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Caz
Last Chance Saloon
Joined: 23 Apr 2006
Posts: 836
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 Posted: Fri Nov 16, 2007 8:57 am Post subject: What academy schools consider it appropriate to teach |
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http://education.guardian.co.uk/schools/story/0,,2132753,00.html | Quote: | School with call centre training site in classroom criticised for lowering pupils' expectations
· Assistant head says pupils gain wide range of skills
· NUT representative says scheme is step too far
Matthew Taylor
Monday July 23, 2007
The Guardian
A secondary school which has opened an on-site call centre where pupils can practise selling mobile phone contracts and answering customer complaints has been criticised for lowering children's expectations.
The centre, at Hylton Red House school in Sunderland, was set up with the help of EDF Energy, which runs its own call centre a couple of miles away. Pupils taking the "preparation course" - worth half a GCSE - answer queries from computer-generated customers.
The assistant headteacher, Helen Elderkin, said the scheme gave 15- and 16-year-olds a wide range of skills that would help them to get a job or continue with their education.
However, Howard Brown, secretary of the National Union of Teachers in Sunderland, said schools had a duty to educate pupils rather than turn out efficient, pliant workers. "We do have to equip our children for a variety of different jobs, but I think this is a step too far," he said.
"It seems that this is going back to the old days when we told children round here that they had to go straight down the mines when they left. Now the mines have gone and we are saying they have to go and work in a call centre. We have an obligation to give them a bit more than that."
The first group of pupils graduated from the scheme last week, and Ms Elderkin said it had been a huge success. "It gives them a great deal of confidence and it allowed them to get a taste of a real working environment. Until now they have not been able to have this kind of experience until they left school."
Staff from EDF Energy helped to turn a classroom at the school into a call centre called Train 4 Life.
"This has been a great example of working closely with business and the City of Sunderland College," said Ms Elderkin. "The children approached us because they wanted something different and together we came up with a call centre. These lessons give them real confidence as well as skills in IT and communication that will help whether they stay in education or go out and look for work."
The school was deemed to be failing last year, although it has improved and was recently taken out of special measures. It has signed up to the government's academy programme and will reopen in a new building in 2009.
Most of its pupils come from estates just outside Sunderland with high levels of deprivation and unemployment.
Ms Elderkin said that the call centre course, which is also open to adults in the area, was part of a wider attempt to support the community. "We are committed to raising pupils' aspirations and offering adults, many of them former pupils, every opportunity to access training and employment that is going to be of real benefit," she said.
Angela Bryan, 15, said the call centre course had already proved popular with pupils and at the school. "A lot of people want to do it because it teaches us how to use computers better and about getting used to dealing with people on the telephone." Another pupil, Vicky Ward, said: "It's like proper work experience and that means it is useful, which makes it more popular." |
Note that the assistant Headteacher, Elderkin, claims that 'The children approached us because they wanted something different and together we came up with a call centre' although, co-incidentally, 'The centre, at Hylton Red House school in Sunderland, was set up with the help of EDF Energy, which runs its own call centre a couple of miles away.' Who is she deluding? Does this mean that the students approached EDF and asked them to take over the school as an academy????? |
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Caz
Last Chance Saloon
Joined: 23 Apr 2006
Posts: 836
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| Posted: Fri Nov 16, 2007 9:12 am Post subject: |
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http://socialistworker.org.uk/article.php?article_id=6194 | Quote: | Making a school a business academy
Schools should not have to scrape to business to get good facilities (Pic: Guy Smallman)
by Kevin Ovenden
Over the next five years New Labour plans another massive handover of public services to big business — striking at the heart of comprehensive education. Under the city academies programme private sponsors are to get their hands on 200 schools by 2010.
The scheme is at the centre of the government’s five year education strategy. It is pressing ahead despite calls by a Labour-dominated Commons committee last month for a moratorium.
Seventeen academies have already been set up and 42 more are in the pipeline. They are based on the idea, trailed under Margaret Thatcher, that private companies should run education.
Academies are independent schools funded by public money. The chief executive of the quango set up to promote them, Rona Kiley, says, “The people who are interested include corporations, some of the banks are providing sponsorship, and wealthy individuals.”
But the sponsorship they bring in return for getting to control a whole school is negligible. The government has lowered the contribution that the privateers have to make to, at most, £2 million of building costs. In some planned academies it is £1.5 million. That is about 8 percent of costs. The rest is public money handed to the sponsors.
The government then provides up to £7.2 million a year for each school’s running costs.
Building costs have soared. Originally, schools were to be built for £10 million each. But the building costs for the 12 academies opened last September averaged £23 million.
Donations
Even the initial outlay by sponsors can be clawed back. Meanwhile, the individuals and outfits taking over the 200 academies are to be given £5 billion of public money as a down payment and regular government donations to meet running costs.
The academic results for this cash, which state schools can only dream of, are poorer than for the comprehensive schools which they replace — which were supposedly beyond redemption.
Academies are represented in local meetings of schools that are meant to establish sensible admissions policies. But the academies are able to select their students. They are only accountable to the education secretary.
There is already evidence that academies are selecting more able children so that the school is more likely to boast of “improved” exam results.
This can happen even where the academy supposedly has a fair admissions system of taking children from different bands (ranges of academic achievement).
A parent told the Guardian last year of one academy in London, “The new academy is keeping to the letter of its policy by selecting on bands. But places are going to those at the top of each band.
“One boy in the middle of the top band was turned down, while others near the top who live further away from the academy got in.”
This further distorts the pattern of education provision locally, with sharper competition between schools, a break-up of any idea of a comprehensive intake and normal schools looking on as huge amounts of cash go to academies.
Sponsors are free to push their own pet schemes in academies. Parents in Bristol are worried that the academy there is focusing on hotel and catering work.
Sir Alec Reed’s West London Academy tries to bring business into all areas of the curriculum. He says he wants every child to see themselves as “Me PLC”.
The Bexley Academy has a mock stock exchange. Sir Peter Vardy’s evangelical school in Gateshead tells history teachers to consider in class whether Britain avoided invasion by Hitler thanks to “an act of god”.
Underfunded
Some parents can be attracted to the idea of a new academy. But this is only because they are replacing schools that have been panned under the government’s policy of naming and shaming underfunded schools.
As with the privatisation of council housing, parents are told the only way they can expect extra money is to opt for an academy. In this case they do not even get a vote.
Academies fit with New Labour’s policy for a three-tier system for 14 to 19 year olds. This will divide children into workplace training, work-related education and, for the middle classes and some working class students, an academic curriculum.
This represents an abandonment of comprehensive education. That’s why teachers and parents are mounting campaigns against the spread of academies, and why there is such disillusion with Tony Blair over what he said would be the defining feature of his government — education.
The following should be read alongside this article:
» City acadamies transforming education in their own image |
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Caz
Last Chance Saloon
Joined: 23 Apr 2006
Posts: 836
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| Posted: Thu Dec 06, 2007 2:51 pm Post subject: |
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Academies teach catering and hotel work, fashion retail, and how to be even better consumers.
The Great City Academy Fraud, Francis Beckett.
| Quote: | p. 157 In Bristol the academy focuses on vocational courses of study such as catering and hotel work.
Parents are concerned that their children are not getting enough opportunity to follow academic courses,
which is not how the academy was presented to them when it was first proposed. |
| Quote: | p. 119 Phillip Green has put up £12 million to set up a Fashion Retail Academy which will get its running costs
largely covered by the Government. Green, a billionaire businessman who owns some of Britain’s largest retailers,
is Britain’s fourth richest man, and lives in tax-exile in Monte Carlo |
| Quote: | p.108 Edison, the big American supplier of private educatin, was coming in (to Islington Green School). …
Edison was founded in 1994 by advertising man Chris Whittle. Whittle also created a television network called Channel One
which offered impoverished US schools what appeared to be a bargain. They would each get free use of a satellite receiver,
videos, televisions and a public address system. In return they promised to force pupils to wawtch a ten-minute current affairs
broadcast each day, with two minutes of advertising in the middle. Pepsi, Reebok, the US military, Twix and Clearasil were prepared
to pay $200,000 for a 30-second message to a captive teen market which could not play truant from the consumer society....
Edison's schools are not the successes that the apostles of privatized education would have you believe. The American Federation of Teachers
says: 'In 14 out opf 20 states where the company operates, Edison schools performed below average compared to public schools.' |
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Caz
Last Chance Saloon
Joined: 23 Apr 2006
Posts: 836
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| Posted: Thu Dec 06, 2007 2:53 pm Post subject: |
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And in some cases, not much else either:
http://education.guardian.co.uk/newschools/story/0,,1780247,00.html
| Quote: | Terry Wrigley, a senior lecturer at Edinburgh University and editor of the education journal Improving Schools, said that some academies were diverting children away from GCSEs to boost their standing in school league tables. The study found that many children had been switched from taking separate subjects at GCSE to the vocational GNVQ qualification, which counts as four GCSEs in government tables.
"There seems to be something important going on here," he said. "Of course we should value vocational as well as academic learning, but false equivalents simply let down the most vulnerable young people. It may be in the school's short term interests, and the government's, to improve exam statistics in this way. However, as soon as an individual applies for a job or university place, they will face problems. How many employers regard a GNVQ in computing plus a C in art as equal to five good GCSEs in different subjects, especially if you include English and maths?" |
However, it would be naive at this point in time to think that this is happening exclusively in Academies. Having taught GNVQ science in a comprehensive school in London, I did get a thorough understanding of what a stupid waste of time this course was (and still is I presume). Students who did appreciate what this could mean for their futher education rang colleges and asked if this course would get them into 6th form science. 'No' was the answer. They then looked around for another comprehensive to go to where they could study GCSE science instead. This school is earmarked to become an academy, apparently. |
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fish5133
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Joined: 13 Sep 2006
Posts: 2568
Location: One breath from Glory
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| Posted: Thu Dec 06, 2007 4:36 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: | School with call centre training site in classroom criticised for lowering pupils' expectations
· Assistant head says pupils gain wide range of skills
· NUT representative says scheme is step too far
Matthew Taylor
Monday July 23, 2007
The Guardian |
Have a friend who works in a call centre and because they have such a high turnover of staff they have to resort to silly team building events to stave off the boredom. Might suit some people though
_________________
JO911B.
"for we wrestle not against flesh and blood but against principalities, against powers, against rulers of the darkness of this world, against wicked spirits in high places " Eph.6 v 12 |
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Caz
Last Chance Saloon
Joined: 23 Apr 2006
Posts: 836
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| Posted: Thu Dec 06, 2007 4:45 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: | fish5133
Quote:
School with call centre training site in classroom criticised for lowering pupils' expectations
· Assistant head says pupils gain wide range of skills
· NUT representative says scheme is step too far
Matthew Taylor
Monday July 23, 2007
The Guardian
Have a friend who works in a call centre and because they have such a high turnover of staff they have to resort to silly team building events to stave off the boredom. Might suit some people though |
It might indeed suit some people, but as a student with a call centre in your school, your don't get the choice. Or, the 'choice' is foisted upon you. |
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Caz
Last Chance Saloon
Joined: 23 Apr 2006
Posts: 836
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| Posted: Fri Dec 28, 2007 11:29 pm Post subject: |
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http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_42/b4005059.htm?chan=t op+news_top+news+index_businessweek+exclusives
| Quote: | No Bush Left Behind
The President's brother Neil is making hay from school reform
Across the country, some teachers complain that President George W. Bush's makeover of public education promotes "teaching to the test." The President's younger brother Neil takes a different tack: He's selling to the test. The No Child Left Behind Act compels schools to prove students' mastery of certain facts by means of standardized exams. Pressure to perform has energized the $1.9 billion-a-year instructional software industry.
Now, after five years of development and backing by investors like Saudi Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal and onetime junk-bond king Michael R. Milken, Neil Bush aims to roll his high-tech teacher's helpers into classrooms nationwide. He calls them "curriculum on wheels," or COWs. The $3,800 purple plug-and-play computer/projectors display lively videos and cartoons: the XYZ Affair of the late 1790s as operetta, the 1828 Tariff of Abominations as horror flick. The device plays songs that are supposed to aid the memorization of the 22 rivers of Texas or other facts that might crop up in state tests of "essential knowledge."
Bush's Ignite! Inc. has sold 1,700 COWs since 2005, mainly in Texas, where Bush lives and his brother was once governor. In August, Houston's school board authorized expenditures of up to $200,000 for COWs. The company expects 2006 revenue of $5 million. Says Bush about the impact of his name: "I'm not saying it hasn't opened any doors. It may have helped with some sales." (In September, the U.S. Education Dept.'s inspector general accused the agency of improperly favoring at least five publishers, including The McGraw-Hill Companies, which owns BusinessWeek. A company spokesman says: "Our reading programs have been successful in advancing student achievement for decades; that's why educators hold them in such high regard.")
The stars haven't always aligned for Bush, but at times financial support has. A foundation linked to the controversial Reverend Sun Myung Moon has donated $1 million for a COWs research project in Washington (D.C.)-area schools. In 2004 a Shanghai chip company agreed to give Bush stock then valued at $2 million for showing up at board meetings. (Bush says he received one-fifth of the shares.) In 1988 a Colorado savings and loan failed while he served on its board, making him a prominent symbol of the S&L scandal. Neil calls himself "the most politically damaged of the [Bush] brothers."
While hardly the first brother to embarrass a President -- remember Billy Carter's Billy Beer or Roger Clinton's cocaine? -- Neil could be the first to seek profit from a hallmark Presidential crusade. And also that of a governor: Jeb makes school standards a centerpiece in Florida, too.
Neil says he never talks shop with his brothers. He attributes his interest in education to his struggles with dyslexia. His son, Pierce, also had difficulties in school, he says. "Not one of our investors has ever asked for any kind of special access -- a visa, a trip to the Lincoln Bedroom, an autographed picture, or anything." |
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