#robert halfon education

[don-lichterman]

Robert Halfon: 'Govt looks like libertarian jihadists treating country as lab mice'

Robert Halfon: ‘Govt looks like libertarian jihadists treating country as lab mice’

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[theinconvenientlifestyle]

[insidecroydon]

Colleges given 'must do better' report from Commissioner

The governors and staff at Croydon College have been handed a demanding set of 12 recommendations by a Government-appointed intervention team, following the institution’s “Inadequate” Ofsted report earlier this year. Coulsdon campus: much of the Ofsted and FE Commissioner’s attention has been focused on conduct at the Sixth Form College The inspectors from the Further Education Commissioner spent…

[daddydotissuesatgmaildotcom]

I SAID YOU BUYYYYYYYY ONE YOU GET ONE FREE

[qudachuk]

Raising student tuition fees is not going to happen ‘in a million years’, says Robert HalfonThe higher education minister, Robert Halfon, has decisively ruled out lifting the cap on student tuition fees in England, despite increasingly urgent warnings from...

[ianchisnall]

A significant number of STEM comments last week

Last week was the end of Parliament until September but interestingly there were several comments raised about STEM during that week. The first few were on Monday and they involved the following people. Robert Halfon is the Government Minister in Education speaking during a Student Visa Eligibility: Impact on Higher Education Sector Andrew Jones is a Yorkshire MP for Conservative and he commented…

[thxnews]

Turing Scheme Empowers Disadvantaged Students for Global Opportunities

  Driving Social Mobility through the Turing Scheme

Over 40,000 individuals across the UK will have the chance to participate in life-changing study or work experiences abroad in the upcoming academic year, thanks to the government's flagship Turing Scheme. The scheme aims to broaden access to international opportunities and foster social mobility, with nearly two-thirds of the placements allocated to individuals from disadvantaged and underrepresented backgrounds. This represents a significant increase from last year's 51%, demonstrating the government's commitment to providing equal opportunities for all.   Focus on Disadvantaged Students in Further Education In an even more promising development, disadvantaged students will comprise 71% of placements in the Further Education sector, highlighting the scheme's dedication to addressing historical disparities and creating a fairer educational landscape. The Turing Scheme will allocate placements in various sectors, including over 22,800 in Higher Education, more than 6,700 in schools, and over 10,500 in Further Education and Vocational Education and Training.  

£105 Million Investment and Growing Interest

The government is investing nearly £105 million to support universities, colleges, and schools across the country in offering these international placements to their students. This year, the scheme has seen a record number of successful applications, with a nearly 50% increase in the number of colleges and schools participating in the program. The high level of interest underscores the growing recognition of the scheme's potential to provide transformative experiences and boost social mobility.   Minister Robert Halfon Commends the Turing Scheme's Impact Minister for Skills, Apprenticeships, and Higher Education, Robert Halfon, expressed his enthusiasm for the scheme's success: "Once again, this transformational scheme is extending the ladder of opportunity for more young people to experience other cultures and learn vital skills for life and work, regardless of their background." He further highlighted the nearly 50% increase in successful applications and the additional learners from disadvantaged backgrounds in the Further Education sector compared to the previous year, emphasizing the scheme's positive impact on social mobility.  

A Global Britain: Expanding International Opportunities

The Turing Scheme is open to education providers and eligible organizations throughout the UK, aligning with the government's vision of creating a truly Global Britain. Students will have the opportunity to explore more than 160 international destinations, including Canada, Japan, the United States, Spain, and France, among others. By funding work and study placements in diverse locations, the scheme aims to equip students with the necessary skills and confidence for a globalized future.   Empowering Students and Enriching Communities The impact of the Turing Scheme is already evident, as demonstrated by a group of year 10 pupils from a school in Blackburn. These students were offered the valuable opportunity to spend two weeks in Eswatini or Morocco in May 2022. Engaging in lessons and community work, such as installing drainage pipework at a care center for local preschool children, the pupils gained invaluable experiences that will shape their future educational and career paths. Rebecca Barker-Rourke, a teacher at the school, spoke highly of the experience: "The Turing Scheme funding means we can offer this opportunity to students that would otherwise never get the chance for a trip like this. It has developed confidence in many of the students and will give them loads of rich examples to discuss in future applications for college, university, apprenticeships, and employment."   Leeds Beckett University and the Benefits of Global Experience Leeds Beckett University is among the successful providers participating in the Turing Scheme this year. Students from the university will embark on educational journeys to countries such as Canada, Australia, and Uganda. Recognizing the growing demand among students for global experiences, Tom Kyle, the Global Engagement and Relationship Manager at Leeds Beckett University, emphasized the positive impact of such experiences on graduate outcomes and employability. He expressed excitement about expanding student mobility and witnessing more students benefiting from these life-enriching opportunities.   Sources: THX News & Department for Education.    Read the full article

[latestnewsfeedsposts]

‘Libertarian jihadists’: Conservative MP attacks govt as Hunt says ‘nothing off table’ on tax cuts

‘Libertarian jihadists’: Conservative MP attacks govt as Hunt says ‘nothing off table’ on tax cuts

A senior Tory has accused the government of looking “like libertarian jihadists” and treating the country as “laboratory mice” over the past few weeks. Robert Halfon, former deputy chairman of the Conservative Party and an education minister under Theresa May, said he believes Liz Truss needs to apologise to the public for the economic turmoil caused by the mini-budget three weeks ago. He told…

[mariacallous]

Foot down on the accelerator, high on dreams, the driver plunges straight at the concrete wall that she calls “growth”. Unfortunately, we’re all in the back of her coach, front seats filled with Tories shouting “Swerve!”, “Go right!”, “Go left!”, “This way!”, “That way!”, “Reverse!”, or “Jump!” But their useless indecision, ineffectual whingeing and fractured splits condemn us all to dash towards worsening crises. What terminal damage this moribund party can do in another two years doesn’t bear contemplating.

Impossibilism used to be a Trotskyite policy – to demand the impossible to break the system. That’s Liz Truss’s tactic, by cutting taxes – creating a £62bn black hole, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies freaking out the despised markets and trashing all the “orthodox”, acronymed stabilisers: the OBR, BoE, IMF, HM Treasury and BBC, as well as the “anti-growth coalition” that comprises most of the population. She told the 1922 Committee that “the ground could have been better prepared” for the mini-budget – only by digging a hole and jumping in it.

Truss also told the Commons there would be no spending cuts to balance the books. That’s a double fib: there will be – and already her refusal to reopen the present spending review means there will be huge cuts to cover pay rises and inflation costs from existing budgets. Every department has been asked to make “efficiency savings”, with the levelling up secretary, Simon Clarke, blithely saying that there’s always “fat to trim”. But he never specified where the lard lurks in departments stricken by years of austerity.

Odd Tory nostalgias grow that should be stamped on now: Robert Halfon, chair of the education select committee, said Truss has “trashed the last 10 years of workers’ Conservatism”, an era that passed most people by as wages fell. He waxed lyrical about bygone days of Cameron, May and Johnson creating apprenticeships and levelling up – even though apprenticeships fell steeply even before Covid and levelling up has merely seen London and the south-east grow richer.

Ministers are sent out daily to talk tripe about the need for tax cuts due to our taxes being at their highest for 70 years, but they’re never challenged on why our closest neighbours all have higher taxes yet higher growth, productivity and resilience. All the same, one unnamed minister told the FT: “We’re doing a whole load of unpopular stuff to pay for tax cuts that nobody wanted.”

Outside London, the only place in the UK that is growing is Northern Ireland, thanks to its lucky status in the EU single market. The only glimmers of stability in the Truss era are unexpected signs of peace with the EU. When the Northern Ireland minister and fanatical Brexiter Steve Baker apologised for how he and colleagues had behaved over the past six years, promising from now on to be “closest partners and friends” with Ireland, the Tory world spun on its axis. But watch Nigel Farage sharpen his teeth at any chance to take bites out of what is left of the Tories’ right buttock.

On Wednesday Paul Goodman, former Tory MP and editor of Conservative Home, glumly spelled out the impossibility of moving in any direction from here. He’s right: Tory backbenchers will oppose everything. They won’t vote for £62bn of spending cuts, the same or more as those imposed by draconian George Osborne. Yet they do want the tax cuts. Wait until their chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng, announces his eight mysterious supply-side reforms, a bonfire of regulations designed to ignite that elusive 2.5% growth on 31 October. They will refuse to vote for them, too, if it means relaxing standards in food, agriculture, environment and especially in planning controls. They won’t like free for all “investment zones” that Truss says can be limitless in number and location, including in national parks, uncosted in tax losses. Like children in a tantrum, they hate everything.

No amount of tea and unsympathy sessions with Truss will get them back in their pram. There is no acceptable solution to the catastrophic mini-budget, no way back or forwards. They can not fathom how their party of sound money has taken leave of its senses. In polling, for the first time ever in opposition – yes, ever – far more voters say they have more trust in Labour to manage the economy. Even in 1997, they only level-pegged on that. Tory MPs need only look at the polls in their oldfashioned true “blue wall” seats, where Labour leads by 13 points, to give them night sweats – while national polls are off the scale. Focus group organisers tell that me they record unprecedented fear and anger over mortgages, rents, prices and pensions. Voters see fuel prices as a global crisis, but everything else as government-created. They talk of shame at Britain’s reputation abroad, and deep fear for the future of their children and grandchildren.

But for all the talk of how only 50 Tory MPs voted for Trotskyite Truss in the first round of the leadership election, they still put her though to the final vote, giving members the opportunity to choose her. They promoted Boris Johnson and Theresa May, they voted for all those years of austerity that left Britain too weak to cope with crises – and they sold Brexit as a panacea, when Brexit and its poisonous referendum lie at the heart of their woes.

The Conservative party is dead, ceased to exist, bereft of identity, nothing left but shards and echoes of previous times. It has become a failed revolutionary faction that has blown up whatever remained of Conservatism after its undermining by the Thatcher insurgence and the Brexit explosion, leaving nothing. No solidity, no seriousness, no philosophy, its country and farming roots lost, despised by its old City base, abandoning family values as it fails all classes of family. Bogus culture wars on colonial statues or museum labels are no substitute. Tax cuts seem to be all that is left of traditional Conservatism – and look how they landed.

Presumably some centre-right or right force will eventually be recreated, but that will need swaths of these MPs to lose their seats and swaths of fresh-thinking new ones to arrive. But how likely is it that a better new cadre will ever be selected by the Tory party members’ ship of fools who brought us Liz Truss?

[3diassociates]

Education: Stuck in a Failing Paradigm

Education: Stuck in a Failing Paradigm

“Our education system has mined our minds in the way that we strip-mined the earth, for a particular commodity, and for the future it won’t serve us. We have to rethink the fundamental principles on which we are educating our children.” Remember that TED talk – from Sir Ken Robinson, who sadly died in this traumatic year of 2020? “We have to rethink the fundamental principles on which we are…

[heykav]

UK schools begin full return despite increase in virus cases

UK schools begin full return despite increase in virus cases

[ad_1]

EDINBURGH: Scottish children began attending schools for the first time in five months on Tuesday as leaders across Britain try to kickstart a return to education despite coronavirus cases increasing again.

Scotland’s devolved government has ordered pupils in different parts of the UK nation to return gradually through this week, with all classes set to have resumed fully by next Tuesday.

[latestbreakingnewsupdates]

GCSE and A-level system 'unfair to poor kids' - latestbreakingnewsupdates.com

GCSE and A-level system ‘unfair to poor kids’ – latestbreakingnewsupdates.com

A flawed grading system for exams cancelled due to the pandemic could cheat some children out of the marks they deserve, MPs warned yesterday.

The Commons Education Committee says disadvantaged and ethnic minority pupils face a high risk.

Teachers will predict pupils’ GCSE and A-level grades. Exam boards then moderate and issue the final results.

This check, designed by exams regulator Ofqual,…

[ukrfeminism]

The training given to women prisoners urgently needs to be widened because it is based on outdated stereotypes, MPs have heard.

Female inmates can get training in areas such as cleaning and sewing, but lack opportunities to learn skills such as bricklaying and carpentry, the Commons Education Select Committee was told.

On Tuesday, the Education Committee held a session on whether the prison education system is providing the right skills to make ex-offenders employable.

Sasha Simmonds, head of social value at O’Neill & Brennan – a firm which helps recruit people into the construction industry, including ex-offenders – told MPs on the committee that female prisoners were only able to take classes in a limited range of trades.

“I would say that it’s highly disappointing the amount of construction skills that are available to females that are serving [time],” she said.

“I think in the world that we live in today, only offering skills such as cleaning, sewing and hairdressing is unacceptable.

“I myself will be holding courses in local female prisons which my company has agreed to fund, and we will get females into construction because it’s not just a male-led industry and females deserve the right to work in any industry, just as anybody does,” she said.

Robert Halfon, the chair of the committee, put it to her that the training offered in female prisons was “antiquated”.

She replied: “From my experience I have struggled to get females into construction.

“I know of a couple working out on release on temporary licence as females in construction, but it’s not within our reach unless the opportunities to train that are in male [prison] estates like bricklaying and carpentry are also made available to females.”

During the session, MPs also heard that prisoners’ education can be disrupted by inmates being moved around and between different jails.

Darren Burns, national recruitment manager at Timpson – which is one of the largest employers of ex-offenders in the country – said: “It’s hugely disjointed.

“I’ve heard of men and women being halfway through a course – so if there’s a 10 week course in bricklaying or whatever it may be – you could have an individual who’s completed five weeks of that course and then through no fault of their own either gets moved onto a lower category prison or a different prison for whatever reason. They lose all of that work that they’ve built up over that last five weeks.

“Effectively they’ve got to start again which is obviously a cost and more time, or often they’re not able to get on a course or the prison that they’re going to doesn’t even offer that course, so that five weeks they’ve done in bricklaying for example is completely useless.”

Mr Burns said that many employers still needed “educating on the benefits of employing ex-offenders and the fact that it’s not the perceived risk, and all these tropes that are constantly perpetuated through the media just aren’t true”.

“Often employers will reach for the most extreme examples and assume that everybody in prison is a dangerous violent criminal who can’t be trusted, and that’s simply not the case,” he said.

[asexplainedbyttoi]

Yet More Resignations As a Result of the Chris Pincher Groping Scandal

Selaine Saxby, Parliamentary Private Secretary at the Treasury

Claire Coutinho, Parliamentary Private Secretary at the Treasury

David Johnston, Parliamentary Private Secretary at the Department of Education

Kemi Badenoch, Equalities Minister

Neil O’Brien, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up and Housing

Alex Burghart, Apprenticeships Minister

Lee Rowley, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business and Industry

Julia Lopez, DCMS Minister

Mims Davies, Employment Minister

Craig Williams, Parliamentary Private Secretary at the Treasury

Mark Logan, Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Northern Ireland Office

Duncan Baker, Parliamentary Private Secretary at the Department for Levelling Up and Housing

Rachel Maclean, Minister for Safeguarding

Mike Freer, Minister for Exports and Minister for Equalities

MPs Who’ve Lost Confidence:

Anthony Browne - MP for South Cambridgeshire

Chris Skidmore - MP for Kingswood

Dehenna Davison - MP for Bishop Aukland

Gary Sambrook - MP for Birmingham, Northfield

Huw Merriman - MP for Bexhill and Battle (submitted letter of no confidence while grilling Boris Johnson at the Liaison Committee)

Kate Griffiths - MP for Burton

Lee Anderson - MP for Ashfield

Liam Fox - MP for North Somerset

Michael Gove - MP for Surrey Heath

Robert Buckland - MP for South Swindon

Robert Halfon - MP for Harlow

Robert Jenrick, MP for Newark

Sally-Ann Hart - MP for Hastings and Rye

Simon Fell - MP for Barrow and Furness

Tom Hunt - MP for Ipswich

[newusernamepending]

Robert Halfon, Tory MP for Harlow and chairman of the committee, asked the unions: “Why is it that children and parents can have access to Primark over the next few months, but many of them won't have access to schools according to your risk assessments?”

You’re the government! You’re the ones allowing Primark to open! Maybe instead you should be asking yourself “Why is it that, when the risk assessments unions have carried out based on guidance from the Department for Education suggest that there is an unacceptable risk in allowing schools to reopen, do we think that shops like Primark should be?”

[britishhumanistassociation]

Updates from our now-virtual Parliament, where the Chief Inspector of Ofsted is currently taking questions from the Education Select Committee. As the education correspondent for the i newspaper notes here, committee chair Robert Halfon is criticising Amanda Spielman for Ofsted reporting on the failures of specific faith schools, including one which was doing outrageous things like censoring out history and science, including pictures of 'immodest' women (like Ginger Rogers or Elizabeth I). This perfectly illustrates the difficulty regulators have with holding religious schools to a rigorous and universal educational standard: wherever they fall short, there are those willing to excuse and bat for them in any given situation. https://ift.tt/357qMO6