School makes 'umbrella dance' record attempt

22 June 2011 Last updated at 16:17 GMT The children and staff danced to Rihanna's Umbrella song A Black Country school is hoping a dance event with a difference will put them in the world record books.

Leighswood Primary School in Aldridge attempted to break the record for the largest "umbrella dance" on Wednesday.

Just over 570 pupils and staff took part in the choreographed routine, complete with multi-coloured umbrellas.

The current record is held by 492 people in a town in Texas, US. The school hopes to find out in a couple of weeks if it has been successful.

Organised by local performance artist, Tom Murphy, the children had to dance together for five minutes while holding an umbrella. Their choice of song was Umbrella by Rihanna.

Videos of the attempt, along with documents and witness statements, will now be sent to Guinness World Records, which will assess if a record has been broken.

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'Record' numbers saved from abuse

31 May 2011 Last updated at 08:19 GMT Ceop's Chief Executive Peter Davies says there is far more abuse going on that can be brought to light

More than 400 children have been identified as victims of abuse over the past year by the UK's national centre for child protection.

The Child Exploitation and Online Protection centre (Ceop) said the children had been safeguarded or protected as a result.

And it said more than 500 people had been arrested for child sex offences.

But the "great tragedy" is that much child abuse goes unreported, said its chief executive Peter Davies.

Ceop was set up in 2006 to track online paedophiles and bring them to court.

In its annual report, the centre said 414 children were helped, 513 people arrested and 132 offender networks broken up in the UK in the past year. This is a record number of children and a record number of arrests for the centre.

Over a five-year period the agency said it helped to dismantle more than 394 high-risk sex offender networks and arrest 1,644 suspected paedophiles.

'Suffering in silence'

According to the report, images on the internet appear to show that younger children are increasingly becoming victims of abuse.

Mr Davies told the BBC: "The great tragedy and the great challenge for us is that so much child abuse goes unreported.

"One of the unique things we do is use the internet to identify people who pose a risk to children and identify children who are at risk who otherwise would have just carried on suffering in silence.

"There is far more child abuse going on out there than ever gets reported. It's a major concern, it's something everyone needs to pull together and do something about."

He added: "Our contribution to that is to highlight it and do what we can using our technical expertise and our partnerships to stamp out the offending.

"And make sure that children and young people, and their parents and whoever cares for them, have the best possible advice and guidance so that they can empower themselves."

Mr Davies said Ceop was trying to stay ahead of developments in technology, including in the area of social networking sites.

'Non-statistical crime'

Jon Taylor, an internet safety expert and former police officer who went undercover posing as a 12-year-old girl, said it was relatively easy to pose online - either as a child who may be groomed or as a sexual predator - to "mingle" and find out what people were doing.

But he said it was difficult because the internet is not "proactively policed", and instead reacts to intelligence and information.

"The big problem arises from the fact that we are dealing with what we call a non-statistical crime because you have to understand that the police do police through statistics.

"If it's reported it'll get a reaction, and that's one of the biggest problems with child abuse, especially online child abuse, that it doesn't really get reported," he said.

He said it was also important for people to understand the "whole picture" of how children use the internet, including chat rooms and webcam chats.

"There are all these different areas that sexual and child predators will use for their own benefit," he said.

'Break taboos'

Ceop is currently affiliated to the Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca), but is to be merged with the new National Crime Agency when it is formed in 2013.

The move prompted the resignation of Ceop's former head Jim Gamble over concerns that the changes were motivated by a desire to cut the number of quangos rather than improve child protection.

Mr Davies insisted that, as well as retaining its own budget, the unit would also keep "its own brand, its own approach and its own dedication to putting the safety and well-being of children first".

He said the agency was "bringing this crime more into the open and are working collectively with many others to break down the taboos and obstacles that stop children getting the help and support they need".

A spokeswoman for child protection charity NSPCC said: "This impressive work by Ceop underscores the constant and serious threat to vulnerable children.

"Latest figures from our helpline show a record number of children had to be given immediate protection because they are at risk of harm.

"But the good news is more people are no longer standing idly by but are reporting these cases."

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Record numbers of overseas students

10 March 2011 Last updated at 00:19 GMT By Sean Coughlan BBC News education correspondent The number of international students around the world is continuing to rise sharply, with provisional figures from Unesco's Institute for Statistics revealing an annual increase of 12%.

The final figures for 2009, to be published in May, are expected to show the number of international students rising to 3.43 million from 2.96 million, according to the Unesco statistics.

There are many different measures of overseas students - but this global figure from Unesco shows a huge spike in numbers this decade, rising by more than 75% since 2000.

The United States is the biggest destination. According to the Institute of International Education, the latest figures show there are 691,000 students in the US, with an annual value to the economy estimated at around $20bn (?12.3bn).

But its dominance now depends on the ever-growing number of arrivals from China, overtaking India as the largest single group of overseas students. The number of Chinese students in the US rose by almost 30% in a single year. The third biggest contingent in the US comes from South Korea.

China has become the firecracker in this market. There are more than 440,000 Chinese students abroad - and there are plans to rapidly increase the number of overseas students coming to China's universities, with an ambitious target of 500,000 places.

To put this into a longer-term perspective, the entire overseas student population in China could once have travelled in a minibus. In the early 1950s it consisted of 20 east Europeans.

Chasing quality

Driving the demand among Chinese to study abroad is a shortage of places on high-quality degree courses at home and the pressure to have an overseas qualification when chasing jobs, says Rahul Choudaha, associate director of the New York-based World Education Services.

Sign of the times: The expanding Chinese economy is drawing overseas students to Shanghai

The Chinese university system has expanded in terms of quantity, says Dr Choudaha, but it is struggling to keep pace with the demand for quality.

The plan to bring more overseas students into China is part of the country's drive to internationalise its economy and become a "knowledge power", says Dr Choudaha.

It's also a reflection of how much the culture of the overseas student market has changed - with western universities no longer able to depend on their pivotal position.

It was once a trade as stately as steamships, vaguely colonial in how it managed to make a nice little earner seem rather philanthropic.

Now it's more like international air travel, with the trade routes of this multi-billion business wrapping themselves around the globe in every direction.

The current intake of overseas students in China also shows a different kind of map of influence. The only European country in its top 10 is Russia - with the most overseas students in China coming from South Korea, the US, Japan, Thailand and Vietnam.

Overseas without the travel

It's also no longer necessarily about overseas students travelling from overseas.

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We don't consider their nationality, we just want the best”

End Quote Danielle Guichard-Ashbrook Massachusetts Institute of Technology Figures released by the British Council this week show that there are now more "overseas students" taking UK degrees in their own countries than there are overseas students coming to study in the UK.

The UK is the second biggest destination for overseas students.

But there are now 340,000 students taking UK university courses in their home countries, either through partnerships between UK and local universities or else through UK universities setting up branch campuses, such as Nottingham in Ningbo in China.

More than 160 branch campuses have been opened in more than 50 countries - mostly by US universities. There are also a multitude of partnerships and joint degrees as part of this academic cross-pollination.

According to the British Council, this type of "transnational" studying has increased by 70% in a decade.

The council's chief executive, Martin Davidson, says this is going to appeal to "students across the world who may not be able to afford to spend several years thousands of miles away from home".

Technology can only accelerate this process. Online degrees are making strides in the mainstream, with US firms such as Laureate teaming up with institutions such as Liverpool University to offer internet-based courses. Laureate has a network of university links in 24 countries.

Talent search

Another key to this growth in internationalisation is the competition for the most talented students and staff.

Major research institutions are like top football clubs, operating in in a kind of international zone, judged by international comparisons and competing to recruit the best individuals from around the world.

Students in Berlin: Universities have international catchment areas

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is widely-recognised as one of the best research universities in the world.

It might be physically based in Boston, but its cutting-edge postgraduate courses depend on recruiting the best students - and this means a global rather than a national catchment area.

About 40% of the students on graduate courses are from outside the US, says Danielle Guichard-Ashbrook, director and associate dean of the International Students Office.

"We open up admissions to the whole world. We don't consider their nationality, we just want the best - and we get them," she says.

There are more than a hundred different nationalities represented in the graduate intake - with the biggest numbers coming from China, India and South Korea.

Cash cows

The scale of the increase in international student numbers in university is not without risks.

In the UK, the current level of anxiety over proposed student visa restrictions reveals how much universities have come to depend on the income from overseas students.

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No student wants to be an export earner and the sooner we learn this the better”

End Quote Steven Schwartz Macquarie University, Sydney Steven Schwartz is vice chancellor of Macquarie University in Sydney, having previously worked in universities in the UK and US.

In Australia he has seen how quickly an expanding overseas student market can evaporate.

Indian public opinion was outraged after a series of attacks on Indian students in Australia in 2009. Applications from Indian students slumped by 50% - and threatened an industry which had grown to become Australia's third biggest export.

He says the lesson from this rise and fall is that university systems should always remember that students are individuals rather than walking fee cheques.

"Studying with students from diverse backgrounds, domestic students learn about other cultures, cuisines and languages. They also learn about fairness and tolerance and teamwork and fair play. These lessons are just as important as any learned in class," says Prof Schwartz.

"However these lessons will be negated when we treat international students as simply income sources. No student wants to be an export earner and the sooner we learn this the better."

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