Private tutors for state schools

26 July 2011 Last updated at 13:26 GMT By Sean Coughlan BBC News education correspondent Private tutors will operate from five secondary schools in East Anglia A private tutor company is going to set up learning centres within five state secondary schools in England, selling extra lessons to schools and parents.

The schools will pay the TLC Education Group ?22 per 80-minute additional lesson for their own pupils.

Parents of pupils from other schools will pay ?27 to attend lessons.

Andrew Hutchinson, head of the Parkside Federation, where tutors will be based, said it would provide one-to-one lessons for a wider range of pupils.

But the ATL teachers' union attacked the scheme as an "unethical use of public money".

'Pragmatic decision'

Head teacher Mr Hutchinson said the tutoring service was a flexible way of supporting pupils, such as those arriving from primary school who needed catch-up lessons or pupils preparing for GCSEs.

Private tutors were already being used by families who could afford it, he said.

"It's a pragmatic decision - trying to broaden the opportunity," said Mr Hutchinson, who runs two Cambridge secondary schools as part of a federation.

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For a state-funded school to allow a private firm to use its premises to make money... seems both unfair to those parents who can't afford the extra lessons and an unethical use of public money”

End Quote Martin Freedman ATL And he says that schools should not be "hung up on dogma", but should be finding ways to "provide a more bespoke package for individuals".

A head teachers' union said that "buying in" extra tuition in this way could "make sense".

"Clearly schools will target resources to best meet students' needs and there is good evidence of the benefits of one-on-one tutoring, especially for students who are starting to slip behind," said Sarah Gadzik, spokeswoman for the Association of School and College Leaders.

"Having a tutoring company based in schools is not something we have come across before but, assuming that robust quality assurance measures are in place, it could be a cost-effective way for schools to target support at individual students."

But Martin Freedman of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers criticised the arrangement.

"ATL knows that individual families can make a decision to buy private tuition for their children - but for a state-funded school to allow a private firm to use its premises to make money, and for the school to buy in cheap tuition from that firm instead of employing teachers, seems both unfair to those parents who can't afford the extra lessons and an unethical use of public money."

The private tutors will run "learning centres" in five schools in East Anglia, offering customised lessons in English and maths.

Unfair advantage?

Lessons will be taught in groups of up to five pupils, either in breaks during the day, after school, weekends or in school holidays.

In exchange for providing premises, the school receives a reduced rate for lessons bought by the school for its pupils.

But the tutors based in these schools will also teach pupils from other local schools, at the higher cost of ?27 per session.

And parents in the five schools who want extra lessons outside those offered through the school, can also pay private rates for private lessons.

The schools are Samuel Ward Academy and Wymondham High School in Norfolk, two schools in the Parkside Federation in Cambridge - Coleridge Community College and Parkside Community College - and the Open Academy in Norwich.

There have been longstanding questions about the impact of private tuition on exam results - and about the advantages gained by pupils whose parents can afford extra lessons.

Much of this extra tuition has been at home - or in after-school catch-up classes - so the extent of this additional coaching has remained uncertain.

A survey carried out for the Sutton Trust education charity two years ago found that about one in five secondary pupils in England was receiving lessons from private tutors.

But this was particularly concentrated in some areas - with the survey claiming that 43% of pupils in London were receiving extra lessons.

Another survey of parents of grammar-school pupils carried out three years ago suggested that almost half had paid for tuition for their children when they were preparing for the 11-plus test.

Simon Barnes, director of TLC Education, said: "Our partnerships mean that we can help improve examination grades and build confidence in students of all ages and abilities."

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Fewer school children expelled

29 July 2011 Last updated at 12:07 GMT By Angela Harrison Education correspondent, BBC News Children with special educational needs are more likely to be excluded There has been another fall in the number of pupils excluded from schools in England - but ministers say with the figures still in their thousands, behaviour is not good enough.

Expulsions fell by about 12% in 2009-10, compared with the previous year, while suspensions were down about 9%.

But a total of about 900 children were suspended every day for violence or verbal abuse.

Three quarters of those expelled had special educational needs.

And more than three-quarters were boys.

Boys were about four times as likely to be suspended as girls and pupils on free school meals were also more likely to be excluded.

In total, 5,740 pupils were expelled (permanently excluded) from primary, secondary and special schools in 2009-10, down from 6,550.

That total has been falling steadily since 1997 - when more than twice as many were expelled.

The number of suspensions also fell in 2009-10, when there were 331,380 "temporary exclusions".

That was a drop of nearly 32,000, a recent trend which has seen totals fall back to levels of nearly 10 years ago.

'Significant problem'

The most common reason for children to be excluded was "persistent disruptive behaviour".

Schools Minister Nick Gibb said discipline was a "significant problem" and the government was giving more powers "to put head teachers and teachers back in control of the classroom".

"With thousands of pupils being excluded for persistent disruption and violent or abusive behaviour we remain concerned that weak discipline remains a significant problem in too many of our schools and classrooms," he said.

"Tackling poor behaviour and raising academic standards are key priorities for the coalition government. We will back head teachers in excluding persistently disruptive pupils, which is why we are removing barriers which limit their authority."

Head teachers accused Mr Gibb of "finding a cloud around the silver lining".

Russell Hobby, the general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, said there was no evidence of weak discipline in the statistics.

"Fewer and fewer schools now need to resort to the ultimate sanction of permanent exclusion, a fact that should be celebrated, " he said.

"Clearly the existing powers on behaviour have been good enough for major progress to be made.

"That said, there remain well-placed concerns about the apparent disparity in exclusion rates across school types and different demographic groups. Too many schools are still forced to exclude because they do not have the skills or resources to deal with children who suffer from mental illness, abuse or tragically turbulent lifestyles."

Special Educational Needs

Alison Ryan, from the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL) said: "It is testimony to the hard work by school leaders, teachers and support staff that the number of pupil exclusions fell in 2009-10.

"However, schools could not have achieved this reduction without the help of early intervention services, extended services and access to training and expertise on behaviour and Special Educational Needs.

"ATL is deeply concerned that the cuts to local authority funding will have an impact on the number of services they can provide, and without them schools will face increasing behavioural problems and increasing numbers of exclusions."

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More females in higher education

28 July 2011 Last updated at 12:57 GMT More women than men are entering higher education. The number of young women in higher education in Scotland remains higher than the number of young men.

Figures released by the Scottish Funding Council indicate that almost 50% of women under the age of 21 are students - 10% ahead of the male intake.

That gap has however narrowed slightly in the last year.

Overall, more young people are going into college or university for higher education.

However at 44% it remains below the peak of 50% at the turn of the millennium.

The proportion of higher education students from disadvantaged backgrounds remains low but is on an upward trend.

Most of them are recruited by further education colleges for courses such as Higher National Certificates.

Young people from East Ayrshire, Falkirk and Stirling are least likely to become students, while those in East Renfrewshire and East Dumbartonshire are most likely.

Scottish Funding Council chief executive Mark Batho said: "The improving trends shown in this report are welcome, but there is still more to do."

Learning and Skills Minister Alasdair Allan added: "These figures show both an increase in the overall number of young Scots participating in higher education and a rise in the number of entrants from the most deprived areas.

"Life chances are being improved across Scotland and these figures underline the importance of our decision to rule out tuition fees, ensuring access to education continues to be based on ability to learn, not ability to pay."

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Ladies in the lab

29 July 2011 Last updated at 11:54 GMT By Hannah Richardson BBC News education reporter Nasa scientist Dr Holly Goodhead in James Bond film Moonraker was a classic stereotype of a female scientist Women are being put off working in and studying science by "subtle" messages in the media and society, academics say.

Although girls make up more than half GCSE science students - by the time they reach university science departments they are outnumbered by men by a factor of two to one.

And higher up the academic food chain, for every female science professor, there are nine male ones. So what is putting women off?

"It's not that people actually think there are no women in science it's more subtle than that," says Rachel Tibbell, development consultant at the UK Resource Centre for women in science, engineering and technology (UKRC)

UKRC research suggests women scientists are stereotyped either as frumpy, glasses-wearing cartoon geeks or uber-sexy, Bond-film glamour pusses - who shake their hair out of their specs once they have split the atom.

Gender stereotypes seem to permeate all the way down to children. Mrs Tibbell describes an Open University research project which asked in 2006 a group of children to draw a picture of a scientist. "Overwhelmingly, the children drew a man."

But where does this stereotyping come from? It starts at birth, says Mrs Tibbell.

"I have girl-boy twins and what I found is people buy a car for the boy and a doll for the girl. So already the child is getting a message about the sort of thing they should be doing," she said.

She also highlights the lack of female scientists in the media. Further UKRC research suggests scientific experts interviewed on television are five times more likely to be male than female.

But are these media images, or lack of them, putting off the female scientists of the future?

Professor Susan Greenfield is one of the few female scientists to have made it into the media

Dr Patricia Brekke, a 32-year-old conservation geneticist who has a fellowship at the Institute of Zoology, says: "I wanted to be a female David Attenborough but there was never a female presenter on television.

"But I would never have let this stop me - then I was a little bit obsessed," she said at a recent women in science event at London's South Bank sponsored by L'Oreal and the Zoological Society London (ZSL).

However, some of today's current scientists suggest that even if women do opt for an academic career in science or technology that they can face sexism once they are at university.

'Girls can't do maths'

Dr Kate Jones, a senior research fellow at ZSL, recalls a very macho culture and unrepeatable sexist comments at the university where she studied, although she says it has improved now.

And Professor Charlotte Watts, a mathematics professor and an expert in HIV prevention in the developing world, says: "I remember when I was an undergraduate at Oxford, one of my peers saying; 'I didn't know girls could do maths'."

Dr Jones said she experienced a very macho atmosphere where she studied

She also remembers going to conferences where she was the only woman: "I was a nobody, but everybody knew my name, because I was a woman. I got bought a lot of drinks."

But how much has society moved on the issue? There has been a greater increase in the number of girls studying science technology and engineering subjects at A-level than for boys.

But progress is slow. Sean McWhinnie, independent research consultant with Oxford Research and Policy, said it would be many years before women are represented in equal numbers in the UK's university science departments.

If present rates of increase continue, he predicts men and women will reach parity in 2021 for biosciences, in 2042 for chemistry, in 2060 for physics and in 2109 for civil engineering.

'Short skirts'

And Prof Watts suggests cultural changes are needed. She adds: "I was talking to this older woman and she said that in her day she had not been allowed to study science. Obviously that has changed.

"But she went on to say how much she admired the neuroscientist and former director of the Royal Society, Professor Susan Greenfield. And then her husband piped up that no one respected her because she wore short skirts."

Dr Brekke suggests that even if women are determined to find their place at an academic institution, problems can arise if they decide to have children.

"The problem is you have to keep up with the latest research and when it comes to getting a grant you are judged by how many papers you have produced."

Dr Jones says when women go on maternity leave they are left with big holes in their academic record for the period of time they take out.

"I am not sure there is any way of showing you have had a break," she adds.

Mother-of-two and 37-year-old evolutionary biologist Seirian Sumner said: "I never really had maternity leave because I had lots of on-going projects and students to see.

"Also because I am a field biologist I had to take my family to Panama for two months. If I had 'logged out', so to speak, I think it would have been even harder coming back."

But eminent plant biologist Professor Ottoline Leyser, author of 'Mothers in Science 64 Ways to Have it All', says there is no reason for women scientists to choose between their career and a family.

Women scientists often feel they must choose between children and careers

"I appeared at a conference in 1993 with my son in my stomach and my daughter on my hip. I was told that my career was in ruins because I had decided to have children."

She argues that working in academia with a family should be easier than other jobs because it can be so much more flexible.

"Even if you are out for a few years for small children it is only a very small proportion of your overall career," she said.

And perhaps most crucially, she adds: "Children have two parents - and men have been happily having careers in science for a very long time."

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Pupils 'shoe-horned' into EBacc

28 July 2011 Last updated at 11:29 GMT By Sean Coughlan BBC News education correspondent MPs have warned of "negative consequences" for subjects outside the EBacc The government should "think again" about the introduction of the English Baccalaureate to secondary schools in England, says a committee of MPs.

The so-called EBacc requires pupils to gain good GCSEs in English, maths, two sciences, a language and humanity.

But the Commons education select committee says it risks "shoe-horning" pupils into inappropriate subjects.

Schools minister Nick Gibb says "all children have the right to a broad and balanced education".

But the cross-party MPs' report says it should not be "up to a group of politicians" to decide which individual subjects should be given priority.

And it questions whether the EBacc should even be given that name, when "it is not a baccalaureate as generally understood".

'Negative consequences'

The report says that the good intentions of the EBacc - to ensure that pupils have access to a core of academic subjects - have been undermined by how it has been implemented.

The report highlights a failure to consult about the likely impact of the new measure - and says the government needs to examine the complaints from head teachers and professional groups.

There have been strong concerns raised on behalf of subjects which are not part of the EBacc, including religious education, art, music and ICT.

There have been warnings that schools will downgrade their support and staffing for these subjects, which will not count towards league table rankings for the EBacc.

There have also been concerns that schools will arrange their timetables to maximise their EBacc scores - which might then limit the subject options available to individual pupils.

The select committee report shares such concerns, arguing that "a fairly narrow range of subjects, demanding considerable curriculum time, is likely to have negative consequences on the uptake of other subjects".

The introduction of the EBacc, and decisions about its subjects, should have been left until a review of the national curriculum had been completed, says the report from MPs.

"For now, the EBacc is not part of a balanced score card," said committee chairman Graham Stuart.

Poorest pupils

The NASUWT teachers' union said that there were already signs of the EBacc leading to reductions in support for non-baccalaureate subjects.

"A recent NASUWT survey found almost 15% of schools had teachers of non-EBacc subjects who were facing the threat of redundancy with many, many more considering restructuring to give more curriculum time to E Bacc subjects, squeezing other subjects out," said the union's general secretary, Chris Keates.

Deborah Annetts, chief executive of the Incorporated Society of Musicians also said there was evidence of an impact on music in schools.

"Our own research - to be published in the near future - shows that 60% of those working in schools have already noticed a negative impact on music education since the introduction of the English Baccalaureate. Among these, 77% noticed a decline in the number of pupils picking music as an option," she said.

The ASCL head teachers' union welcomed the report saying that the EBacc would create a "perverse incentive for schools to concentrate on those subjects at the expense of others".

Continue reading the main story

Just 8% of children eligible for free school meals were entered for the EBacc subjects last year”

End Quote Nick Gibb Schools minister Kevin Stannard of the Girls' Day School Trust, representing independent girls' schools, said the EBacc "elevates the interests of some academic disciplines over others - for no obvious educational reason".

"The government's performance tables are supposed to be about transparency. The EBacc is certainly that - it is possible to see right through it."

Two Conservative MPs on the committee, Charlotte Leslie and Damian Hinds, voiced their support for the EBacc "as a means of leveling the playing field and giving our poorest children a fighting chance of taking the GCSEs that unlock our top universities and chances in life".

Schools Minister Nick Gibb argued that the EBacc would make sure that children had access to subjects that would be valuable for work or university.

"These academic subjects reflect the knowledge and skills young people need to progress to further study or to rewarding employment.

"It cannot be right that children from the poorest backgrounds are significantly less likely to have the opportunity to take GCSEs in these subjects than children from more advantaged areas.

"Just 8% of children eligible for free school meals were entered for the EBacc subjects last year compared to 22% overall."

Shadow education secretary Andy Burnham said: "This damning verdict leaves the secretary of state and his ministers isolated.

"There is now a clear professional consensus that, if left unchanged, the English Bacc will have a number of damaging effects on our school system.

"It limits student choice, narrowing the range of subjects on offer in schools. We are already hearing that RE, music and art teachers are being made redundant."

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Student visa plans rushed - MPs

26 July 2011 Last updated at 00:01 GMT Visa cuts: Ministers say there are too many bogus students who are working in the UK MPs have accused the government of rushing plans to curb student visas, saying they could harm the economy.

The Home Affairs Committee said that it was concerned that official figures indicated the restrictions could cost the economy ?3.4bn.

Officials estimate the measures will cut net migration by 230,000 by the end of the current parliament.

Immigration minister Damian Green said the changes were introduced after full and extensive consultation.

Ministers announced earlier this year they would cut the number of students visas as part of their target to bring net immigration down to tens of thousands by the end of the Parliament.

The plan involves tougher English language tests, greater scrutiny of private colleges and restrictions on when students and their dependents can work. Officials estimate that the plans will eventually reduce the number of students by 75,000 a year, down from roughly 250,000 a year at present.

Continue reading the main story Education: ?407m Health: ?339m Crime: ?92m UKBA investigations: ?44m Public services total: ?840m (Source: Home Office; Savings estimated over four years)The government's "impact assessment", an official document detailing the predicted financial effects of the changes, was published 12 weeks after the proposals were revealed.

That document said that the total costs of cutting student numbers could be ?3.5bn, but that would be partially offset by savings of ?1.1bn. MPs said they were concerned the policy was going ahead as planned, despite the potential economic costs.

Keith Vaz, chairman of the home affairs committee, said: "The Home Secretary's dismissal of the impact assessment is very disappointing. The government appears to be not only making policy without adequate immigration statistics, but also ignoring its own evidence. We reiterate the need for an immigration policy which is both evidence-based and does not adversely affect the British economy."

Immigration minister Damian Green said: "The changes were introduced after full and extensive consultation. The extent of the crisis which this government inherited in the immigration system meant that tough early action was necessary."

In a separate report, MPs on the Scottish Affairs Committee said that the student visa changes would "adversely and unduly" affect Scotland.

The Scottish Affairs Committee said: "These proposals will have a disproportionate effect in Scotland, both because of the disproportionate size of the sector in Scotland and as they are primarily designed to address a problem which is largely insignificant in Scotland.

"In doing so, these proposals risk compromising and diminishing not only the high standard of education provided by higher education institutions in Scotland but also threaten the valuable contribution of the international students who study at these institutions, to Scottish society."

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Peer-review 'needs improvements'

28 July 2011 Last updated at 08:19 GMT By Daniel Boettcher BBC News The committee recommended peer-review training in particular for early-career researchers MPs have recommended improvements to the way scientific papers are checked before they are published.

The House of Commons Science and Technology Committee report said this "peer-review" process of science journals should be more transparent.

Their recommendations include making scientific data publicly available, and formal training for reviewers.

Their report also recommends the appointment of an oversight body to ensure integrity in science research.

"Peer-reviewed" has become a byword for "scientifically sound and approved", but complaints have arisen in recent years that the process can sometimes work to suppress radical new ideas, and can fail to catch fraudulent research.

The committee said ethical and scientific misconduct damages peer-review and science as a whole, referring to examples like the MMR controversy.

Dr Andrew Wakefield, who suggested a link between the MMR vaccine and autism, was struck off the medical register by the General Medical Council last year after it found him guilty of serious professional misconduct over the way he carried out his research.

'Broader impact'

MPs want to see more consistent training for those involved in the review process, particularly for researchers in the early stages of their careers. In addition, they say appropriate use of internet tools could allow broader scrutiny of new research.

"Innovative approaches - such as the use of pre-print servers, open peer-review, increased transparency and online repository-style journals - should be explored by publishers," their report said.

The chair of the committee, Andrew Miller MP told BBC News: "The vast majority of science undertaken in this country is done with a high degree of integrity and the peer-review process broadly speaking is working well but we feel that improvements can be made."

One of the report's findings was that the oversight of research integrity was unsatisfactory. The MPs recommend that there should be an external regulator to deal with suspected cases of ethical misconduct, though the committee accepts that these are rare.

Mr Miller said: "It's not a case of how many times mistakes get made and how many times things slip through the net.

"It's the potential seriousness of errors or fraudulent activity that should cause us concern, and principally we need to think not just about the individual incident but the broader impact on public confidence in science."

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