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NEWS • VIEWS • INFORMATION • ADVICE


THE DREAM LAB:

a competition that’s waking young minds

(Photo captioned: Trevor Baylis OBE, inventor of the wind-up radio)

Secondary school pupils are being offered a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to invent a new product and potentially win thousands of pounds as part of a major new national competition.

‘The Dream Lab: A Search for Young Inventors’ will look for Britain’s next design superstars, giving young people aged 13 to 18 the chance to open their minds, get their thinking caps on and design a sleep-related product. The winner with the best design will bag £20,000 for their school and £10,000 for themselves. It is one of the most ambitious projects of its kind to be targeted at pupils in Key Stages 3, 4 and 5.

Trevor Baylis OBE, inventor of the wind-up radio, who is fronting the Dream Lab, said: “I’m really excited to be involved with this competition. With the Government’s ‘innovation nation’ strategy aiming to boost the economy, it’s clear that Britain’s future lies in design and technology.

“Many children who struggle with traditional academic subjects in school find real inspiration in invention, which is why it’s so important that young adults are encouraged to explore the world of innovation from an early age. The Dream Lab gives them the opportunity to do this.”

The competition, which is being run in conjunction with secondary schools throughout the UK, will be judged by Trevor Baylis and Ortis Deley, presenter of the Gadget Show. The Dream Lab finalists will receive moneycan’t- buy feedback about their inventions and the overall winner will be personally presented with the prize at their school in November.

The campaign to find Britain’s brightest young design star is sponsored by Sound Asleep, the creator of innovative audio gadgets such as the original Sound Asleep pillow.


School funding blow

The Coalition has dealt schools in England yet another blow by hitting them with a last-minute £155 million budget cut.

The Department for Education (DfE) has made a 5% reduction in the Standards Fund, money that is allocated to schools to pay for services such as free school meals and extra tuition for children who need help with literacy or numeracy.

The unexpected cut to the fund was announced after local authorities had already allocated school budgets for the forthcoming year and has resulted in widespread disruption and turmoil for schools.

As with many of the Coalition’s reforms, it is the schools serving the most deprived areas that will be hit hardest, as a proportion of the money allocated under the Standards Fund related to deprivation.

The £155 million reduction is in effect a 0.4% cut in the Coalition’s main funding for schools in 2011/12 and comes on top of cuts to local authority funding and a savage programme of reforms and cuts to education, including the axing of Building Schools for the Future, universal free school meals and one-to-one tuition.

The NASUWT believes that hasty and unilateral removal of the Standards Fund once again demonstrates the contempt that this Coalition Government has for the work of schools and local authorities and the determination of ministers to try to obscure the full scale of cuts it is making to the education service.


Independent Review backs national framework

An independent review of pay in the public sector has backed the NASUWT’s belief that the national framework of teachers’ pay and conditions must be retained.

In his Government-commissioned report on fair pay, economist Will Hutton rejected the idea of introducing a cap on senior public servants’ pay, including that of headteachers, or benchmarking salaries against that of the Prime Minister. These recommendations were welcomed by Chris Keates, General Secretary of the NASUWT, but she also raised concerns about the lack of focus in the report on tackling low pay.

The emphasis in the Report on the need for clear pay frameworks and greater fairness and transparency on salaries reinforced the need to retain the teacher’s contract, she argued.

“This underlines the importance of maintaining the current system for teachers’ pay and the folly of abolishing the Support Staff Negotiating Body,” she said, adding: “the real danger will be that some of the recommendations do not feed the Coalition’s irrational contempt of public service workers and therefore are unlikely to see the light of day.”

Further details are available at www.nasuwt.org.uk/FairPay