Article: Maths teacher shortage ‘will get worse’

This article refers to a wider trend affecting not only the UK but most countries around the world. The shortage of skilled labour force in certain strategies areas, related to the quality provision of health and education, such as it is the case of teachers in math and sciences.

From the Guardian, form Anthea Lipsett ,May 7, 2008:

“the shortage of qualified maths teachers in schools in England and Wales is set to get worse, according to new research.

Figures produced by Education Data Surveys today reveal that only 2,000 maths teachers are likely to be trained this year, with even fewer next year, meaning there will not be enough trainees to fill all the vacancies advertised by schools.

An analysis of job advertisements for main scale maths teachers placed by secondary schools since the start of 2008 showed some 1,650 adverts by state schools across England and Wales.

With three months left for schools to advertise teaching posts before the end of the school year, the number of adverts is around 75% of total trainee numbers.

But once the needs of the private sector, those who drop out of training courses, and those who decide not to enter teaching are factored in to the equation, recorded vacancies for the first four months of 2008 exceed the likely number of trainees available.

Prof John Howson, who conducted the analysis, said: “Once again the government’s failure to recruit enough trainee maths teachers means that some schools will be short of properly qualified maths teachers.

“Parents should ask what the government is doing about this issue. All the focus on so-called poor teachers must not disguise the fact that the government has continually failed to provide enough teachers.

“What is even more alarming is that recruitment to training courses for 2008 is falling behind the levels seen last year and is well below the record highs recorded in 2006.”

The government must ensure that every school has its fair share of qualified maths teachers, regardless of whether it has to introduce rationing or use incentives, he added.”

 

Changing IMF Policies: Is the IMF responsible for the shortage of doctors, nurses and teachers in developing countries?

From Eldis:
Title: Changing IMF policies
Authors: R. Rowden
Publisher: IFIwatchnet, 2008

Full text of document

This paper highlights the shortage of doctors, nurses and teachers hired in developing countries. It critically addresses current International Monetary Fund (IMF) policies with a focus on the need to change its practices in order to improve the situation.

The authors argue that 57 countries, most of them in Africa and Asia, face a severe health workforce crisis. The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates that at least 2.4 million health professionals and 1.9 million health workers, or a total of 4.3 million health workers, are needed to fill the gap. Without prompt action, the shortage will worsen. Mounting evidence suggests policies promoted and enforced by the IMF may be preventing developing countries from spending more in their national budgets. This has important consequences for health and education budgets being constrained at unnecessarily low levels when major increases are needed. Although rich countries have provided some debt cancellation, too little has been made available for too few countries in need.

The paper calls for four key courses of action:

• to demand that the IMF change and widely publicise revised macroeconomic restraint policies
• to demand that other policy options for increased public spending be fully vetted and explored
• to demand greater public stakeholder involvement in such explorations of alternative spending options
• to call on governments to raise this issue of changing IMF policies through the Executive Board of the IMF, which approves the IMF loan programs for borrowing countries.

 

HOUSEKEPING NOTES

Our regular blog posting will be interrupted until next Week.

 

Progress for children: a world fit for children statistical review

From Eldis:

An overview of progress made in attaining the millennium development goals with regard to children

Title:Progress for children: a world fit for children statistical review
Authors: ; UNICEF
Publisher: United Nations [UN] Children’s Fund , 2007

Full text of document

This paper provides an overview on progress made in attaining the millennium development goals (MDGs) with regard to children.

On the way towards the eradication of extreme poverty and hunger (MDG 1), underweight prevalence has declined even if low weight or height for children aged under 5 remains common in many developing regions.

With regard to MDG 2, universal enrollment in primary schools has been successfully promoted and more than 85 per cent of primary-school-age children attend school. However, the provision of secondary education lags behind.

 

Audio/Video: Bruno Latour

A very complete list of Bruno Latour Audio/Video lectures available online.

From ANTHEM:

• Listen to audio: “The Tarde/Durkheim Debate” with Bruno Karsenti as Emile Durkheim, Bruno Latour as Gabriel Tarde, and Simon Schaffer as the Dean, at the Tarde/Durkheim: Trajectories of the Social Conference at Cambridge University, 14 March 2008
• Listen to audio: “The Harman Review: Bruno Latour’s Empirical Metaphysics,” a symposium with Bruno Latour, Graham Harman, Lucas Introna and Noortje Marres, chaired by Edgar Whitley, at ISIG, London School of Economics and Political Science, 5 February 2008
• Listen to MP3: “Another European Tradition: traceability of the social and the vindication of Gabriel Tarde,” lecture by Bruno Latour, European Institute, London School of Economics and Political Science, 4 February 2008
• Listen to RealPlayer Audio: “Episode 5 - Ulrich Beck and Bruno Latour,” How to Think About Science, CBC Radio, 12 December 2007
• Listen to audio: “Is there a cosmopolitically correct design?” Manchester Architecture Research Centre, University of Manchester, 5 October 2007
• Watch the video or listen to MP3: “From Object to Things: How to Represent the Parliament of Nature?” A lecture by Bruno Latour, The Art, Technology, and Culture Colloquium, UC Berkeley’s Center for New Media, 17 October 2005
• Watch the video: “Nature Space Society” by Bruno Latour, with Olafur Eliasson, Doreen Massey and Dominic Willsdon at the Tate, London, 19 April 2005
• Watch the video: Bruno Latour on the Issue Ticker, at “Making Things Public: Atmospheres of Democracy.” Exhibition. ZKM_Museum for Contemporary Art, Karlsruhe, Germany, March 2005

• Watch the video: “Making Things Public: Atmospheres of Democracy.” Exhibition. Opening speech by Bruno Latour, ZKM_Museum for Contemporary Art, Karlsruhe, Germany, 19 March 2005
• Watch the video: “Assembly or Assemblage? Politics and Polytechnics.” A lecture by Bruno Latour, Politecnico di Milano, 17 November 2003
• Listen to RealPlayer Audio: “Why has the Critical Spirit Run Out of Steam?” A lecture by Bruno Latour, Stanford Humanities Centre, 7 April 2003
• Watch the video: “What is Iconoclash?” A lecture by Bruno Latour given at the symposium “Image Wars and Image Floods,”12 July 2002
• Watch Flash presentation: “Iconoclash” by Bruno Latour given at CCA Kitakyushu, 1 July 2002

 

Report: UK-China-Hong Kong Transnational Education Project (British Council, 2007)

From globalhighered :

Both China (PRC) and the Hong Kong SAR offer an expanding and highly competitive market opportunity for overseas higher education institutions (HEIs). As noted in a recent report commissioned by the British Council (UK-China-Hong Kong Transnational Education Project), a number of UK HEIs are providing hundreds of new ‘international’ degree programmes in Hong Kong and China.

According to the Hong Kong Education Bureau, in January 2008 there were over 400 degree programmes run by 36 different UK HEIs in Hong Kong. On the one hand, UK HEIs can be seen to work as independent operators, offering a number of courses to local students registered with the Hong Kong Education Bureau under the ‘Non-local Higher and Professional Education (Regulation) Ordinance’. At the same time, UK HEIs have also initiated a series of collaborations between UK and Hong Kong HEIs. These collaborations are exempted from registration under the Ordinance. In January 2008 there were over 150 registered- and 400 exempted-courses run by 36 different UK HEIs in Hong Kong.

 

Report: Graduate Education and the Public Good (CGS, 2008)

On April 24, 2008, CGS released a major new report, Graduate Education and the Public Good, at a legislative forum at the Library of Congress.

The report illustrates the value of graduate education to the U.S. economy and our quality of life by showcasing alumni of U.S. graduate schools and the significant contributions they have made to the nation and the world.

Excerpt and Executive Summary

Press Release

Full report available from the CGS Online Bookstore

From Chronicle of Higher Education News blog, April 24:

Universities may be labeled “ivory towers,” but many people find a master’s degree or a doctorate an important steppingstone to career advancement in the wider world as well. But how does all of that advanced education translate into the betterment of society at large? And, more important, do legislators, policy makers, and the average citizen know how much graduate education matters?

A new report released today by the Council of Graduate Schools argues that those advanced degrees not only make a tangible difference in people’s lives, but provide American society with a vital knowledge base, economic capital, and social cohesion.

The report, “Graduate Education and the Public Good,” cites knock-on effects from graduate education that extend past technological advances in medicine and other disciplines to include higher average salaries (which yield greater tax revenue) and replenishment of the nation’s teaching corps.

Furthermore, the report observes, “the new global competition for talent places increasing importance on maintaining a world-class graduate higher-education system.” —Richard Byrne

 

Report: “Democracy at Risk: The Need for a New Federal Role in Education”

Last week Forum for Education and Democracy released a report entitle Democracy at Risk: The Need for a New Federal Role in Education,”

You can obtain a copy of the full report here.

Craig A. Cunningham writes at the Educational Policy blog a concise review indicating that this report:

…argues strenuously for a new approach to education at the Federal level.

……The report specifically attacks the No Child Left Behind approach that uses “compliance checklists” instead of true reform initiatives. “Rather than providing access to new programs, technologies, and supports that could dramatically change schools and communities, the law has been managed in ways that push schools back to out-of-date notions of learning and stifle the use of new technologies.”

[One example of the ways that NCLB stifles the use of new technologies is the ways in which it forces many schools--particularly those with high numbers of poor and minority children--to focus the curriculum exclusively on "drill" in so-called "basic skills," rather than the type of higher-order thinking tasks and inquiry-based problem solving that new technologies foster.]

The report cites statistics showing that reading improvement under NCLB has been slower than before the law was enacted, that high school graduation rates have started to decline again, that pverty rates among children in the US are the highest in the industrialized world, that the US ranking on international tests has plummeted, that “trust” and “community involvement” among people in the US is in rapid decline, and that increased expenditures on the prison system have far out-paced increases in spending on education.

(read full here)

 

News: Prime Minister Calls India’s Universities ‘Teaching Shops’

From the Chronicle of Higher Education News blog, April 26, 2008:

India’s prime minister, who last year described the country’s universities as dysfunctional, has again lashed out at them, calling them “teaching shops and degree-giving authorities” that have lost their tradition of research-oriented teaching.

“I say this as someone who has been a teacher,” Manmohan Singh said on Friday in a commencement address at Shri Mata Vaishno Devi University, in the state of Jammu and Kashmir. “I have often said that I have strayed into politics by accident but my preferred career was teaching. I recall that in the days I used to be a student and a teacher, universities placed great emphasis on doing research along with teaching.”

Since taking office in 2004, the prime minister has often criticized the state of India’s higher-education system. Last year, he lambasted the governance of state universities and described them as below average. “A dysfunctional education system can only produce dysfunctional future citizens,” he said then.

On Friday Mr. Singh said his government had spent more money on public education than any other recent administration. But “it is not enough to spend it on buildings and salaries alone,” he said.” Some of it should be earmarked for research … and for providing scholarships to promising students.” —Shailaja Neelakantan

 

Resource: The Free Software Directory

The Free Software Directory is a project of the Free Software Foundation (FSF) and United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). The website catalogs useful free software that runs under free operating systems — particularly the GNU operating system and its GNU/Linux variants. Licenses are verified for each and every program listed in this directory. Link: http://directory.fsf.org/