What about the Sanity Clause?

Having spent most of yesterday waiting in King's Cross station for some semblance of information as to when a train was going to travel North, I was struck by how little anybody seemed to care about the cold, the lack of anything to sit on or even how much of a wasted afternoon hundreds of people were having. What seemed to be the most irksome aspect of the experience was generally agreed to be the lack of information: the horrible waiting without knowing when it would end, certain only that when it did, there would be some sort of mad priority scramble where the winners got to be packed like erect sardines for the next 2 hours sweating & exchanging viruses, while the losers waited on the concourse for the next melee to take place.

Deep down, we were all aware that the next service wasn't going to sneak off without any of us noticing, but information, any kind of information, would've given us the illusion of control without having any effect at all on how long we were going to be stuck there. Is too much to ask that "damage to overhead lines at Huntington" had been accompanied by some sort of estimated repair time, even one possibly met ahead of schedule? This would not only have made those inconvenienced by the delays feel a little better, but the subsequent dispersal of the expectant throng (for what turned out to be 5 hours) would have made the station far less crowded, and therefore more comfortable for the non-East Coast Main Line travellers.
Or is that just madness on my part?

With a reverential nod to 1935's "A Night at the Opera"
Groucho: It's all right. That's, that's in every contract. That's, that's what they call a sanity clause.
Chico: Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! You can't fool me. There ain't no Sanity Clause!

Figuratively speaking...

The Home Office has just (yesterday) launched what it laughably claims to be a "consultation exercise" (the quote marks are there to emphasise how inaccurate the term actually is) on its plans to tighten up visa requirements for foreign students.

The questionnaire on which this "consultation" is based invites the public and interested parties to "Contribute your views to our consultation into how we can best reduce the number of students who can come to the UK". However, it's either been very badly put together (rather ironically for something do with education as it highlights that somebody somewhere needs educating about questionnaire design), or it's been deliberately formulated to preclude dissenting opinions. I'll leave you to decide....

Example:
Q2. Do you think that only Highly Trusted Sponsors (HTS) should be permitted to offer study below degree level (at NQF levels 3, 4 and 5 / SCQF levels 6, 7 and 8) in the Tier 4 (General) category?

• Yes – only HTS should be able to offer these sub-degree level courses
• No – all sub-degree level study should be prohibited under Tier 4 (General)
• No – study at NQF level 3 should be prohibited, even where the sponsor is a HTS
• Don't know

So if you happen to think that sub-degree level courses should be available from a wider range of providers you have no box to tick, nor can you tick a box to show that you think that the system as it is ought to be maintained. Only if you believe that the Home Office proposals are insufficiently draconian can you enter an alternative.

Now regardless of whether or not these proposals are desirable, proportionate or in the interests of our educational system, highly biased "consultations" like this not only have no statistical credibility, they're a disgraceful way of canvassing public opinion.

The tooth, the whole tooth, and nothing but...

Now travelling back from two days on the South Coast, I've just read Martin Robbin's Lay Scientist blog at the Guardian, where there's the story of a Brazilian evangelical cult leader called Welder Saldanha banning his followers from using USB connections on their computers. This, says the story, is because the universal symbol for the technology "is a trident, which is used to torture souls".

Although the writer does wonder whether the story could be a spoof, and it's hard to tell when you consider the kind of pronouncement Stephen Green made last month, the bit about how the members of the Paz do Senhor Amado cult can connect devices in lieu of USB is undeniably very funny. Apparently, Bluetooth is fine because "Blue was the colour of the eyes of our saviour Jesus Christ"....

Bonfire (night) on the Insanities...

For the elite upper quartile of the country's universities, those likely to set their tuition fees close to the Government's £9,000 cap, this week's announcement is close to what they've been long been arguing for, since if students are prepared to pay, then those institutions will be better off. However, the remainder face an uncertain future as cuts in block grants means that they will lose the equivalent of over £7,000 a year for each undergraduate, so even setting fees at £6,000 equates to a large loss of income.

Ministers have claimed that universities could compensate by reducing costs and deliver two-year degrees, but assuming that the credit value required for certification stays the same, then the number of course weeks will need to be increased from their present level by around 50% each year. This leads to the inevitable questions (well they are to me as I've spent many years writing, running and delivering HE programmes) :

• When are lecturers working within this educational model supposed to prepare for their teaching (and escalating student expenditure will surely be accompanied by an attendant growths in expectations of quality)?
• When are they supposed to engage with any form of scholarly activity?
• When are they supposed to set and mark assessments?

Unless I'm missing something, in this scenario, either staffing numbers and the attendant costs must go up, or quality inevitably goes down. Have they just not thought this through, or have the lunatics finally taken over the asylum?

The most unwelcome of cuts

News here in Leicestershire (where I'm preparing a critical thinking workshop) describes how the USA is helping out the locals with some cuts that President Obama definitely didn't have in mind during yesterday's telephone conversation with our Prime Minister.

Claiming that it's part of a programme to prevent children being born into dysfunctional families or with addictions, an American charity called Project Prevention has "bribed" a 38-year-old drug addict to have a vasectomy. Now I don't particularly object to the trans-atlantic acquisition of our football clubs, the dictation of our foreign policy or the subjugation of our youth culture with their own, but getting involved with which Britons should (or shouldn't) give birth?
That's surely something we're capable of doing all on our own!

So the pot said to the kettle : the sequel!

Local news here in Yorkshire is that Graham Taylor, the author of "the most frightening children's book ever written", claims that he's having to keep the details of a nationwide school tour secret for fear of lobbying from Evangelical Christians after Christian Voice chairman Stephen Green was quoted as saying "Shame on any head teacher who invites GP Taylor into their school with this book", adding that, "To promote gore, bloodlust and thoughts of death as being healthy topics for the minds of innocent children is bizarre."

Doesn't sound to me like the "voice for Biblical values" has bothered to ever actually read the Old Testament part of the book he's supposedly basing those values on...

You are what you eat (allegedly)

I'm now in a Telford hotel room, just a few miles from where the local BBC news has reported that a special "God's Acre" service has recently been carried out on the grave of Richard Munslow, the last known sin-eater in England, at St Margaret's Church, Ratlinghope.

The Reverend Norman Morris explained that "It [Sin-eating] was a very odd practice and would not have been approved of by the church, but I suspect the vicar often turned a blind eye".

The BBC report also helpfully explains that sin-eaters were generally poor people who were paid to eat bread and drink beer or wine over a corpse, in the belief they would take on the sins of a person who had died suddenly without confessing their own sins, and so allow the deceased’s soul to go to heaven in peace.

So logically, as a sin-eater wouldn't have been able to acknowledge these unknown sins prior to their own demise, and would therefore always need someone to consume their unconfessed sin collection, isn't it surprising that there were ever any believers unable to see the flaws in it as a career choice?

So the pot said to the kettle ....

Walking across London because of the tube strike, I've just (30 minutes or so ago) been handed a religiously-focussed magazine (Awake) which states in the first 2 sentences of the first article,
"A new group of atheists has arisen in society. Called the new atheists, they are not content to keep their views to themselves."

As the views of the distributor weren't sought either by me, nor anybody else who politely took a copy without first looking to see what it was (I admit to thinking it was one of the free Time Out style supplements & just dropped it into a conference bag), it's got me wondering whether the irony is deliberate, or is the writer subtly advocating some form of theocracy where people like Stephen Hawking are prevented from making assertions like the one last week?

The proof of the pudding is in the (ch)eating..

"This is only an allegation," says Ijaz Butt, chairman of what is surely an utterly discredited Pakistan Cricket Board, adding that, "At this stage there will be no action taken because there is still no charge or proof on that account." Possibly not proof as defined by a criminal law court, but the evidence of cheating described in the News of the World at the weekend is as damning as anything you could ever hope to see.

Unfortunately, according to some of the participants in today's plagiarism workshop, the PCB's lack of decisive action is not unique and draws parallels with the attitude of some senior educational managers who fear legal action if students are penalised by lecturers, moderators and exam boards for collusion, plagiarism and the passing off of other's work as their own prior to some form of "official investigation".

Noting that both the PCB and the International Cricket Council are currently striving to maintain any semblance of credibility with their very public failure to act, surely it's time for Education's default position to be one of trusting the lecturer who identifies malpractice and place the burden of proving innocence on the accused student?

Herd of cows? Of course I've heard of cows...

If today's Food Standards Agency Summary of investigation on cloned animals statement that "no milk ... has entered the food chain" is true, how come all my glasses of milk look exactly the same?

With a reverential nod to 1942's "Ride em Cowboy"
Bud Abbott: No, not heard of cows, that's a cow herd.
Lou Costello: What's a cow heard? I don't care what a cow's heard, I haven't said anything to be ashamed of.

Never mind the quality mark, feel the myth

Sitting on a train on the way home, I've been reading the TES on-line where one of the headline stories is about the Noah’s Ark Zoo Farm (which somewhat coincidently is located near Bristol which is where I've been for a JISC meeting,) controversially receiving the Government-backed Council for Learning Outside the Classroom's “quality badge”, a kitemark developed last year to accredit outdoor activity centres, museums and stately homes as suitable for children's education.

Hopefully the institution's name ought to be a clue for any educators wanting to broaden the mind of their charges, but the presence of an official badge might sway the unwary into inadvertently exposing enquiring minds to religious propaganda presented as fact.

Now leaving aside problems which are presumably issues of faith, such as where did all the water come from and where did it go, or why did Noah leave all the marsupials in Australasia, the likelihood of the story having any actual, and therefore significant, educational basis can be illustrated with simple mathematics.

Ignoring what we actually know to be the highest peaks on earth (Everest, K2, etc) and instead using Mount Ararat as reference point since that's where the biblical story says the ark ended up, we're left with water covering land at an elevation above sea level of to close to 17000 feet (to be precise the elevation of said mountain is 16945 feet). Since the story says it rained for 40 days and 40 nights, that means in each twenty four hour period the water rose an average of 425 feet (17000/40), or to put it in another way, 17' 9" each and every hour all around the world for nearly 6 weeks, not just local to wherever Noah's menagerie was floating around.

That's an awful lot of water in anybody's (good?) book, and if the family who run the zoo want to believe that it really happened and put on a show about it then that's up to them, but handing out an official educational endorsement is surely not something that's going to help anybody involved in the planning of school trips now that we know there's no apparent care taken in deciding which organisations can be trusted to deliver objective supplements to the national curriculum.

Mad Mullahs Mullets Matters

News today that Iran is going to ban "decadent cuts" such as mullets, spiked-tops and ponytails as part of a crackdown on "Western hairstyles" after an organisation devoted to Islamic fashion issued a list of what they claim to be culturally appropriate haircuts for men.

The list, endorsed by the culture ministry, includes pictures of models with short hair (curly and straight), long sideburns and in one case a 60s-style quiff, but none of collar-length locks. The "... proposed styles are inspired by Iranians' complexion, culture and religion, and Islamic law", and will be promoted at the Modesty and Veil Festival, the organiser of which, Jaleh Khodayar, said "We are happy that the Islamic Republic of Iran's government has backed us in designing these hairstyles."

Wonder how many more new persecution categories could need adding to the world's asylum claim forms now that even skipping a visit to the barbers could result in a visit from a coiffeur copper cluster?

Monkey Business

In the middle of what are always my busiest two weeks of the year, I'm now in a Peterborough hotel with a copy of the regional weekly newspaper where the main story is about a local woman who went to Thailand in an attempt to overcome a fear of monkeys.

Apparently, 56-year old Dee Darwell was trying to overcome a lifelong primate phobia by travelling to an area near Phuket called Monkey Island as a way of "confronting her fears". The story doesn't say whether the indigenous crab-eating Macaques could smell Dee's fear, or could just detect utter stupidity and found the temptation to mischief too hard to resist, but within minutes of her getting off the boat they attacked "like a pack of animals" (as opposed to????).
Now recovering at home after treatment for bites in a Bangkok hospital, Dee says she owes her life to the intervention of local fishermen after the other sunseekers on her boat trip fled in panic, adding that at the time she thought "This is it, I'm going to die, I'm going to be savaged".

Now personally, although psychoanalysts and motivational speakers might say that this is the way to go, I can't see that in her case it was even remotely necessary. Obviously there are many things round here that having an irrational fear of would be more than worth the effort to cure.
Fens for instance.
Or shoe shops.
But monkeys?
I've only been here for about four hours, but unless the city centre resembles a safari park on weekends, or gibbons plague the bingo, it seems to me that the best thing to do if you have a fear of monkeys and live in Peterborough is to forget all about finding a cure and not go on holiday to somewhere called Monkey Island!

Close, but no cigar....

On my way across London this morning for a conference where David Willets will this afternoon talk about the value, heritage and future of technical skills at FE and HE level, I picked up a copy of one of the free papers distributed outside Underground stations which today contains a report about an article in yesterday's Daily Mail (lazy journalism part one) regarding the alleged censoring of Winston Churchill's cigar from a poster outside an exhibition near London Bridge by anti-smoking zealots.

"It seems the man who steered Britain through the most dangerous period of its recent history may have fallen victim to the modern curse of political correctness," says the report (of the report!).

Oddly enough, the story goes on to describe that the disappearance of the Churchillian havana is "something of a mystery" with the ubiquitous, un-named spokesman for the visitor attraction "astonished" that such a thing could have happened and denying that the museum has been contacted by any anti-smoking lobby group, and was quite unaware of the airbrushing until a visitor drew it to their attention.

Anway, despite the Daily Mail (or the Metro) being unable to identify who was responsible for the airbrushed image (lazy journalism part two), typing "Winston Churchill Images" into Google gives a listing of which one the higher ranked results is Fanpix, an on-line image gallery. So, on the assumption that Fanpix isn't responsible for removing the cigar (why would they?), presumably someone creating the War Experience display went on to the Internet in search of suitable Churchill pictures and, not knowing that it was digitally altered, selected this one.

A bit more research using Google's advanced search facility gives what is probably the ultimate source of the doctored picture, a 2006 blog about a Washington Post story about politically-correct anti-smoking fanatics censoring old pictures. In this case, the story concerned Hanna-Barbera apparently removing scenes from Tom and Jerry cartoons after a complaint to Ofcom that the scenes were "glamorising" smoking. The blog suggested that "they’d have to go back and edit all the old pictures of Winston Churchill to remove his cigar" and mocked up an image poking fun at the excesses of Political Correctness to illustrate the point, which four years later has ended up getting used as "proof" that PC has, once again, "gone mad". So, as we now know that it's not (in this instance at least), maybe something else is going on: an attempt to attract publicity to the Britain at War Experience, perhaps? Or am I just too cynical?

Hoop, hoop and away (with the money)

I'm now in Blackpool at the end of my first ever staff development day just for school teachers where the principal topic of conversation has been the hoopla stall owner prosecuted last week for breaching gambling laws by making his game almost impossible to win.

Although none of us were in the least surprised that the blocks were tilted at such an angle the chances of success were calculated by academics at Lancaster University to be over 2,600 to 1, nobody could even begin to comprehend why one complainant to Trading Standards lost nearly £1,500.

According to court reports, secret filming showed punters losing around £1 a minute, which made us all wonder what kind of person would want a shoddily assembled cuddly toy enough to spend what must have been about 3 days vainly throwing money away?

So yes, the operation was crooked, but this particular idiot was always likely to get separated from his money pretty quickly one way or another. Now if only the bbc report had mentioned his name and address, I could forward an e-mail from a Nigerian chief anxious to deposit £5m in a British account, then all he'd have to do to recoup his losses would be to send his complete bank details without delay....

Leicester 2 Colin 20

This repeat visit to Leicester College (we were there in June 2009) was the 20th Colin Beard Experiential Learning Day put together for lecturers delivering HE level education programmes in a FE environment.

Even though there's been 19 similar events around the country over the last 4 years, and there'll be more in the North and on the South coast later in the year, recommendations from previous attendees meant that delegates were willing to travel from as far away as Brighton and Greenwich, with two of those present making the effort to "experience the difference" for a second time in less than twelve months.

As usual, a full day and an engaging facillitator meant that nobody's attention was diverted from the activities in the room, although our venue on the second floor of the Freemen's Park campus has such an excellent view (from the window to the right in the picture above) of the magnificent rubgy ground which is home to the Leicester Tigers that we should probably have included a mention of it in the programme for the day instead of just alluding to it in a post title...

Space (centre): the no-Phil Frontier

Having been asked to help coordinate a "Creative Assessment to Help Eliminate Plagiarism" workshop as part of the joint JISC/HEA e-asy Assessment day at the National Space Centre, I arrived in Leicester late last night to be told by the organisers that Professor Phil Race, the advertised keynote speaker, was ill and unable to attend, so "could I step in"?

3 beers, a glass of wine and a pizza-full of persuasion later, meant sleep was postponed while I re-purposed a collection of resources and wrote a presentation to make up a (hopefully!) coherent 2-hour session around the day's theme of "engaging with innovative ways of assessing learners to make assessment e-asy".

Fortunately, when the moment of truth arrived, adrenaline overrode the effects of having had only 3 hours worth of sleep, so my delivery was something close to normal, but after an afternoon workshop, a plenary and three hours to get home, the effects of "boldly going where no one (well me anyway) has gone before" has left me feeling very tired....

C'est la vie (ou la mort) ma femme fatale...

Looks like those romantic ballards about racing heartbeats might be scientifically based after all, as according to research carried out by the University of Valencia, just five minutes alone with an attractive woman can raise a man’s levels of the stress hormone cortisol to “dangerous levels” that “may be bad for the heart”.

The experiment, approved by the Faculty of Psychology’s ethical committee, involved 84 male students who were told to avoid alcohol and other stimulants for 24 hours, before being led into a room by one of the (male) scientists to solve a Sudoku puzzle. The researcher then departed on the pretext of getting another puzzle, leaving the unsuspecting student to sit alone in a room with a stranger.

Saliva samples were taken from the students to measure their cortisol levels which apparently remained the same when left with another male, but rose when left alone with an attractive female. The study added that this rise was heightened in men who believed the woman was “out of their league", and could even reach levels reportedly similar to that experienced by parachutists, an amount that can “bring on the possibility of heart attacks and strokes”.

As we now know that since pretty women are sociological gravediggers, surely our newspapers should be ablaze with headlines such as “Man dies in front of sexy woman”, “Ban these killer heels” and "French National Suicide Bid: instead of making it mandatory, they're banning the burka!"?

Roses, grants and Guildford signs ahead

Having just spent 5 hours driving down to Surrey in readiness for tomorrow's Funding Applications workshop, I'm now sat in a country hotel's beautiful rose garden looking up at the dozens of vapour trails criss-crossing what would otherwise be a completely clear blue sky while reading the travel information pages of the BBC website.
Apparently, Eyjafjallajökull, Iceland’s second-least pronounceable volcano (where to even start with Þeistareykjarbunga?) is still moderately active, and later today, due to an expected change in wind direction, it's ash plume will drift over Irish airspace and close Dublin, Cork, Waterford, and Shannon airports.
Although it's understandable that jet planes will be again be affected since they travel at the same height as the ash cloud (around 30,000 feet with lower altitudes not feasible on many levels : fuel usage, thicker air = overheating etc) and would suck volcanic dust through turbines which could theoretically heat it to glass-forming temperatures, what I can't find an explanation for is why are propellor planes also grounded when they fly much lower, or helicopters which fly lower still?

Ian-PWL (whoever he is) says this blog is wonderful!

The secret's out: how to make any blog appear to be one of the most popular on the Internet, even if it only averages half-a-dozen visits a day (assuming there's no visitor counter like the one on the right).
Just after each posting, leave a comment underneath saying how brilliant it is. Something along the lines of “Fantastic: particularly the headlines with puns in them!”, or possibly "A must read - absolutely fascinating. 5 Stars!!" will do. Then go comment on every other blog you can find and write that they are boring, and perhaps written by morons/idiots/lunatics/etc.

This, according to a BBC news report (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8641515.stm), is approximately the strategy employed by the historian Orlando Figes (a professor at London's Birkbeck College and the author of many books on Russian history) to boost his ratings. Apparently he's been leaving comments like "hard to follow" and "awful" under the Amazon entries of the printed works of rivals, and oozing praise about his own efforts. Unfortunately, there were Baldrickesque flaws in his cunning plan, as not only did he use the ill-disguised pseudonym “orlando-birkbeck”, Rachel Polonsky - one of the authors rubbished by Figes - discovered that the reviewer shared the same home address as the good professor. Oops!

Figes said he was "ashamed" of his behaviour and did not entirely understand why he acted as he did, adding that "it was stupid".
No arguments here!

There's no substitute for experience

Less than 5 weeks left to Colin Beard's latest Experiential Learning Day (there's been 19 of these days over the last four years, and this one at Leicester college is almost full), so if you're reading this and want to know what a combination lock made from drinking cups is all about, download a programme from http://www.playingwithlearning.com/subpages/images/Leicester_Prog.gif

A-pope-collarish Now (or Never)

If you happened to pick up today's Sunday Times, you could easily develop an exciting new opinion of Richard Dawkins, author, television presenter and formerly Charles Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University.

A headline in the paper declares "Richard Dawkins: I will arrest Pope Benedict XVI", which suggested to my overly-active Sunday morning imagination that when the Pontiff arrives in September, the good Professor intends do his best Bond-gone-mad impression and personally attack the Papal Plane, kick in the door, rough up a few Swiss Guards, present an arrest warrant, slap on a pair of handcuffs and then drag Benedict XVI kicking and screaming to the authorities to face charges for his alleged role in covering up child abuse by errant Catholic priests around the world.

An amusing image, but it didn't take much research to discover that the headline was, to say the least, misleading. Dawkin's own website points out that the headline did a disservice to both himself and the Times journalist responsible for the article, and unless someone decides to make the movie (& if they do, who owns the rights?) that image of Dawkins the action hero will have to remain nothing but a diverting fantasy since the rather less funny truth is only that Pr Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens have been exploring the possibility of mounting a legal challenge to the Papal Visit.

Thanks to Marc Horne, the Sunday Times reporter, for not only providing a topical addition to Tuesday's Critical Thinking workshop, but also inspiring the Photoshopping which has produced an image for the summing up session.

A distinction without a difference....

After spending the day delivering a critical thinking workshop at St James Park, I've now spent nearly two hours sat on a train parked just south of Newcastle.

Apparently, we (the passengers) aren't entitled to free food and drink because it's not our locomotive that's broken down: it's the one in front!

No wonder the likes of Stephen Byers (recently discredited MP) describe themselves as "like taxis for hire", since not even the most unscrupulous of our politicial elite would be daft enough to risk association with our rail network when they behave like this.

Springing in the rain

Trying to drive back up the M1 after attending a JISC Project Assembly, I'm now parked in Leicester Forest service station due to the torrential rain which the local Midlands radio describes as "unseasonal".
As today is officially three days into spring, "unseasonal" would appear to be putting it rather mildly.
Unlike the weather, which isn't mild at all.....

Bearing False Witness is a Highway to Hull...

Watching television in my Humberside hotel room (in the middle of delivering a two-day team building workshop), I've just seen a local BBC news article about a school due to open up the road in September called the "New Life Academy", which apparently claims to be "Ofsted approved".

Now feel free to send corrections, but to my knowledge Ofsted doesn't "approve" anything; it inspects and regulates. A quick Google has produced a website promoting the "Advanced Christian Education system of individualised learning" delivered in a school which is "Ofsted approved, and with an excellent track record".

However, since it won't open until September the New Life Academy doesn't have a "track record" in anything, so it can't possibly relate to the institution and must mean the curriculum instead? Nope, Ofsted doesn't "approve" curricula either.

Therefore, the New Life Academy's Christian Fundamentalists must have considered "Thou shalt not bear false witness" to be simply an option not an instruction and decided to ignore it.

Wonder if they've considered that making false public declarations might lead the inspectors to doubt the contents of their Self Evaluation Process when the day of judgement finally arrives - Ofsted that is; not Armageddon?

The Elephant in the Room..

The Higher Education Academy has apparently been informed by the funding councils that its grant will be reduced for the forthcoming academic year, something which the subject centre workers I've spent today with think is going to significantly impact primarily, and unjustly, on them.

It's my view, and it's also one apparently shared by all the delegates at today's event (not just those representing the subject centres), that whoever makes the decisions needs to very seriously consider the educational impact and current returns on expenditure.

The HEA board will doubtless claim to look at the big picture as it considers the challenge of managing the prospective funding cut, but given the contractual position of the subject centres, reducing/stopping their activities is relatively easy to implement and representatives of the central function are hardly likely to admit that their well-documented ticking of many boxes isn't a desirable output?

However, the easiest option is unlikely to be the best one, as the subject centres are not only the most visible part of the HEA, (other than running a recognition scheme, what do all those people at York actually do?), they are also, according to 2008's interim evaluation of the HEA "valued because they tackle enhancement from the ‘ground floor’" and “widely cited as the Academy’s flagship programme”.

It is also the regular engagement with those lecturers actually delivering the HE programmes, individuals who can have a direct impact on standards, that makes subject centres so effective: extensive repositories of generic information and strategy/policy documents do not have anything like the same potential for positive change as working together within and across learning communities.

Therefore, surely either reducing the size or number of the centres before, or instead of, reducing the size (& cost) of the central "coordinating body" first, will eventually lead to the closure of the HEA anyway, as without them what's left of the organisation won't be able to deliver anything of use to any of the people who want or need it?

Anyone willing to assuage the fears of centre personnel that they won't be bearing the lion's share of the Academy's cuts while the York white elephant is protected like the endangered species it now surely is?

Kirpaning it in the Family...

I'm currently sat in Leeds/Bradford Airport reading yesterday's remarks by Sir Mota Singh QC, a retired judge who's apparently stated that Sikhs should be allowed to carry their ceremonial daggers in public places, and wondering whether he's thought about how this assertion might apply to air travel since even nail files are on the banned list?

No exceptions are proposed in the BBC article, but it does describe a case where a boy was banned from wearing his Kirpan (dagger) at the Compton School in Barnet, and that even though the school offered to compromise by offering "the option of wearing a smaller knife, welded into a metal sheath" the boy's parents declined and removed him from the school; causing me to wonder what would happen if they (or their son) wanted to fly?

Mass homeopathic overdose - none dead!

Setting off to Derby on a 10.23 train to deliver an assessment workshop has prompted me to declare my admiration for all those who took part in Saturday's mass homeopathic overdose (at 10.23am: various locations around the country). Or not as it happens, since nobody succeeded in taking their own lives despite hundreds of people downing entire packets of homeopathic pills.

Hopefully the 10:23 campaign has succeeded in raising awareness (a form of education, just by another means?) of the inefficacy of homeopathic medicine, and the double-standards of leading pharmacists who happily stock them while admitting that they don't work.

Effectively it's a secret?

Surfing the Internet whilst on the way home after delivering a day's training about running effective meetings in Manchester isn't yielding any information about yesterday's HEFCE meeting to decide this year's funding allocations.
Thinking aloud - is this because:

• no decision has been made yet? And if not why not?
• they're waiting to tell the institutions/organisations first? Which means it's not looking good for the support providers.
• or maybe they'd also like some help running effective meetings?

Note: today's staff development hasn't been specifically "Running Effective Meetings in Manchester", it just happens to have been in Manchester as that's where the client's based...

New Team Building Exercises

Although some might think this is a little sad, I spent part of my holiday working out how the cleaning staff constructed these (and others) daily towel sculptures. There'll be some instructions and team building exercises based on these images written over the next week or two - available "origami-style"!

Minus Seven!

Well that's it - I'm fed up of weather like a dwarf-less Snow White pantomime; so assuming Manchester airport's open (and the M62 is clear) it's scuba-diving for two weeks in the Maldives and hoping that this strange white stuff has all gone by January 20th.

Snow work without flyer

Due to yesterday's closure of Southampton airport, I've had to postpone today's "Moving from Group Work to Team Work" workshop on the South Coast and stay home watching cricket on Sky instead.

Jet2 have agreed to refund my airfare to/from LBA, but DeVere Hotels are still charging me £95 as I didn't (couldn't) give 24 hours cancellation notice and won't take my weather-enforced non-appearance into account for any future booking when the training day gets rearranged.

Am now wondering how the snow is costing British industry £oos of millions a day (ref: Sky News during the lunch interval) since although I've incurred some expenses without any income, DeVere have benefitted by that same amount without incurring any costs, and the college still has the funds they were going to pay me, all the money involved is still in the system somewhere.
Isn't it?