Buscador avanzado

Britain's Houses of Parliament is seen at sunrise in London on 31 December 2020 on the day that the Brexit transition period ends and Britain leaves the EU. Photo by NIKLAS HALLE'N/AFP via Getty Images.

The EU-UK trade deal which came into force on 1 January 2021 ends the UK’s participation in Erasmus+, the EU’s largest education, training, youth and sports programme. The UK will not be signing up to the programme’s next seven-year cycle, beginning in 2021, meaning that British young people – as well as teachers, university administrators, youth workers and others – have lost the right to apply for funds to study, learn, volunteer and travel in the European Union – and a number of non-EU countries – while European youth are missing out on the same opportunities in the UK. The UK government’s decision itself is not up for discussion in this piece, our concern instead is ensuring the proposed successor to Erasmus+ achieves its full potential.…  Seguir leyendo »

Recientemente he tenido ocasión de hablar con estudiantes de Relaciones Internacionales en IE University o con algunos de los miles de jóvenes españoles que visitaron la Feria de Educación en Barcelona y Madrid, algo que me ha hecho recordar mi época como estudiante universitario –no os voy a contar hace cuántos años–, primero en el Magdalen College en Oxford y luego en la escuela de estudios superiores de Yale.

Por aquel entonces, a finales de los 80, el Madgalen College era el pariente pobre de las universidades estadounidenses a pesar de la arquitectura y el nivel de su sistema de tutela individual.…  Seguir leyendo »

Few people could have predicted the first policy on which Britain’s new prime minister would take a stand. It is none of the issues that have dominated British politics in recent months: Brexit, immigration, terrorism. Rather, Theresa May has decided it is to be grammar schools.

Grammar schools are state-supported secondary schools that select their pupils through an exam taken at age 11 known as the 11-plus. Once a centerpiece of Britain’s education system, they have largely been phased out over recent decades.

The history of grammar schools goes back to the Middle Ages, but the modern version emerged out of the 1944 Education Act, one of a series of laws that shaped social policy in postwar Britain.…  Seguir leyendo »

Estúpida. Incoherente. Corta de miras. Torpe. Entrometida. Contraproducente. Me faltan adjetivos para calificar la insensatez que supone la estrategia actual del Gobierno británico respecto a los estudiantes extranjeros. Trabajo en una universidad británica y veo sus nefastas consecuencias a diario: una burocracia insolente y kafkiana, que trata a todos como sospechosos. Un prestigioso funcionario de Singapur al que se rechaza porque no domina bien la lengua (cuando, en Singapur, la Administración funciona en inglés). Hijos que no pueden ir a sus países a ver a sus ancianos padres porque el absurdo Organismo de Fronteras de Reino Unido les retiene los pasaportes durante meses.…  Seguir leyendo »

This week, BBC1's Panorama reported on the Saudi school textbooks used in over 40 Saudi schools in the United Kingdom and Ireland. The investigation found that the books contained messages of hatred, incitement of violence and other reprehensible teachings that are commonly found in the Saudi official religious discourse. I had the pleasure of participating in the programme, providing commentary on the findings.

In my years of work dedicated to promoting modernity and reform in my homeland, I have always given special attention to education as it is the foundation of social values and a major predictor of the direction in which a country is headed.…  Seguir leyendo »

So, Edinburgh University has finally stripped Robert Mugabe of the honorary degree it awarded him in 1984. It is the first time in the university’s 425-year history that it has revoked an honorary degree - and Mugabe will be afforded a right of appeal.

The university’s sanction came about after a sustained anti-Mugabe campaign by its student body and alumni, local newspapers and MPs. In order to carry it out, the university’s senate first had to alter its rules and then empanelled three professors to examine whether there were grounds to penalise Mugabe.

On June 6, the senate duly announced that there were such grounds.…  Seguir leyendo »

Yes, John Chalcraft: An international, non-violent movement supporting divestment, sanctions and boycott of Israel is gathering strength. The question for British academics is whether they too should refuse to do business as usual with Israeli academic institutions. At stake is not the boycott of individual Israelis, nor some political test, but the withdrawal of institutional collaboration - in relation to funding, visits, conferences, joint publication and the like - with Israeli universities.

Academics will be unimpressed by the erroneous claim that Israeli universities have seriously opposed Israeli violations. No Israeli academic institution has ever taken a public stand against Israel's 40-year military occupation.…  Seguir leyendo »

We are in the middle of the biggest educational movement in history. Hundreds of thousands of young people are travelling to be educated abroad. They are led by the Chinese, for whom a foreign education is highly prized. There now are over 50,000 Chinese students in Britain - mostly the children of the elite and the rich - and the numbers studying abroad are predicted to double.So what happens to the beliefs and values of these young people when confronted by a culture so different from their own? Staying in Britain produces extensive reflection about both British and Chinese society, as a new study of recent graduates by the British Council has found.…  Seguir leyendo »

By Carol Nevison, the assistant programme director at Save the Children (THE GUARDIAN, 30/03/06):

Simon was permanently excluded from school. Thanks to the help of an independent advocate he has now moved to a new school, but without that support, he might have fallen out of education completely.School exclusions have increased consistently over recent years: in 2003-04, almost 10,000 children were permanently excluded from school. These figures don't reflect the numbers of children who are informally excluded by schools, the ones that slip through the net and are not registered at any school. Neither do these figures include the children who decide to "self exclude" because they find life in mainstream school too difficult.…  Seguir leyendo »

By Jock Percy, a senior analyst atACE*COMM, an operations support systems solutions provider (THE GUARDIAN, 30/03/06):

The Qualifications and Curriculum Authority's (QCA) annual report, released on Friday, found that more than 1,000 pupils were disqualified in last year's public exams for taking mobile phones into the exam hall.While this is a fairly small percentage of those taking examinations, it is indicative of a much larger trend. The report concluded that many of the miscreants were penalised simply for having the phones in their pockets, having brought them in unintentionally. This highlights the fact that for today's teenager, the mobile is so much an essential item, that it is unthinkable not to have it available at all times.…  Seguir leyendo »

By Camilla Cavendish (THE TIMES, 30/03/06):

LONG BEFORE eBay shocked the nation by selling fake Blue Peter badges to people who want to get in free to national treasures such as Edinburgh Zoo and the Penzance Pilchard Works, I obtained my own Blue Peter badge through a shameful deception.

I was 8. My mother had invented a kind of jungle gym for our cats: a vast enterprise involving cardboard box tunnels, loo roll ladders and, naturally, sticky-backed plastic. When Blue Peter acquired some kittens, she wrote in telling them about the invention; they built one; and I got the credit. I think my dear mother really believed it had been my idea, but it was entirely hers.…  Seguir leyendo »