Disciplinary issues, truancy, special needs (to integrate or to separate) – some of the everyday problems which beset teachers in our schools, and that’s before you get to the administration, let alone actually start to teach!

Teachers are not necessarily equipped to be social workers, psychiatrists, or, heaven forbid, policemen, yet even the most damaged (in the widest sense of the word) children can be helped with the right care and attention – see www.kidsco.org.uk, the charity founded by Camila Batmanghelidjh in 1996.  Of course, such care and attention costs money, but in today’s climate, with disruptive pupils in particular, it is exclusion that sometimes seems as though it is becoming the weapon of first, not last, resort. 

Such – neglect? - however can be an expensive solution – expensive in human terms, because it can lead to semi-literate adults with significant unemployment issues, perhaps even drug abuse and criminality, but expensive too in cash terms, because of the opportunity cost to the economy as well as the additional costs to the public purse in terms of the justice and health systems. 

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With talk of cuts drowning out all other kinds of discourse, I thought it would be interesting to canvass opinions in the universities as to the outlook for employment over the next year or two.  Now, I certainly wouldn’t pretend that what I did was to conduct a scientific survey amongst Advancement professionals at the more than 20 institutions I spoke to, but nonetheless the results were interesting.

Firstly, the bad news. At least a couple of institutions are facing compulsory redundancies, and half were anticipating voluntary redundancies/natural wastage etc, the majority of which were expected to primarily impact administrative staff.  Most universities had at least a freeze on recruitment, and many had put in place very strict rules governing the filling of posts which become vacant.

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Any motorist driving to work at school times will be familiar with the congestion caused by the school run - but what are parents to do?  Schools are often not within walking distance of home and if you have two or three children at different schools – which does happen - how do you cope? Choice (whatever it may be) is universally held to be a good thing, but in practice it often means that children do not go to the nearest school.  How can government want parents to have a choice of school on social grounds, and also encourage women to work on economic grounds, and promote children walking to school on health grounds - but at the same time make all of this all but impossible because it means that children attend schools miles from home?  There is a further effect, namely that driving is the only practical way of getting children to school on time, especially outside the major conurbations.

So much for environmental policy.

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Well, I guess the electoral excitement is now over, and reality will have to take over.  Personally, I welcome in principle the notion of parties working together (it has produced, in Germany, one of the world’s most successful countries, after all), and if it leads to politicians insulting each other rather less (in case they need a coalition after some future election) and concentrating on policies rather more, well I don’t know too many people who will regret that!

As far as Education goes, I’ve been impressed with what I’ve seen of both Michael Gove and David Willetts when I’ve seen them in relatively intimate surroundings – I’m not convinced that television is a great friend to either.  Policy is another matter of course, and it’s pretty clear that, whilst there are interesting proposals for increased funding in certain areas, education as a whole, and especially tertiary education, will not escape the inevitable cuts in public funding which lie ahead.

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Well, it’s a dirty job, but someone had to do it – I’ve been reading the manifestos of the three national parties in order to see what they have to say about Education, especially FE and HE.When you strip out the bile and hyperbole, the answer was rather less than I expected.

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So the starting gun has been fired on what is being billed as the closest General Election for 36 years – and there seems little doubt that Education will at least get a mention, for the first time really since another young man with excellent presentational skills referred to it (in triplicate, no less) on the 1997 hustings.

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With HE making headlines about funding cuts, FE can easily be overlooked. Yet this sector drives the economy by providing skilled technicians and that's what most companies want.  Funding is also tight for FE, and leaders in the sector will have to learn the lessons others have learned before them.  Apart from the miserable business of cost cutting, there are a number of pro-active steps which can be taken and which can lighten the gloom. 

Is branding still important? Most certainly, yes. Stakeholders have to understand what a college is all about, what its core brand values are, what it stands for, what benefits it brings to stakeholders. New college structures will undoubtedly emerge, as a result not just of mergers, but of the formation of federations and other groupings and the need for powerful branding which presses the right buttons with employers and stimulates them to pay for training will be paramount.

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Wonderful to hear Steve Smith on the radio yesterday morning making absolutely clear (“The evidence shows however that whatever university you go to - your life chances will significantly improve.  One of the great vehicles for social mobility in the UK is going to university.") that universities confer on their students benefits well beyond vocational training and really can and do transform lives.

The reason for the interview on Radio 4 was the publication of the HEFCE report on trends in university participation in 18 and 19 year olds over the past decade and a half.  Perhaps counter intuitively, given the introduction in tuition fees in the last few years, the report found that youngsters in the poorest areas are 30% more likely to go to university than 5 years ago – and whilst it is certainly true that a much higher proportion of the wealthier enjoy a tertiary education, there is at last some real movement in… widening participation.

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Met up with Barbara Anderson last week. Barbara, as many of you may know, is the Academic Registrar at Gresham College. You may not know much about Gresham (I certainly didn’t) but its history and its role today are fascinating.

Its founder, Sir Thomas Gresham (1519 to 1579), traded cloth and linens between England and the Low Countries at a time when Cambridge and Oxford had a duopolistic hold on higher education in England. A Cambridge man himself (Caius College), if Gresham’s skippers had visited an Oxbridge College they would, at best, have had the door of a college opened to them and then been laughed at in Latin for their ignorance. Sir Thomas died (of apoplexy) in 1579, bequeathing funds to the Corporation of London and to the Mercers’ Company, and charging them with the nomination of seven Professors to lecture in Astronomy, Divinity, Geometry, Law, Music, Physic and Rhetoric. He required the lectures to be in Latin and, horror of horrors, English. In effect, Sir Thomas used his will anti- monopolistically to crack the Oxbridge oligopoly by bribing seven professors to give lectures to the public, in English.

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