little puzzled, that's how they treat him. At a thanksgiving in the Keele chapel a few years ago for Baldwin's work there, the visiting vicar recounted how he had first met Baldwin 20 years before, while at theological college in London. "He seemed to know all the bishops," he said.
Clarke became the student union president in the turbulent year of 1968, when Keele students occupied the registry. Clarke opposed the action and resigned as president over it, but not before proposing Baldwin for honorary life membership of the student union. For that, at least, he got unanimous support. I too was there in the late 60s and remember Baldwin as a solid if enigmatic figure. I'm pretty sure we first met in the union bar, late at night. In 1974, Clarke became mayor of Newcastle-under-Lyme, and on the day of his inauguration, Baldwin sat beside him in the back of the mayoral Daimler, waving regally at puzzled bystanders.
As the 70s closed, Keele appointed a new vice-chancellor and Baldwin phoned Clarke, by then living in Manchester, to give him the news. "It's Professor David Harrison of Cambridge," he said, "and 'e's a very nice man." "A very nice man" is one of Baldwin's most frequently imitated phrases; he says it emphatically, and as though there's a D in the middle of "very".
"Do you know him then?" asked Clarke. "I've just had tea with him and his wife in Cambridge," replied Baldwin. Clarke now says, rather carefully: "I think Professor Harrison may have been under the impression Neil was the Anglican chaplain."
Baldwin's Keele student friends thought he was fantasising when he talked about his friendships with Kevin Keegan, Gordon Banks, Graham Taylor and other famous footballers, until one day a well-known member of the Stoke City squad dropped him off at the student union, having given him a lift home from an away game. When Clarke met the players, they told him they knew Baldwin well – but had doubted his stories of his friendship with the mayor of Newcastle.
Eventually, Baldwin became a regular fixture on the Stoke City team coach for away matches. He makes it sound terribly simple. "I met Lou Macari [Stoke manager in the 1990s and a former Scottish international] outside the ground and we got talking. He made me the team's kit man." It sounds as though it can't be true, but it's confirmed in Macari's autobiography, Football, My Life, which has seven pages about Baldwin. Macari treated him as a kind of mascot, getting him to dress up and sit on the touchline for the amusement and morale of his squad – once in a chicken suit, another time in full white tie and tails.
Macari, like Clarke, grew to love him. He and Baldwin were often seen together in Stoke, walking Macari's dog. And one day in 1993, during a friendly against Aston Villa at Villa Park, Baldwin's old friends among the Stoke supporters saw him, in full Stoke kit, warming up on the touchline. With five minutes to go in the match, Macari actually sent this rather overweight man of nearly 50 on to the pitch. The players on both sides and the referee must have been in on the plan, because Macari then had 12 players on the pitch – and the players passed the ball to Baldwin, who almost got a shot at goal.
In his autobiography Macari calls him "my best-ever signing". Baldwin's unselfconscious remarks were a constant source of amusement for the players, and did wonders for morale. They never paid him properly as kit man, but have now given him free entrance to Stoke games for life. Baldwin says Macari is "a very nice man".
The late John Golding MP used to tell a story about how he walked into the House of Commons restaurant one night and saw Tony Benn, then energy secretary, at a table with Baldwin. Golding was a Keele graduate and MP for Newcastle-under-Lyme, so he knew him well. Golding was also the Labour right wing's chief fixer, and he loathed Benn with a passion, so he left swiftly before either of them saw him. He never worked out how Baldwin had got the energy secretary to invite him to dinner.
It was quite simple. Baldwin had come to the House of Commons and put in a card for Benn saying, "Neil Baldwin from Keele – friend of Steve's." "Steve" was Tony Benn's son Stephen, and Baldwin was not making it up. Like many Keele graduates, Stephen Benn keeps in touch with Baldwin to this day.
Stories about Baldwin abound, and they are almost always true. He once sold a Keele rag magazine to then prime minister Harold Wilson and buttonholed the Duke of Edinburgh for a chat about world problems. He wrote on spec to an American oarsman who was in the Cambridge boat race crew one year, and got himself on board the official launch that followed the race and into the boat-race ball afterwards.
"Neil's complete lack of self- consciousness has made him many genuine friendships with the famous," says Clarke. "People say he's a fantasist, but he isn't – he turns his fantasies into reality."
As a young man he had an unskilled job in the pottery industry in Stoke, and in the 80s he travelled as Nello the Clown in Sir Robert Fossett's circus. His other travels were aided by his habit of putting on a clerical collar before hitching lifts. His mother, Mary, used to worry about how he would cope after her death and sensibly made him move into his own flat; she died a few years ago, and Baldwin is managing.
People are always willing to help him, because, says Clarke "there's not an ounce of malice in him". Every generation of Keele students for 50 years has looked after Baldwin, and he in turn has enriched their lives with his extraordinary adventures. Generations of Keele students, including Stephen Benn, have played in the Neil Baldwin Football Club, of which he is the manager and captain, and in which he wins Player of the Year every year. Clarke calls it "a motley collection of students of the day, managed, coached, captained and kit-managed by Neil".
Now his footballing days are probably over. He is 64 this month and will go into hospital this year to have two new hips. He may continue to train his team, though. "I've always been grateful to the people at Keele," Baldwin says in his calm, gravelly voice with its strong Potteries accent. "The students have always been wonderful, they are still good friends to me."
Baldwin's old friend Malcolm Clarke now chairs the Football Supporters Federation and is the supporters' representative on the Football Association council. The two meet regularly at Stoke City matches.
Clarke and Keele alumni officer John Easom want the university to give Baldwin an honorary degree, as do many Keele graduates, including me. "He has contributed a lot more to the university than most people who get honorary degrees," says Clarke. For the moment the university establishment is resisting. Clarke has even bigger ambitions: he wants Baldwin to have an honour. He plans to petition Gordon Brown. It might just work. There could be votes in it. And it can only be a matter of time before I hear Baldwin say that "he's a very nice man".
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New independent schools proposed by Tories
Mum and Dad get a D- for homework | Open thread
As parents struggle to answer GCSE-level questions, are you confident helping with your children's schoolwork?
Despite claims that exams are getting easier, a survey has shown that parents struggle to answer GCSE-level questions. Faced with 10 questions based on the curriculum in science, maths, history and geography, they managed to get an average of just two correct answers. The results of the quiz, taken by 500 people with children under 16, suggest that helping teenagers with their homework could be beyond the capabilities of many parents.
The parents were asked about subjects including the name of the bars on a synoptic chart (isobars), the total number of degrees in the exterior angles of an octagon (360) and the number of chromosomes in a human cell (46).
If you're a parent with school-age children, how has the curriculum changed since you were at school? Do you feel confident helping with homework, or does it leave you scratching your head?
• This article was amended at 16:10 on 9 March 2010. The original made reference to the angles of an octagon – it should have specified "exterior angles". This is now been corrected. D- for us
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