University Bosses Become Fat Cats As Student Fees Rise
The pay packets of Britain’s university heads rocketed by as much as a fifth last year, just as institutions lobbied for a huge hike in student tuition fees. More than 950 university staff, including all vice-chancellors, were paid more than the Prime Minister – an eight per cent increase on the year before. One senior administrator at Oxford was given a salary of almost £600,000, thought to be the highest-paid university post in ...
Children Are Bring Given Chemical Cosh For Shyness
Children are being prescribed mind-altering “chemical cosh” drugs for conditions such as shyness and mild social anxiety, behaviour experts have warned. Young people are routinely being given medication to treat normal childhood conditions, it was claimed, despite fears over their long-term health. The disclosure came as it emerged that the number of eight- to 13-year-olds on drugs such as Ritalin has soared seven-fold since 1997. In many cases, pupils are being put on medication amid fears from parents, teachers and doctors over a serious deterioration in
Leading Schools fail to make examination passes league table
Many of the most famous schools in the world – including Eton, Marlborough, Harrow and Dulwich College – registered lower results than some of England’s worst-performing comprehensives because of technicality. According to the tables, no pupils at 142 schools achieved five A* to C grades including English and maths, while a further 26 scored below 10 per cent. The rock-bottom ratings come because most independent schools have dropped conventional GCSEs in some subjects and ...
Could vocational education make a comback at the expense of university indoctrination?
Tens of thousands of children will be able to abandon academic study at 14 to undertake vocational training under plans unveiled last night.Up to 70 technical schools teaching youngsters practical skills from bricklaying to fashion are to be opened within the next five years. The scheme is one of the most radical shake-ups of the education system since ...
Dumbing Down Has Destroyed Respect For Academics
Academic inflation is as dangerous to any country as its financial equivalent. When university degrees no longer represent a genuine assessment of a graduate’s abilities, the whole intellectual currency is debased. In Britain, as we report today, this insidious process has reached
UK Education Falls Behind Third World
UK schoolchildren today plummeted down a major international league table after being outscored by pupils from countries including Estonia, Lichtenstein and Slovenia.
Teenagers slumped in worldwide rankings comparing standards of reading, mathematics and science in 65 developed nations. Figures published by the respected Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development showed the UK fell from ...
Lib Dems Planned To Drop Tuition Fees Pledge
The Liberal Democrats were drawing up plans to abandon Nick Clegg's flagship policy to scrap university tuition fees two months before the general election, secret party documents reveal.
The amount of rage being hurled at Nick Clegg and other Liberal Democrat ministers in the coalition government by labour-lefie-loonies and by their own party members is as amusing as it is
Higher Tuition Fees Will Keep Costs Down Says Cameron by Xavier Connolly
A surprise remark from David Cameron is likely to anger parents who are being forced to find thousands more to fund their children's higher education.
The Prime Minister was quizzed on a trip to a university in Beijing about last week's Coalition proposal to raise tuition fees by up to £9,000 a year.
it's hard to see quite what The Prime Minister is driving at here, how can higher fees possibly keep
Graduate Tax Would Deter Many From University Education
As the public sector debt crisis forces the coalition to cut the Universities budget Ian R Thorpe wades into the argument about university education as a right and tuition fees ...
Selection By Stealth Or Simple Common Sense by Xavier Connolly.
The comprehensive education system has become one of the sacred cows of the "progressive left" in spite of its very obvious failure. The old Grammar School system only segregated on grounds of intelligence whereas the system now with its postcode lottery and the growth of private schools for the rich segregates on grounds of parental wealth, social class and geogrphic location. Intelligence does not enter the equation. So the selective way was more egalitarian, what are the leftie whiners on about.
More Graduates, Less Graduate Jobs
Vince Cable the coalition government's minister responsible for business and higher education has kicked off the biggest shake up in University financing in the past four decades. Since the vast and rapid expansion of higher education begun bt the Wilson government in the 1960 there has been constant growth in University funding, the number of University places available and the ...
The Pursuit Of Mediocrity by fatsally.
SATS test, introduced in 1993, were supposed to meaure a pupil's progress through the education system from junior to senior school and ensure every child was fulfilling their potential. Now we see the government constantly lowering standards in order to ensure enough pupils from each school are reaching government imposed targets.
Is It Time To Ban Maths From Schools?
Academics and politicians are always banging on about how school pulpils have no interest in maths and science. They blame everybody but themselves of course. When you get down to it, maybe the way Maths and Science are taught in schools is to blame. Or maybe it is the nerds who teach it and try to infect pupils with their own irrational enthusiasm for the uttrly pointless that has made these subjects so uncool.
Teenage Prostitute Baby Poisoners
Today we have a surfeit of riches. Our favourite paper led on the headline “ Schools may be judged on teenage pregnancies and drug problems. What is all that about? Is the education system planning to start handing out GCSEs in getting up the duff and stonerology? Are the government offering NVQs for sex workers?
Need A Degree In English To Write Your Name?
by Ian R. Thorpe
An article in today's Guardian suggests free degree courses in English should be offered.
The study of our language and literature is so fundamental to society that everyone ought to have access to it, argues Alex Hay.
Why degrees in English?
I'm pretty ancient at 61 I know, but even when my kids were t school in the 1980s and 90s a GCSE O level was a good standard of basic...
No Child Left Behind - Just £800 million
by fatsally
Everybody has been feeling the pinch this past couple of years so just think how well off we would all be if this government stopped wasting our money! Each party is suggesting the other will bring in the more savage cuts to public spending. But they don't have to cut any necessary spending at all, just stop wasting the money we bung into the kitty via our tax on stupid schemes thought up by The Politically Correct Thought Police...
Mr. Bollocks Goes To Cookery Class
Today our education correspondent, N.E. Teecher, was invited along with the press corps to observe with Education Minister Ed. Bollocks a modern New Labour New Cookery lesson The school visit was part of the Education Ministers new initiative to improve the way the general public and especially chioldren eat by teaching pupils how to cook.
Bleep Till You Drop - Labour's Plan To Stop Children Getting Fat
The Labour Government's obsession with meddling n the minutiae of individuals lives grows as Labour's eviction from power becomes more inevitable. Their lastest propsal for social enginering, launched health minister Liam Donaldson, is a plan to use military style bleep tests in schools to indentify pupils who are unfit and likely to become obese. This piece of social enginerring or let's be honest and call it eugenics, is aimed at eliminating obese or overweight people from the population but sounds more like something that would be more appropriate in Guantanamo Bay than a Junior School in Britain.
The Whining Academy
Whining seems to have become a national sport. Politicians spend their time whining about the public's lack of respect for them except for when they are busy embezzling public funds, cutting cash for influence deals with fake lobbyists, sucking up to dodgy donors, fiddling their expenses or boffing their secretaries.
B Sc in Stating The Bleeding Obvious.
The failure of education is not because kids are getting dumber, stuff is getting harder to learn, the internet is a distraction or parents are less co-operative. It is because education in schools is run by idioys who can't see what's staring them in the efffing face.
Killing History.
The government constantly whines that not enough pulips in their later school years take up sciences. The government itself however is pushing history off the curriculum. So as they strip the nation's young people of a sense who they are and destroy the national culture inthe name of diversity and multiculturalism can they complain if those young people feel alienated and do not wish to contribute positively to the national community.
Sex Education Kerfuffle
Sex education in schools is always a provocative topic, on the one hand religious groups think there should be none, on the other the Politically Correct Thought Police believe there should be lots, with practical demonstrations. And what can government officials do when caught between the two sides? Turn somersaults?
SATS - The Science Of Dumbing Down
The government and education academics have been obsessing about SATS tests for a long time, believing intelligence can be measured by examination results. All this pseudo - scientific bullshit has achieved is a meaurable dumbing down through a teaching to test mentality in which exam results give a false impression of school leavers intelligence.
Teaching English As A Native Language
Teaching English as a foreign language has always been recognised as a speciality in education. But has English become so difficult that teachers are now having difficulty teaching it to those born as native speakers of the language. Is this because there is too much academic bullshit and not enough good teaching in the education system.
The Truth About The Economy, Crime And Everything Else.
by Ian R Thorpe
2010-01-26
The Labour government has been telling lies again, about unemployment, the economy, education, and crimes. And they are really really angry that us ungrateful oiks refuse the believe the official statistics that prove what a good job the government is doing.
A Clockwork GCSE Exam Paper
by fatsally
Repeated complaints from bosses suggest school exams in English have become too easy. But is this true or are examiners simply testing not so much on formal grammar as English like wot it is spoke?
NVQ In Retail
University education is not for everyone. Some people are not happy in the academic environment and yearn to get into the workplace. Why are such people who have a go - getting attitude rather than a dossing around listening to Coldlay albums attitude treated so dismissively by the careers service and other government agencies then.
Looks Like A Job For …… BICYCLE REPAIR MAN!
One of my favourite Monty Python sketches though it is remembered by few other people which may prove I am more of a Python geek than I thought, featured a Superhero called Bicycle Repair Man. A bike mechanic superhero? you might well ask...
Book Review: How To Talk About Books You Haven't Read.
Can we really talk about books we haven't read as the title of the book reviewed here suggests? The author, french literature academic Pierre Bayard argues that it is perfectly feasible as books are not so much about narrative and characters as ideas. Does Bayard's argument hold up? Poet Ian R. Thorpe reviews How To Talk About Books You Haven't Read (without having read it of course)
Science - A Career For Tossers
Science is a career for tossers. That sounds like a sweeping generalisation so let's clarify. Nothing wrongs with physics, chemistry or biology, stuff like oceanography, electronics, hydraulics, applied sciences, they're good too. When people tell you they are scientists though its too vague. It usually means they are irritating little droids who go around with clipboards asking stupid questions.
Marking Computer Says No As Top Writers Fail Their English A Level.
Boggart Blog makes it our business to invigilate the progressive education lobby for sings of loonyness. An we have to be honest, they keep us busy.
One of the most crackpot ideas to come out of the academic clique that supervises the dumbing down of standard was the recruitment of a marking computer to assess A level papers.On being given samples of writing by great authors including... Marking Computer Says No
Evolutionary Science Classes In Junior School Might Be Counter Productive.
A new plan to reform the primary curriculum proposes teaching evolutionary science to kids aged 4 to 11. This article shows how such an approach might be counter productive.
Obama's watered down speech to schools
Barack Obama's much hyped speech to school pupils caused a storm when it was leaked that the self-worshipper-in-chief planned to exhort kids to ask themselves "what can I do to serve President Obama. No dount a man as deluded as Barack Hussein Obama thought he was doing something really cute in paraphrasing Jack Kennedy. Kennedy of course had the political acumen to say, "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what
FRAGMENTS:
(Shorter posts from our blogs and links to other sites)
When Less Was MoreThis blog likes to bring you original article but is happy to serve as a highlighter for other controversialist writers, pointing you towards writers prepared to go againt the tide of mainsteam opinion, to chalenge the orthodoxy. Today the link is to an article by the excellent Deborah Orr, a true liberal who is commenting on the persistent whining
Higher Education Is The Path To UnemploymentThe news that there are seventy applicants for each job vacancy requiring a new graduate from University, though it is indicative of a dire situation in the jobs market, should not be interpreted as meaning there is only one job for each graduate seeking to enter the world of paid employment in a job related to ...
A Degree In Writing Your Name?
Higher Education Disaster
