Showing posts with label universities. Show all posts
Showing posts with label universities. Show all posts

Saturday 2 January 2021

UCU says government plans for a return to in-person teaching 'doomed to fail'

 The University and College Union (UCU) said  just before the New Year  that the government's plans for college and university students to resume in-person learning were "doomed to fail".

The union said after the recent drastic increase in positive cases and hospital admissions, all non-essential in-person teaching must move online at universities and colleges until Easter to help contain the pandemic.  

UCU was responding to a statement by Education Secretary Gavin Williamson to the House of Commons on plans for teaching at colleges and universities next term. The union said plans to use lateral flow tests in colleges and universities would not work. It said that university students who do not need to return to their student accommodation must be urged to stay off campus to help contain the virus, and be released from accommodation contracts. It also said ministers must ensure that all students have the ability to learn remotely, so no one is left behind whilst being taught online. 

UCU general secretary Jo Grady said: 'We now seem to be hurtling towards a national disaster, with the NHS about to be overwhelmed, but the government is wedded to using lateral flow tests to get students back onto campuses. 

'Keeping learning online until Easter would help lower rates of transmission and ensure a consistent learning experience, but the government continues to be fixated on forcing students and staff into lecture theatres and classrooms.  

'The lateral flow tests, which the government is relying on for a return to in-person teaching in colleges and universities miss an alarming number of people with Covid. Plans to use them to return to in-person teaching seem doomed to fail. One or two tests at the start of term will not be enough, and a regime of continuous testing in every university presents far too many logistical challenges.  

'As it stands, the window for the 'staggered return' of university students is shorter than the window in which they moved to university in September - and that mass movement led to more than 50,000 cases. We will have another term of students being forced in and out of isolation and staff being put at risk while their teaching plans are constantly disrupted.  

'These half measures will not bring the virus under control. Given the escalating rate of Covid cases, the government needs to halt all non-essential in-person teaching at colleges and universities until Easter. It needs to urge all university students who do not need to return to student accommodation to stay where they are, and release them from their accommodation contracts. Ministers must also ensure all students have the resources they need to learn remotely so that no one is left behind.' 

Sunday 1 November 2020

Greens: Extend lockdown to secondary schools and universities

The Green Party is calling for secondary schools, colleges and universities to be added to the list of closures from Thursday after a month-long lockdown in England was announced by the Government. 

Co-leader Jonathan Bartley is demanding this afternoon that common sense prevail, following the release of figures by Independent SAGE showing that a lockdown with schools remaining open will be significantly less effective than if they were closed.

“The government is fond of saying they are following the science, but this is an example of them doing the exact opposite,” says Bartley. 

“The figures are clear, a lockdown with schools open would need to be three times longer than if they were closed, to have the same impact. This lockdown is going to negatively affect huge numbers of people, so it has to be worth it. 

“Of course there are going to be exceptions - young people with special educational needs for instance should still be able to attend schools in person. But in general, this is the time to shut secondaries and universities, move to remote learning, give the support needed to curb the rates of infection where that can be done, fix the test and trace system which is still woefully underperforming. Use the time to make this lockdown worthwhile.” 

Green Party Education spokesperson Vix Lowthion said: “The government produced their own guidelines back in August which clearly stated that secondary schools must be on a remote learning rota or closed when the threat of the virus increases. Surely, that’s where we are now? 

“University teaching can move online during this heightened period and school teachers can focus on online learning plans whilst appropriate home-school rotas are put in place. Yes, it’s a huge challenge for our schools but so is working in a frankly unsafe environment where you’re not being given the back-up you need to keep yourself and your pupils out of harms’ way.

“Along with this there needs to be thought put into safeguarding for children at home, their physical and mental health and making sure they have everything they need to learn – the tech equipment and the support.

“The vast majority of children in secondary schools and young adults in higher education are able to learn from home with supervision from teachers. In the medium term this 'blended learning' will disrupt the economy less than a full shutdown including primary schools as in most cases older children have less need for intensive childcare provision.”

Monday 24 October 2016

"If the community sees [PREVENT] as a problem, then you have a problem”


Image for earlier report by Rights Watch LINK

Earlier this month Brent Council organised a public discussion on Extremism at which the majority of the audience appeared to be opposed to the Prevent Strategy - not because they were in favour of 'Extremism' but because they saw the strategy as sterotyping the Muslim community and being implemented in a top-down way which excluded community organisations. Additionally it threatened free speech in schools and colleges and had a corrosive effect on good community relations.  Overall it was likely to be counter-productive.

Now Open Society has taken up many of these issues in a report entitled Eroding Trust: The UK's PREVENT Counter Extremism Strategy in Health and Education LINK

Concerned organisations in Brent has set up a Monitoring Group on Prevent on Facebook which can be found HERE.

As a contribution to the Brent debate I publish below the Executive Summary of the Open Society Report:
“I’ve never felt not British. And this [Prevent experience] made me feel very, very, like they tried to make me feel like an outsider. We live here. I am born and bred here, not from anywhere else”.
“It could have gone the opposite way if I wasn’t thinking straight, if I were the type who was being brainwashed. The way they went about it, [Prevent] could have made me do exactly what they told me not to do. I associate with Prevent negatively, it is not helpful at all”
 Executive Summary and Recommendations


The UK’s Prevent strategy, which purports to prevent terrorism, creates a serious risk of human rights violations. The programme is flawed in both its design and application, rendering it not only unjust but also counterproductive. 
Launched in 2003, the Prevent strategy has evolved against the background of increased public fears over the threat of “home grown” terrorism. The strategy in its cur- rent form aims “to stop people becoming terrorists or supporting terrorism”. In 2015, legislation created a statutory Prevent duty on schools, universities, and NHS trusts, among other public sector entities, to have “due regard to the need to prevent people from being drawn into terrorism”. This requires doctors, psychologists, and teachers, among other health and education professionals, to identify individuals at risk of being drawn into terrorism (including violent and non-violent “extremism”) for referral to the police-led multi-agency “Channel” programme (for England and Wales) or “Prevent Professional Concerns” (for Scotland), both of which purport to “support” such individuals. 
This report analyses the human rights impact of Prevent in its current form in the education and health sectors. It focuses on these sectors because they are critically dependent on trust and have particular care-giving functions that have not traditionally been directed towards preventing terrorism. Under Prevent, doctors and teachers who have a professional duty to care for their charges are now required to assess and report them for being at risk of “extremism”, which is defined as “vocal or active opposition to fundamental British values, including democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty and mutual respect and tolerance of different faiths and beliefs”. Because the conscription of these sectors into preventing terrorism is part of a growing trend, the report’s principal findings, listed below, not only apply to the United Kingdom, but are relevant and instructive for other governments grappling with these challenges. 
First, the current Prevent strategy suffers from multiple, mutually reinforcing structural flaws, the foreseeable consequence of which is a serious risk of human rights violations. These violations include, most obviously, violations of the right against discrimination, as well the right to freedom of expression, among other rights. Prevent’s structural flaws include the targeting of “pre-criminality”, “non- violent extremism”, and opposition to “British values”. This “intensifies” the government’s reach into “everyday lawful discourse”. Furthermore, Prevent’s targeting of non-violent extremism and “indicators” of risk of being drawn into terrorism lack a scientific basis. Indeed, the claim that non-violent extremism – including “radical” or religious ideology – is the precursor to terrorism has been widely discredited by the British government itself, as well as numerous reputable scholars. Prevent training, much of it based on unreliable indicators, appears to be largely unregulated. Moreover, the statutory duty creates an incentive to over- refer. This incentive is reinforced by the adverse consequences associated with non-compliance with the Prevent duty and the lack of adverse consequences for making erroneous referrals. The case studies and interviews in this report confirm the tendency to over-refer individuals under Prevent. The fundamental nature of these defects makes them unlikely to be cured by a mere renaming of Prevent to “Engage”.

Second, Prevent’s overly broad and vague definition of “non-violent extremism” creates the potential for systemic human rights abuses. On the basis of this definition, schools, universities, and NHS trusts, among other “specified authorities” subject to the Prevent duty, are required to assess the risk of children, students, and patients being drawn into terrorism and report them to the police-led Channel programme where necessary. By the government’s own admission, thou- sands of people have been erroneously referred to the Channel programme. Individuals (including children) erroneously referred under Prevent experience the referral as inherently stigmatising and intensely intimidating. They also fear continued surveillance and the creation and retention of Prevent records, which may taint them and lead others to view them as “extremists” in the future. 
Specifically, the targeting of non-violent extremism raises serious concerns about possible violations of the right to freedom of expression. Children in schools have been targeted under Prevent for expressing political views. University conferences relating to Islamophobia and Islam in Europe have been cancelled, raising questions of possible breaches under the Education Act (1986) and article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights. More generally, the case studies and interviews in this report suggest that Prevent has created a significant chilling effect on freedom of expression in schools and universities, and undermined trust between teachers and students. This risks driving underground, removed from debate and challenge, conversations about controversial issues such as terrorism. In addition, as indicated by the large number of interviewees for this report who requested anonymity, there is a genuine and intensely held fear among some that public criticism of Prevent will trigger retaliation. This fear is particularly acute for parents who fear that their children will bear the brunt of the retaliation. 
Third, the Prevent duty creates a risk of discrimination, particularly against Muslims. Frontline professionals have broad discretion to act on their conscious or unconscious biases in deciding whom to report under Prevent. Current and former police leads for Prevent recognise that currently, Prevent operates in a cli- mate marked by Islamophobia. Significantly, between July 2015 and July 2016, Islamophobic crime in London rose by 94 percent. This climate creates the risk that Muslims in particular may be erroneously targeted under Prevent. All of the case studies relating to the targeting of individuals under Prevent raise serious questions about whether they would have been targeted in this manner had they not been Muslim. Relatedly, in some case studies, Muslims appear to have been targeted under Prevent for displaying signs of increased religiosity, raising questions about the violation of their right to manifest their religion.
Fourth, by requiring the identification and reporting of individuals at risk of violent and non-violent extremism, Prevent creates a risk of violations of the right to privacy. Many of the case studies describe individuals being intrusively questioned under intimidating conditions about their religious and/or political beliefs. One case study raises troubling questions about the collection (apparently without informed consent) of names and political opinions from Muslim children for the Home Office.

Fifth, there are serious concerns about the treatment of children under Prevent. Although the government describes Prevent as a form of “safeguarding” (a statutory term which denotes promotion of welfare and protection from harm), the two sets of obligations have materially different aims, particularly with respect to children. In contrast to the Prevent strategy, for which the primary objective is preventing terrorism, the primary objective of the duty to safeguard children under domestic legislation is the welfare of the child. This reflects the obligation under article 3(1) of the Convention on the Rights of the Child to make the best interests of the child a primary consideration in all actions relating to children. Accordingly, while compliance with safeguarding obligations would only permit referral to Channel while prioritising the best interests of the child, the Channel duty guidance does not specify that as a mandatory or even a relevant consideration. All of the case studies in this report relating to children – including one in which a four year-old child was targeted– appear to be instances in which the best interests of the child were not a primary consideration. 
Sixth, the Prevent duty risks breaching health bodies’ duty of confidentiality towards their patients and undermining the relationship between health professionals and their patients. The standard for disclosure of confidential information under Prevent appears to be much lower than that warranted by the common law duty of confidentiality enshrined in the NHS confidentiality code of practice and the General Medical Council’s confidentiality guidance. Specifically, requiring a medical professional to report to the police-led Channel programme an individual who is at “risk of being drawn into terrorism”, including “non-violent extremism”, appears to be a much lower standard than requiring the medical professional to report (under the GMC guidance) the individual only when failure to disclose confidential information would expose others to a risk of death or serious harm. This could generate breaches of the confidentiality duty along with violations of the right to private life under article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

Finally, there are serious indications that Prevent is counterproductive. The case studies show that being wrongly targeted under Prevent has led some Muslims to question their place in British society. Other adults wrongfully targeted under Prevent have said that, had they been different, their experience of Prevent could have drawn them towards terrorism, and not away from it. Government data reveal that 80% of all Channel referrals were set aside, implying that there were thousands of individuals wrongly referred to Channel. This in turn risks under- mining the willingness of targeted communities to supply intelligence to law enforcement officials which could be used to prevent terrorist acts.
 
As Sir David Omand, the architect of the original version of Prevent, has observed: “The key issue is, do most people in the community accept [Prevent] as protective of their rights? If the community sees it as a problem, then you have a problem”. This report demonstrates that the UK’s Prevent strategy is indeed a serious problem. 
Recommendations

To the UK Government:

1.     Repeal the Prevent duty with respect to the health and education sectors. 

2.     End the targeting and reporting of “non-violent extremism” under the Prevent strategy. 

3.     End the use of empirically unsupported indicators of vulnerability to being drawn into terrorism. 

4.     Establish an independent public inquiry – with civil society participation – into the Prevent strategy and associated rights violations. 

5.     Create a formal and independent complaints mechanism through which individu- als whose rights have been violated by the Prevent strategy can seek and obtain prompt and meaningful remedies. 

6.     Publicly commit to a policy of zero tolerance regarding retaliation against indi- viduals who allege rights violations under Prevent. 

7.     Publicly disclose data on total number of individuals referred to and processed through Prevent, Channel, and Prevent Professional Concerns (PPC), as well a the breakdown of these figures by age, type of extremism, and referring authority. 

8.     Publicly disclose, to the extent it exists, evidence underpinning and data relating to the UK’s Extremism Risk Guidance (ERG) 22+. 


To the Children’s Commissioners for England, Wales, and Scotland:

Conduct an assessment of the impact of Prevent on children, including but not limited to whether the best interests of the child are a primary consideration in Prevent-related actions. 
To the National Association of Head Teachers, the National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers, the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, the National Union of Teachers, and other teachers associations: 
Conduct an assessment of the impact of Prevent on teachers and children, including but not limited to the extent to which the best interests of the child are a primary consideration in Prevent-related actions.

To Universities UK:

Conduct an assessment of the impact of Prevent in universities, including but not limited to its impact on academic freedom and freedom of speech. 
To the General Medical Council: 
Review and clarify professional standards relating to the duty of confidentiality as interpreted and applied in Prevent settings. 
To the British Medical Association, the British Psychological Society,
the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges, the Royal College of General Practitioners, the Royal College of Psychiatrists, and other professional bodies in the health sector: 
Conduct an assessment of the impact of Prevent on the practice of doctors, psychologists and other healthcare professionals, and on patients and patient care, including but not limited to an assessment of how the duty of confidentiality is being interpreted and applied in Prevent settings.

Saturday 19 January 2013

Taking the Michael reaches new heights

By some means not yet revealed,  Michael Rosen's satirical letter to Michael Gove has appeared on a semi-official website which specialises in government contracts LINK

In case it disappears I reproduce Michael's advice below:

For the start of the year, I’m sending you some helpful ideas, from how to keep student numbers down to keeping teachers in check.

I thought I would try to be positive and lay out a set of modest proposals for you to consider in 2013.

1 Universities
It’s imperative to keep down the number of students. “Graduate” is really another name for people who think they’re entitled to be paid well. We are in an era when we must all pull together to ensure that workers work more and earn less (or as employers call it, “keeping labour costs down”) and large numbers of graduates swimming around the economy are an impediment to this. What’s more, three years of independent living and discussion have the potential to turn many of these young people into dissenters and trouble-makers. There is an argument for saying that it is the job of government to enable a population to increase its cultural capital, raising the level of education of as many people as possible. You must portray this sentiment as a utopian fantasy of a long-lost past.

So, let’s put into practice a set of clear policies:
a) You and your colleagues (and Eric Pickles) need to put a lot of effort into mocking and rubbishing university courses. Don’t worry about consistency here: pick on both vocational courses and seemingly obscure academic ones: “A degree in leisure management, ha ha ha”; ‘A degree in medieval German literature, ha ha ha”.
b) Suggest at every opportunity that academics and students are spongers and skivers. Contrast their use of public money, long holidays and low hours of work with MPs’ honesty, diligence and industriousness.
c) Make a big deal out of things like the “knowledge economy”, “what Britain does best”, “centres of excellence” and “world-class universities”. Rely on journalists to put this inflated waffle (which you don’t believe in anyway) on their front pages while relegating the cuts to a one-inch column on page 11.
d) It is absolutely vital to boast about making it possible for the “disadvantaged” to go to university while making it harder for them to do so. Fees of £9,000 a year are already much too low and some students from poorer families are slipping through the net and going to university. We must discourage them from doing so. I suggest fees in the region of £20,000 a year. One scholarship a year per university would serve the purpose of looking as if you’re being “fair”.
I am so glad that your colleague David Willetts has highlighted the problems of white working-class boys going to university. Given your party’s electoral precariousness at the moment, it is vital that you and your colleagues present a narrative which suggests that Britain today is a place where white people can’t get on and black people are given incredible advantages.

2 Ebacc
There is a real danger that you’re about to be stabbed in the back by your predecessor Kenneth Baker. He has come up with a plan to abolish exams at 16, create higher schools and training places for 14- to 18-year-olds. With utmost urgency, you must dig up anything you can on Baker to suggest that he is either an out-of-touch old backwoodsman fart and/or he is in thrall to Trotskyists.
For you to be able to push through what is fast becoming an exam that will be a major impediment for most young people to develop as learners, you must:
a) ignore all evidence on adolescents and learning;
b) make misleading comparisons with the old O-levels;
c) keep talking about “rigour” without explaining what you mean by that word;
d) rubbish teachers by saying that, unlike MPs, they are lazy and misuse public money.

3 Primary school exams
The phonics screening check and the spelling, punctuation and grammar – Spag – test.
You must resist all demands to provide evidence that these tests will improve reading and writing, as there is none. Avoid public debate about this. Potential problems coming up are:
a) that many more children failed the phonics test than learn how to read using the old mixed methods;
b) many good readers failed the phonics test;
c) some children are being told they have “failed” and so can’t proceed to “real” books.

Rely on ill-informed newspaper editors to keep these stories off the front pages. When it comes to the grammar test, I predict that there will be real problems, with teachers not knowing how to teach for it and hardly any children understanding what is being tested. Therefore you must keep up the campaign of rubbishing teachers, showing how, unlike MPs, they are lazy and misuse public money.
In a key speech, make the suggestion that most British children are ignorant, illiterate, stupid and badly behaved.

4 Academies programme
Stop trying to be nice. Step in now, and make every state school in England an academy. Hail this termination of public accountability as a triumph of “freedom from control”. Make sure that your own burgeoning powers of control over the nation’s teachers and young people is never mentioned. It is crucial that whenever an academy fails an inspection, you must rubbish the teachers, showing how, unlike MPs, they are lazy and misuse public money.

It is highly unlikely that you will be able to keep tabs on all the academies, so I suggest that you create a set of regional committees to manage them. These must not be called “local” in case people compare them to local authorities and the management committees must not be elected, but made up of people appointed by you.

5 Teachers
Abolish all teacher training. In a key speech, try to whip up people’s bad memories of individual teachers (who were usually just people trying to implement what governments made them do) by saying how “we all hate teachers”. Play to people’s feelings that it is always other people’s children who are “bad influences” on their own, and what is needed is a “firm hand”. This should enable you to usher in the replacement of teachers by ex-military personnel who can do the job of patrolling past the computer terminals (equipped with News Corporation syllabuses), which all children will be looking at all day in the exciting schools of the future.

6 History
You must work even harder on the history curriculum, ensuring that all our children in England are proud of our country’s history. I’m not absolutely sure what this means if Scotland becomes independent, but I’m sure you’ve figured out what “our country” means better than me. Meanwhile, can we make sure that dead white men are celebrated the most? All attempts to show either that some dead white men did bad things, or that there are some important things done by dead white women, dead black men and even dead black women, must be eradicated. We need to have our classrooms filled with pride. After all, thanks to your government, more and more children are arriving at school with empty bellies, so at least let’s fill them with pride, eh?

7 Business
All schools must be turned into limited companies. Headteachers should be employers (“school company directors”) while compulsorily non-unionised teachers and pupils are the workers. Schools should be required to make goods and sell services for money and become places that offer car-cleaning, photocopying, fruit-picking, biscuit-making and the like at highly competitive rates.

8 Your job
The moment it looks as if staying in your job is an impediment to your long-term objectives of becoming leader of the Conservative party, make it clear to David Cameron that you’ve never been very interested in education and you have outlived your usefulness.

I hope that these proposals will be of use to you throughout the year.