As I was saying.. Galileo wasn’t able to describe the four satellites of Jupiter other than noting moving points of light, but when you’re whizzing past them with a battery of modern scientific devices you can get a much better view. Nasa’s New Horizons mission is heading further out towards the dwarf planet Pluto [that’s not a real planet – Ed], although it was a fully fledged planet when they started, and they’ve been testing out the onboard equipment while …
Here’s an interesting (unintended) consequence of the Private Finance Initiative (PFI) picked up by the eagle eye of the Great Wee Azoo, and how a public asset inadvertently fell in to the hands of a private company. It all began when he noticed the last remaining wall of the old Millfield Tech was wrapped in a protective covering. Under a Freedom of Information request, I contacted BIFHE to inquire after the mural and discovered that the Institute made an application …
As I mentioned at the time, I was less than enamoured with Pope Benedict XV’s attempt to equate, or entwine, religion and science in a speech at his old University in September last year, during his Meeting with The Representatives of Science. So it’s not a surprise to see that the publication of details of a subsequent meeting at the papal summer palace in Castel Gandolfo, a closed-door seminar attended by his former theology students – in a book which …
The wiki is getting there slowly. The education page lays out three headline issues: the Bain Report; the abolition of the 11+: and integration of education. There are policies from Sinn Fein, the Conservatives and the UUP. If your party’s policy is not there, now’s the time to fix it… It may be time to give the rather forlorn Environment page some loving attention too.. Mick FealtyMick is founding editor of Slugger. He has written papers on the impacts of …
The Guardian, quite rightly, along with some other papers, pick up on the story of how Dr Gillian McKeith Phd Gillian McKeith, aka the poo lady, has agreed to drop the title Dr from her company’s advertising after a complaint to the Advertising Standards Authority – although the quotes from the good lady herself might suggest otherwise. The ASA had come to the provisional conclusion that the use of the title in adverts was likely to mislead the public, given …
In the Belfast Telegraph, Kathryn Torney reports that the Department of Education has confirmed that “post-primary schools will be able to set their own admissions criteria – which can include the results of academic tests – if, as expected, a restored Assembly fails to agree on a way forward.” That shouldn’t come as news to anyone paying attention.. or reading Slugger on a regular basis.. but it seems that some of our politicians still don’t do that.. From the Belfast …
In a later blog, Peter Hitchens cites Northern Ireland as one of the few places left where there is not a ‘post code’ lottery for ‘good schools’. Here he argues that socially aspirant Londoners have been moving to Kent and Buckinghamshire in order to gain access to the region’s remaining state funded Grammar schools… That is why it is so unfair that only the well-off can pay fees. In the 1960s the mid-range private schools were dying, losing pupils to …
It is notoriously difficult to do comparisons across the border, but it seems that the National Educational Welfare Board is concerned enough with parental attitudes towards their children’s’ education to have published a report today commissioned from Mori Ireland. Yet the most interesting detail is in the statement from CEO Eddie Ward, that 20% of the population don’t sit the Leaving Cert (H/T Willis): “Many thousands of our children and young people do not attend school regularly and their life …
We, eventually, had a reasonably erudite discussion on education yesterday on Slugger. The issue of Northern Ireland’s clearest educational virtue came up several times: its high scoring performance in A Level exam results. It coincides with an outreach from Oxford to draw in some of that considerable talent. Given that Queens recently joined the Russell Group of elite universities, is there a danger that, despite our many problems, we are taking some historical advantages for granted: ie, considerably higher levels …
Really interesting piece of research on educational achievement and its relation to individual economic success in Northern Ireland by Vani K. Borooah at the University of Ulster. In the introduction he notes that, “Based on a survey of 97 studies that estimated returns to education, Ashenfelter et. al. (1999) concluded that the return to an additional years schooling was between 6 and 9 percent”. Now we do extremely well compared to the rest of the UK when it comes to …
As the BBC report says, Secretary of State for Wales etc, Peter Hain, while announcing a new Shared Future Accreditation scheme for schools, has pledged the full implementation of Sir George Bain’s Strategic Review of Education, beginning immediately, including the Education and Skills Authority – despite the declared opposition from certain quarters. He also appears to want to set the political course ahead, on education, for any subsequent Assembly..From the NIO statement Turning to the planning and funding of schools, …
NIO Minister Maria Eagle has taken some time off from the all-important campaign to give the government’s official response to George Bain’s Independent Strategic Review of Education. The statement is on the NIO site and, in more detail, as a PDF file.. the detail is probably worth examining closely..Perhaps most interestingly, given the atatement by the Catholic Bishops, is the acceptance of the “central recommendation” to “move quickly to a system of area based planning.” But, while the NIO statement …
My previous post wasn’t timed to tie-in with this one, but sometimes stories just collide. The nine Northern Ireland Catholic bishops have responded to proposals on Education under the Review of Public Administration.. and presumably, at least in part, to the Bain Report recommendations “On this occasion, however, we feel compelled to say that we cannot in conscience commend these proposals to parents, teachers and all involved in Catholic education.” From the BBC report The bishops were responding to detailed …
The NIO minister Angela Maria Eagle seems enthusiastic about the 61 recommendations in George Bain’s Independent Strategic Review of Education while the BBC highlight the recommended raising of minimum enrolment levels for primary and post-primary schools, and that a third of schools – 440 in total – do not have the required minimum number of pupils. The Report is available here Adds Press Association report hereBain highlights what he sees as the problem in the introduction and summary of his …
The BBC claims it has learned that “Academic selection cannot be maintained in Northern Ireland without cross-party support” and quotes the DUP’s Sammy Wilson’s interpretation of the situation that will emerge with a rewriting of the law to, as I understand it, not ban academic selection but with the universally applied 11-plus exam also being abolished. But there is another solution to the vacuum created by both events coming to pass and the Assembly failing to agree an alternative. Surely …
Queens Students Union are the first to use our new Message Space service (more later). They’ve just kicked off a week of events focused on political activism, no doubt now inflected with a touch of optimism since the positive outcome the St Andrews talks last week. Today, the Electoral Commission will be in the foyer of the spanking new Union building all day taking new registrations (don’t forget your Nat Ins number). The refurbishment of the Union building means there …
Some good news for Queen’s University after the recent Clinton airport episode.. As the BBC report, Dr Alan Fitzsimmons and his colleagues at the Astrophysics Research Centre are to head up UK efforts to identify Near Earth Objects, of which one or two potentially hazardous examples have been mentioned recently [and are likely to continue to feature in reports – Ed]. They’ll be using data collected by the new Pan-Starrs observatory in Hawaii along with researchers at Edinburgh and Durham …
From Gary Kent in Manchester: The four main parties and the Secretary of State set out their stalls in the run up to the deadline of 24th november. The local representatives rehearsed their lines and none of them blinked. However, the DUPs Nigel Dodds surprised many with his response to a question on integrated education. He said that “the best way is for people to be educated together” and argued that “if we were starting again with a blank sheet …
I may have to take some time out from diving into the fascinating archives of the Royal Society [free until December – Ed] to read this, Richard Dawkins’ latest book, The God Delusion, and it couldn’t have appeared at a bettter time. Joan Bakewell applauds loudly in her review in the Guardian, “Primed by anger, redeemed by humour, it will, I trust, offend many”, where you can read an extract from the first chapter. Dawkins was also interviewed on Newsnight …
Roy Hattersley has been over to Northern Ireland specifically to look at the integrated school system. Most of it is focused on Rowallane College in Saintfield, which was recently declined funding by the Department of Education, and is (in the style of the orginal Shaws Road Buncoil), going it alone, in what the parent’s call, an ‘act of faith’. It currently subsists on a small grant from the Integrated Education Fund. Simon at Liberal England laid out three reasons, why …
