Posted by: Martin Bojam
on Aug 12, 2010
From time to time at 360Education we carry guest blogs which we hope may be of some interest to readers. Today's is by David Lowe, Principal of DLD, an independent sixth form college in Central London.
It’s that time of year again, when the release of results seems to give rise to hackneyed and sterile arguments about the validity of the examinations. However, the debate ought not to be about whether A-levels have got easier, or how imprecise a predictor they are for universities, but the importance of education itself. It is critically important to the individual young people who are getting their results, to their families and to our wider society and our economy. We should surely be debating how education can and should prepare students for the world of the future, which is the world that they will inhabit. We should be exploring ways of making education more relevant, focused and ever more effectively delivered.
Posted by: David
on Jun 16, 2010
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.
Posted by: Martin Bojam
on Apr 26, 2010
