IN BRIE F
r The University of East Anglia (UEA) has officially opened its new £5 million campus in London. INTO UEA London has been set up through a public-private partnership to attract students from overseas and to improve cultural and political links. The site, a collaboration with INTO University Partnerships, will have a total of 1,000 students in September.
r A new research ‘super institute’ is being launched in Scotland to tackle key global issues such as food, energy and environmental security. The James Hutton Institute – named after the Edinburgh-born founder of modern geology, James Hutton – will employ more than 600 scientists, researchers and support staff.
r Meeting needs in a changing environment, an adult career guidance conference organised jointly by NIACE and NAEGA, takes place in London on 21 June 2011. The event will explore how career guidance policy and practice can meet the needs of all adults across the life course.
r The government has launched an independent task force to improve levels of employee engagement. The task force will aim to ensure that there are opportunities for organisations wanting to learn about engagement. It will share good practice, generate debate and offer support via a new website. It builds on the report Engaging for Success, which David MacLeod and Nita Clarke produced in 2009 for BIS.
r This year’s World Assembly of the International Council for Adult Education takes place from 14 to 17 June, in Malmo, Sweden. The ICAE World Assembly takes place every four years and is open to members, partners and to all networks that are linked to lifelong learning.
6 ADULTS LEARNING APRIL 2011
Clegg promises to end ‘who you know’ culture of unpaid internships
SOCIAL MOBILITY Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg has said he wants to stop people getting on in life purely because of ‘who they know’, as part of government moves to increase social mobility. Launching the government’s social mobility
strategy, Mr Clegg promised to change the culture of unpaid internships, which benefits the wealthy and well-connected. No-one, he said, should gain an unfair advantage because their parents have ‘met somebody at the tennis club or the golf club’. Although just seven per cent of people attend independent schools, they make up 70 per cent of High Court judges and 54 per cent of CEOs of FTSE 100 companies.
The government said it would offer more formal work placements within Whitehall, and pledged to encourage businesses to commit to improving access to their internships.
Mr Clegg also unveiled a new commission on social mobility and child poverty to monitor progress towards ending child poverty, improving life chances and increasing social mobility. It will be headed by the government’s adviser on social mobility, the former Labour MP Alan Milburn. While improving social mobility was not going to happen ‘in a few months or years’, Mr Clegg
said, he wanted the present government and future governments to be held to account over attempts to ‘make Britain a fairer and more socially mobile place’.
Mr Clegg said that the coalition’s ‘overriding
mission’ was to make society fairer, adding that Labour had failed to improve social mobility despite doubling public spending. However, in an exchange in the Commons,
Labour’s deputy leader Harriet Harman said: ‘I’m afraid you gave up the right to pontificate on social mobility when you abolished Education Maintenance Allowance, trebled tuition fees and betrayed a generation of young people.’ The University and College Union said raising tuition fees and scrapping the Education Maintenance Allowance would counteract any attempt to improve social mobility. General Secretary Sally Hunt said: ‘Education is the closest thing we have to a silver bullet when it comes to social mobility, yet since this government took power, we have seen major financial barriers erected in the face of those from low and average- income backgrounds.
‘Nick Clegg has made lots of positive noises about the importance of social mobility, but the actions of the government tell a different story.’
New bursary scheme to replace EMAs STUDENT SUPPORT
The government has announced a £180 million bursary scheme intended to target funding at those most in need to replace the Education Maintenance Allowances which were scrapped in England last year.
The £560 million EMA scheme had provided up to £30 a week to help low-income students stay on at sixth forms and colleges.
Under the new scheme, the biggest amounts – £1,200 per year – will be given to 12,000 teenagers with the greatest needs, such as pupils in care, care leavers and the severely disabled. After these payments, from the £180 million overall funding, there will be £165 million for colleges and schools to make discretionary payments to support low-income students with costs such as transport, food and books.
Education Secretary Michael Gove said the revised system would provide a ‘more targeted’ support system. He said that MPs had to consider ‘whether it is socially just to be paying 45 per cent of students a cash incentive to stay in learning when we could be concentrating our resources on removing barriers to learning faced by the poorest’. The new bursary scheme, he added, would ‘ensure that every child eligible for free school meals who chooses to stay on could be paid £800 per year – more than many receive under the current EMA arrangements’.
Shadow Education Secretary Andy Burnham described the plans as an attempt to ‘put a positive gloss’ on deep spending cuts. He said that that Mr Gove had ‘taken a successful policy, which improved participation, attendance and achievement in post- 16 education, and turned it into a total shambles’. The University and College Union warned that the reduction in overall support raised ‘the prospect of thousands of poorer students being priced out of studying’.
NIACE has issued a call for evidence to assess the social and economic impact and value for money of informal adult and community learning, on behalf of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS). The evidence submitted will contribute to the process of reforming and reinvigorating informal adult and community learning currently being undertaken by government. The survey can be completed online until Monday 25 April 2011 and documents can also be submitted as part of the evidence. Submissions will be analysed and summarised for BIS and will be used to inform a policy paper on the future of informal adult and community learning. Any queries about the call for evidence or online survey can be sent to Emily Jones:
emily.jones@
niace.org.uk.
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32