How Relevant Are Teachers In Preparing Today’s Students For Tomorrow’s Jobs? | French and British Education.
Bn121_pr. Higher Education. Why the baccalaureate beats A-levels | Agnès Poirier. Many students take only three subjects at A-level. Photograph: Rui Vieira/PA I have always found the concept of A-levels simply maddening. For the continental lazy lycéen, it's the ultimate dream. Just imagine: you not only get to choose the subjects you're going to be assessed on at the end of your school years – a mere three subjects in most cases – but these are, needless to say, the subjects you're best at. Easy peasy! No surprise then that voices in Britain regularly express their concern about "cheap" A-levels and ask for the introduction of the baccalaureate, a system where teenagers are assessed on a large variety of subjects, in which they necessarily rarely all fare well.
This week, the Royal Society vented its frustration at seeing a drop in "difficult" subjects such as science taken as A-levels. Why is school such a hard place to be gay? | Society. The teenage years are tough. Fuelled by hormones, laced with uncertainty, they are the years when we try to work out who we are and find our place in the world. We can swing from intense excitement to extreme embarrassment in a heartbeat, while all the time wanting nothing more than to make friends and fit in. It's hard for everybody but, without a doubt, for gay teens it can be a lot harder. When even the word "gay" has become a synonym for "crappy" or "pathetic", it's clear that the problems are incredibly deep-rooted. Some shocking statistics: according to Stonewall, 92% of LGBT teens have been verbally abused because of their sexuality; 41% have been physically bullied; 17% have had death threats.
But I went to a fairly rough London comprehensive school where survival was Darwinian. There is no doubt that, in many ways, things have got better for us queer folk and yet, despite all the progress, we still live in a country where two-thirds of gay teenagers are bullied at school. Geoffrey Crossick (président de l’University of London) : « Le gouvernement veut créer un marché de l’enseignement supérieur dans lequel l’étudiant serait un consommateur »
World gets second helpings of girl's school dinner blog as ban is overturned. When nine-year-old Martha Payne set up a blog six weeks ago, to show pictures of her daily school lunch – sometimes meagre, often fried – it was meant as a writing project that would be seen by few others than her close relatives. But word spread over social media, and in just over a week more than 100,000 people had viewed Martha's stark photos of her food, sitting on a white, prison-style tray. Still, she could have been little prepared for the deluge of publicity on Friday, when Argyll and Bute council was forced into a humiliating climbdown over a decision to effectively close the blog, by banning photography in the school dining hall. By 11pm, her blog, NeverSeconds, which has drawn the support of Jamie Oliver, had attracted more than 4m page views and she had managed to raise more than £52,000 for the charity Mary's Meals.
Martha's father said the pictures, taken with the permission of her teachers, were intended only for "aunts and uncles, grannies and grandpas". Education budget faces deepest cut since 1950s, warns IFS. Education spending is being slashed by more than 14% – the largest cut since the 1950s, Britain's leading tax and spending experts have warned. Researchers at the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), a highly respected thinktank, have calculated that public spending on UK education will fall by 14.4% between 2010-11 and 2014-15.
They said this represented the largest cut in education spending over any four-year period since at least the 1950s. Their study – Trends in Education and Schools Spending – found school and college building projects will suffer the most from cuts to funding. The budgets for these projects will be more than halved. Universities will fare the next worst with a 40% cut, although this will be offset by higher tuition fees of up to £9,000. The majority of schools will see a real-term budget reduction over the next four years, the researchers said, although those with the most deprived pupils will see a real-term increase in state funds.