| Child benefit cuts under attack Ministers defend plans to cut child benefits to higher earners amid criticism they are a further attack on already hard-pressed families. bbc.co.uk |
Divided schools: a portrait of inequality One of the most comprehensive studies into fairness in the UK shows how class, race and gender remain crucial factors in determining how British pupils succeed at school - and beyondThe statistics are stark: boys are slipping behind girls in 11 out of 13 learning categories by the age of five; children from the poorest families are half as likely to achieve good GCSEs; black pupils of Caribbean descent are three times more likely to be excluded; four out of five young people with special needs are being bullied; between a quarter and a third of Muslim women have no qualifications.After decades of reform, during which governments have tried desperately to address the social fault lines in British education, the problems persist.In the space of 80 pages – one chapter of its groundbreaking report on fairness in Britain, due to be published tomorrow – the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) portrays an education system in 2010 that is deeply divided. The inequalities emerge at nursery, carry on into primary school and secondary education, and then university and beyond. Some relate to race, others to poverty, disability and the problems experienced by Britain's boys.GenderThe report, How Fair is Britain?, reveals evidence of boys in their early years slipping behind in problem solving and reasoning and then in social and emotional development. By the age of five, 53% had reached the expected level in writing compared with 72% of girls.Next they underachieve at GCSE, failing to go in such large numbers to university; when they do, they are less likely to gain a 2:1 or a first. It is not just an academic problem – the report finds that boys are also three and a half times more likely to be permanently excluded from school. "A lot of boys feel they do not fit into the way education is now," said Gaynor Sbuttoni, an educational psychologist. She argued that schools placed too much emphasis on skills that boys often struggle with but which were not necessarily relevant in adulthood.Take neat handwriting as an example, she said, describing seeing a beautifully written piece by a male pupil that had one comment scrawled across it by a teacher: "Please write more neatly."Or sitting still – something girls tend to be better at. "So a boy can't sit still, so he gets told off, so he starts to feel like a bad boy, so he starts to behave like a bad boy, so he gets told off some more, so he gets angry, so the teacher gets angry and so on," said Sbuttoni, her words tumbling out as she described the vicious circle. "And so his work will suffer."The under-achievement of boys is an international phenomenon that has emerged in recent years. New Labour sought to tackle it in the late 1990s when Stephen Byers, then the schools standards minister, said we "should not simply accept with a shrug of the shoulder that boys will boys". So councils were ordered to draw up plans that addressed the issue. Later, there was an intensive project in more than 50 schools. Some blamed the lack of male primary teachers so there was a drive to recruit more.For Sbuttoni the solution is obvious. "We need to change the way we teach, we need to make it more attractive, more fun, take the pressure away so we are not just worrying about the amount of information we can stuff into children's brains," she said. She remembered watching pupils collect spiders and worms and use them to learn about nature, geography and maths. Boys thrived in that environment, she claimed.Many parents agree. Late last week, mothers writing on the Mumsnet website discussed the issues. "I think that boys take longer to be ready to learn than girls," wrote one woman. "When a boy is six to seven they are still very active and have a short attention span." Erratic boys found it hard to be told suddenly to calm down and concentrate, she added.Another mother described how one "chaotic" school with few opportunities to play outside sent boys "stir crazy".BullyingAccording to the EHRC report, bullying is rife in the classrooms, corridors and playgrounds of Britain's school. Two thirds of young people claimed to have been bullied at some point between 2004 and 2006. That proportion rises to four fifths when it comes to children with special educational needs (SEN). One woman writing on Mumsnet said her son had high-functioning autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. "He was bullied daily," she wrote. "The children knew that they could coax a reaction from him, so would goad him and call him names, walk up behind him and poke him like a dog and then run off." Yet it was her son who was excluded.It is a depressingly familiar story to campaigner Julie Maynard, who has a 15-year-old autistic son, Joshua, and who has represented dozens of other parents of children at the Special Educational Needs and Disability Tribunal."Are you really surprised that children who are perceived as different are bullied? The sadness is that many SEN children do not have the language ability or cognitive ability to defend themselves," said Maynard. She talked of children with learning disabilities and autism having to "fend for themselves in dizzy, mainstream schools, unsupervised at lunch and play".But Maynard wanted to talk about parents, too. "What appals me is the lack of sympathy by parents of able children towards our children, who they perceive as a nuisance and a burden. It adds educational pressure to school staff who have to deal with the wishes of both competing groups of parents," she said.The EHRC report also highlights homophobic bullying – and cyber-bullying, which it says affects one in three young people of secondary age. It also points to research that suggests children with religious beliefs have been targeted because of their faith.Charities that offer support to young people abused at school say that an increasing number are being driven to suicide.Emma-Jane Cross, chief executive of Beatbullying, said it was "unacceptable" that between a third and half of all children in the UK think bullying is a problem in their school – a statistic revealed in the report.Taken to the extreme, bullying meant criminal behaviour, she added, explaining that her organisation was lobbying for a school safety bill to make it unlawful to harass pupils or teachers at school. Next month, thousands will take part in an online "Big March" in protest at the problem.And the impact of bullying permeates children's school achievement as well. According to the EHRC, children who have been bullied do worse in GCSEs – scoring on average 15% lower than those who have not. They are also twice as likely to end up out of education and without a job.Some of the trends highlighted in the EHRC report are clear – boys are falling behind girls, children with disabilities are highly vulnerable and those from the poorest families face disadvantage from the very start.PovertyThe study highlights the fact that just over a third of children who qualify for free school meals – often used as an indicator of deprivation – reach a "good" level of development by the age of five. That compares with more than half who do not.For white British, Bangladeshi and black Caribbean boys on free meals, the number is closer to a quarter. And the trend continues throughout school, with pupils from the poorest families half as likely to get good GCSE results and twice as likely to be permanently excluded.Policymakers know that poverty matters when it comes to attainment. That is why league tables based on a "value-added" measure were introduced that looked not just at overall results but at how far pupils had come. And while many argue about their worth, academies brought in by the last government to replace struggling schools in deprived communities were meant to break down such social divisions.The coalition also says it is driven by a desire to stamp out such unfairness. Sarah Teather, the Liberal Democrat children's minister, said: "We have a moral duty to eradicate the unacceptable inequalities that still exist in our society, to narrow the gaps between rich and poor and between different ethnic groups, to work as hard as we can to make our society fairer." She said policies such as the pupil premium, which will provide extra funding for the poorest pupils, will be at the heart of her government's plans.Russell Hobby, general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, said Teather was right to highlight economic disadvantage as key.But he argued that the inequalities emerged well before children reached the school gates: "Schools are not adding to the problem – they are part of the solution."RaceOnce it was a story of black and white, in which racial discrimination was a major driving force. But in tomorrow's report, the story of ethnicity is a complicated one – in which poor black boys underachieve, as do those from Irish Traveller families, but poor Chinese girls overachieve; Pakistani and Bangladeshi communities see different outcomes to Indian ones; and there is a growing group of mixed race children who in themselves have complex outcomes.Take exclusions, for example. Pupils from non-white British backgrounds were as likely in 2008-09 to be permanently excluded as pupils overall. But a more detailed analysis shows large differences between groups.The lowest permanent exclusion rates were among the Asian community, with five out of every 10,000 pupils being excluded, followed by children with one white and one Asian parent.Those closer to the average of 10 permanent exclusions per 10,000 were white British, black African, Irish and mixed white/black African children. Yet children with one white and one black Caribbean parent were 2.5 times more likely to be excluded than average, with a rate of 25 per 10,000 pupils. The highest rates of exclusions were found among Gypsy/Roma children, who were more than three times more likely to be excluded, followed by black Caribbean pupils.Last week, at the Conservative party conference, deputy headteacher Katharine Birbalsingh declared: "Black underachievement is due in part to the chaos of our classrooms, and in part to the accusation of racism. If you keep telling teachers that they're racist for trying to discipline black boys ... the schools stop reprimanding these children."Rob Berkeley, director of the Runnymede Trust, a leading race equality thinktank, said the comments were a concern. "My worry is the race to say that racial discrimination is never a problem," he said. But tomorrow's report makes clear that ethnicity still matters – even if you control the factor of class, he added. So it is a little early to declare "mission accomplished".He said the issue of race inequality had become complex and it was urgent to highlight what parts of disadvantage were about racial discrimination and what were about something else."A lot of the time you look at the figures and say there is inequality and that needs to be tackled. But when you come to the real stats, then some is about class, some about gender and some about cultural patterns."Hobby argued that it was important to maintain high expectations of all children, be they black, brown or white, male or female, rich or poor, disabled or not. "The solution is not to single out separate groups," he said. After all, as the EHRC report makes clear, disadvantage is much more complicated than that. It is often about people who fall into two, three or four categories that are highlighted.What the EHRC report does show is that inequality remains a stark reality in Britain – not just throughout a deeply split education system, but on into adulthood, where who you are and where you came from continues to define where you are likely to end up.Tomorrow, the government's equalities body lays down the most comprehensive set of evidence ever published; a fairness map of Britain that spells out just how far we have to go. It is up to politicians to decide if and how they will embark on the journey.Education in crisisSchoolsEqualityChildrenEducation policyAnushka Asthanaguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Hundreds block oil refinery road Hundreds of climate campaigners blockade the access road to a refinery in Essex to hold back oil delivery tankers. bbc.co.uk |
Welsh-language viewers get chance to discuss BBC funding of S4C in live show S4C bosses to answer questions from live audience on Monday over proposal for BBC to take over 90% of S4C funding by 2013Welsh-language viewers opposed to the government's controversial move to give the BBC responsibility for S4C will have a chance to air their views in a live programme to be broadcast by the channel.John Walter Jones, S4C Authority chairman, and Arwel Ellis Owen, the broadcaster's acting chief executive, will discuss the proposal for the BBC to take over funding more than 90% of the Welsh public service broadcaster's budget by 2013 on Noson Gwylwyr S4C - or Viewers' Evening – on Monday. Jones and Owen will answer questions posed by viewers.The show is to be presented by S4C's Angharad Mair, who has already expressed her opposition to what the broadcaster claims is a "merger" with the BBC.Yesterday Mair appeared in a video posted on YouTube promoting a protest rally against the S4C changes funded and organised by the pressure group Cymdeithas yr Iaith Gymraeg (known in English as the Welsh Language Society).The video also appeared on the WLS's website. The clip, which is in Welsh, is accompanied by text which, when translated, says "Rally 'No to Cuts – Yes to new S4C'" and urging viewers to attend a protest in November.S4C said it is "monitoring" the row that has developed as the story has circulated around Wales but that it is not at this stage concerned about bias in the show because of Mair's public opposition to the government plan.Mair will not interview the two S4C executives, with questions all coming from the members of the public. She is also not in control over which questions are chosen; her role is to read them out over the course of the hour-long discussion.Opposition to the proposal and anger about the way the changes were agreed between the government and the BBC without consulting S4C has been growing in Wales since the shock revelation that a deal had been reached late on Tuesday.On Wednesday Welsh Assembly government ministers expressed shock and dismay at the way the deal had been done.Owen admitted that he only found out about government plans to "merge" with the BBC while listening to a radio report. However, despite his anger he admitted that in some ways the deal, which will see a 24.4% cut in real terms to S4C's £102m budget over four years, could have been much worse as the government had been considering cuts of 40% until as late as Wednesay morning."I heard on the radio when I was driving down the M4 on Tuesday night... that was when the story was breaking and I had such a surprise," he said in a radio interview."Absolutely nobody saw it coming and that is the real reason why the [S4C] Authority has called for this judicial review because... the [culture] minister [Jeremy Hunt] chose not to inform them, not to consult them, not to advise them, not even to warn them that something like this was coming and they were holding a secret deal with the BBC."He said that while the judicial review process was being worked through he would "get on and discuss the details" about making the BBC deal work."At least we have four years of guaranteed income and that is a huge increase on what the minister talked about when we met him about a month ago when he talked about a one-year guarantee of income. We are fortunate that we have ended up with 24% because... [Hunt] was talking about 40%." Geraint Talfan Davies, a former controller of BBC Wales and one of the architects of S4C's ill-fated submission to the Department of Culture Media and Sport which opened the door to the BBC deal, said today that he does not believe S4C will get anywhere with the the judicial review."It could prove an interesting case, but it will not deter the government from pushing on," he said in a piece online at Click on Wales, the news magazine of the Institute of Welsh Affairs, where he is chairman. "It has more than enough time to regularise its decisions in parliament and to finesse points of detail."• To contact the MediaGuardian news desk email editor@mediaguardian.co.uk or phone 020 3353 3857. For all other inquiries please call the main Guardian switchboard on 020 3353 2000.• If you are writing a comment for publication, please mark clearly "for publication".S4CBBCBBC licence feeTelevision industryWalesMark Sweneyguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Royal two for one: William and Harry go to Africa on first joint tour In these times of austerity, it is the royal tour that gives value for money: two princes for the price of one. Prince William and Prince Harry’s tour of Africa — a six-day, three-country dash that began yesterday and will take in England’s next World Cup match in Cape Town — is the first time the prin-ces have embarked on a joint tour. timesonline.co.uk |