“THE SANDS OF EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH ARE LITTERED WITH THE WHITE BONES OF WELL INTENTIONED ENDEAVOURS”. A Viewpoint. Paper presented at a conference. 1997. The recent announcement to scrap the White Paper on ‘Lifelong Learning’, to be replaced by a series of consultation papers shows the fragmented situation as far as the Government’s long term strategic vision for education is concerned. This White Paper was supposed to draw together and respond to a number of pre-existing initiatives and research, namely Higginson, Kennedy, Fryer and possibly Dearing. One could add to these the ideas of the Labour Party in opposition on the
Browsing 3 Articles Originally Published in: “Times Educational Supplement”
Science Struggles as a Sustainable Symbol of Survival.
Science education post-16 is facing major threats, particularly vocational science in further education. University science faculties struggle each year to hit targets. They are increasingly lowering their entry requirements and poaching students already enrolled for college higher national diplomas. Reasons for the threats include the continued hostility to science and technology, particularly the vocational awards, despite a world increasingly oriented towards science and technology. If Britain is to survive as a global economy and deal with changes from the information revolution, we need more employees highly qualified in science and technology and more basic scientific literacy among the general public.
Don’t Catch the Drift
Colleges must not sacrifice their Further Education (FE) work in an effort to make themselves like universities, says Dick Evans Suddenly, politicians are talking about the dangers of academic drift and the shift from vocationalism without realising their policies are driving these trends, Do they really understand the meaning of these terms and, more importantly, the dangers that they will bring? First, consider “academic drift”. Following the announcement that the Government wants one in three young people in higher education by the year 2000, many further education colleges felt they should play their part in realising this target. No real