Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

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Drawing parents into the education debate

In Uncategorized on January 6, 2010 by Tessa Stone Tagged: ,

the_archers_radio_4_programme One of the many good things about the Christmas break this year was that it allowed me effortlessly to mix work with a guilty pleasure – catching up with the Archers.

Those who are not already devotees of Radio 4’s ‘everyday story of country people’ and the longest running soap opera in the world are advised to steer clear.

As those of us who imbibed it at our mother’s apron strings know, passive listening in the early years can lead to a life-long addiction. It doesn’t happen that often, but the Archers are running an education-related story line.

Pip Archer, who aims ultimately to take over the family farm, had started her A levels at the local 6th form college, but decided after the first term that she wanted to call it quits. Cue heated argument between Dad (‘You’re throwing your future away and anyway, you’ll be much more use to us with A levels’) and daughter (‘No I won’t and anyway, I’ve made up my mind and I know what’s best for me…’)

In true soap opera style, this one is bound to run and run, although early indications suggest that A levels will win out – this is Radio 4 after all! However, what’s most interesting about the storyline is the role of the parent in guiding and supporting their (often very unwilling) child.

At BrightsideUNIAID we’re currently struggling with the conundrum of how to engage and inform parents in the ‘Information, Advice and Guidance’ process.

Adequately and effectively supporting parents is really hard to do – not least because those whose positive input, or just engagement, would most benefit their children are often the hardest to reach by third parties such as ourselves. Plus, there’s the problem of ensuring that in the process of reaching out to parents we don’t alienate the young people who are our main focus, and for some of whom the impartial support of an adult mentor, who is not their parent, teacher, or any other authority figure, can be the major benefit of ementoring support such as ours.

The primary importance of parental influence (and especially maternal influence) in educational attainment cannot be overlooked, however. So, difficult though it is, this is one circle we have to try and square. I’m hoping the Archers may come up with some interesting suggestions. Gives me an excuse to keep listening ‘for work purposes’, at least…

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Higher Education funding cuts won’t go unnoticed by the sector

In Uncategorized on December 23, 2009 by Tessa Stone Tagged: ,

Announcing cuts to HE funding while everyone’s on holiday? Maybe Christmas isn’t such a good time to try and bury this particular bad news.

Am I being too cynical this close to Christmas, or did the Government think that if it announced its £533m university funding cuts two days before Christmas when the entire HE sector is very firmly on its hols, it might just sneak the bad news out without anyone noticing? Nice try, but no cigar.

The penalty of £3,700 incurred by universities for every student over-recruited strikes particular fear into this ex-admissions tutor’s heart.

The numbers game in University recruitment is a dark art at the best of times, and in a recession I’m sure that second guessing what proportion of students offered places will both accept the place and get their grades becomes even more impossible than ever it was.

That the Government ‘wants to see more degrees completed over two years’ via fast-track courses is the sort of news that will affect more than just admissions tutors’ mental health, however. This will presage a fundamental alteration of our education system that no-one in the sector will let pass unnoticed.

I think that the government may have misjudged its burying of this particular bad news though. At pretty much the only time of year when our HE colleagues take a real break from just keeping their heads above the academic water, they now have this proposition on which to focus their undivided thoughts and attention (when not watching Sound of Music for the 80th time, of course). We shall await their considered response in the New Year with bated breath…

The only disadvantage I’ve found of having joined the merry army of bloggers is that I now have another New Year’s resolution to add to my burgeoning list – to try and write more frequently. After all, the signs are it’s going to be a particularly eventful year for higher education in particular! In the meantime though, I wish everyone a very merry Christmas, and a peaceful 2010.

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If the Student Loans Company wants to build a proper partnership with Universities, it needs to start speaking the same language

In Uncategorized on November 17, 2009 by Tessa Stone Tagged: ,

 Spent two days in Leeds last week at the Student Loans Company (SLC) stakeholder conference.   Colleagues were right to warn me about the risk of ‘death by powerpoint’.  I get all the exciting gigs!

 It was, however, a useful introduction to a strata of university organisations I never knew existed, and I’ve collected several new organisational acronyms, most significantly NASMA, the National Association of Student Money Advisers, and Amosshe, ‘the Student Services Organisation’ (presumably no-one else knows what the acronym actually stands for either).

 AMHH06Most interesting, apart from hearing from the horse’s mouth just how bad the student loans chaos of the summer had been (bad enough to warrant an independent investigation, but still not as bad as the press would have us believe, apparently) was seeing the SLC operate.

There are many quangos in HE (HEFCE, Offa, and the QAA you will have heard of, the Leadership Foundation, and the Committee of University Chairs maybe not..) but the SLC is an odd one, in that it was originally a ‘real’ business, and therefore largely speaks a completely different language to its stakeholders, which makes the dialogue between them a fascinating thing. 

 In the world of the SLC, students are ‘customers’ and student loans are ‘products’.  They have a ‘Customer Insight Team’ whose job it is to ‘identify, size and package improvement opportunities’.  I could go on…  But while they clearly speak ‘business’ very fluently, they don’t yet speak ‘education’.  

 I was most interested in the session on IAG (information, advice and guidance), and was busy thinking about the ways in which we might be able to support whatever they’re planning in schools with some of our online money management tools and resources. 

Turned out they didn’t mean IAG at all though, at least not as the DCSF might understand it, just information about their ‘products and services…’ 

 Maybe I’m just not properly tuned in yet, but it did rather underline what became the conference mantra – the plea for better, and speedier communication from SLC to its most important stakeholders, the universities. 

 And while there was clearly genuine goodwill, and real partnership work happening on various joint projects, one senses that it’s going to be a rocky road to success until the two sides are able to coalesce around a common language.

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Is a school admission lottery the only route to equality?

In Uncategorized on November 16, 2009 by Tessa Stone Tagged: ,

admissionticketstub2660_smallIt’s school admissions time again, and parents’ desperation that their child will be able to go to the school of their choice in 2010 is being heightened by the fallout of this year’s admissions round.

 The Chief Schools Adjudicator has issued his report on those who lied to get into the best schools, Harrow Council has failed in its attempt to prosecute a parent accused of “cheating” the application system, and our new Supreme Court is hearing an appeal from the Jewish Free School in London against an earlier ruling that they can’t select pupils on the basis of faith. 

Fiona Millar, an impassioned commentator in this area, was surely missing the point though when she suggested that “most schools aren’t failing, and most children with a supportive home environment can get a perfectly good education in their local school if it is …. good enough.”

It’s been a long time since the middle classes have been satisfied with ‘good enough’, particularly when it comes to education. 

 In it for the long game that is university admissions, parents see each move in this complex journey as utterly critical, and ‘good enough’ is never going to wash when ‘the best’ might have been an option.  And of course, for many the credit crunch will have cut off the independent school escape route that they had been banking on in extremis. 

So all in all, admissions next year will be more, not less, febrile, and if Ms Millar thinks that a “warning on schools’ admissions forms” about a Local Authority clampdown on cheats will really “help restore integrity to the system” then she’s sorely underestimated the level of angst in middle England – angst which will only be fuelled by threats of prosecution.  If the problem is so bad we’re having to criminalise parents then it’s got to be even worse than we think, right?

 When I was at the Sutton Trust we advocated the use of lotteries in school admissions, on the grounds that it would at least be truly fair, and that it might just provide the fillip needed to sort out the much abused catchment area system.  Force middle class parents to engage with their second or third choice school and they’ll quickly make sure that bad becomes better and good enough becomes best, or so goes the argument. 

 The reality of a lottery can seem extremely unfair on an individual basis, of course, and as a parent the thought that my boys might be allocated to any school other than the village primary 10 minutes walk away fills me with abject horror.  But I still can’t see any other way, in policy terms, of sorting out this unholy mess.  Let’s all hope the Government can…

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Could I get excited about a Tory government?!

In Uncategorized on October 23, 2009 by Tessa Stone

david cameronCameron is right when he says we should avoid new initiatives and quangos. We should support the third sector to build on their considerable experience.

As one of the generation who came of age under Margaret Thatcher, Sunday night’s Westminster Hour piece by Peter Oborne on David Cameron’s political philosophy proved most unsettling.

This is not a sentence I ever thought I’d write, but their discussion of Edmund Burke was music to my ears…

Cameron outlined the salience of Burke’s conception of ‘little platoons’ in helping form his vision of a society where local organisations such as voluntary bodies and third sector organisations should be supported in what they do. Should the next government be Conservative, Cameron said, then the incoming ministers should ask ‘what is already there? Is there a charity or voluntary body doing this work who we could help and work with, rather than thinking we can invent something afresh?’

Hallelujah! One of the greatest frustrations of the 7 years I’ve been working in the Third Sector has been the almost universal refusal of government to support and underpin organisations which, for relatively little, could have a potentially massive impact.

Instead, we have seen sums of money that bring tears to the eyes thrown at quangos, which first spend months ‘consulting’ (usually with the wrong people) before spending half of their eye-watering budget on an infrastructure (usually consisting of ‘hubs and spokes’) before distributing the rest to a new set of organisations or individuals whose brief appears to be to reinvent the wheel.

I exaggerate for effect (but not that much…) and that’s not to say that the money’s all been entirely wasted. It’s just that we know we could do at least as much and I’d hope a lot more, for a hell of a lot less.

I won’t hold my breath, but if Cameron’s Tories really would take the brave step of not throwing millions at new initiatives but instead supporting Third Sector organisations, like mine, to turn the pilot projects we’ve been forced to subsist on into sustainable national best practice, then I for one could get more excited about a change of government than I ever thought possible.

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The battle for Oxbridge- comprehensives vs independent schools

In Uncategorized on October 20, 2009 by Tessa Stone Tagged: ,

Given that independent schools maintain a tight grip on the top 30 Universities, should Universities compromise on grades to encourage widening participation?

At its recent conference the HMC (which represents the Heads of 250 leading independent schools) released a report it had commissioned on ‘The strengthening relationship between leading universities and independent schools’

Using data from 2003/4-2006/7, Professor Richardson of Exeter University concluded that “across almost all measures, independent school entrants to the top 30 universities maintained their relative position. Among the top 10 universities independent school entrants have undoubtedly consolidated and enhanced their positions in almost all areas.”eton college quadrangle

This is potentially an interesting call for the HMC. On the one hand it offers great reassurance to fee-paying parents, who now have no need to switch Johnny or Jemima to the local comprehensive in order to increase their chances of getting in to Oxbridge.

On the other hand, it risks reinforcing the determination of the hard-working university Widening Participation departments to level the playing field.

However, one doesn’t have to read beyond the executive summary to see why the HMC won’t, in fact, be too worried. As Prof Williamson points out, the independent sector’s dominance is explained their excellent exam grades, and their high concentration on ‘strategically important and vulnerable’ subjects, such as the sciences, and modern foreign languages, in which the leading universities dominate.

And here’s the rub. Universities can help, but cannot fix the differential levels of attainment at 16 and 18, and have to be very, very careful before compromising on grades. That’s not to say it can’t, and shouldn’t, be done, and the report itself suggests that successful schemes which do accept state school candidates with lower grades such as those run by St George’s Medical School and Leeds University are ‘valuable and might be expanded’.

It’s an approach that government, too, has been increasingly supportive of , but these are slow-burn, high-intensity, expensive options. So, HMC schools clearly feel they’re taking a fairly safe punt that until and unless the state sector can match them, there will only ever be so much the universities can, will, and should do to try and bridge the gap.

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Do students get a valuable University experience?

In Uncategorized on October 19, 2009 by Tessa Stone Tagged:

 

Alumni will only donate to future students if they feel that their time at University was meaningful. Proper advice and guidance is the first step to achieving this.

 

Further to the theme of my last post, if today’s students are to be persuaded to invest in future generations then their own experience of university has got to have been transparently worth it.

However, if the recent report of HEFCE’s ‘teaching quality and student experience’ committee is anything to go by, then many institutions will have to sharpen up their act before they can make that all-important fundraising call.

It’s interesting following the thread of comments prompted by the Guardian’s coverage of this report. Too many university academics, like teachers, feel beleaguered, overworked and undervalued (literally as well as metaphorically). And as one who escaped academe and whom wild horses would be hard pushed to drag back, they have my utmost sympathy.

But, improving academics’ pay and conditions, will not, by itself, ensure a universally positive student experience.

Is University a valuable experience?According to HEFCE’s report there are courses where contact time is too limited, for example, and where students will be justified in feeling that their course was mis-sold. The NUS is right to call for universities to provide more consistent, reliable and comparative information about courses and institutions.

And maybe, in these straightened economic times, its suggestion that HEIs stop competing to produce the glossiest brochure is not as naïve as it at first appears.

But information alone is not enough without better quality advice and guidance to help students interpret that information to best effect.

As it currently stands, the lack of advice and guidance in this area is one of the biggest barriers to widening participation in Higher Education, and to making sure those from non-traditional backgrounds have a positive and fruitful university experience and graduate with a meaningful degree.

Brightside is working with Birmingham City University on an ementoring scheme aimed at overcoming this deficit, focusing not just on recruiting but retaining WP students and launching them successfully into the world of work post-graduation. It’s a holistic, thoughtful approach to the student experience which will, we hope, ensure that the participants feel their time in HE was indeed transparently worth it.

If this inspires them some way down the line to help the University support future generations then it’ll be an added and very real bonus.

 

 

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Should students help to pay for their successors?

In Uncategorized on October 15, 2009 by Tessa Stone Tagged: ,

one american dollarCan we really expect UK graduates to contribute money so that others can access University? It will take a big change in attitude.

I was interested to read last week that Oxford University’s new Vice Chancellor is suggesting that the UK’s ‘Ivy League’ should go American, and introduce means-tested bursaries.

He makes this suggestion from the comfortable position of having inherited enough wealthy, influential and loyal alumni from whom to raise the necessary money.

UK universities have been making increasingly Herculean, and professional, fundraising efforts over recent years, and are gradually overcoming our cultural aversion to asking for money.

However, it’s going to take more than just the expansion of our euphemistically known ‘development’ sector to provide the sort of support that disadvantaged young people are going to need, particularly if recent forecasts about the future level of tuition fees are realistic, as one suspects they are.

If the UK is going to enjoy a fully-funded HE sector in the future, we will need to move even further away from the welfare state mentality that education should be free at the point of use.  Until then, the present hard-fought truce, where those who benefit from HE pay for themselves through a heavily discounted loan that only needs repaying once they can afford it, can only be a holding position.

Many US undergraduates believe not only that they should pay for their own university education, but most importantly that they should help pay for those less fortunate than themselves.  The sharpest operators start this process before they’ve even graduated, with final year students directing their ‘RAG-week’ equivalent to provide bursaries for the incoming first years, so setting the tone – and the focus of students’ natural altruism – right from the outset.

The problem for UK universities wanting to raise money for student support today is that it will take years, if not generations to affect this sort of change in attitude here.

As a nation, we’re very good at digging deep to support animals in distress, and increasingly good at supporting people in distress.
But getting graduates to support those who can’t pay for the life and social mobility-changing experience university can provide is going to take some doing.

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How do we fix the broken Higher Education system?

In Uncategorized on October 1, 2009 by Tessa Stone Tagged:

We need to provide young people with varied and meaningful goals, especially after the government’s failure to provide enough university places.

Over 100,000 students will be disappointed this year.

So, the Government whose aim was to get 50% of young people into higher education presided over a situation where over 100,000 university applicants faced disappointment due to a shortage of places.

Cap on university places

We can’t just blame the government – the cap imposed on university places had a lot to answer for. However, a demographic bulge of 18 year-olds, coupled with the credit crunch, turned a drama into a crisis for an awful lot of young people this summer.

The risk now is that this could become a wider crisis of social mobility. It could well be the case that when the dust settles, it is state educated and disadvantaged young people who end up being disproportionately squeezed out of this admissions round. If that happens, we risk seeing the good work of widening participation in the last 10 years undone, and that really would be a national crisis.

Alternatives to Higher Education

Given the lack of university places the real question is, what’s the alternative for our young people? What the ‘student place scramble’ has exposed is the longer term imbalance in the system. With a service-dominated economy seeing ever more jobs requiring degrees, and no truly respected alternatives to an academic track, young people who miss out on university also miss out on a good career.

A number of organisations – my own charity BrightsideUNIAID included  – are working as hard as they can to help disadvantaged young people in particular make up for the national deficit in information, advice and guidance. We want them to be able to ‘play the system’ the way their more privileged peers have been doing for years.

But when the system is so clearly broken, isn’t it time we also started thinking beyond information, advice and guidance? While we need to help people negotiate the HE labyrinth, we also need to find another route for those who really aren’t achieving their potential. For these young people we need to provide some straightforward alternatives to achieve varied and meaningful goals.

How to do that without perpetuating a two-tier system is a topic for another day, but in the meantime the Edge Foundation is taking a lead in raising the status of practical and vocational learning and their “6 steps to change” manifesto makes interesting reading.

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