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July 2004 |
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I am constantly amazed, although I should by now have become inured, that Dawn and I can find yet more sources of information which we think are sufficiently relevant to need regular checking. Yes, I know that emphasis changes and we must change with it. The government's "flavour of the month" may not be what we would choose to be reading about but ... we now bring you items of social significance which we wouldn't have dreamt of doing three years ago. Anyway, the latest information source is very readable – all about information management issues and work in libraries. The sources are mainly American but information these days does not know any boundaries. I've also subscribed to a daily news service for information professionals – also American but has some interesting things in it.
Do you provide advice in a general context? Signposting to other advice agencies where the subject is outside your remit? I suggest that you might wish to consider getting the Citizens Advice publication, Adviser. The May/June issue (number 103) has some useful definitions in connection the employment status of casual workers e.g. "gangmaster". There's also an article about the Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998 (whistleblowing) which would be helpful to anyone dealing with employment issues.
The government (or is it just the Prime Minister?) wants 50% of 18-30 year-olds to "experience higher education". Now the Secretary of State for Education says that he believes planned university expansion could be funded only by "co-payment" between the state and employers.
OK – the argument goes like this:
Can't be an argument – there's no "other side". Well, in the beginning, once upon a time, a lot of people told the government that the expansion of higher education couldn't work without more money.
Information is at www.adset.org.uk or await the invitation landing on your desk.
Every effort has been made to ensure a rounded, interesting programme – and lots of opportunity to network – but there may well be "happenings" between now and then that we want to discuss. Don't be shy – we'll fit it in somehow!
Another event
The ICG's Information Managers' Conference is now to take place on 11-13 October at the Telford Moat House
Belatedly, please welcome Sheila Bisset representing Careers Bradford (I have already grovelled)
Sussex Careers – contact Christa Lindner, Information Manager
National Resource Service (UfI/learndirect) – contact Viv McGrath, Manager
In trying to index the items that go into this publication month after month (OK, so it's a topic list not an index) I've realised that several of the items I've thrown into the box labelled "lifestyle" really ought to be in one called "governmental social engineering". However, discretion being the better part of valour, so I'm told, I think that "lifestyle" is where they will stay.
Work is well under way to integrate national and local Information, Advice and Guidance (IAG) services, as outlined in Information, Advice and Guidance for Adults – The National Policy Framework and Action Plan. Since February 1998, the learndirect national learning advice service has provided information on learning and careers to more than six million callers. There have also been more than 23 million successful searches on the learndirect-advice website since April 2002. Local IAG services are embedded within colleges and other learning provision and are presently delivered by local IAG partnerships. Now these two services are to be integrated to provide a seamless service for the user. Due to be launched later this year [now confirmed as 1 August], this integrated service will provide IAG to two main groups:
There will be a strong focus on those who need the most help, and who are least able to pay for it. This group will be identified by a national criterion (those with a Level 2 qualification or below) as well as local needs (based on social or economic priority area, for example).
As well as operating the national telephone and web service, UfI has also been contracted to create a national resource service to support IAG delivery. This service will develop resource materials, databases, diagnostic tools and guides for use by local face-to-face services and the national entry point, to support consistent and high-quality IAG service delivery, for example a Guide for Women Returners. These resources will also be available in hard copy from the helpline or local services or for individuals to download from the website.
Reach Newsletter July-August 2004
New awards for the delivery of high-quality information, advice and guidance have been launched by the DfES. The Matrix Excellence Awards will be presented to organisations that already hold the Matrix Standard. These organisations must show that their service has made an impact in enabling individuals to realise their learning and work potential.
More information: www.matrix-quality-standard.com
Library and Information Update Volume 3(8) July-August 2004
Update comment: I am somewhat concerned at the source of this information. Was there a press release? What does the Guidance Council say, if anything? Any comment in the press? If you know anything, please let us know. Thank you. Hazel.
The new paper from the Guidance Council examines the need for career guidance within the process of career management and estimates the potential savings to the economy as a result of better learning and work decisions.
The paper (PDF 24pp) is at http://tinyurl.com/3qsad
Guidance Council website July 2004
Guidance Council website July 2004
The government's drive to boost apprenticeships is under threat because of "the continuing poor quality of careers advice", claims a survey from manufacturers organisation EEF and SEMTA. The survey found that two-thirds of respondents were advised by their teachers to follow traditional educational paths. They were advised to stay on at school and take A-levels, rather than pursue other vocational paths in alternative institutions. Just one in five was advised to apply for an apprenticeship.
Ngaio Crequer, The TES FE Focus 9 July
Update comment: Yet again we, the people of England, are paying the price for cuts in funding for delivery of guidance as opposed to information.
According to research conducted on behalf of the Learning and Skills Council, poor pre-enrolment advice is a significant factor in the decision to drop out of study. Researchers interviewed more than 100 students who did not complete their university or college courses. They found that the majority felt that they were on courses which were "inappropriate to their interests, abilities or needs". The study concluded that this situation is likely to worsen if the government continues to pursue its "bums-on-seats" approach to participation, which focuses on recruitment rather than selection in post-compulsory education.
Alison Utley, The THES 9 July
Update comment: Sorry to be a damp squib but "I told you so", as did a great many other people. Did you, government of either or any complexion, actually listen? Information, advice and guidance are essential ingredients of the success recipe. They are available in some places but sadly lacking in others.
"A budget tells us what we can't afford, but it doesn't keep us from buying it."
William Feather
Libraries around the country are responding to the adult basic skills agenda. In an article for Library and Information Update (Volume 3(8) July-August 2004), Genevieve Clarke describes how the Vital Link project is helping in key areas. The Vital Link is a reader development programme which promotes reading for pleasure as a way of motivating and sustaining adult basic skills students and reaching new learners. Its main aims are to:
Information about The Vital Link is at www.vitallink.org.uk
In an article for Library and Information Update (Volume 3(8) July-August 2004), Fiona Tarn reports on the steps taken by Croydon library services to "encourage diffident learners into libraries". Beginning with basic skills awareness training for all staff, Croydon then established a working party to identify priority areas. Stock was revamped, and displays were erected which used the DfES "Get On" logo rather than "basic skills". The campaign proved to be highly successful, and resulted in the production of a community information pack. The pack is a "smog-tested" (simplified measure of gobbledegook) version of an existing community information database.
For information about the community information pack, contact Liz Moss on tel: 020 8760 5400 ext 1109
Alan Barton discusses the government's major initiative to move people from incapacity benefits into jobs. He says that the government's policy of encouraging as many people of working age as possible into paid employment has, in many respects, been successful. However, there has been no reduction in the number of people receiving benefits because they are unfit for work. Pathways to Work, an initiative being tested in seven pilot areas, will run to April 2006.
Adviser Number 103 (May/June 2004)
In an article for The Guardian (27 July), Alan Wells, director of the Basic Skills Agency, dismisses the claim that four out of five adults have problems with literacy and numeracy as "ridiculous". This figure is taken from the proportion of the population that is not qualified to Level 2, rather than the 7 million adults who were originally believed to have difficulties with numeracy and literacy. The expansion of the target group means that, according to the DfES's own skills survey, 82% of adults aged 16-65 are now considered to have "inadequate basic skills". Mr Wells comments: "What really worries me is that I left school without the equivalent of A*-C at GCSE, which means I was part of the target group and might still be. I also employ some people, many of them graduates, who haven't got an A*-C in both English and maths, so I suppose they are also part of the target for Skills for Life. I must say I wish I'd known I had literacy and numeracy difficulties, because I didn't think I had. Clearly I was wrong. But not realising I needed help is my excuse for never joining a course to deal with my difficulties. I'm sure many of the four in five adults must be in a similar state of ignorance."
Full article: http://tinyurl.com/66ngt
Carla McLoughlin and Anne Morris
Reported here are the results of a research project that examined the role of the UK public libraries in addressing adult literacy, including approaches and issues. Eight public libraries were selected as case studies and adult literacy provision was investigated using staff interviews. The interviews provided support for the role of public libraries in promoting the pleasure of reading to adults with poor literacy. The re-branding of adult literacy collections was recognised as the ideal starting point for the rejuvenation of adult literacy work. Approaches used to address poor adult literacy included the use of reading groups, talking books, themed activities and events, and student book buying. A role for public libraries in identifying adults with poor literacy was acknowledged as part of multi-agency work. The main issues facing public libraries in the delivery of adult literacy services concerned establishing dedicated staff time and identifying funding opportunities. Recommendations are provided for public libraries involved in establishing or reviewing adult literacy services. The authors' recommendations make interesting reading:
Journal of Librarianship and Information Science Volume 36 Number 1 (March 2004)
Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell has published the hard evidence of how the arts and culture can help rebuild broken communities, and create lasting new ones. Speaking at the launch of a consultation paper, Culture at the Heart of Regeneration, Ms Jowell said: "Culture matters for its own sake. But the argument doesn't stop there. Everyone now accepts that culture can be a catalyst to turn round whole communities. There are examples up and down the country. Places to live must be living places." Ms Jowell set out a six-point plan for building successful and sustainable communities through culture. She said: "The CHAMPS formula – at the heart of today's consultation paper – suggests that cultural regeneration works best when there is:
The consultation paper, Culture at the Heart of Regeneration (PDF 59pp) is at http://tinyurl.com/58xnc
Also available on the DCMS website is The Contribution Of Culture To Regeneration In The UK: A Review Of Evidence (PDF 77pp) http://tinyurl.com/4s8eq
Responses to the consultation are required by 15 October
DCMS news release 30 June
Good-quality childcare is central to building community life and ending child poverty, according to the British Urban Regeneration Association and Daycare Trust. In a joint policy statement, the two organisations called on the government to integrate its National Childcare Strategy with its Neighbourhood Renewal Strategy to ensure that local agencies are working together to ensure that quality affordable childcare is available in every community.
To read the statement in full, visit: www.bura.org.uk/Press/daycare_policy.htm
Children Now 16-22 July
Local communities are to be given new "people power orders" under plans to tackle antisocial behaviour. The new "community-focused" approach to justice will provide residents with incentives to combat local trouble-makers and nuisance neighbours. Neighbourhood action teams will be set up to take a proactive role in fighting low-level crime in their patch, which could include imposing curfews and issuing antisocial behaviour orders. They will also liaise with the police to set the priorities for local policing.
Matt Weaver, The Guardian 19 July
Stephen Billett, Griffith University, Australia; Terri Seddon, Monash University, Australia
Social partnerships that respond to and address local needs are becoming an increasingly significant feature of public policy, particularly in Europe and, more recently, Australia. The trend is also being actively promoted through the development planning agencies such as the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, UNESCO and World Bank. The common policy intent is to devolve decision-making to the local level where action consequences are more immediate and more readily realised than in more centralised forms of governance. Working to secure mutuality of interests and reconciliation of conflicting interests among client groups then becomes the hallmark of mature service delivery. This article sets out the conceptual terrain for "new" social partnerships in terms of their prospect of building communities through participation in vocational education and training (VET). It initially identifies some of the qualities and characteristics of "new" social partnerships being enacted in VET, their achievements and contributions to community building. In doing so, it highlights some bases [basis?] for judging the successes and threats to these social partnerships, and to appraise the extent to which they have shifted conceptions of learning beyond traditional institutional spaces occupied by centralised policy formulation and provision of VET through education institutions. A principal concern is to identify strategies for making social partnerships work better in supporting localised decision-making and opportunities for VET to be enacted in ways to support both communities and individuals.
Journal of Vocational Education and Training Volume 56 Number 1 (2004)
Rowland Atkinson and John Flint
Policy discourse and interventions relating to disorder perceive a lack of organisational capacity to deal with these problems in high-crime and deprived areas. This article draws on research looking at the relative propensities to deal with disorder within deprived and affluent neighbourhoods. We find that deprived areas may be characterised as chaotic and disorganised but also that residents in these areas appear more likely to intervene in acts of disorder. Nevertheless, residents in all neighbourhoods did not want to engage directly with local crime problems. This challenges current policy with its aim of empowering communities to deal with crime, and appears to burden rather than empower residents.
Policy and Politics Volume 32 Number 3 (July 2004)
The UK's first Social Enterprise Zone (SEZ), based in Newham, East London, was established in 1998. It built on the Business Enterprise Zone model, where designated areas are freed from a range of statutory regulations obstructing local economic growth, and applied this principle to community services. The SEZ is a test bed for new policies and services tackling regeneration in deprived areas. Users of public services and front-line workers generate all the ideas. In this study, those involved in running the SEZ report on the lessons from its first years. Findings include:
An overview of the research is at www.jrf.org.uk/knowledge/findings/housing/734.asp
The full report, Enduring change: The experience of the Community Links Social Enterprise Zone: Lessons learnt and next steps, by Matthew Smerdon and David Robinson, is published for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation by The Policy Press (ISBN: 1-86134-312-4, price £11.95)
JRF mailing list 20 July
The government's flagship Neighbourhood Renewal Fund has been extended for a further three years, but regeneration agencies and local authorities will be set tougher targets to achieve. Chancellor Gordon Brown announced that the scheme would continue at its current level of £525 million a year until 2007/08. The ODPM has been set an objective of securing "measurable improvements" by 2010 in narrowing the gap between the most deprived neighbourhoods and the rest of England on six fronts: health, education, crime, worklessness, housing and liveability. It is believed that organisations which receive NRF funding will be "more targeted" than in previous years.
Henry Palmer, New Start Hotnews 14 July
A valuable new tool to help voluntary sector organisations get more people involved in shaping their communities was launched by Home Office Minister Fiona Mactaggart today (19 July). The new website <www.activecitizenship.co.uk> is a one-stop shop for facts, figures, debate and case studies on how people can make a real difference in their community. The Benefits of Community Engagement, a new report commissioned by the Home Office's Civil Renewal Unit, is published on the website today.
Home Office press release GNN ref 98492P 19 July
Parents should be entitled to free childcare for children under three to bring Britain closer to the high levels of state-funded care found in other European countries, according to a new children's services think-tank. Capacity argues that the government must provide much more support for families if it is to justify ambitious claims to regard childcare as a policy priority.
Lucy Ward, Education Correspondent, The Guardian 6 July
Many ordinary working people are on track for a poverty-stricken retirement, warns an Age Concern report. Builders, shop workers, hotel staff and factory workers are some of the many who are working their way towards a retirement below the breadline. 79% of hotel and restaurant workers, 60% of construction workers and 54% of wholesale, retail and repair workers don't even have access to a pension at work. Gordon Lishman, Age Concern's Director General, said: "It's an absolute disgrace that millions of ordinary working people are heading for poverty after a lifetime of work – with many unlikely to be aware of the bleak future that lies ahead."
HRLooK Daily News 20 July
Who is "under-saving" for retirement? A Labour Research Department report for Age Concern (PDF 54pp) is at http://tinyurl.com/6bxzd
"It is precisely because the public sector has invested £6 billion in new technology, modernising our ability to provide back-office and transactional services, that I can announce, with the detailed plans departments are publishing for the years to 2008, a gross reduction in civil service posts of 84,150 to release resources from administration to invest in the front line," said Chancellor Gordon Brown as he unveiled his spending plans.
Gareth Morgan: Computing
via TheITPortal Midweek Roundup 14 July
Update comment: Mr Brown went on to say that the £6 billion investment has also led each and every adult living in the UK to be computer literate, and capable of accessing information from online sources. All websites have been made fully accessible so there will be no problems for disabled people who need to communicate with their local council. Moreover, for those who do not have a PC with an Internet connection at home, their local library will be extending its opening hours so that they can make beautiful transactions with the government via the People's Network. He did say all that, didn't he? … No? … Oh well, at least he explained who would be there to support all the front line staff when all the admin staff have been sold off, didn't he? … No? … Oh dear! Dawn.
Only one of the UK's top five supermarkets has a website that meets even the most basic accessibility needs of disabled consumers, a survey by the charity AbilityNet has found. State of the e-nation: online supermarkets audited websites operated by ASDA, Morrisons, Sainsburys, Somerfield and Tesco for usability and accessibility. The sites were ranked on a five-star scale, where one star signifies "very inaccessible" and five stars mean "very accessible". The highest score of four stars went to Tesco's "alternative" site <www.tesco.com/access> which was the only site that could be easily accessed by those with visual impairments, dyslexia or a physical disability. Tesco managed two stars and the remainder scored just one star each.
E-Access Bulletin Issue 55 July 2004
Sarah Agarwal sets out the reasons why you need to be aware of users – and how your product (a website) is being used by these people. Ms Agarwal tells us that users are not simply a "nice to have" item – without them we would perish. Given this, why is it that so many organisations seem to ignore the needs of website users? There are usability guidelines available and much of the advice is free to charitable and not-for-profit organisations. However, these are, argues Ms Agarwal, no substitute for actually talking to users. She then goes on to tell us how to check on users' needs, build prototype sites for testing and then actually test needs.
The document is at www.freepint.com/issues/150704.htm#feature
Research conducted by the Cabinet Office shows that Internet users respond favourably to both the Directgov and UK online. A panel of 100 users who had never seen the sites before were asked to complete a number of specific tasks. On completion, 71% of users said they found the information available on Directgov to be "good", and 88% felt that the Directgov site made it easier for them to access government information and public services. In addition, 80% preferred it to the UK online website, saying that it offered a broader range of content in a more easy to understand and better structured way.
Cabinet Office press release: http://tinyurl.com/4mjd6
Info@UK Issue 39 (June 2004)
A report for the European Institute of Public Administration claims Wales is leading the way in Europe when it comes to e-Government. The report, which looked into how a number of regions use information technology to communicate, puts Wales ahead of areas in various countries, including the regions of Catalonia, Baden-Wurttemberg, Flanders, Lombardy, and Scotland. The report found that Wales demonstrated best practice in the areas of e-Government and e-Democracy.
European Institute of Public Administration 13 June
Info@UK Issue 40 (July 2004)
The £75 million local e-Government partnership programme supports 101 partnerships to deliver a range of e-Government projects delivering joined-up and shared services at regional and sub-regional levels. This leaflet gives information on the programme.
The leaflet (PDF 2pp), published by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister on 7 July, is at http://tinyurl.com/4d9pt
The Cabinet Office is reported to have scrapped an £83 million contract with IT services company ITNET. The contract, to build two high-security data centres at secret locations to host e-Government projects, was only signed a year ago. However, the contract has been cancelled to "avoid non-delivery". A statement from the Cabinet Office said: "None of the services under the remit of ITNET's data centre hosting contract have either been delivered or accepted and the project is several months behind schedule and was forecast to be considerably over budget if continued." The decision is thought to signal a new "tough approach" from the government to IT projects.
E-Government Bulletin Issue 165 (9 July)
"Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity."
Hanlon's Razor
Responding to the publication of the draft Bill on regional assemblies, the Director-General of the British Chambers of Commerce, David Frost, said: "We are not opposed to the principle of devolution. … We are concerned, however, that the current proposals fall short of a genuine devolution of power. They threaten to strangle business with red tape and extra taxation, without the benefits of increased productivity, economic activity and skills that a genuinely powerful regional assembly might bring to a region. The draft Bill, whilst showing some limited progression from the proposals set out in the White Paper, still lacks teeth and falls well short of Chambers' expectations of real devolution."
BCC Newsletter 29 July
Mahmoud Ezzamel, Noel S Hyndman, Age Johnsen, Irvine Lapsley and June Pallot discuss the impact of devolution, the NPM and public management culture on accounting for democratic accountability in the first term of the devolved national assemblies and parliaments in the UK. Although there is more openness, transparency, consultation and scrutiny with regard to budgets, accounts and performance as a result of devolution in the UK, there is extensive information overload. Thus, many politicians are highly dependant on the parliamentary division of labour and are reliant on experts and advisers functioning as buffers and filters of accounting information.
Public Money and Management Volume 24 Number 3 (June 2004)
Two senior government procurement officials have called for a wider use of reverse electronic auctions. The intent of reverse electronic auctions is to hold live, on-line bidding auctions, which lead to the successful bidder submitting the lowest price to the owner or owner's representative at the conclusion of the auction. Both John Oughton, Chief Executive of the Office of Government Commerce and Hugh Barrett, Chief Executive of OGCbuying.solutions believe that reverse e-auctions have the potential to play "an important role in providing value for money in public sector procurement".
Government Computing July-August 2004
"E-mail is not to be used to pass on information or data. It should be used only for company business."
Accounting manager, Electric Boat Company
Bizarre News
The UK economy is in its healthiest state since the 1990s, according to a respected economic forecast group. The Ernst and Young ITEM Club said the economy was in its best shape for over five years and predicted growth of 3.5% this year followed by 3% in 2005. Strength can be seen across the board, from the high street to the factory floor, the report said, with companies hiring staff across all sectors including the UK's beleaguered manufacturing industry. More encouragement for exporting manufacturers came with the news that the world economy driven by the US and China has just experienced its best quarter since 1988, it added.
BCC Newsletter 22 July
According to preliminary figures released by the Office for National Statistics, economic growth in the UK has continued at or above trend for the fifth consecutive quarter. The growth is said to be as a result of "continued buoyancy" in services and a "snap back" in the industrial sector.
Scheherazade Daneshkhu, Economics Correspondent, Financial Times 23 July
Local council leaders and ministers have responded to the report claiming that the north-south divide is widening with "a mixture of caution and scorn". The research, which analysed 2001 census data, suggested that the current economic boom masked stark regional differences. It noted an "unprecedented" migration of skilled workers to the capital, and concluded that the country is being "split in half", with London acting as a hub for "an archipelago of the provinces – city islands that appear to be sinking demographically, socially and economically". Council leaders criticised the findings, claiming that they are out of date and do not take into account the effects of regeneration activities. Bob Kerslake, a leading voice in lobbying group Core Cities, said that the figures show that, while there is still clearly a divide and problem areas remain, the gap is narrowing, not widening. He said: "There is already evidence of a turnaround in the last five years and every prospect of things getting better."
Peter Hetherington, regional affairs editor, The Guardian 1 July
"Late night TV is very educational. It teaches you that you should have gone to bed earlier."
James Dent
The quarterly monitor of employment from the CIPD shows that a majority of employers (60%) plan to hire extra staff this Summer. The CIPD's HR Trends and Indicators survey, involving up to 2,000 employers in all sectors and regions, finds that:
CIPD press release 12 July
HR Trends and Indicators survey will be available at the end of July from www.cipd.co.uk/surveys
John van Reenan, writing in CentrePiece (Volume 9 Issue 2 Summer 2004) finds that British labour productivity still suffers from low investment in capital, basic skills and innovation. I, Hazel, read this article twice before realising that I was fighting a losing battle in trying to bring you a précis. I'm going to write to the editor for permission to reproduce the whole article. In the meantime I bring you some "snippets" which will, I hope, indicate why I think this article is important.
John van Reenan is Director of the CEP and Professor of Economics at the LSE.
Key figures from the latest issue of Working Brief (Number 156 (July 2004)) monthly review of labour market statistics include:
Labour market statistics published this month show an unchanged unemployment rate. While the number of people unemployed is up slightly, there is another fall in claimants of the Jobseekers' Allowance. The number of people in employment is down, but there are more job vacancies than a year ago. Growth in average earnings excluding bonuses is up slightly, but growth in earnings including bonuses is unchanged.
Issued by: National Statistics, 1 Drummond Gate London
SW1V 2QQ
tel: 0845 601 3034
email:
labour.market@ons.gov.uk
URL: www.statistics.gov.uk
Next publication date 11 August 2004.
National Statistics press release GNN ref 98209P 14 July
For detail please access the full press release (7pp in text format) which contains links to other information and explanations of series figures etc.
The ten new members of the European Union have between about 50% and 60% of their jobs in services, compared with 70% in the 15 existing member states, according to an article in the July Labour Market Trends. The accession added 75 million people to the EU15 population of 378 million.
An additional 162,000 public sector jobs were created in the 12 months to June 2003, according to an article first published on the National Statistics website on 26 May 2004.
This article describes the annual analysis by age and duration of the full claimant count. This shows that the monthly results, which exclude the small proportion of claims handled manually, continue to be sufficiently accurate for most purposes.
Labour Market Trends July 2004 (PDF 136pp) is at http://tinyurl.com/6xnor
ONS news release 8 July
The CIPD has backed Work Minister Jane Kennedy's comment that the UK is unlikely to return to the full male employment of the last century. However, it says that there is no reason to assume that the male employment rate cannot be raised above what is currently being achieved if changes are made to employment and welfare policy and employer practice.
HRLook Daily News 30 July
Stefani Scherer, University of Milano-Bicocca, Italy
This article addresses the question of whether the first job functions as a "stepping stone" or as a "trap". It does so by using individual longitudinal data to estimate the consequences on future occupational attainment of entry into the labour market via (a) "under-qualified" jobs or (b) via temporary contracts. … With regard to "under-qualified" positions, the findings are not consistent with the stepping-stone hypothesis but provide some support for the entrapment hypothesis. Despite the greater mobility chances of over-qualified workers, the initial disadvantage associated with status-inadequate jobs is not fully overcome during their future careers. The article shows, however, that the negative effects are not due to the mismatch as such but rather to the relatively lower level positions. These effects are mediated by the national labour market structure, with the British flexible model providing the best chances of making up for initial disadvantages, and the more tightly regulated and segmented markets in Germany and Italy leading to stronger entrapment in lower status positions. No negative effects of the type of contract are found for later occupational positions in any of the countries.
Work, Employment & Society Volume 18 Number 2 (June 2004)
Data for the first two months since the enlargement of the EU suggests that the number of people from the new East European member countries coming to Britain to work has already peaked. The statistics show that 24,000 people signed up with the government's worker registration scheme since 1 May. Just over 8,000 were new arrivals, and the remainder had arrived in Britain before enlargement, and had "taken the opportunity to regularise their position".
Alan Travis, home affairs editor, The Guardian 8 July
"Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one's definition of your life; define yourself."
Harvey Fierstein
Jane Kennedy, Minister for Work, today (14 July) welcomed figures showing the number of people in work on a rising trend, with unemployment falling and vacancies at very high levels. This follows the latest survey by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which confirms the UK's position at the top of the international employment league.
DWP press release GNN ref 98212P 14 July
Update comment: As always there is a lot of detail in the background which accompanies the press release.
Andrew Davies, Minister for Economic Development and Transport, today (14 July) welcomed the publication of the latest Labour Market Statistics for Wales, which show the unemployment rate below the UK average and the claimant count rate falling to its lowest level since February 1975.
Welsh Assembly press release 14 July
Recruitment demand in SMEs has reached a two-year high, and is nearly 10% higher than demand in large organisations, according to new research from recruitment company Reed. The research found that nine out of ten SMEs plan to recruit staff over the next quarter, compared to 81% of large organisations. At the same time redundancies in SMEs are half the level in large organisations, and have reached a two-year low. Only 5% of SMEs plan to downsize over the next quarter, compared to one in ten large organisations.
HRLook Daily News 26 July
Women across the European Union still earn an average 25% less than men and are at greater risk of income poverty, finds new research published by the Equal Opportunities Commission and the Woman and Equality Unit. Painting a grim picture for European women, the report reveals that EU labour markets remain strongly gender-segregated, with women comprising 70% of workers in jobs requiring lower education levels.
Advancing Women in the Workplace: statistical
analysis and
Advancing Women in the Workplace: case studies are
at
www.eoc.org.uk or free
from the EOC Helpline
tel: 0845 601 5901
Equal Opportunities Review Number 129 (May 2004)
"The problem is not that there are problems. The problem is expecting otherwise and thinking that having problems is a problem."
Theodore Rubin
The government has published its five-year plan for the future of education. In an article for The TES (9 July), Michael Shaw and Jon Slater outline the key elements of the strategy. They tell us that, within the next five years, the government plans to:
According to research from the Audit Commission, there was no school funding crisis last year. The Commission studied a representative sample of 15 councils and found, rather than an overall shortage of money being felt by all schools, that changes to the funding system exacerbated existing inequalities. This led to the "reserves of well-funded schools increasing faster than the overall rise in funding, while the overdrafts of the less fortunate did likewise". The Commission criticised the government's "one size fits all" approach to funding, claiming that this system will fail to ensure that money goes where it is most needed.
Jon Slater, The TES 23 July
According to research from Sainsbury's Bank, more than 70,000 people will move home this year to ensure that their children can go to good schools. The research found that around 4% of people who have moved or are planning to move during the April to September period said they were doing so to ensure that they lived in the right catchment area.
Nicky Burridge, The Independent 19 July
Charles Clarke has indicated that the government may consider shifting funds from primary schools to support expansion in higher education. Speaking to the Education and Skills Select Committee, Mr Clarke said that, if pupils numbers continue to fall in primary schools, the government may reallocate the funding to post-compulsory education, and higher education in particular. He said: "In post-16 and in higher education in particular it is quite possible that we will see resources coming from elsewhere."
Alan Thomson and Anna Fazackerley, The THES 9 July
David Miliband, School Standards Minister, today (13 July) set out details of a school funding settlement designed to ensure continued delivery of stability and certainty for schools in 2005-06 and to help schools to meet the costs of the next phase of implementation of the National Agreement on Raising Standards and Tackling Workload.
DfES press release GNN ref 98114P (applies to England) 13 July
A "new academy" state school favoured by the government has admitted that its exclusion rate is 10 times the national average. A spokesperson for the academy said: "We have a very clear procedure on behaviour to which all students and parents sign up." She insisted that taking a hard line has helped to establish a "good ethos" among pupils. The spokesperson added that all the pupils who had been expelled were now being taught at neighbouring schools – but insisted that the academy also accepted excluded pupils from other schools in return.
Polly Curtis, The Guardian 24 July
Update comment: Educational divide? What educational divide?
Four heads of the 12 new city academies, most of which have been running for less than a year, have resigned, prompting fears that the expectations placed on the new academies to deliver dramatic improvements in a short space of time are too great. John Dunford, General Secretary of the Secondary Heads Association, commented: "There is a misplaced expectation that these schools, which may have been in difficulties for many years, can be turned around overnight. Ministers should be more patient."
Michael Shaw, The TES 30 July
Former chief of OfSTED Chris Woodhead has attacked the interim report of the Tomlinson review of 14-19 education, led by his successor Mike Tomlinson. Mr Woodhead argued that the proposal to replace current examinations with a school diploma is "destined to lead to yet another educational disaster". He claimed that the reforms which attempt to remove the status gap between academic and vocational qualifications are "no more than gargantuan, meaningless abstractions" which ministers would be "stupid" to implement. He concluded by declaring that the report is "the worst government publication on education I have read in the past 20 years".
Lucy Ward, Education Correspondent, The Guardian 5 July
The Welsh National Assembly has passed controversial regulations which permit classroom assistants to teach children. The measures were pushed through, despite vehement opposition from other parties and teaching unions. Education Minister Jane Davidson said that this move does not undermine the status of the teaching profession, nor does it mean that the Assembly has introduced "teaching on the cheap".
Martin Shipton, The Western Mail 7 July
This large-scale study explored fathers' levels of involvement with their secondary-school-aged children, the nature of fathering and its impact on children. More than two thousand children and their parents took part in a survey and 26 co-resident parents and their children were interviewed. The study asked children to identify a "father figure" (who might or might not be living with them and who might or might not be their biological father) and the term "fathers" refers to these definitions throughout.
An overview of the research is at www.jrf.org.uk/knowledge/findings/socialpolicy/724.asp
The full report, "Involved" fathering and child well-being: Fathers' involvement with secondary school age children by Elaine Welsh, Ann Buchanan, Eirini Flouri and Jane Lewis, is published for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation by the National Children's Bureau as part of the Parenting in Practice series (ISBN: 1-90478-724-X, price £12.95)
JRF mailing list 19 July
Just one in five fathers is using the paid paternity leave entitlement, according to official figures released by the Department of Trade and Industry. The DTI had forecast that, in the first year of new fathers being eligible for a fortnight's paid leave, 80% of the 400,000 workers affected would take it up. However, figures for the year to April 2004 suggest just 79,000 used their entitlement. Commenting on the figures, Malcolm Bruce, the Liberal Democrats' Trade and Industry Secretary, said: "The low take-up of paid paternity leave indicates that some men are still influenced by our macho culture; 1950s Britain is still alive and well. The cultural revolution of the 1960s, which the Prime Minister recently derided, seems to have passed many by."
Helen Carter, The Guardian 27 July
New guidance which will transform young people's learning is being made available today (9 July). The Learning Pathways 14-19 Guidance is being made available electronically and can be found on the Assembly's website <www.learning.wales.gov.uk>. A loose leaf hard copy of the guidance will be formally launched by the Minister for Education and Lifelong Learning in mid-September. The Guidance will be periodically updated as Learning Pathways 14-19 is rolled out over the next few years.
Further details are available from Russell Dobbins
tel: 029 2082 5854 or
Chris Webb tel: 029 2080 1432
email:
14-19@wales.gsi.gov.uk
Welsh Assembly press release 9 July
It was announced by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) that a new programme which will bring the benefits of e-learning to learners and teachers across England will begin in September. The Distributed eLearning Programme will establish links between schools, colleges and universities to encourage progression into higher education, supporting government targets for widening participation. The new programme will also exploit and reinforce the increasingly regional dimension of higher education as government-sponsored activities encourage closer working between schools, colleges, universities and the business sector across the regions of the UK. Regional projects will allow learners to build and access their own learning portfolios, informing and supporting their learning and career decisions, while teachers will benefit from a range of tools to support their use of e-learning systems, including the sharing of teaching materials. Strong funding and political agendas are increasingly requiring that learning and teaching practice should be fully informed by the benefits of e-learning. To support this, the HEFCE Infrastructure Fund in 2004 made available £12 million to fund this programme to support regional and subject communities to exploit the possibilities of technology.
JISC Headlines Issue 14 (July 2004)
In an article for The Guardian (20 July), Peter Kingston tells us that the Adult Learning Inspectorate intends to bid for part of British industry's £20 billion annual training budget. The ALI wants to extend its remit to encompass in-house training, in addition to publicly funded training. The Inspectorate will offer "Commissioned Inspections" to companies that offer and manage in-house training, and it is understood that motor giant BMW has already invited the ALI to scrutinise its training operations.
In a sharp contrast to the fortune of the UKeU, Scotland's Interactive University has exceeded all targets for its first full year of trading and has reported a "modest operational profit". The IU was created to market Scottish degrees online across the world and, after just 18 months, it has enroled more than 60,000 students from south-east Asia, China, India, the Middle East, and South America. David Farquhar, the chief operating officer of IU, said he expects IU to double its sales next year. He believes that the organisation has "only begun to scratch the surface" of a global e-learning market estimated to be worth about £15 billion. Mr Farquhar said: "The Interactive University has proven its business model. We have been able to drive huge efficiencies. … That has come from understanding the business better and understanding the market better."
William Lyons, The Scotsman 13 July
Classroom-based training and books are still the most popular way of acquiring knowledge and skills. However, research from Echelon Learning reveals that web-delivered learning is gaining ground, and is now a very close second.
E-Learning Age May 2004
Chris Pond, Work and Pensions Minister, today (20 July) welcomed a report showing that the European Social Fund (ESF) is helping people improve their skills and their chances of finding work. Research published today looked at the impact of training funded by the ESF Objective 3 programme on the qualifications, skills and employment status of participants. The European Social Fund Leavers' Survey 2002 report found that people receiving ESF training increased their likelihood of being in work from 37% on entry to the programme to 47% on leaving it. This was increased by a further six percentage points, to 53%, when the survey was carried out around six months later.
ESF Leavers' Survey 2002 Objective 3: England by IES is published by the Department for Work and Pensions In-house Report Series (Report No. 146) and is available from the DWP website at www.dwp.gov.uk/asd/asd5
DWP press release GNN ref 98580P 20 July
The funding system for FE colleges has been condemned as divisive, after many inner city institutions failed to gain top marks for performance, and the extra funding that accompanies the award. Heads of city colleges said that institutions in smaller towns had more of a chance of making the grade, as they did not face the acute challenges associated with widening participation.
Joe Clancy, The TES FE Focus 9 July
If the standard of teaching within further education colleges across Wales is to be maintained and improved upon, annual funding boosts of around £4 million are needed, claims a significant report published by the Further Education National Training Organisation (FENTO). Research conducted by FENTO into workforce development for FE teachers in Wales, Towards a Learning Country: Moving from Vision to Results, states the need for "a substantial cash injection" from the Welsh Assembly Government for FE teaching staff and ultimately colleges and the wider post-16 community.
For more information or to obtain a copy of the report contact gavin.thomas@fforwm.ac.uk
FFORWM e-news Issue 73 (9 July)
Colleges in Wales need an extra £9 million to pull them out of the red because of a shortfall in funding, the sector has warned. Unless more money is pumped into further education the most vulnerable learners in Wales could suffer, said John Graystone, Chief Executive of Fforwm, the voice for FE in the Wales. Responding to the news that the funding body ELWa was to be scrapped and responsibility taken on by the Assembly Government by 2006, Mr Graystone also cautioned staff not to "take their eye off the ball" during the handover in the next 18 months.
Jenny Rees, The Western Mail 20 July
Higher Education Minister Alan Johnson has infuriated FE college heads by calling on universities to keep a close eye on the quality of higher education delivered by FE institutions. Mr Johnson argued that, while there have been some improvements in standards and success rates in some colleges, many were still not up to scratch. He said: "If we are to offer all students the best possible higher education experience, this has to be addressed. … We ought not to kid ourselves that everything in the garden is rosy."
Tony Tysome, The THES 9 July
The Learning and Skills Council has called for tuition fees for students studying higher education access and professional courses in further education colleges to rise by as much as 40%. Outlining its proposals in a consultation paper, the LSC said that this move is needed to recoup the loss of about £100 million in fee income every year, a shortfall which is due to colleges failing to collect some or all of the fees they are entitled to charge students.
Tony Tysome, The THES 23 July
The Association of Colleges has criticised government plans to introduce a voluntary register of colleges, arguing that this is likely to have little effect on the bogus institutions the government is trying to crack down on. The AoC believes that a register should be introduced. However, the association would like it to be a compulsory register. It also calls for any institution using the title "college" to be subject to the same level of regulation and protection as those using the title "university". Jo Clough, the AoC's International Director, said: "The main problem is that these institutions go through no audit regime yet they are allowed to trade on the good name of others that do. When these institutions attract media attention because of their activities and the word `college' is used, you have to ask what that makes Joe Public think about bona fide colleges?"
Tony Tysome, The THES 30 July
The Black Leadership Initiative (BLI) has been given a reprieve after "a change of heart" from the government. The BLI was told in May this year that its funding was being withdrawn. The work conducted by the BLI was to be taken over by the Centre for Excellence in Leadership. However, the group has now been told that it will be able to continue its work in promoting black staff into senior management positions in colleges. Instead of being swallowed up by the leadership college, it will continue as a semi-autonomous project reporting to its existing steering committee.
Joe Clancy, The TES FE Focus 23 July
Charles Clarke, the Education Secretary, has warned business leaders that they will have to begin sponsoring courses at further and higher education levels as levels of public funding for tertiary education become more squeezed. Mr Clarke said that he believed planned university expansion could be funded only by "co-payment" between the state and employers.
Miranda Green, Financial Times 15 July
Update comment: How about a "learning levy" not unlike the training levy we used to have? Large firms paid more to the central fund - very small firms paid nothing but reaped the benefit of what the large firms had paid for - and it didn't work!
Awarding body Edexcel has been forced to abandon plans to offer foundation degree courses from September. A report in The THES (Foundation degrees lack awarding body, Phil Baty, 21 May) warned that Edexcel's plans would breach academic quality assurance rules. A spokesperson for Edexcel said that it had sent letters to colleges that planned to run the BTec foundation degrees, saying that the plans had been put on hold for a year.
Phil Baty and Tony Tysome, The THES 9 July
Mark Haysom, Chief Executive of the Learning and Skills Council, has launched a 12-week consultation on the prioritisation of resources in further education to help deliver the vision set out in the government's Skills Strategy, which will raise skills levels in the workforce. The consultation is an important step in turning the vision into practice, and seeks to rebalance the way in which we invest in skills to maintain a workforce capable of matching the best in the world for innovation, flexibility and productivity. The consultation calls for an open debate on a number of areas, including:
Mark Haysom said: "This consultation is a major step towards putting the Skills Strategy into practice. We are looking at how to bring about the changes needed to ensure that public investment is applied where it will secure the greatest benefits, and that employers and individuals contribute in line with the benefits they receive. The changes proposed are potentially of great significance for those in the post-16 learning sector, for individual learners and employers. The consultation is intended to contribute directly to the `historic shift in expectations and practice about who pays for what' called for by Charles Clarke. The proposals set out today do not reduce the overall level of public funding for adult learning – but they do make clear our priorities. Our challenge is to re-focus public funds, particularly to help adults with low or no skills and/or qualifications. This will mean that better-qualified people might need to invest a little more in their learning. … We do not underestimate the significance of these changes, nor the scale of the cultural change that they imply. Therefore we will be working with colleges and providers to help them secure additional income from course fees, so they can continue to improve quality and respond even more effectively to employers' needs."
LSC press release 15 July
The consultation document (PDF 54pp) is at http://tinyurl.com/7yuag
Responses to the spending review from the education sector include:
"Through this settlement the government is making a long-term commitment to developing education from the cradle to the grave. This settlement will support the reforms I announced in my five-year strategy. It will continue the drive to achieve excellence and to narrow the gaps in attainment between schools and between pupils within individual schools. It will deliver higher participation in education beyond age 16, support wider participation in higher education, and will reduce the number of adults with low or no skills."
"I welcome the government's commitment to continue to invest in education. … Whilst this policy has many advantages, it is vital to ensure that funding is used for its intended purpose and does not sit in unproductive reserves. Clearly our main concern is to ensure that schools have sufficient funding to implement fully the workforce reforms."
"The DfES has recently set out an ambitious five-year plan for our schools. The CSR, however generous it has been spun to seem, will be an inhibitory rather than a supportive factor. It will limit the possibilities of creating a balanced and forward-looking agenda. ATL welcomes all attempts to make the DfES more efficient, but the Chancellor seems totally wedded to the concept that more efficient means cheaper. Continuing to develop the social partnership, which has delivered benefits to teachers, to pupils and to the government, will not be helped by squeezing the department until its pips squeak."
"Despite the impressive aggregate funding figures being mentioned in the CSR, there are concerns about whether allocations will address the real funding needs of colleges and universities. … The introduction of increased fees will not resolve universities' funding problems and the government's unwillingness to guarantee that top-up fees income will be truly additional is causing concern."
"Universities UK welcomes increased government funding for science and the associated partnership with the Wellcome Trust which will generate matched funding in this area. … However, we are still awaiting further details from the DfES with higher education's proportion of the spending review settlement for education as a whole."
The Guardian 12 July
In his speech to mark the publication of the government's spending review, Chancellor Gordon Brown said that the review would put "society" at the heart of government policy-making. He said that the government was delivering "the longest growth in a generation with the longest sustained investment for a generation".
The full text of the 2004 spending review is at http://tinyurl.com/5qprd
Matthew Tempest, political correspondent The Guardian, 12 July
Commenting on the Spending Review 2004, TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber said: "We welcome the sustained and unprecedented investment in health, education, childcare and other vital spending programmes. Unions will welcome continuing support for services to manufacturing, the boost to science, and the increase in overseas aid. We are however very concerned at the sudden escalation and arbitrary manner of the civil service job cuts. These cuts cannot be made without hitting the quality of public services. They will deal civil service morale a bitter blow just as staff support is needed for change."
TUC press release 12 July
The annual report of the Statistics Commission has reprimanded government departments for not using official data properly. The Commission found that, not only had departments not issued statistics in the prescribed manner, they were also guilty of "spinning the figures to support their policies". The report concluded that the voluntary code of conduct in place for departments was not sufficiently rigorous to ensure that statistics were used in a way which would not show the government in an unreasonably favourable light.
Edmund Conway, Daily Telegraph 9 July
The Learning and Skills Council has so far not been able to produce any figures showing how successful its promotion of workplace learning has been with employers. In addition, the LSC has been unable to draw up an accurate list of the firms that take apprentices, which could be used as a tool to measure its performance. The government has called on the LSC to improve its information management processes so that reporting of successes can become easier to achieve.
Richard Tyler, Daily Telegraph 22 July
The Statistics Commission has recently published its annual report. The report says: "Perhaps our single most important act in the year has been the publication of our report on the need for legislation to strengthen public trust in official statistics. The requirement to address this was put in place by the government when the Commission was established some four years ago – but with the proviso that work should not start until Summer 2002. Following public consultations, commissioned research and detailed work with the Treasury Solicitor's department, we published Legislation to Build Trust in Statistics in May 2004. Central to the recommendations was that the existing, essentially voluntary, arrangements that government departments are expected to adopt should be put on a binding, statutory footing and, as part of this, the existing Commission should be replaced by a statutory one. The decision to propose legislation, even though others had also urged it, was not taken lightly. We show with examples in this report how the letter and the spirit of the existing, voluntary Code of Practice seem, on occasion, to have been ignored by various government departments. As a Commission, we have experienced frustration at our requests for information sometimes being ignored or our recommendations simply eliciting broad generalisations by way of response. Whilst we recognise that the government has made real progress in recent years in establishing the concept of statistical independence, we believe that the existing Code of Practice is, in some respects, inadequate – for example in allowing Ministers to decide which statistics are subject to the Code. But our recommendations are not just designed to ensure that departments follow good practice. We believe they would also help to protect Ministers from unfair criticism. In our view, then, the case for legislation is a strong one. The legislation that we are proposing would not only be an effective contribution to enhancing public trust but would also be practicable and avoid unnecessary changes in the machinery of government. It is now for the government to decide how our recommendations should be taken forward. But the Commission will continue for as long as necessary to carry out its existing functions, explain its thinking and press for a statutory framework."
Legislation to Build Trust in Statistics (2004). London, Statistics Commission. 193p.
www.statscom.org.uk/media_html/reports/report_018/report_018-01.asp
via Information Law Newsletter
Issue number 49 (13 July) © Paul Pedley
"Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must first be overcome."
Samuel Johnson
A recent report on NewsScan Daily gave a statistic of "three of every four abduction victims are killed within three hours of being taken." A reader takes the original report to task, quoting the accurate statistic: "three of every four abduction victims who are killed are killed within three hours of being taken" which is not the same thing at all.
NewsScan Daily 28 July
Update comment: There's lies, damned lies and then there's statistics. Just goes to show that you do need to know about eight out of ten cats preferring a certain brand of cat food.
Government statisticians were left feeling a little embarrassed after being forced to admit that they had failed to count more than 100,000 people in the 2001 census. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said that it had reviewed the results of the census and given upward revisions to a number of locations, including Westminster, Derby, Cardiff, Milton Keynes and Newcastle upon Tyne. The corrections follow a decision last year to add 24,500 to the population of Manchester.
John Carvel, Social Affairs Editor, The Guardian 9 July
Academics at Warwick and Oxford universities have warned the government that the expansion of universities is turning degrees into "lottery tickets" that offer graduates no guarantee of a good job. Ken Mayhew and Ewart Keep, Director and Deputy Director of the Research Centre on Skills, Knowledge and Organisational Performance, argue that the drive to get 50% of young people into higher education poses "potentially devastating" risks for the economy. They predict that many graduates face disillusionment because there will not be enough well-paid jobs to repay the debts they accumulate at university.
Tony Halpin, Education Editor, Times Online 26 July
The interim report of Sir Tony Atkinson's investigation into ways of modernising the effectiveness of the way public spending is measured has been published. Sir Tony's proposal to include some means of measuring any improvements in the quality of public services that resulted from additional funding came in for heavy criticism from the Shadow Chancellor, Oliver Letwin, who accused the government of trying to turn the Office for National Statistics into a "propaganda tool".
Larry Elliott, economics editor, The Guardian 20 July
Full article: http://tinyurl.com/4ysgf
At his 103rd birthday party, my grandfather was asked if he planned to be around for his 104th. "I certainly do," he replied. "Statistics show that very few people die between the ages of 103 and 104."
Clean Laffs 29 July
People with disabilities may be unable to register for the UK's identity card scheme. The British Computer Society (BCS) believes that the current proposals to use fingerprint, face and iris recognition fail to take account of the needs of people with common disabilities, such as cerebral palsy, partial sight or blindness. Brian Layzell, chair of the BCS's disability group, commented: "Many people, especially those with cerebral palsy, have little control of their muscle movement and will find it very difficult to hold their head or finger still long enough for an iris or fingerprint recognition device."
KableNet news website 12 June
Info@UK Issue 40 (July 2004)
The Employers' Forum on Disability has published an updated guide to disability communication at work. The guide offers advice for anyone who works with or serves disabled people on communication, preferred vocabulary and etiquette in meetings and interviews. It also offers detailed information about specific impairments.
The Disability Communication Guide is available
from the Employers' Forum on Disability
telephone 020 7403 3020 to
order
IRS Employment Review N800 (21 May)
Minister for Disabled People Maria Eagle has called on the public sector to deliver a programme of real change to make the rights of disabled people a top priority. As part of the recommendations of the Draft Disability Discrimination Bill, public bodies will be under a new duty to promote equality of opportunity for disabled people as well as making sure that they do not discriminate when carrying out public functions. Major organisations delivering important public services such as health and education will be required to publish and implement a plan setting out how they will improve the way they deal with disabled people.
Speaking on the day of the publication of Delivering Equality for Disabled People, Ms Eagle said that the public sector had a responsibility to lead the way in rights and attitudes.
Government News Network 23 July
The consultation document Delivering Equality for Disabled People can be obtained from The Stationery Office (Cm6255 ISBN: 0-10162-552-9) and will shortly be available from the DWP website
Two judgments this month, one by the Court of Appeal and one by the House of Lords, have found against employers who failed to make reasonable adjustments to accommodate employees who had become disabled.
Full article at http://tinyurl.com/59dmv
Out-law.com 9 July
New rules laid down by OfCOM mean that seventy broadcasters will have to offer subtitles and audio description for disabled audiences. OfCOM estimated the cost to broadcasters will be £37.35 million next year, of which about £30 million would already have been spent by terrestrial broadcasters maintaining existing commitments.
John Plunkett, The Guardian 27 July
A record number of disabled people in prison means, unfortunately (understatement of the year) a record number of people being punished twice for their wrongdoing. There is very little done within the prison service to ensure that people in their charge with mobility, visual or hearing problems have access to facilities which meet basic needs. Prisons now have disability liaison officers but these people have no ring-fenced time or money to work with disabled prisoners.
Disability Now July 2004
The majority of recommendations made during pre-legislative scrutiny of the draft Disability Discrimination Bill will be accepted, Andrew Smith announced today (15 July). The response from the government to the Scrutiny Committee's recommendations marks a further step towards the statute book for the legislation. In addition to the endorsement of all the recommendations, the government has also accepted some significant legislative changes, including:
DWP news release 15 July
Andrew Smith, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, has announced that workers who succumb to serious illnesses such as cancer or mental health problems will receive greater protection in law. At the moment people can be dismissed if they are ill with conditions such as multiple sclerosis, but do not display symptoms. Sometimes employees with long-term illnesses are sacked because employers anticipate that their conditions will require hospital treatment or lengthy periods of sick leave.
Marie Woolf, Chief Political Correspondent, The Independent 16 July
The legal fight in which a man won the right not to wear collar and tie to work on the grounds that it was discriminatory led to a 76% jump in sex discrimination cases at employment tribunals last year. The man concerned was granted the right not to wear a collar and tie, but the case has subsequently been referred back to the tribunal and an agreement has not yet been reached. This has not, however, prevented the 7,000 copycat cases that followed in the wake of the original case. If these cases were removed from the overall figure, there would actually have been a fall in the number of cases brought.
Nikki Tait, Financial Times 21 July
A new report from think-tank Demos claims that networking groups are playing an important role in helping women to overcome obstacles in the workplace. The report finds that women still consider the "old boy network" to be among the most significant barriers to career advancement. Based on interviews with professional women in the public and private sector, the report argues that "by facilitating new relationships between women, networks disrupt the patterns of social connectivity that have favoured men for so long".
Girlfriends in high places: how women's networks are changing the workplace (PDF 114pp) is at http://tinyurl.com/4bexj
IRS Employment Review N800 (21 May)
The Prime Minister today (24 July) announced the creation of a Women and Work Commission to examine the problem of the gender pay gap and other issues affecting women's employment. The Women and Work Commission will look at:
The gender pay gap currently stands at 18% for full-time workers and 40% for part-time workers. The Women and Work Commission will be chaired by Baroness Margaret Prosser and will begin its work in Autumn 2004, reporting to the Prime Minister within twelve months. It will make recommendations on what the government can do to reduce the pay gap and give women fair opportunities at work.
Information about the WNC is at www.thewnc.org.uk
DTI press release GNN ref 98957P 24 July
So says Paul McCrea of the construction company Durkan Ltd on its "employing women as trades-people" policy. Women can do the jobs!
Equal Opportunities Review Number 129 (May 2004)
Ethnic minority and female managers are rated higher by their peers and subordinates than by their bosses, finds a study commissioned by the Improvement and Development Agency (IDeA).
Perceptions and Prospects (executive summaries) are at www.idea.gov.uk
Equal Opportunities Review Number 129 (May 2004)
Libraries exist to meet the information, lifelong learning and leisure needs of all sections of the community, whether heterosexual, bisexual, lesbian, gay or transgendered. CILIP's Ethical principles and code of professional practice for library and information professionals stresses "respect for diversity within society, and the promoting of equal opportunities and human rights". This guideline has been produced in order to facilitate equality of opportunity for lesbians, gay men, bisexuals and transgendered people (LGBTs) using, or working in, all types of library and information services. The information is intended to be helpful to employers and service providers by including examples of good practice relating to both service provision and employment issues.
URL: www.cilip.org.uk/practice/sexual.html
LIS-LINK 7 July
Equal employment practices bring big gains to employers, a business-led taskforce on race equality and diversity has concluded. The taskforce, set up by the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), says businesses that open themselves up to a wider pool of ethnic minority workers can "reap huge rewards". In a new report, the group argues that there is a "strong business case" for companies to draw on equal opportunities principles when hiring, retaining and promoting workers. It also recommends that businesses set a three-year schedule to demonstrate a step change in their methods, and if they fail the government should step in to compel companies to promote equality.
British Chamber of Commerce Newsletter 8 July
Race Equality: The benefits for responsible business
- Task Force on Race Equality and Diversity in the Private Sector (ISBN:
1-86030-249-1) is available, price £14.95, from
IPPR, 30-32
Southampton Street, London WC2E 7RA
tel: 020 7470 6100
Report summary (PDF 4pp) is at http://tinyurl.com/3zxhq
A research project conducted by BBC Five Live, which involved sending off job applications from fictitious individuals with comparable qualifications and experience, but with names suggesting a variety of ethnic backgrounds, concluded that people with English-sounding names have a better chance of being selected for interview than those who "sound like" they are from ethnic minority groups. The applications were sent to a variety of sectors, including commerce, sales, the media and leisure in a variety of locations across the country. Key findings include:
Hugh Muir, The Guardian 12 July
The Commission for Racial Equality has voted to reject a merger with other anti-discrimination bodies into an equality and human rights commission. The Commission has voted for the "unequivocal rejection" of a merger arguing that such a move would signal that racial discrimination is no longer a high priority political issue. The news is a setback to the government, which proposed the creation of a Commission for Equality and Human Rights, encompassing race, gender, disability, sexual orientation, religion and age.
Colin Blackstock, The Guardian 22 July
Many British homeworkers, such as those who assemble Christmas crackers or sew buttons onto clothes for UK retailers, work in conditions that are more readily associated with overseas sweatshops, claims a new report. Made at Home, published jointly by the TUC, Oxfam and the National Group on Homeworking, reveals that there are currently around one million homeworkers in the UK, 90% of whom are women and 50% from ethnic minorities. The report argues that many of these workers endure poor working conditions including:
The report calls for the government to act to extend all employment rights to homeworkers and other excluded groups as soon as possible. It also demands that the government implement ILO standards for homeworkers' labour rights to ensure that they are entitled to the same rights as other workers.
Made at Home - British homeworkers in global supply chains (PDF 38pp) is at http://tinyurl.com/5kc56
IRS Employment Review N801 (4 June)
A construction company which is involved in a number of Private Finance Initiative (PFI) schemes covering more than 120 schools in England and Wales is in serious danger of bankruptcy. If Jarvis collapses, this could mean that building projects and facilities management could be "thrown into chaos". The DfES insists that there are contingency plans in place should the company cease operations. However, opposition parties and unions are concerned about what will become of building projects already started or planned.
Jon Slater, The TES 9 July
The government's claim that the extra costs of PFI are justified, because risks are transferred from the public to the private sector, are called into question in a damning new report from UNISON, which shows that no attempt has been made to evaluate that risk. As a result UNISON claims that the case for an independent review of all Private Finance Initiative (PFI) projects has never been stronger. The report shows that although £36 billion worth of PFI deals have been signed and 451 schemes are up and running, the true cost of these deals to the taxpayer is still unknown and private companies are reaping the benefits of this oversight, at the expense of the public purse. Private finance is an expensive form of public borrowing and a drain on public service budgets, but Ministers claim that by transferring the risk, it's a price worth paying. However, the Public Accounts Committee, which oversees public spending for parliament, has complained twice to the government about the lack of information on the relationship between risk and profits. The failure to evaluate this relationship raises fundamental questions about accountability.
UNISON press release 7 July
Public risk for private gain? by Allyson Pollock and David Price (PDF 46pp) is at www.unison.org.uk/acrobat/B1428.pdf
A study by members of the public health policy unit at UCL, commissioned by UNISON, has found that government claims that Private Finance Initiative projects offer value for money have never been systematically tested. The study finds that the theory behind PFI initiatives – that the additional expense incurred by using private finance can be offset by the private sector taking on the risks of a project failure or default – is questionable. It concluded that there has been no attempt to establish whether risk transfer took place and at what price to the taxpayer.
Terry Macalister, The Guardian 7 July
The Gershon review of public sector efficiency argues that it is time that the UK began to see a return on the £6 billion invested in IT under the 2000 and 2002 spending reviews. The review said that IT and e-government were "key" to cutting government spending. It identifies a three-stage process to saving money through improvements in IT: build the systems, persuade people to use them, then reduce expenditure on the former methods of conducting business. The review argued that, while the first stage was all but complete, very little had been done to move on to the second stage. It called on government departments to cooperate more fully with each other to identify areas which overlap and can therefore be streamlined, and for a more concerted effort to persuade the public of the benefits to using e-government systems.
Michael Cross, The Guardian 15 July
Research from the Institute for Public Policy Research has found that the government has come under fire unnecessarily for increasing bureaucracy at the expense of front-line staff in public services. The research found that the overwhelming majority of extra money that the government has invested in the public sector has been used to employ additional front-line staff such as nurses and teachers. An accompanying report stated: "Since 1998 the Labour government has significantly increased public sector employment in education and healthcare, but not in other areas. The growth in public sector employment has not been driven by increased employment of central or local government administrative staff. As a result, a higher proportion of public sector jobs are now providing front-line services in health and education."
Ashley Seager, The Guardian 8 July
Jobseekers' willingness to work for public sector employers may be wrecked by long-standing image problems, new research warns. According to a survey conducted by totaljobs.com, while 90% of jobseekers said they would consider applying for a public sector post, many felt that there were significant drawbacks to working in the public sector:
HRLooK Daily News 8 July
"Living in an age of advertisement, we are perpetually disillusioned."
J B Priestley
An open debate on what local government should look like in ten years' time began in earnest today (27 July). Key themes are local leadership, citizen engagement and participation, service delivery and the performance framework, and the relationship between central, regional and local government. The two papers published today are The future of local government: Developing a 10 year vision on the key themes and Local Area Agreements: a prospectus. To inform the debate, the Local and Regional Government Research Unit (LRGRU) at ODPM has published four research reports today:
All these documents are available at www.odpm.gov.uk/localvision
ODPM press release GNN ref 99065P 27 July
The government has finally announced that it intends to honour its pledge to end the two-tier workforce across the public services, following intense negotiation with public service union UNISON. The ground-breaking deal will end the exploitation of low-paid workers by private companies which take over public service contracts. The promise to end the two-tier workforce was made in 2001 and implemented in local government in 2002. However, until the new agreement, this was not extended to other workers in the public sector. Welcoming the news, UNISON General Secretary, Dave Prentis, said: "This is great news for UNISON and fantastic news for many thousands of low-paid public sector workers – private companies will no longer be able to make profits by cutting their pay and conditions. … We could never have had world class public services based on exploitation and injustice. We will now make sure this is implemented without delay."
UNISON press release 20 July
A multi-application smartcard to provide citizens with secure access to local services is being launched by four local authorities in the Black Country area. The card is being developed and funded by the Black Country Knowledge Society, a government-backed project to encourage regeneration in the area through the use of new technologies. The first phase, to be completed by the end of this year, will see the smartcard being rolled out in community learning centres across the region, enabling adult learners to log on securely to online learning environments.
More information at www.bcks.org.uk
E-Government Bulletin Issue 166 (28 July)
According to research from the Work Foundation, more than two million workers in the UK are suffering from "work lust". The research found evidence of a growing number of "workophiles" who find their jobs so rewarding that they put in an average of 60 hours a week and prefer to spend their time at work than at home. However, the number of people who hate their jobs far outnumber them, with four million people disliking what they do for a living.
Philip Thornton, Economics Correspondent, The Independent 29 July
Most office workers blame their colleagues or bosses for hindering their productivity, according to a survey from training firm Priority Management. The survey found that 23% cited interruptions by colleagues as being the worst distraction from their duties. 14% said that they could not say no to their boss, even when they were asked to do something that would detract from their main function. However, 6% admitted that their biggest cause of low productivity was their own procrastination.
IRS Employment Review N802 (18 June)
More than 90% of UK employers would welcome a workplace ban, according to research by employment law firm Peninsula. The survey found that only 32% of employers had in place facilities for smokers, such as a room to accommodate them. The vast majority (93%) said that they would encourage a law that banned smoking in the workplace, and more than four out of five (84%) already have a ban in place.
HRLooK Daily News 14 July
Update comment: And we are able instantly to recognise firms which have imposed bans. They are the ones that have a huddle of smokers out on the doorstep.
Workers' health and productivity is being jeopardised as lunch breaks get squeezed, claims a new report. The Eurest Lunchtime Report 2004 found that one in five workers said that they never took a lunch break; a quarter of women said they worked straight through lunch; and of those that do stop to eat, the average time taken is just 27 minutes. Commenting on the findings, TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber said: "Workers who don't take long enough breaks risk damaging their health, and employees who don't get away from their desks at lunchtime are not going to be very productive in the afternoon. Employers need to do more to make sure that their staff are not so overburdened that they feel unable to leave the office for more than a few minutes."
Changing Times News Number 42 (28 July)
Colin Lindsay and Ronald McQuaid, Napier University
Service employment plays an increasingly important role in the UK economy. However, it has been suggested that some forms of service work are unattractive for many unemployed job seekers, and particularly those formerly employed in "traditional" sectors. The argument has been made that these job seekers and others may be reluctant to pursue the type of positions that have become known as "McJobs" – de-skilled, entry-level service jobs which often offer poor pay and conditions. This article examines whether there is such a reluctance amongst job seekers to pursue service work, and whether it differs between job seeker groups. It also compares differences in job seekers' attitudes towards entry-level work in three areas of the service sector – retail, hospitality and teleservicing or call centre work. … The article concludes that policy action may be required to encourage job seekers to consider a broader range of vacancies and to provide financial and personal support for those making the transition into work in the service economy. However, on the demand side, service employers must seek to "abolish the McJob", by ensuring that even entry-level positions offer realistic salaries, decent work conditions and opportunities for personal development.
Work, Employment & Society Volume 18 Number 2 (June 2004)
In response to the government's negotiations with the Trade Unions, David Frost, Director General of the British Chambers of Commerce, said: "The government must not back down from opposing this damaging Directive. It could add huge costs to business and further erode the flexibility of the UK's labour market. Business and government have worked together to fight the terms of this Directive and any U-turn by the government would jeopardise that relationship. The Directive currently gives temporary workers equal employment rights after just 6 weeks of employment. Equal treatment regarding pay and working conditions for temporary workers would put substantial additional financial and administrative burdens on business."
BCC Newsletter 29 July
The second quarterly HR Trends and Indicators survey, published by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD), finds that two-thirds of UK organisations support proposals for extending the current flexible working legislation so that more employees would benefit from it. Moreover, two fifths (46%) back the right being extended to all workers.
CIPD press release 27 July
A consultation looking into long hours working and the way the individual opt-out from the 48-hour working time limit operates in the UK, has been launched by Employment Relations Minister Gerry Sutcliffe. Mr Sutcliffe said that the government was committed to retaining the opt-out in order to protect employee choice and workplace flexibility, but was also determined to make sure it was being used correctly. Information from the consultation will help inform the government's policy on long hours working and its position on proposals expected soon from the European Commission on amending the Working Time Directive. The DTI's consultation does not set out any proposals, but offers ideas and options on which people may want to offer views. It covers three main areas of discussion:
The consultation paper (PDF 40pp) is at www.dti.gov.uk/er/work_time_regs/consultation.pdf
DTI press release 29 June
Many UK employers do not understand the basics of employment law, according to a survey by employment law firm Peninsula. The survey found that a worrying 82% of employers openly state that they have sacked an employee without giving a warning for something which excluded gross misconduct. In addition 29% of those questioned had not issued contracts, while only 62% of employers issued their employees with written disciplinary procedures. Peter Done, Managing Director of Peninsula, said: "The failure to issue an employee contract is a breach of employment law, and could easily be seen as a case for litigation. An employee has the right to know what disciplinary procedure is in place and also how to appeal should they feel that it is unfair."
HRLook Daily News 26 July
Over 50% of small businesses admit to either reducing the number of people they employ or even avoid employing more people because of the concern over the increased burden of paperwork, according to a recent survey by Mentor, the advice service from NatWest. Even more concerning is that when firms make the decision to become employers, a third choose to restrict or even reduce the numbers of staff they employ. However, over half of the respondents didn't think that they spent too much time complying with government regulations, despite spending an average of 13.2 hours a month dealing with regulations and paperwork.
NatWest news release 19 July
Small UK businesses have moved HR issues to the top of the agenda when consulting third-party advice, according to findings from BT. The figures come from a recent user analysis by BT of its online small business advice service. The personnel advice section of the BT website saw a 43% rise in unique visits, with legal liability cited as an area of great concern by many users. Neville Manuel of BT Retail said: "High profile court cases seem to have acted as a wake up call to our small business customers. Suddenly they can't get enough information about employment terms and conditions, disciplinary and grievance procedures and grounds for dismissal. It's as if they've only just realised the financial dangers of non-compliance, and that if it can happen to the `big boys' it can certainly happen to them."
HRLook Daily News 28 July
David Guest and Neil Conway, School of Management and Organisational Psychology, Birkbeck College
This paper explores the apparent paradox that while unions exist to promote the interests and well-being of their members, UK survey evidence consistently shows that union members report lower levels of job satisfaction than non-union workers. A review and further analysis of the evidence confirms that this difference persists after controlling for other factors such as type of work. If union member dissatisfaction reflects a form of voice, then we might expect to see resulting gains. An analysis of data from the 1998 Workplace Employee Relations Survey indicates that any gains are modest. Evidence is presented to suggest that although management has become less hostile to trade unions, a degree of anti-union sentiment remains, sometimes leading to a muffling of the union voice, and this helps to account for some of the union member dissatisfaction.
Industrial Relations Journal Volume 35 Number 2 (March 2004)
Employees' skills and competencies are more important than the job they do in selection for redundancy, claims a new report from the IRS. A survey found that, while the law on redundancy selection states that the procedure used must be fair and reasonably applied, the factors affecting the decision vary greatly. It revealed that more than half of the employers questioned used workers' skills and competencies ahead of job description and duties when deciding redundancies.
HRLooK Daily News 16 July
Government efforts to extend working life need to take account of the key role that employers play in retirement behaviour, an under-researched area. This study, by University of Kent researchers, examined how people working for three organisations were affected by the interaction of their employers' policies and their own personal choices. The study looks at current retirement processes, barriers to effective retirement planning, employee views on retirement choices, and the merits of flexible retirement. The study found that:
The researchers conclude that attempts by governments to encourage people to work for longer must recognise that the context in which people negotiate retirement is an organisational one. They may have little personal discretion over the timing and manner of their departure from work. Urging individuals to change their behaviour will not be sufficient if organisations are not similarly encouraged to reappraise their management of older workers.
An overview of the research is at www.jrf.org.uk/knowledge/findings/socialpolicy/714.asp
The full report, Happy retirement? The impact of employers' policies and practice on the process of retirement by Sarah Vickerstaff, John Baldock, Jennifer Cox and Linda Keen, is published for the Foundation by The Policy Press as part of the Transitions after 50 series (ISBN: 1-86134-584-4, price £13.95)
JRF mailing list 20 July
Draft guidance to help firms implement a new employment law to encourage better workplace communication was published today (7 July) by the Department of Trade and Industry. The guidance relates to the Information and Consultation regulations, which come into effect in the spring. They give all employees the right to be consulted and informed about key decisions that affect their employment. The department is consulting on the draft guidance which aims clearly to explain the new law and meet demands for a brief overview with links to more detailed information for those with specific questions.
Further details on Information and Consultation are at www.dti.gov.uk/er
DTI press release GNN ref 97760P 7 July
Competency-based reward frameworks first became common in the 1990s, mainly as an alternative to traditional performance-related pay. However, a failure to live up to its early promise, in terms of improvements in employee performance, and practical difficulties in linking competency frameworks to pay, have meant that the approach has mainly been used to modify existing merit-based schemes. In the public sector, though, it is being promoted as an alternative to automatic service-based progression, and a way of focusing on staff development.
IDS Pay Report Number 909 July 2004
Update comment: Having read the article and noted the advantages and disadvantages of competency-based pay I am personally very glad that I'm not working within a company that uses this approach for determining how much to pay me. Hazel.
Large companies are now so concerned about the contents of the electronic communications leaving their offices that they're employing "snoopers" to read employees' outgoing emails. According to research from Forrester Consulting, 44% of large corporations in the US now pay someone to monitor and snoop on what's in the company's outgoing mail, with 48% actually regularly auditing email content.
Jo Best, TheITPortal Midweek Roundup 21 July
The Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998 protects workers who "blow the whistle", highlighting wrongdoing by their employer. The Act makes provision about the kinds of disclosures that may be protected; the circumstances in which such disclosures are protected; and the persons who may be protected.
Alison Wallace, British Chamber of Commerce Newsletter 8 July
According to the annual survey conducted by the Association of Graduate Recruiters (AGR), the number of vacancies available to university leavers has risen for the first time in three years. The survey suggests that there has been a 15.5% rise, with just three types of employer, motor manufacturers, construction companies and insurance firms, predicting fewer vacancies. Key findings include:
Richard Garner, Education Editor, The Independent 14 July
Statistics from the Association of Graduate Recruiters have revealed that graduates contribute upwards of £1 billion to the national economy each year in terms of added value once they have a job. Recruiters sounded a note of caution, however, saying that if the government meets its target of seeing half of all young people in higher education by the year 2010, there would be a glut of graduates. They believe that this would make recruitment "more difficult and expensive" and would lead to a lowering of the quality of graduates.
Roland Gribben, Daily Telegraph 23 July
According to an analysis of graduate earnings, conducted by Graduate Prospects, students who want the highest paid jobs on leaving university should pursue careers with numbers rather than words. The research found that numerate disciplines, such as economics and statistics, enjoy average salaries of £22,828. The overall average salary is £18,362.
Alan Thomson, The THES 9 July
In an article for The Daily Mail (21 July), Rosanna Spero offers a range of tips on sensible budgeting for those making the transition from student to worker.
While the article is not available on the Daily Mail website, it is online in full at www.thisismoney.com/20040721/ht80616.html
Education Secretary, Charles Clarke, has warned that businesses must provide money to help develop foundation degrees. Speaking before the launch of the qualification's coordinating body, Foundation Degree Forward, Mr Clarke said that it would be necessary for the state and businesses to enter into "co-payment deals" to meet government targets for higher education expansion. He said that more money would be needed to match provision with demand, as the number of applicants for foundation degrees rises. He said: "So, are we just going to hold [the increase] back, or are we going to say other money starts to come in? And the big obvious other money is from employers. We've got to get the employers and the education system closer together."
Polly Curtis, The Guardian 15 July
Foundation Degree Forward is at www.fdf.ac.uk/
Following extensive consultation, the government today (16 July) underlined its commitment to modernising higher education in England whilst maintaining quality and standards by overhauling the way in which organisations can gain degree-awarding powers and changing the criteria for deciding which institutions can gain the title "university". In a statement to the House of Commons Higher Education Minister Alan Johnson announced his decision to:
DfES press release GNN ref 98403P (applies to England only) 16 July
Scottish businesses have been warned that they face a "brain drain" of talented graduates if they do not take immediate steps to close the gap in starting salaries north and south of the Border. Research from the Association of Graduate Recruiters shows that the average starting salary for a Scottish graduate is £18,500, compared with an average of £21,000 for British graduates. Adrian Thomas, of the Royal Bank of Scotland, said that employers north of the Border needed to make sure that wages in Scotland did not fall any further behind the rest of the UK.
Kevin Schofield, Education Correspondent, The Scotsman 14 July
Universities will have to give the government a year's notice before closing struggling departments, the Treasury announced this week (of 16 July) as part of its long-awaited 10-year investment plan for science. The move suggests a more interventionist role for higher education funding chiefs and the first steps towards a national plan for subject provision – prompting accusations that the government is encroaching on university autonomy. Lord May, President of the Royal Society, commented: "Lenin and Stalin tried that in Russia and it didn't work. We are moving from being a light-touch system to a bureaucratically rigid system with silly goals. Government officials making judgments about what we do and do not need is lunacy."
Anna Fazackerley and Paul Hill, The THES 16 July
Charles Clarke has ordered an inquiry into the developing crisis over chemistry provision in universities. Mr Clarke has asked the HEFCE to oversee the investigation, following the news that three more universities have decided to close their chemistry departments in the past year. Both ministers and academics are alarmed at the effect the slump will have on the future of the subject, seen as vital to the future of both the economy and medicine. Sir Harry Kroto, President of the Royal Society of Chemistry and a Nobel prize-winner, said: "Chemistry made massive contributions to society in the 20th century: from penicillin, which has saved the lives of billions of people, ammonia-based fertiliser, which has increased the productivity of arable land tenfold, to mundane objects such as the humble washing-up bowl and T-shirts and non-drip paint. At this crucial moment one must ask serious questions about the state of science education – chemistry in particular."
Richard Garner and Lucy Hodges, The Independent 12 July
An investigation is under way into how 90% of students on an architecture course failed their final exams. The course, at the University of Central England, Birmingham, has been suspended while the investigation takes place. Thirty students due to start in September will now have to find places at another university, while those who failed have been offered autumn resits. Pro-vice Chancellor Professor Phil Walkling said students obliged to work full-time at the same time as studying, as well as unfinished coursework, contributed to the appalling pass rate.
BBC Online 17 July
The government's determination to get half of young people to go to university is driving the growth of "Mickey Mouse" degrees in subjects such as surfing, claimed an official from the Professional Association of Teachers (PAT). Speaking at the PAT annual conference, Peter Morris highlighted the BA in Surf and Beach Management offered by Swansea University as a prime example of study which lacks credibility. He argued that there is an increasing number of subjects available to study at degree level which are "little more than hobbies", and elevating them to honours degrees devalues both academic and vocational education.
Dominic Hayes, The Western Mail 25 July
The leading article in The Independent (29 July) criticised the Professional Association of Teachers (PAT) for sneering at vocational degree courses such as the BA in Surf and Beach Management. While PAT officials claim that there has been a growth in "Mickey Mouse" degrees, driven by the participation target, this article argues that the BA "is precisely the kind of course that should be encouraged". It reads: "It is easy to make cheap shots about Mickey Mouse degrees … but we would argue that it is better to have degrees that teach golf management or modules in coastal conservation, customer care and surf entrepreneurship than not. If a few of these graduates go on to set up their own golfing enterprises in the Highlands or surfing businesses in the Gower peninsular, these degrees will have been worth it. The expansion of higher education is a good thing because it gives more people more opportunity."
The government is planning a £1 million campaign to explain the purpose and the benefits of variable top-up fees for higher education. Higher Education Minister Alan Johnson said that, as the bill is now on the statute book, it is possible to use public money to fund an explanatory campaign. He said: "There's a huge sense of fulfilment. We have won the argument on fees but we have still got to get the message across to the public. … It does seem to me that there are many people out there who genuinely don't understand what the proposals mean."
Rebecca Smithers, Education Correspondent, The Guardian 5 July
The Association of University Teachers has estimated that government spending on higher education will need to rise by £3 billion if it wants to see its target of 50% of young people attending higher education reached.
Alan Thomson, The THES 16 July
Update comment: How long have different organisations been telling this government that the 50% target is ... And ... And ***********?
A survey conducted on behalf of the Conservative Party reveals that more than half of university vice-chancellors believe that first-year students lack the basic skills required to study for a degree. 54% of respondents said that they had concerns about the maths skills of students on technical courses and two-thirds admitted that they provided classes in numeracy to "bring students up to speed". Chris Grayling, Shadow Higher Education Minister, said: "Universities are being asked to pick up the pieces caused by failings in the school system. Universities should be able to be confident that students arriving to do maths and technical courses are well equipped to do those courses. They should not have to use scarce resources to teach school-level maths."
Phil Baty and Paul Hill, The THES 16 July
Universities in Scotland are being encouraged to target overseas students in a bid to counter the country's falling birth rate. A report from the Scottish funding councils argues that, while more than half of young people in Scotland go on to higher education, a declining birth rate will see this proportion begin to fall after 2006. The report suggests that universities could help themselves by encouraging students from abroad to stay and work after they have completed their studies.
More details about Higher Education in Scotland: a baseline report are at www.shefc.ac.uk/publications/baseline/baseline.html
Donald MacLeod, The Guardian 22 July
In an article for The Independent (22 July), Kevin Massy argues that too many UK universities believe that support for overseas students once they have recruited them consists of checking that they can speak good English. Mr Massy says that, while there are indeed some notable exceptions, including Nottingham University, many universities are failing to give international students the level of pastoral care that they need. His perspective is supported by Clive Saville, former head of UKCOSA, the council for international education in the UK, who commented: "Universities want the students and they want the money, but they're really quite slow to realise that when they are charging such high fees they have to put some of that money back into extra support for the [international] students. And that they can't assume that they cost the same as home students. … They're a long way from home, and you have to take on board there is all the difference in the world between doing a piece of work in English and actually having to live your life in English."
Wandsworth Council in London has become the first to publicly announce that students may not receive their loans on time. A spokesperson for the student finance team at the council said that new software introduced by the Student Loans Company, which was supposed to streamline applications for loans, has proved to be highly problematic. The spokesperson said that urgent action is required to address the problems caused by the Protocol programme, or many students, and particularly those who are mean-tested for benefits above and beyond the basic cost of fees, will be left penniless.
Polly Curtis, The Guardian 1 July
New figures released by the admissions service UCAS show that there has been a surge of applications from English and Welsh students to study at Scottish universities. Applications from non-domiciled students have increased by more than 10%, creating fears that the availability of places for Scottish applicants are being "squeezed".
Elizabeth Buie, Education Editor, The Scottish Herald 15 July
The British Council has warned that universities are "in urgent need of agreed guidelines for the import and export of students". The Council has called for a national admissions policy after concerns were raised about the high number of foreign students studying at UK universities. The Council believes that admissions tutors are favouring high-fee-paying foreign applicants over home students.
Tony Tysome, The THES 16 July
The number of young Scots taking part in the EU-funded Erasmus programme has fallen by almost a quarter in the past five years, according to figures released by the Scottish Executive. The Erasmus programme enables students to study part of their degrees at universities in EU countries other than their homeland. The figures show that participation fell from 1,235 in 1998 to just 951 last year, a drop of 23%. First Minister Jack McConnell commented: "I don't think there is a broad understanding of the Erasmus scheme and the Executive ought to be doing more to publicise it and make sure that as many students as possible take part."
Kevin Schofield, Education Correspondent, The Scotsman 8 July
Back in the days when most information was tangible and costly, libraries were special. Their main interest was acquiring material and making it available for free to a specific service population. Now, however, much everyday information is readily available online, and libraries face the threat of being marginalised. But librarians can exploit several advantages as online information providers. Perhaps their primary advantage is trust. Much has been made of the dubious trustworthiness of information on the Web, and the typical user's lack of understanding regarding its retrieval. But libraries are admired, respected and trusted. They are also perceived to provide information in a fair and unbiased way. Users of library Web collections should be reminded that no political or social agenda underlies items selected and, in most cases, no commercial interest either. To avoid being perceived as irrelevant, libraries should leverage this position of trust in the minds of the public. Because of funding limitations, libraries should consider increasing the amount of cooperative work that they do, both with other libraries and with non-library partners. Greater consideration must be given to joint marketing campaigns and the branding of their Web collections. Libraries should emphasise their proud tradition as trustworthy stewards of organized information to which there is free access. In addition, because of their basic computer training functions, public libraries are in a particularly strong position to cultivate loyalty to library Web collections among new Internet users.
LIBRES March 2004
http://libres.curtin.edu.au/libres14n1/index.htm
via ShelfLife Number 166 (22 July) www.rlg.org
Libraries will find it difficult to meet the government's vision for involving the communities they serve unless they adopt innovative ways for rallying public involvement, according to Community Service Volunteers. The message from CSV coincides with the publication of recommendations in an independent report by Shared Intelligence on CSV Lending Time, a pilot project charged with helping to position libraries at the heart of their communities. The report on the work of the UK's largest volunteering charity says that strong leadership and training within library services is vital if encouraging community involvement through volunteering in libraries is to succeed.
An executive summary of the CSV Lending Time Pilot Project - Summary Of Final Evaluation (PDF 8pp) is at http://tinyurl.com/4ro9w
Community Service Volunteers press release, 9 July
"Smooth seas do not make skillful sailors."
African proverb
The technological developments that have been brought to bear in libraries in recent years are certainly wondrous to behold – from shared cataloging and powerful search engines to full-text access and in-house wireless service. But American Libraries' columnist Walt Crawford cautions that every new solution carries with it new problems and unintended consequences that need to be coped with, and notes that technology won't solve the real issues facing librarians, which encompass the complexities of copyright, universal access and social networking. Expecting technology to be a cure-all can take librarians' focus away from the truly important, and ultimately humanistic, aspects of their jobs. "I love what technology has done for entertainment, libraries, publishing, and interpersonal communication – even as I wonder about what it has done to entertainment, libraries, publishing, and interpersonal communication," he writes. "Librarians work most effectively when they recognise that most users are less devoted to constant technological change than they are to the heart of libraries: Good people offering effective access to varied, worthwhile collections that center on books."
American Libraries Online June/July 2004
www.ala.org/ala/alonline/thecrawfordfiles/crawford2004/Junejuly2004whathappened.htm
via ShelfLife Number 166 (22 July) www.rlg.org
New information has been added to the education section of the LASA Multikulti website. The pages, which are translated into 10 community languages, offer information about the public library service. They explain what libraries offer and are specifically designed to inform new users who may be unfamiliar with such a service.
LASA Computanews Issue 131 (May 2004)
The Museums, Libraries and Archives Council is working to turn Framework for the Future's vision into reality, and this means changing how libraries are seen by the public. Over the next few months MLA will be consulting with staff and users across the library network as part of this work. An online space has been created so library staff can find out what is happening in the project and make sure that their voices are heard.
URL: http://futurelibrary.mla.gov.uk/
managinginformation.com 2 July
Manchester Library and Information Service is proposing to open two key district libraries on Sundays in a bid to widen access to the library service. If the trial proves to be successful, it will be extended across the whole of the Manchester Library Network.
Managing Information July-August 2004
Anne Goulding's editorial for the Journal of Librarianship and Information Science (Volume 36 Number 1 (March 2004)) discusses the concept of social capital in relation to libraries. Ms Goulding explains the principles of social capital, emphasising the importance of social relationships between members of a community, and outlines its characteristics and outcomes. Communities high in social capital are characterised by citizenship, neighbourliness, trust and shared values, community involvement, volunteering, social networks and civic participation which can lead to lower crime rates, better health, better educational achievement, better child welfare, more effective government and higher economic achievement. Libraries can contribute to the building of social capital by promoting the types of interaction and integration, which enable social networking, and by providing citizenship information resources. There are challenges, though, which libraries need to address if they are to fulfil their potential in this key policy area.
One of the points that I, Hazel, found interesting was the emphasis on public space – by which is not meant urban parks and green spaces, important though these are, but internal spaces "such as libraries and town halls".
This item in the News and Curiosities section of Prospect magazine (Issue 100 July 2004) questions the level of attention given to the Libri report on the imminent meltdown of public libraries from the British media. The author notes that the report was highlighted on the Today programme, the BBC website and in the Independent, Observer, Guardian and Times newspapers – to name but a few. He asks why then, if this is a reflection of the nation's interest in library services, was the report from the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy all but ignored. The CIPFA report said that libraries were far from being on the verge of obsolescence, with visits up by 5 million on the previous year. The author writes: "So, is it curtains by 2020 or not? It seems that the happy (but not newsworthy) CIPFA findings were based on figures from 99% of the UK's local authorities (yes, boringly reliable). But the Libri report, which so exercised the national media, was based on an investigation into, um, Hampshire County Council."
Update comment: I found an article about the CIPFA report in Managing Information, and it was mentioned in The Guardian. Rather different from the Libri report which I couldn't seem to get away from! Dawn.
The Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA) has welcomed research which shows that there has been a substantial rise in the number of visits to libraries over the past year. The research, published by the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy (CIPFA) in the 42nd Annual Report of the UK's Public Libraries, showed:
Mark Wood, chair of the MLA, said that this, coupled with a different report which demonstrates the increasing popularity of the People's Network, gives a clear indication that "the tide has turned for public libraries".
Managing Information, July-August 2004
The 2004 Spending Review is a missed opportunity as far as libraries are concerned, according to CILIP: the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals. Although there is some good news it is thinly spread. Libraries will have a strong role to play in the proposed SureStart Children's Centres, demonstrating the government's recognition that investment in early years education pays social and economic dividends. CILIP also welcomes the Review's commitment to increased investment in science and innovation. Beyond these developments, however, there is little cash for libraries. Other than the early years funding, which will come through the DfES, there appears to be no new money at all in the Review for public libraries, including extra money for sustaining the People's Network – the highly successful scheme to provide free access to the Internet in all public libraries and train staff to help the public in using it. The People's Network was started with lottery money, but now needs core funding to sustain it. Above all, the Review fails to recognise the value that public libraries offer in support of learning. With millions of pounds more poured into formal schooling, not a penny extra will go on the wider learning opportunities that libraries provide. "Our hopes may have been high, but our expectations were less so," was the reaction from CILIP's Chief Executive Bob McKee. "Unfortunately, we've been proved right."
CILIP press release 13 July
Katerina Ananiadou, Andrew Jenkins and Alison Wolf - Institute of Education
A review of the literature on the impact of workplace basic skills training on individuals, as measured by their effects on wages and employment probability. The paper also examines studies on the returns to individuals of general training at the workplace. On the whole, the evidence suggests that better numeracy and literacy skills have a strong positive effect on individuals' earnings and employment stability, even when other relevant factors, such as qualification levels, are taken into account. There is also good evidence to suggest that general training provided at the workplace has a positive impact on individuals' wages, particularly when this training is employer-provided rather than off the job. However, the literature also suggests that improvement of basic skills levels in adults has very small or even no positive effects on wages and employment probability. The authors discuss the implications of these findings on the formation of government policy on basic skills provision.
Studies in Continuing Education Volume 26 Number 2 (2004)
According to a joint report from the CIPD, TUC and LSC, union learning representatives provide "a significant new source of expertise and engagement in promoting the learning agenda at work". The report notes that learning representatives are "particularly valuable" in areas where workers:
Trade Union Learning Representatives - A Change Agenda (PDF 14pp) is at www.learningservices.org.uk/extras/cipd.pdf
IRS Employment Review N800 (21 May)
Gillian Boulten-Lewis, Hitendra Pillay, Lynn Wilss and Sean Rhodes
This study consisted of interviews with people aged 40+ and under 40 to determine their conceptions of work and learning at work amidst changing workplace practices. The researchers found that almost half of the older workers viewed work as simply a job, while almost half of the younger workers felt that work is personally empowering. The authors ask what are the possible implications of these attitudes for knowledge creation and application in the workplace.
LLinE 2-2004
The government has prepared the way for the creation of a new breed of private universities. Multinational companies, which already have unofficial "universities" to train their staff, will be able to apply for time-limited degree-awarding powers and full university status under revamped criteria announced by Higher Education Minister Alan Johnson. The new rules will also enable public sector bodies such as the Police Service and the Armed Forces to set up their own universities. Mr Johnson acknowledged that this would automatically create a two-tier system, in which some institutions retain their titles and powers indefinitely and others must apply to renew their status every six years. However, he said that both this and the requirements that universities have at least 4,000 full-time equivalent students and teach a minimum of five subjects, would "act as safeguards for quality and standards".
Tony Tysome, The THES 23 July
The Chartered Insurance Institute (CII) and Cass Business School have joined forces to develop what they describe as an "insurance university". The two organisations signed a Memorandum of Understanding which "lays the foundation for the development of the joint venture." They eventually hope to create an "internationally recognised centre of excellence for education and post-graduate qualifications in insurance," which will "underpin the Lloyd's and the London Market insurance brand."
Insurance Journal website 29 June
Work-based learning has much in its favour, so when will it get the respect it deserves, asks Peter Honey (Training Journal July 2004). Mr Honey wonders why organisations persist in keeping a "touching faith in the effectiveness of formal training courses", despite the clear evidence that most people learn what they need to know about their jobs while they are actually doing them. This type of informal learning, he argues, must be given greater regard if organisations wish to see improvements in learning productivity and effectiveness.
New figures released by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister show that the number of families in England who are registered as homeless has more than doubled since the Labour Party came to power. There are now almost 100,000 families who are currently in temporary accommodation, compared to around 41,000 in 1997.
Amanda Day, The Tribune 23 July
A university at the centre of the fake degrees scandal has warned employers to be more rigorous in verifying the degrees provided by job applicants. An investigation by The Guardian revealed that a reporter was able to buy two fake honours degrees and a set of A-grade GCSEs over the Internet. A spokesperson for Strathclyde University, the institution which was supposed to have awarded one of the degrees, said that employers are guilty of taking these qualifications at face value. He said that a telephone call to the university named on the awarding certificate would verify whether the award was real or fake. In this way, he argued, it is possible to both weed out the bogus qualifications, and protect the integrity of those which have already been awarded.
Polly Curtis, The Guardian 5 July
The confusing system of more than 4,000 different vocational awards is to be reformed, reports Peter Kingston (The Guardian 13 July). Qualifications and Curriculum Authority Chief Executive, Ken Boston, has announced a programme of reforms to the "notoriously complex jungle of vocational qualifications". Mr Boston revealed that the revised qualifications framework, which has been devised with the cooperation of all interested parties including unions and businesses, will lay the foundations for a flexible credit-transfer system. He explained that the framework will be made up of fewer components, but will include "the core qualifications for occupations that have been identified by the relevant sector skills councils, and a range of optional units". He said: "We have essentially a new view of the world: that qualifications must be market-driven, employer-led, and … government agencies must respond. The notion of a provider-led economy is gone."
Full article: http://tinyurl.com/4at8d
Britain's promotion of foundation degrees is anti-European, according to German academics. They claim that foundation degrees run contrary to the Bologna process, since they introduce yet another qualification that must "fit" into the common European higher education area, which the process aims to create by 2010. Moreover, a core element of the process is the agreement to adhere to a two-tiered higher education sector, consisting of undergraduate and postgraduate study. Critics are confused as to how foundation degrees fit into this definition. Winfried Pohl, a mathematics professor at the University of Nuremburg, concludes from the introduction of foundation degrees that the UK is not interested in educational integration. Rather, she feels that it is trying to "Anglicise" all other European universities.
Matthias Becker, The Guardian 6 July
Full article: http://tinyurl.com/2uzev
Hilary Steedman and Steve McIntosh,
Centre for Economic Performance,
London School of Economics and Andy Green, Institute of Education, University
of London
Brief no: 548 ISBN: 1-84478-263-8 July 2004
In 1995 the then Department for Education and Employment (DfEE) and The Cabinet Office commissioned research to compare qualification levels in the UK, France, Germany, the USA and Singapore. The aim was to map other countries' qualifications on to the UK system of NVQ equivalent levels. In 2000 the figures for the UK, France and Germany were updated. This current work updates the figures for all the countries examined in the 1995 work. Findings include:
The full report (RR548), price £4.95, is available
from DfES Publications, PO Box 5050, Sherwood Park, Annesley, Nottingham NG15
0DJ
Cheques should be made payable to "DfES Priced Publications"
The Research Brief (RB548) is available free of charge
from the above address
tel: 0845 60 222 60
Research Briefs and Research Reports can also be accessed at www.dfes.gov.uk/research/
Further information about this research can be obtained
from
Vikki Caulfield, Room N611, DfES, Moorfoot, Sheffield S1 4PQ
email: vikki.caulfield@dfes.gsi.gov.uk
Vocational GCSEs, introduced two years ago in a bid to prepare school pupils for employment, are too academically focused, claims OfSTED. Inspectors said that lessons tended to slide towards an academic curriculum, largely because teachers have not received enough training to teach skills for the workplace. The education watchdog was also critical of schools' attempts to develop relationships with employers, and maintained that the inadequate provision of work experience placements had resulted in "patchy" grades.
Polly Curtis, The Guardian 20 July
According to figures from the DfES, fewer teenagers are choosing vocational courses, despite a government drive to encourage pupils to try non-academic subjects. The figures show that the number of under-19s in England taking GNVQs and NVQs fell by 9% last year. An analysis of the statistics found that this fall was matched by a broadly similar increase in the number of students taking academic courses.
Michael Shaw, The TES 9 July
E-Skills UK, the Sector Skills Council for IT, Telecoms and Contact Centres, has launched the e-skills Passport. The e-skills Passport is a new web-based service that will enable any individual in the UK to assess and record their current IT user skills, and then establish a personal training plan to improve those skills. It also allows employers to simplify the process of IT skills assessment of employees within their organisations.
URL: www.e-skillspassport.com/
SSDA Involve Issue 58 (21 July)
The Assessment and Qualifications Alliance, the country's biggest exam board, is to axe 11 minority exams including GCSEs in classics, Russian, and archaeology. The decision has been described as "educational barbarism" and teachers are furious that AQA failed to consult its own subject advisory committees. AQA says the subject entries are small or declining and all bar one, archaeology, are offered by other boards. Summer 2006 will be the last chance to sit AQA GCSEs in accounting, archaeology, Greek, home economic textiles, Latin, Russian, social science, and travel and tourism, or AS and A2s in Greek, Latin and European studies.
Dorothy Lepkowska and Philippa White, The TES 9 July
"Now here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!"
Lewis Carroll
The government has indicated that it may consider setting up an insurance scheme for companies so that they have similar funding to rivals that infringe their patents. The Patent Office believes that the high costs associated with taking legal action could prevent smaller patent holders from defending their intellectual property against competitors that are better financed.
Bob Sherwood and Nikki Tait, Financial Times 29 July
The BSA has recently published a study on global software piracy, conducted by the independent firm International Data Corporation. The study contains economic data and statistics, as well as detailed information on software piracy in various countries and regions around the world, therefore providing with an overview of global software piracy.
Information Law Newsletter Issue number 49 (13 July) © Paul Pedley
South African lawyers acting for a Zulu family are suing the Disney Corporation for copyright infringement. The lawyers allege that the song The Lion Sleeps Tonight borrows too heavily from a song written by Solomon Linda, a migrant Zulu worker in 1939. Mr Linda's composition formed the basis for Wimoweh, which in turn formed the basis for The Lion Sleeps Tonight, yet he died penniless in 1962 and his descendants are equally poor. Lawyers acting for Mr Linda's descendants warn that this lawsuit is just the first of many. Speaking at a press conference to launch the action, lawyer Owen Dean warned: "We intend going after anyone who is using the song. We started with Disney because they are the most active of the users. The Lion King musical … is running to full houses all over the world while Linda's daughters work as domestic servants, live in shacks and struggle to feed their families. As far as we're concerned, this is both illegal and profoundly unfair."
Rory Carroll in Johannesburg, The Guardian 3 July
While organised crime largely controls hard copy piracy, the general public downloads soft copy illegal content. A different approach will be needed to combat the newer threat of digital theft. This article examines digital theft, which includes copying music, television programmes and films over the Internet. It investigates who are the main culprits and why this particular type of copyright breach is largely considered to be "less illegal" than making hundreds of copies and selling them off at car boot sales.
Ed Shedd and Jolyon Barker – Deloitte
Mondaq
Weekly Newsletter 5 July
URL:
www.mondaq.com/article_preview.asp?a=26993&e=on
(Requires free registration)
Any business photocopying from books, magazines and journals that are protected by copyright, without permission from the copyright owner or a licence from The Copyright Licensing Agency, may be breaking the law. The Copyright and Related Rights Regulations 2003 narrow an exception to copyright law, that was often used by companies to claim they were exempt and could avoid taking out a licence. Copying for research for commercial purposes no longer falls within the exception to copyright known as "fair dealing". The effect of the change in the law is that, with very few exceptions, any commercial organisation copying or scanning extracts from published books, journals or magazines now requires a CLA licence, or the permission of the copyright owner is required on each occasion. The Copyright Licensing Agency has published a leaflet called Guidance for businesses about changes to copyright law, (PDF 4pp) which can be downloaded from http://tinyurl.com/3tamx
CLArion Summer 2004
The threat of legal action has compelled a multinational corporation in the travel and leisure sector to take a copying licence with The Copyright Licensing Agency Limited. Most large companies in the sector seek to comply with copyright law by licensing their photocopying and scanning needs, but this particular group had rejected negotiations. A covert investigation, by CLA's Copyright Compliance Unit, produced evidence of the company's illegal photocopying activities. Remaining unlicensed groups in the travel and leisure sector can expect similar action to be taken against them by CLA. Copyright Compliance Unit is seriously concerned about the cynical attitude displayed by many large unlicensed public companies to illegal photocopying or scanning. Hence, big business is the primary focus of copyright compliance attention for 2004/2005. Through its Copywatch initiative and website, CLA is offering rewards of up to £20,000 for reliable information about illegal photocopying or scanning leading to a successful licensing outcome or to a legal action in the corporate sector.
Information Law Newsletter Issue number 49 (13 July) © Paul Pedley
CLA has introduced a new adult education licence for adult education centres maintained by Local Education Authorities (LEAs). The licence allows the creation of student handouts as well as the compilation of course packs without having to get separate permissions from publishers, authors and artists on each occasion.
More information from the CLA
tel: 020 7631 5555
email: cla@cla.co.uk
CLArion Summer 2004
This article provides an outline of the Advocate-General of the European Court of Justice's Interpretation of the provisions of Directive 96/9/EC on the legal protection of databases. In assessing whether there is an infringement, the Advocate-General maintained:
Martyn Hann and Les Christy – Pinsents
Mondaq
Weekly Newsletter 15 July
URL:
www.mondaq.com/article_preview.asp?a=27127&e=on
(Requires free registration)
Update comment: So, you pick up a copy of the latest "Directory of Troglodytes in the UK", extract the information you require in order to market the latest paint for cave walls and send the letters out. You have both extracted and re-utilised the data from the database without ever having seen the database. You are in breach of the regulations.
A national database containing confidential details about every child in Britain is to be set up by the government. Each child will be assigned an identifying number so that authorities can access their records. All parents are to receive letters from the government informing them of the plan. The central register will hold information on a child's school achievements, GP and hospital visits, police and social services records and home address. It is also understood that it will include information on their families, including whether parents are divorced or separated.
Robert Winnett and David Leppard, Sunday Times Online 25 July
Update comment: And if we don't want this to happen? Tough!
A new website offering advice on how to protect yourself against identity theft and what to do if you think you have been a victim was announced today (14 July) by Home Office Minister Des Browne. Identity theft occurs when personal information is used by someone else without the owner's knowledge. It may support criminal activity, which could involve fraud, deception, or obtaining benefits and services in the victim's name. More than 100,000 people are affected in the UK every year. The website <www.identity-theft.org.uk> explains how to keep personal information safe, how to get help, and what is being done to tackle this growing crime. It is part of a significant package of measures to tackle identity fraud.
Home Office press release GNN ref 98216P 14 July
Practical guidelines on how people can protect their personal privacy have been published by the Information Commissioner's Office. Accredited by the Plain English Campaign, the guidelines have been produced in the format of a lively comic book to provide people across the country, including those with literacy difficulties, with essential information about their rights under the Data Protection Act 1998. Published in a clear and accessible format, the A4 booklet, How to manage your personal information under the Data Protection Act covers issues such as:
Commenting on the booklet Richard Thomas, Information Commissioner, said: "Incorrect personal information can have dramatic effects on people's lives, for example being turned down for a loan or a job as a result. Everyone has the right to change any incorrect information held on them and to know exactly who holds this information. I hope that people will find the straightforward advice useful and that it encourages individuals to take more care and control of their personal information." The booklet has also been designed with the needs of those with literacy difficulties in mind. The ICO followed guidelines on accessibility provided by the British Dyslexic Association and Mencap to ensure that the guide is in the appropriate format and language.
The leaflet is available free of charge by calling 01625 545 745
Wired.gov, 6 July
The European Commission has called upon the UK government to justify its approach to data protection law – because it fears that it does not comply with the European Data Protection Directive. The Commission sent a letter of formal notice to the UK government questioning a number of aspects of compliance with the EU Data Protection Directive of 1995. While the detail has not been made public, it is understood that the EC's concerns include:
Out-Law 15 July
The CBI has urged the government to stand firm against any attempts from Europe to force Britain to toughen its data protection laws. Responding to the news that the European Commission had sent a formal letter to the government expressing concerns that the UK regime was out of line with other member states, the CBI warned that more upheaval over the legislation would "simply cause greater confusion and deter investment". Susannah Haan, CBI legal adviser, said: "The government should stand up for the pragmatic approach that it has taken so far. In fact, if there are any changes that need to be made, they should be in softening rather than toughening the law."
Bob Sherwood, Legal Correspondent, Financial Times 19 July
In the Financial Times (16 July – "Lax" UK data protection criticised) and European Voice (15 July page 1 – Bolkestein rebukes UK over lack of data privacy) there are stories about the UK's implementation of the European data protection directive having been challenged by the EU. The issues were thrown into the spotlight with the case of Durant v Financial Services Authority. The FT reports that Mr Bolkestein, the internal market commissioner, has sent a "letter of formal notice" to the government which sets out five areas where he is concerned that the UK's 1998 Data Protection Act fails to meet the requirements of the directive. Ultimately this could lead to a case in the European Court of Justice; and for the UK to make changes to its legislation.
Cross-border Injunctions: An Update
This article
examines moves to develop a solution to infringement of intellectual property
rights when the infringement occurs across several countries.
Bart J Van Den Broek, Howrey Europe
Mondaq Weekly
Newsletter 22 July
URL: www.mondaq.com/
(Requires free
registration)
Provision must be made in the Children's Bill, which is currently passing through parliament, to ensure that new information-sharing databases do not threaten young runaways' right to confidentiality, children's minister Margaret Hodge has been told. Andy McCullough, runaways consultant for the Children's Society, said that there is a danger that young people will be deterred from seeking help from professionals if they believe that information about them may be passed onto other departments.
Children Now 16-22 July
One quarter of HR and IT managers in UK businesses do not know who is responsible for training staff on confidential data protection, according to a new survey from Web and email filtering company Surfcontrol. The survey found that HR executives feel that training staff in the dangers of distributing confidential information should be the responsibility of the IT department. However, IT department heads say that staff training is the responsibility of the HR department. This "worrying lack of co-operation" means that many staff do not secure the information that they transmit.
Caroline Berdon, Infoconomy Bulletin 9 July
According to the Hospital Chaplaincies Council, some NHS Trusts are denying a large number of terminally ill patients access to spiritual guidance because of the way they are interpreting the Data Protection Act. The trusts are refusing to disclose the religious background of patients to hospital chaplains as they claim that such information is "too sensitive" to share. A spokesman for the Department of Health said that patients should be asked if they give their permission for information about their religious affirmation to be passed when it is recorded.
Sunday Telegraph, 25 July
Update comment: It seems to me that the Data Protection Act has become the new Social Worker – it gets blamed whenever anything goes wrong! Dawn.
The DPA is quite clear about "sensitive personal information" and should not be blamed by people who don't know how to do their jobs. Hazel.
Red tape is still causing headaches for UK businesses, according to a survey by the Institute of Directors (IoD). The IoD maintains that "petty rules and regulations, incompetence and misplaced `assistance' continue to hinder business expansion and job creation".
HRLooK Daily News 19 July
Research from Intrum Justitia, a provider of credit management software, reveals that UK businesses could be losing as much as £20 billion a year through unpaid invoices. The research revealed that almost half of UK invoices are overdue, by an average of 18 days, and almost 2% of these invoices are never paid at all. A spokesperson for Intrum Justitia said that late payment hit SMEs the hardest because they are "more vulnerable to variations in cashflow and often rely on a limited number of customers".
British Chamber of Commerce Newsletter 1 July
Update comment: To which I would add, "small firms are also more concerned not to upset their larger customers – which are often the worst at paying on time." Hazel.
In response to a reader who asked: "I'm looking for a free multi-purpose tool to monitor the web-friendliness of web pages. I previously used the now defunct www.websitegarage.com Can you help?", Phil Bradley recommended:
His Site of the Month is The Lord of the Rings – What if it had been written by someone else? Very funny – whether you like the book or not – particularly the versions by "Jane Austen" and "Douglas Adams".
URL: www.teemings.com/extras/lotr/
Library and Information Update
Volume 3(8) July-August 2004
Resellers, and distributors who recycle obsolete computer hardware, could be responsible for ensuring that sensitive corporate data doesn't end up in the wrong hands under the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Directive according to a report in Computer Reseller News.
See http://crn.vnunet.com/News/1156033 and www.managinginformation.com/news/content_show_full.php?id=2830
via Information Law Newsletter Issue number 49 (13 July) © Paul Pedley
Microsoft has been awarded US Patent 6,754,4752, entitled Method and apparatus for transmitting power and data using the human body. The company is to explore the potential of the human body to transmit data between ICT devices such as PDAs and mobile phones.
David Adam, science correspondent, The Guardian 6 July
Update comment: YEUK!
Thousands of people are being stopped from accessing hardcore child pornography on the Internet every day because of a new filtering system introduced by British Telecom. The technology works by blocking access to more than 15,000 websites that the Internet Watch Foundation has identified as "illegal to view" under the 1978 Child Protection Act. BT reports that the system is currently blocking more than 20,000 attempts to access paedophile websites each day. Pierre Danon, Chief Executive of BT Retail, said that the "cleanfeed" technology is only blocking attempts by BT's 2.8 million customers to reach the sites at the moment but BT plans to make it available to other ISPs.
Nicole Martin, Daily Telegraph 21 July
Update comment: Sinister! Yes, of course one agrees with the actuality of checking on, if not stopping access to, these sites, but what if the process is used to stop us accessing ....? I know of one local authority where the firewall prevents access to the Information Commission website and another public organisation where no emails with attachments are allowed through.
Two Oxford University students could be banned from their studies after exposing serious flaws in the university's IT network by hacking into it while investigating a story for the student newspaper, writes Lee Glendinning (The Guardian 15 July). Using a free Internet program, the students managed to gain access to email passwords, private IM conversations and live CCTV footage within just seven minutes. However, following the publication of the story, the students were hauled before the university's proctors, who revoked their IT privileges and closed their email accounts. One of the students commented: "I regret the fact that the university's priority seems to be pursuing [us] rather than addressing the issues we raised."
Microsoft has launched a test version of a service called Newsbot which, like Google News, searches for the latest news online. Calling Newsbot a "personal newsstand" that heeds user preferences, Microsoft says the new service will examine stories from more than 4,800 English-language news outlets. Microsoft's longer-term plans include a broader search technology that would let people search websites, messages, and databases.
Los Angeles Times 28 July
www.latimes.com/technology/ats-ap_technology11jul28,1,346381.story?coll=sns-ap-toptechnology
via NewsScan Daily 28 July
Perennial problem: locating data in the "deep Web."
Ingenious solution: combine the Open Archives Initiative mission to promote interoperability standards with pervasive Apache server modules and add a nice infectious (but benevolent) virus.
Thanks to funding from the Andrew W Mellon Foundation, the melding of these three concepts is helping make it possible to find more treasures on the hidden Web. It's elegantly simple says Phil Long PhD, of the Academic Computing Enterprise at MIT. First you make something for a host that is widely distributed in the population. Then you make it incredibly easy to transmit it symbiotically – that is, in a way that does not detract from the host's general health, but adds capability. Nearly 64% of Web sites worldwide use the Apache server, which allows programmers to launch new features through easy-to-install modules. The modules to be launched to help tap hidden databases are driven by the Open Archives Initiative's Protocol for Metadata Harvesting, based on the open standards HTTP and XML. So the host is the Apache server, and the "viral" package to distribute is the high-performance federated digital search service implemented as an Apache module, mod_OAI.
Syllabus.com July 2004
www.syllabus.com/article.asp?id=3D9680
via ShelfLife Number 165 (15 July) www.rlg.org
Technology journalist Yuri Kageyama is wild about Sony's new Librie electronic book reader, which is "easier on the eyes than any electronic display yet." The device features a display technology designed to replace printed words on paper (using so called electronic ink). To download content, the machine connects to a personal computer via a USB link; digital books are obtained from a service in Japan called Publishing Link, set up with capital from Sony and major Japanese publishers. Kageyama says: "I'm not wild about buying books that self-destruct after 60 days. But the idea behind Librie makes impeccable sense. It's not that far-fetched to imagine receiving our morning newspaper of choice, call it the Daily Download, into an upgraded version of such a gadget. We'll save a lot of trees."
AP Technology 1 July
http://apnews.excite.com/article/20040701/D83HVNUG0.html
via ShelfLife Number 164 (8 July) www.rlg.org
This consultation covers fees, funding and learner support in further education. The approach set out is intended to sit within the framework of the Success for All reform programme. It looks at how to bring about the changes needed to ensure that public investment really is applied where it will secure the greatest benefits, and that employers and individuals do indeed contribute in line with the benefits they receive.
The document (PDF 54pp), published by the DfES on 15 July, is at http://tinyurl.com/5x5fn
This is the third annual report on the Skills for Life strategy. It gives information on progress made during the 2003-04 period.
The report (PDF – number of pages unknown but it took 8 minutes to download) published by the DfES on 8 July is at http://tinyurl.com/6amy9
Grants worth more than £490,000 were today (5 July) awarded to 17 projects which deliver training and development opportunities to Scotland's workforce. The Scottish Skills Fund (SSF) provides grant support to projects aimed at meeting the skills and training needs of industry. The Scottish Skills Fund was set up by the Executive in April 2001 to help maintain existing skills projects; continue to develop a learning culture; tackle skills gaps, shortages and other issues; and encourage skills development in employment sectors during the replacement of the National Training Organisation network with Sector Skills Councils.
Scottish Executive News Release SEELTski/2004 5 July
The University for Industry (UfI) and Investors in People UK (IiP) have signed a three-year deal to develop the skills of the UK workforce in a bid to raise the productivity of the economy. The Strategic Alliance formalises a number of shared principles and also maps out a practical framework for joint working in key areas.
For information contact
Helen Crow at UfI
tel: 0114 291 5680
email:
hcrow@ufi.com OR
Charlotte Burnip at Investors in People UK
tel: 0207
467 1905
email: charlotteb@iipuk.co.uk
E-Learning Age May 2004
The national Skills Strategy sets out a broad agenda, which is designed to tackle weaknesses in both supply and demand for training and so achieve a step change in the skills of young people and adults in England. Progress made to date is outlined in this report.
The report (PDF 64pp), published by the DfES on 9 July, is at http://tinyurl.com/4pjww
Skills for Health is the latest of the licensed Sector Skills Councils. One of its primary tasks is to develop a Sector Skills Agreement between the health sector employers, the government and the Learning and Skills Council.
SSDA Involve Issue 59 (26 July)
Skills for Justice and Improve Ltd held their official launches on the 6th and 7th of July, bringing the total number of SSCs licensed or recommended for license to 19. Skills for Justice is the new Sector Skills Council for the justice sector, while Improve Ltd is the new Sector Skills Council for the food and drinks industry.
SSDA Involve Issue 58 (21 July)
Commenting on the government's Rural Strategy, 2004 Sally Low, Director of Policy and External Affairs at the British Chambers of Commerce said: "It is not clear that the measures outlined in the government's White Paper will enable businesses to access grants and support more easily. The government's reforms focus on reducing internal bureaucracy by simplifying funding streams. While these reforms are a step in the right direction, they are of little value to business if the sheer number of organisations that they have to navigate is not radically reduced. Simplifying the grant application processes is crucial as over-bureaucratic and complicated systems are a major disincentive to encouraging businesses who could benefit most from applying."
BCC Newsletter 22 July
First Minister Rhodri Morgan today (14 July) announced that the Welsh Development Agency, the Wales Tourist Board and ELWa – the National Council for Education and Training for Wales, will cease to be quangos by 1 April 2006. They will be merged with their sponsor departments and will become part of the Assembly administration. These essential delivery agencies of the Welsh Assembly Government are currently arms-length executive public bodies, responsible to boards appointed by Ministers. The transfer will create direct democratic accountability for the decisions and expenditure currently undertaken by these boards. Continuity of business will be maintained through the transfer period and merging the back office functions with those of the administration will be expected to release additional resources for front-line services.
Further information on today's announcement is at
www.wales.gov.uk/publicservicereform
– English Language
www.cymru.gov.uk/diwygiorgwasanaethaucyhoeddus
– Welsh Language
Welsh Assembly press release 14 July
A group of disillusioned Labour Party supporters has launched a campaign to force Tony Blair out of office. The campaigners are encouraging people to write to their MPs using the form on the website which reads: "As a constituent, I have one simple question for you, my elected representative: Has Tony Blair become a divisive influence, incapable of delivering true leadership? Yes | No | No Comment." The campaigners want to force a vote of no confidence in the Prime Minister, and have named the campaign The Big Intervention, "in honour of Blair's empty PR stunt, The Big Conversation".
URL: www.bigintervention.org.uk/
Government Computing July-August 2004
Trade unionists and Labour activists have accused the government of presenting them with "a done deal" regarding the formation of party policy. The Labour Party's National Policy Forum was due to discuss three policy documents at a meeting in July. These documents were to form the basis of the next general election manifesto. However, critics say that the government has "effectively by-passed" the discussion process by announcing a series of policy initiatives. A spokesperson for public sector union UNISON said: "It is bizarre. Have they never heard of the `Big Conversation', the National Policy Forum or the Labour Party Conference?"
Barckley Sumner, The Tribune 23 July
The editorial column in this month's Working Brief (Issue 156 July 2004) tells us that recent surveys show that unemployment has dropped down both the public and political agenda. The very fact that there is no five-year plan for employment policy is, the author says, a stark contrast to other government departments, most of which have produced such plans following the Spending Review. The author believes that this view of unemployment as "a marginal issue in today's booming labour market" is misguided, as it fails to recognise that there are still areas of the UK where unemployment remains unacceptably high. He acknowledges that there have been dramatic improvements in the employment rate over the past few years. However, he comments: "It is a fact though, that there are many more people who want to work than can achieve it. … Therefore, Labour needs to do more than fight a general election on the strength of its employment and economic record since 1997 and a series of five-year plans for other areas of public services reform. It needs to use that platform of experience and achievement to finish the job it promised in 2001 – achieve full employment across the country."
The following documents have been added to the TUC website.
Latest results for the successful employment programme for lone parents
www.tuc.org.uk/welfare/tuc-8239-f0.cfm
Latest official figures for the New Deal for older unemployed people
www.tuc.org.uk/welfare/tuc-8238-f0.cfm
Latest results for the New Deal for Young People
www.tuc.org.uk/welfare/tuc-8237-f0.cfm
TUC email alert 3 July
Home Secretary David Blunkett has mooted the idea of introducing a differential National Minimum Wage. Mr Blunkett suggested the possibility as a way to reduce economic inequality across the UK. He believes that the current system is "too inflexible" as it fails to take into account widely differing living costs. The rate would be set according to geographical location, with the most likely option being an extra amount for workers in London and neighbouring areas.
David Turner, Employment Correspondent, Financial Times 29 July
The government's free access policy for national museums is to be extended to the 30 university museums which receive core funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Board. The terms of the agreement means they will no longer be obliged to pay VAT.
Dalya Alberge, Arts Correspondent, Times Online 13 July
Update comment: So, university museums don't pay but Connexions Partnerships do?
Metadata doesn't just describe websites. Whatever your application, if you are a public sector organisation you should be looking at the e-Government metadata standard, writes Liane Broadley.
The article is available in full at http://tinyurl.com/4geyd
Library and Information Update
Volume 3(8) July-August 2004
In an article for Library and Information Update (Volume 3(8) July-August 2004), David Haynes explains why metadata is essential for interoperability and retrieval.
The article is available in full at http://tinyurl.com/53gxo
Update comment: "Gawd bless you CILIP," says Dawn as she contemplates trying to understand enough of this article to be able to precis it – now she doesn't have to! You can read it for yourself if you want to.
The Federal Depository Library Program is losing the race to keep up with cataloging and preserving access to Web-only government documents. "This is not a problem; this is a crisis," says Daniel Greenstein, head of the California Digital Library, which serves the 10 libraries in the University of California system. To capture those missing documents, known as fugitive documents, the Government Printing Office is contemplating using Web-harvesting technologies, but GPO officials acknowledge that Web-crawler and datamining technologies might prove inadequate for rounding up much of the information the government publishes online. Greenstein notes that while Web-crawlers are fairly good at capturing documents from the Web's surface, they miss much of the information on the so-called Deep Web, where databases and dynamic Web pages reside. A recent California Digital Library study found that about 85% of the Deep Web is in the .gov domain. GPO officials have enlisted the help of the University of North Texas Libraries to maintain a collection of electronic documents known as the Cyber Cemetery, but they acknowledge they have no idea how many fugitive documents they're missing. "If we knew where they were to count them, then they wouldn't be fugitive," says Judith Russell, superintendent of documents. But other institutions, such as the California Digital Library, say they can't wait for the government to solve the problem and are committing staff and funding to maintain their electronic collections of government information.
FCW.com 21 June
www.fcw.com/fcw/articles/2004/0621/pol-crisis-06-21-04.asp
via ShelfLife Number 164 (8 July) www.rlg.org
A new project, set up by the British Library, the National Archives and the Wellcome Trust, aims to tackle the problem of "electronic-deficit" by taking samples of websites and preserving them for future generations in an archive. Over the next two years the consortium will sample and copy some of Britain's six million websites. The first Internet archive will go online in January.
David Derbyshire, Daily Telegraph 10 July
The National Archives has launched its new website, incorporating the content from former Public Record Office and Historical Manuscripts Commission websites. If you have bookmarks on the old sites you will be automatically diverted to the new site. It's got lots of new features including special sections for family and military historians, kids, and many more images.
Explore the site at www.nationalarchives.gov.uk
managinginformation.com, 28 July
Update comment: Dawn reckons it's a great way to lose a couple of hours – I'd just like a couple of hours to lose. Hazel.
In the spring of 2001, it was estimated that some 93% of new information was "born digital", i.e. created originally in digital form. While the benefits of digital content creation are numerous, ranging from easy access to low publication costs, one of the big dangers of digital-only content is its potential loss. The average life span of a website is approximately six weeks, and nearly half the websites found in 1998 were gone by the following year. While efforts to archive portions of the Internet abound, one stands out for the breadth of its mission. Founded in 1996, the Internet Archive (IA) was created to archive as much of the Internet as possible. As of January 2004, the IA contained in excess of 30 terabytes of data, including more than 30 billion Web pages. Despite its vastness, some academics fear the IA won't be enough. Because its collection capabilities are limited to public Web pages containing links to other pages, the billions of orphaned and restricted-access pages that reside on the Web are out of reach. Scholars are increasingly concerned with the possibility of a coming Digital Dark Age, a period in the not-so-far future when the manuscripts and ephemera used by historians, social scientists and others to examine the past and present will not exist in a significant accumulation to yield useful historical or social context.
Ephemeral to Enduring: The Internet Archive and Its Role in Preserving Digital Media is at http://edwards.orcas.net/~misseli/archive.pdf
According to Lynne Brindley, Chief Executive of the British Library, large numbers of texts will be lost for ever unless the government steps in to preserve the increasing amounts of digital material. The Legal Deposit Act passed last year stated that electronic and non-print publications should be deposited in the British Library. However, Ms Brindley argues that there has been "an explosion" in electronic publications, including weblogs, CD-ROMs, and films and books that are only released online. She warns that BL will need an increased fund of £12 million in order to collect, collate and manage the material. Ms Brindley said: "It is a mammoth task, but it is better than throwing up your hands and saying we can't do it. Books don't deteriorate that quickly, so you don't need to act straight away to preserve them, but that is not an option in the digital world. Preservation can't be done at a later stage – it has to be done at the point it is acquired because formats become obsolete very quickly, or, in the case of websites, they just disappear. There are pretty complex technical challenges in how we do this. We have got the broad legislation, but now we have to have dialogue about how we achieve it. We also need to finance it."
Anthony Barnes, Arts and Media Correspondent, The Independent 25 July
"The thing that gets me springing out of bed in the morning and has for the last 20 years is the idea that we could have universal access to all knowledge," says Brewster Kahle, chairman of the board of the Internet Archive. The Archive was founded in 1996 to build an Internet library with permanent access for researchers and scholars to historical collections in digital format. Kahle's Quest begins "deep in the human psyche," but is planted in practicality, with detailed analyses of what's to be done: "Let's consider the question of how much information there is. If you break it down, it turns out to be not that big of a deal. The largest print library in the world, which is the Library of Congress, has about 28 million volumes. A book is about a megabyte. That's just the ASCII of a book, if you put it in Microsoft Word. So 28 million megabytes is 28 terabytes, which fits in a bookshelf and costs about $60,000 right now. Storing books in ASCII is no problem, and the scanned images are more but still affordable. Scanning books costs between $5 and $20. ... So books are "doable", in terms of technology."
ACM Queue June 2004
www.acmqueue.com/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=163
via ShelfLife Number 166 (22 July) www.rlg.org
Web usability guru Jakob Nielsen says that one of the most persistent challenges facing the Web is the difficulty in finding anything: "Bad search continues to be a problem today even though, from a technology perspective, great progress has been made. You can see this plainly when you use the public search engines. They're much better today than they were ten years ago. But the search on individual websites or inside intranets is, typically, still bad. [On intranets] things are divided up into different knowledge bases, so you've got to know where to search, and if you need to know where to search, then that defeats the entire idea. The other problem about search is the content, which is to say the individual pages, or units of information, are typically poorly described in terms of things like the headline and summaries, which is all people have to choose from when they get the search-results listing. So if there was just one thing we could fix on the Web, and for intranets as well, I would say let's fix search; that's still the number one thing that's causing people problems." Nielsen estimates that an average mid-size company (10,000 employees) could expect a return on investment of 1,000% and a gain of $5 million a year in employee productivity, simply by improving the usability of its intranet.
CIO Insight 1 June 2004
www.cioinsight.com/article2/0,1397,1610163,00.asp
via ShelfLife Number 165 (15 July) www.rlg.org
A study by the Daily Telegraph has found that over 76,000 files which have passed the standard 30-year period under which government records remain closed, have been held back from release on the instructions of the Lord Chancellor. 27,000 of the files, which are preserved in the National Archives, are considered so sensitive that even a description of their contents has been suppressed. Maurice Frankel, Director of the Campaign for the Freedom of Information, said he was "astonished" by the number of files still held back by the government. He said that the study "raises serious concerns about the new Freedom of Information Act".
Ben Fenton, Daily Telegraph 12 July
Update comment: If the records are closed does that mean that the FOI does not operate? Even if it does, if the files aren't even labelled as to content how does anyone know to look in them?
Launching his office's annual report, Information Commissioner Richard Thomas welcomed indications that Whitehall departments and other public bodies are recognising the benefits of open government but warned that this commitment must be backed up by clear action when the Freedom of Information Act (FOI) comes into force in January 2005. He warned, however, that there will be no sympathy for public bodies which have not prepared themselves for the changes. Mr Thomas said: "Public bodies have had nearly four years to prepare for FOI and they must be ready to hit the ground running when FOI comes into force – ignorance or lack of preparation time are not excuses we will be able to accept."
Full report (PDF 100pp) at http://tinyurl.com/5hrvg
Information Commissioner's website 14 July
The parliamentary ombudsman, Ann Abraham, has published a report of her investigations into cases where the government was alleged to have wrongly withheld information from those who had asked for it under the Code of Practice on Access to Government Information. Of the 25 published complaints, the majority were upheld. Ms Abraham said that it was "surprising and regrettable" that it was still necessary to remind departments of their obligations under the code of practice which regulates access to government information.
Publictechnology.net 4 July
Generators of spam have developed ways of telling when you open messages from them, so that they can find out more about you. Spammers have harnessed web-bugs to help them find out about the recipient of their email. Use of the web-bug is fairly commonplace with websites. Once a page is loaded, the bug transmits information about the user, including their ISP, operating system and when the page was accessed. However, while this may be perfectly normal for web browsing, it is "rather different for an unwanted email that you haven't even properly opened yet". According to research from MX Logic, almost half of all spam contains this kind of email bug which transmits personal details, including email addresses, to spammers, even if the email is only viewed in a preview pane. Moreover, a new company is attempting to market a legitimate use of a spammers' tactic. Didtheyreadit.com offers a means of tracking whether people have read an email, and precisely when and where they read it. It uses web-bugs to "follow" emails and report back to the server once they have been opened. The solution seems to be to not use the preview pane and, perhaps most importantly, don't open the darned stuff in the first place!
Charles Arthur, The Independent 28 July
A source from Scotland Yard's computer crime unit has revealed that huge networks of home computers are being rented out without their owners' knowledge to digital miscreants. The PCs have been infected by a virus which has turned them into zombies – machines that can be controlled by an outside source, usually for malicious purposes. The source said that hackers have created networks of between 10,000 and 30,000 computers, and are offering them for hire to "anybody who has the money". The networks can be used for spam, phishing and denial of service attacks and cost less than $100 an hour to hire.
Source, News.com
via TheITPortal Midweek Roundup 14 July
The latest mass-mailing worm, Atak, hides by going to sleep when it suspects that antivirus software is trying to detect it. Mikko Hypponen, Director of Antivirus Research at Finnish company F-Secure, said that the worm uses a number of evasion techniques to avoid detection and removal. He explained: "Atak tries to tell when someone is stepping through the code to analyse whether it is a virus or not. … It is standard for worms to have layers of encryption, or armouring, to keep out snoopers, but this goes way beyond that. It tries actively to detect if it is being analysed by antivirus research tools. If it thinks it is being analysed, it stops running and shuts down."
Munir Kotadia, News.com
via TheITPortal Midweek Roundup 14 July
An increasing number of companies say that they will "give up" on email if the threat posed by viruses, spam and other unwanted content is not contained, according to a survey from MessageLabs. The survey showed that 40% of bosses are worried about the threat to their business from security problems arising from email. Mark Sunner, chief technology officer at MessageLabs, said: "These results clearly show that concern about email security continues to run high, to the extent that if the situation does not improve the status of email will be under threat."
Robert Jacques, vnunet.com
via TheITPortal News Roundup 19 July
Microsoft has addressed complaints about download times from its dial-up customers by offering the Windows XP Service Pack 2 through distribution of the update on CD in the UK. Dial-up customers will be able to order the CD, which will be free of charge, from the website when the online upgrade is posted. The company has also entered into agreements with a number of computer magazines to distribute the update on their cover CDs.
Munir Kotadia, Silicon
via TheITPortal Midweek Roundup 14 July
Microsoft has announced that the long-awaited update of Windows XP will be sent to manufacturing in August, a month later than expected. The product should be in customers' hands later that month. Windows XP Service Pack 2, or SP2, will contain a number of new features. However, the majority of the new features will pertain to security.
Mike Riccuiti, Silicon
via TheITPortal Midweek Roundup 14 July
The use of wireless networks of sensors and machinery has been expanding rapidly in such applications as the management of lighting systems and the detection of construction defects. Recent examples include a wireless communications system to tell precisely when to irrigate and harvest grapes to produce premium wine and a system to monitor stresses on aging bridges to help decide maintenance priorities. Hans Mulder, Associate Director for Research at Intel, says that systems such as these "will be pervasive in 20 years". Tom Reidel of Millenial Net comments: "The range of potential market applications is a function of how many beers you've had," but adds: "There's a whole ecosystem of hardware, software and service guys springing up."
New York Times 26 July
www.nytimes.com/2004/07/26/business/26sensor.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1090841246-SB1UWqxacwSvPY/GEWIydA
via NewsScan Daily 26 July
Denise Thursfield, University of Hull and Roger Henderson, Leeds Metropolitan University
In the spring of 2004, the Selby Coalfield, the largest of the remaining coal mines in the United Kingdom, will close and 2,071 employees will lose their jobs. The impact of the closure will be severe in the surrounding area, and will present a challenge to local employment services and training agencies. It will also test the UK government's rhetoric on the importance of lifelong learning. The primary objective of this article is to investigate the issues emerging from the retraining programme implemented to ease the transition from mining to alternative forms of employment. It questions the veracity of the New Labour government's commitment to lifelong learning in practice. The research suggests that the retraining programme to assist the Selby miners does not meet the expectations engendered by the UK government's rhetoric on lifelong learning and calls into question the New Labour government's commitment to lifelong learning in practice.
Journal of Vocational Education and Training Volume 55 Number 4 (2003)
Futures for learning is a new initiative by pjb Associates. The newsletter aims to report on developments that are leading to emerging and future scenarios for learning. The first issue of the newsletter was published in March 2004 and includes a wide variety of topics, including:
URL: www.pjb.co.uk/fol-newsletter1.htm
ETV-NEWS March 2004 Number 46 (March 2004)
Kai Hakkaainen, Sami Paavola and Lasse Lipponen
This article examines the concept of Innovative Knowledge Communities (IKC). IKCs function in an environment in which the criteria of successful performance are constantly tightening. The main focus of IKCs is the production of knowledge and innovations rather than transmitting traditions, as Communities of Practice tend to do. The authors consider how IKCs, as communities that focus on the creation of new knowledge and novel practices, function, and examine how such communities can be deliberately cultivated.
LLinE 2-2004
Government ministers have announced a £12.5 million lottery-funded drive to enable all British teenagers to attend US-style Summer camps. The Get REAL scheme will be open to 11- to 17-year-olds and will offer a variety of activities at a residential camp. More than 2,500 pupils will attend such a camp this year, and ministers hope that this number will rise to 20,000 next year. The government believes that Summer camps will improve inter-racial mixing among Britain's teenagers, after research showed that more than one in ten have no friends from racial backgrounds different from their own.
Sarah Cassidy, Education Correspondent, The Independent 21 July
Update comment: Ministers might have their work cut out for them if they want to use Summer camps to improve inter-racial mixing. Less than 3% of the students who attended the pilot scheme came from ethnic minority backgrounds!
More workers than ever are choosing not to take holidays so they can devote more time to their jobs, claims a survey from recruitment firm Portfolio Payroll. The survey reveals that 72% of workers have not booked time off work for a Summer holiday this year, and 78% have revealed that even when on holiday they look forward to returning to work. Just 41% of workers said they had any holidays booked over the next 12 months.
HRLooK Daily News 8 July
Update comment: More fool them!
Short breaks are taking over from traditional Summer holidays, and lead to higher productivity at work, according to research from reed.co.uk. The research revealed that UK workers are set to take 82 million short breaks this year. Less than one in three (30%) will be taking a traditional fortnight's Summer holiday, while 70% say they are more likely to take short breaks than they were five years ago. Almost three out of four employees believe that the traditional Summer break causes more stress than a short break. A key reason for this is that people usually return to a large backlog of work, which many respondents felt undid the good that they had taken from their holiday.
HRLooK Daily News 12 July
All BBC sites, including Skillswise, have been made compatible with a very easy-to-use text to voice system for reading out text on screen on a PC. After installing a free plug-in called browsealoud, users simply hold the mouse pointer over a piece of text and the computer will read it out.
URL: www.browsealoud.com/downloads.asp?dl=bl
BBC Skillswise Issue 131 (7 July)
Every year in the UK approximately 3 million PCs are decommissioned and are no longer in use. A great many of these un-used PCs are in fine working order. Yet, in the developing world 99% of schoolchildren graduate from high school not having seen or touched a computer in the classroom. Computer Aid International aims to bridge this digital divide by refurbishing computers from the UK for re-use in schools and community organisations in developing countries. The organisation is calling for more donations and asks that all machines offered are in good working order. At present, collection facilities are only available for large numbers of PCs. However, Securicor will deliver a system for around £10.
For more information, contact Computer Aid
tel: 0207
281 0091
URL: www.computeraid.org
Mike Gerrard, The Guardian 15 July
The number of lonely and isolated older people in Britain will grow by a third to 2.2 million by 2021 due to rising rates of divorce and childlessness, according to a new report from centre-left think-tank Demos. The report, Home Alone, concludes that positive lifestyle trends espoused by the Friends generation, such as independence and freedom, may have a darker side which can lead to loneliness. It also highlights the possibility that women, who have traditionally been the "glue" that sticks families together, have less time available to devote to this role because of expanding roles in the workplace. The report, which was produced in partnership with WRVS, argues that social policy must move away from its preoccupation with meeting material needs at the expense of social contact.
David Batty, The Guardian 30 June
Home Alone by Helen McCarthy and Gillian Thomas,
is available from
Demos (price £10 ISBN: 1-84180-128-3)
tel: 020
8986 5488
The plight of Britain's hidden poor – middle class professionals who have slipped down the social scale – is highlighted in a report published by the Elizabeth Finn Trust. The trust says that 3.8 million people, 14% of the country's professional classes, are living below the poverty line on as little as £114 a week. A major problem for some of the group identified by the charity is their lack of formal educational qualifications "in an increasingly meritocratic society" where "who you know" is no longer a guarantee of financial or social status.
David Ward, The Guardian 26 July
Update comment: Now you know – you'll be poor AND lonely!
The shortlist for the 6th UK Big Brother Awards has been released by Privacy International. The awards include: Worst Public Servant, Most Invasive Company, Most Appalling Project, Most Heinous Government Organisation and Lifetime Menace Award – now renamed the David Blunkett Lifetime Menace Award. Among those shortlisted are:
A spokesperson for the company said that, while they had been inundated by nominations for David Blunkett, ID cards and the Home Office, they have been forced to remove them from the list because they were "honoured" last year.
John Oates, The Register
via TheITPortal Midweek Roundup 7 July
"Stile" is just our little joke – but a new study by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), Reading at Risk, has found that fewer than half of Americans over 18 now read novels, short stories, plays or poetry, and that this increasing indifference to literature holds in virtually all demographic areas. Calling the survey results "deeply alarming", NEA chair Dana Gioia says, "What this study does is give us accurate numbers that support our worst fears about American reading. It quantifies what people have been observing anecdotally, but the news is that it has been happening more rapidly and more pervasively than anyone thought possible. Reading is in decline among all groups, in every region, at every educational level and within every ethnic group." Men (37.6%) are doing less literary reading than women (55.1%); Hispanics (26.5%) are doing less than African-Americans (37.1%) and whites (51.4%); and all categories are declining. But the steepest declines of any demographic group are among the youngest adults.
New York Times 8 July
www.nytimes.com/2004/07/08/books/08READ.html
via ShelfLife Number 165 (15 July) www.rlg.org
A project which allows prison inmates to read stories to their children by recording them onto CDs has been judged so successful that it has been expanded across the UK, and has led to the establishment of a new national charity.
Alexandra Frean, Times Online 19 July
Following the publication of an independent review into its online services, the BBC has announced that it will shut down five websites and reduce the scale of a number of others. The review, chaired by Phillip Graf, found that some of the websites offered by the BBC were "insufficiently distinct from commercial websites". It concluded that the Corporation should focus on news, current affairs, education and information. The BBC confirmed that it would close its fantasy football, events listings, and soap websites as well as its surfing and games portals.
James Burleigh, The Independent 6 July
Update comment: All this comes after Marylaine Block says that, for researchers, the BBCi site is the best ever! However, researchers are probably not concerned with the demise of fantasy football!
The Department for Constitutional Affairs is planning a new database of UK primary and secondary legislation. The DCA is currently exploring the creation of two databases:
A spokesperson said that the launch is part of a series of organisational changes in which the department has become more "customer facing", rather than catering primarily for the judiciary.
Government Computing July-August 2004
A wiki (the Hawaiian word for "quick") is a type of website that many people can revise, update and append with new information. Whereas blogs are essentially designed for personal expression, wikis are designed for collaboration. The concept was pioneered in the mid-1990s by programmer Ward Cunningham, who called it the WikiWikiWeb and intended it to serve as a platform for freewheeling collaboration in software and engineering projects. Ross Mayfield of the Silicon Valley startup called Socialtext says: "People have tried very hard to take fragmented knowledge within corporations and put it somewhere that it can be used, but it's been an uphill effort. Our focus is literally to get everyone on the same page." And New York University communications professor Clay Shirky explains that "people are realising that perhaps the most human value actually occurs in smaller groups."
Wall Street Journal 29 July
http://online.wsj.com (requires subscription)
via NewsScan Daily 29 July
Well now, here's a surprise. A spokesperson for Encyclopedia Britannica said that the "accuracy and objectivity" of Wikipedia is questionable. Apparently, the online encyclopedia, which is produced and maintained by a worldwide community of volunteers, contains more than 300,000 references, registers an average of 8.7 million hits a day and is absolutely free, might not be very good. The spokesperson urged those who seek information to do their seeking from a trusted source – like Encyclopedia Britannica, which charges a subscription of $60 (£50) a year.
Simon London, Financial Times 28 July
In response to the arrival of yet more "marketing babble", the Government Computing Mole asks the question that forms on everyone's lips when connoted by text which says: "a robust and comprehensive sourcing routemap for reviewing existing relationships and for supporting our clients in building in-house capability and in sourcing and supplier management."
Government Computing July-August 2004
Update comment: Does Linguaphone do a course to help us understand this stuff? Dawn.
No – and what's more I'll quote Richard Reeves of the Intelligence Agency who said "It's tempting to dismiss all this stuff as utter guff. And as Oscar Wilde pointed out, the only way to be rid of temptation is to yield to it. So guff it surely is." Mr Reeves wasn't talking about gobbledegook but something akin to it – so called "authentic" leadership. Hazel.
J Kidger, University of Bristol
As part of its Teenage Pregnancy Strategy, New Labour has focused on ensuring more teenage mothers enter education, training or work, in order that they may avoid "long term social exclusion". This paper argues that this conceptualisation of the route to social inclusion is problematic for young mothers in that it ignores the structural and contextual barriers to them gaining inclusion, it discounts full-time mothering as a valid option, and it neglects the social and moral elements of their exclusion, while in fact contributing to this. A broader understanding of social inclusion is therefore advocated, which emphasises the significance of social belongingness and community participation, alongside economic self-sufficiency. Data are drawn from interviews with 14 young mothers who act as volunteer "peer educators" in school sex education, to illustrate the ways in which this wider conceptualisation of social inclusion might be more useful in meeting the needs of this group.
Critical Social Policy Volume 24 Number 3 (August 2004)
A new exhibition at the Natural History Museum in Tring, Hertfordshire, could be just the thing for bored children this Summer. Poo: a natural history of the unmentionable is encouraging us to take a closer look at faecal matter. Paul Kitching, education officer at the museum, said: "Poo has a definite yuck factor, but it is scientifically valuable. We want people to appreciate the wealth of information that can be gathered from droppings."
Adi Bloom, The TES 30 July
The Plain English Campaign has celebrated its 25th anniversary by asking its 7,000 supporters worldwide to nominate the worst offending piece of jargon they have encountered. The winner comes from draft National Minimum Wage Regulations introduced by the UK government in 1998, which read: "The hours of non-hours work worked by a worker in a pay reference period shall be the total of the number of hours spent by him during the pay reference period in carrying out the duties required of him under his contract to do non-hours work."
John Ezard, arts correspondent, The Guardian 26 July
Mentoring-based schemes could provide a cost-effective way of addressing the UK's skill shortage, according to the chair of an organisation that links students with industry. East Mentoring Forum chair Ken Lewis said that schemes such as his give students important industry knowledge while businesses gain fresh talent. The Forum runs a Year in Industry (YII) programme, which is designed to arrange industrial placements for young men and women after A-levels and before higher education.
URL: www.mentfor.co.uk/
TrainingZONE Newswire Issue 314 (5 July)
Higher Education Minister Alan Johnson has informed the public that there will be "no formal test" of whether government policy on tuition fees and grants succeeds in drawing more students from poor homes into higher education. Mr Johnson said that there was no point in measuring widening access when initiatives to encourage people from poorer backgrounds to go to university will "take years to feed through the system". He argued that imposing a target on universities at such an early stage in the proceedings would be "superfluous" and may "do more harm than good".
Paul Hill, The THES 16 July
Update comment: That's one target that will not need to be revised!
Madeleine Wahlberg and Denis Gleeson, University of Warwick
Drawing on a single case study in the Transforming Learning Cultures in Further Education (TLC-FE) project, discussed in the introduction to this volume [this is not available with the online abstracts service], this article explores contrasting perspectives of tutors' and students' experiences of a General National Vocational Qualification (GNVQ). The "case in point" is an Intermediate level GNVQ in Business Studies. The study juxtaposes the official discourse of GNVQ as a high skill qualification, offering parity of esteem and access to higher education and employment, with the reality as tutors and students experience it. The article explores the often contradictory ways in which these experiences interrelate with one another in shaping the teaching and learning culture of the GNVQ site. The term "site" is used here to denote the context and situation that frames the teaching and learning experiences of tutors and students. As the title suggests, the article identifies ambiguities in the way tutors and students make sense of GNVQ Business Studies, in the wider context of vocational education and training (VET) policy. A number of overlapping themes are identified that connect the contrasting biographies and identities of tutors and students with the development of learning cultures in the site. The article deals with each of these in turn to illuminate the complex ways in which the "empty shell" of GNVQ is given meaning in the often paradoxical conditions of further education (FE) practice. It is pertinent to examine this site in such depth at a time when Intermediate GNVQs are being transformed into Vocational General Certificates in Secondary Education (VGCSEs), which form part of the wider reform of 14-19 education and training in England.
Journal of Vocational Education and Training Volume 55 Number 4 (2003)
According to a recent survey from the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), most people believe that cyberspace should be declared "a resource to be shared by all for the public good". If implemented, this could mean that Internet governance would pass from Western governments to an international organisation like the UN.
More at http://tinyurl.com/6wv65
Library and Information Update Volume 3(8) July-August 2004
In his regular column for Library and Information Update (Volume 3(8) July-August 2004), Bernard Naylor ponders on the subject of "book-dropping". On completion of a good book, a book-dropper will then abandon it in a public place for someone else to find. He muses: "People have become so foot-loose these days, and library books seem, by contrast, to be so site specific. I warm to the idea of an amorphous wandering library matching its mobility to the wandering scholars of past centuries. Why shouldn't there be bibliographical `brief encounters' as well as amorous ones?"
Update comment: Just inscribe your unwanted book: "This book is part of the stock of the wandering library" and leave it lying around.
Helen Colley, University of Leeds;
David James and Kim Diment,
University of the West of England;
Michael Tedder, St Austell Centre,
Cornwall College
Official accounts of learning in vocational education and training emphasise the acquisition of technical skills and knowledge to foster behavioural competence in the workplace. However, such accounts fail to acknowledge the relationship between learning and identity. Drawing on detailed case studies of three vocational courses in English further education colleges, within the project Transforming Learning Cultures in Further Education, it is argued that learning is a process of becoming. Learning cultures and the vocational cultures in which they are steeped transform those who enter them. The authors develop the concept of "vocational habitus" to explain a central aspect of students' experience, as they have to orient to a particular set of dispositions. Predispositions related to gender, family background and specific locations within the working class are necessary, but not sufficient for effective learning. Vocational habitus reinforces and develops these in line with demands of the workplace, although it may reproduce social inequalities at the same time. Vocational habitus involves developing not only a "sense" of how to be, but also "sensibility": requisite feelings and morals, and the capacity for emotional labour.
Journal of Vocational Education and Training Volume 55 Number 4 (2003)
Campus accommodation provider Jarvis said this week that its financial crisis will not affect students living in halls of residence that it built and manages, writes Alan Thomson (The THES 9 July). A spokesperson for the troubled firm, which manages accommodation at 14 university sites across the country, said that students will not be thrown out of their halls.
Reed Elsevier has raised the price of its academic journals by 5.5%, more than three times the rate of inflation, despite a committee of MPs raising concerns that prices are already too high. The Commons science and technology committee demanded that commercial academic publishers set their profit margins at a "reasonable and sustainable level" because of a library funding crisis. The committee also recommended that the Office of Fair Trading keep a watch on publishers' activities.
Richard Wray, The Guardian 21 July
Middle class students are exploiting university hardship funds to subsidise their social lives, shopping sprees and holidays, The THES has learned. Admissions from former students indicate that there may be "widespread" misuse of the £97 million hardship system.
Jenny Rees, The Western Mail 23 July
Update comment: I wouldn't doubt for one second that there are people who misuse the system in this way – just as the social security system has its fair share of fraudulent claimants. But "widespread"?
Situations Vacant
Applications are now being taken for the position of Director of the Office for Fair Access (OfFA). The successful applicant will be experienced in negotiation, and will be resilient and firm in the face of opposition. Knowledge of higher education policy will be an advantage, though not essential. A salary of £100k per year is available for this exciting opportunity. However, we are unable to provide thick skins at this time so it is essential that the successful candidate has their own.
Paul Hill, The THES 9 July
According to a survey conducted by Yours magazine, the 21st-century granny is saving the country an absolute fortune in unpaid work. The survey showed that almost half of Britain's grannies look after their grandchildren, with the average granny looking after two grandchildren for around 56 hours a week. The majority of those who look after their grandchildren do so without pay, and 7% said that they have taken on the full-time role of parenting a grandchild.
Martin Wainwright, The Guardian 1 July
There's a growing debate about whether children should be exposed to technology when they are still infants. Author Jane M Healy opposes the practice and says, "Mental ability is gained from manipulating the three-dimensional world at that age and managing your own mind and not having it managed by an electronic machine"; she recommends that kids stay off computers until age seven. David Elkind, professor of child development at Tufts University, has similar concerns: "Children miss out on all these basic learning experiences if they are so attuned to the virtual world." But other scholars hold the opposite view: Yong Zhao, a professor of educational psychology at Michigan State University, bought his daughter an iMac before she turned one and allowed her to simply bang on the keyboard to learn how the banging led to changes on the screen. And still other technology experts say the right answer lies somewhere in the middle. Peter Grunwald, whose consulting firm specialises in kids and technology, says: "Kids need a good balance in their lives and a mix of experiences"; his position is that computers can help kids develop hand-eye coordination and other skills, but shouldn't be used as robotic baby-sitters.
AP 25 July
via NewsScan Daily 26 July
Disruptive technologies, those that really shake up existing business models, are endemic to the library and information world. Many new technologies, while still disruptive, don't involve a radical rethinking of how people live and work, the way the Internet has. The Internet not only has the potential to make everyone a researcher, communicator, publisher, and student, but it rewrote the rules on how libraries purchase, access and deliver information to clients and patrons. Does the Internet disrupt how libraries operate? Yes. Does it disrupt the basic reasons why libraries exist? No. That's the most important point, says Marydee Ojala, editor of ONLINE. That's why libraries were early adopters of online and Internet technology. It parallels the information professional's ethos of free and unfettered access to information, all information, not just the information deemed acceptable by one group or another. "I find the notion of librarians and information professionals being disruptive technologies extremely appealing," admits Ojala. "What a wonderful role to assume! I'm not just a librarian. I don't just work in an information department. I'm a disruptive technology. If information professionals are disruptive technologies, and we are, I suggest we enjoy this pivotal role and assert our distinctiveness."
ONLINE July-August 2004
www.infotoday.com/online/jul04/homepage.shtml
via ShelfLife Number 166 (22 July) www.rlg.org
An exam board will hand out top GCSE grades to pupils who do not deserve them, after botching the introduction of a new paper, claim markers. Examiners grading the Assessment and Qualifications Alliance English Literature GCSE say that they struggled to award top grades because the answers candidates submitted were not up to scratch. They claim that the examining board has exerted pressure on them to mark "less severely" so that pupils who were predicted A grades would receive them regardless.
Warwick Mansell, The TES 16 July
A disgruntled teenager has taken his revenge on a UK insurance company by bombarding the company website with five million emails after he was sacked for failing to fill in a time sheet properly. The ejected party used an email "bomber", a programme which sends a flood of emails over a short period of time, to wreak havoc. The company was forced to shut down its website and claims that the attack may have cost it as much as £18,000. As for the young man, he has been charged under the Computer Misuse Act and could face up to six months' jail or a maximum penalty of £5,000 if convicted.
Lester Haines, The Register
The government has given the go-ahead to the Teachers' TV project. The channel will be on air 24 hours a day with programmes supported by a website, and is believed to be the first European digital TV channel to be dedicated to a specific category of public service professionals. It will be available through cable and satellite services early next year.
URL: www.teachers.tv
E-Government Bulletin Issue 165 (9 July)
A report from the Commons Constitutional Affairs Committee argues that too much of the legal aid budget is spent on criminal and asylum cases. It warns that the "rocketing cost" of these cases is threatening the provision of the civil aid scheme which helps the poor and vulnerable with debt, housing, family and other legal problems. Committee chair Alan Beith said restrictions on the civil legal aid budget meant that many people were being denied access to justice. "Civil legal aid has become the Cinderella of the government's services to address social exclusion and poverty. Eligibility, scope and funding are increasingly restrictive. This process has now gone too far," he said.
Clare Dyer, legal correspondent, The Guardian 16 July
A little boy opened the big family Bible. He was fascinated as he fingered through the old pages. Suddenly, something fell out of the Bible. He picked up the object and looked at it. What he saw was an old leaf that had been pressed in between the ages.
"Mama, look what I found," the boy called out.
"What have you got there, dear?"
With astonishment in the young boy's voice, he answered, "I think it's Adam's underwear."
From mistupid.com
The world's most difficult word to translate has been identified as "ilunga" from the Tshiluba language spoken in south-eastern DR Congo. It came top of a list drawn up in consultation with 1,000 linguists and means "a person who is ready to forgive any abuse for the first time, to tolerate it a second time, but never a third time". Second place was awarded to "shlimazl" which is Yiddish for "a chronically unlucky person", while third was "Naa", used in the Kansai area of Japan to emphasise statements or agree with someone.
Oliver Conway, BBC News
Via greenfairy.com June 2004
"Excuse me, can you help me. I think I'm a moth."
"You don't need a dentist. You need a psychiatrist."
"Yes, I know."
"So, why did you come in here?"
"The light was on."
Clean Laffs 28 June
AUDI: Another Ugly Deutsche Invention
BMW: Brings Me Women but Broke My Wallet
FIAT: Failure in Italian Automotive Technology
FORD: Fast Only Rolling Downhill
PORSCHE: Proof Of Rich Spoiled Children Having Everything
SUBARU: Screwed Up Beyond All Repair Usually
VOLVO: Very Odd Looking Vehicular Object
Shamelessly stolen from Usenet by Dawn
We'll begin with a box, and the plural is boxes;
but the plural of ox became oxen not oxes.
One fowl is a goose, but two are called geese,
yet the plural of moose should never be meese.
You may find a lone mouse or a nest full of mice;
yet the plural of house is houses, not hice.
If the plural of man is always called men,
why shouldn't the plural of pan be called pen?
If I spoke of my foot and show you my feet,
can I give you a boot, and would a pair be called beet?
If one is a tooth and a whole set are teeth,
why shouldn't the plural of booth be called beeth?
Then one may be that, and in plural is those,
yet hat in the plural would never be hose.
We speak of a brother and also of brethren,
but though we say mother, we never say methren.
The masculine pronouns are he, his and him,
but imagine the feminine, she, shis and shim.
There is no egg in eggplant, nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple.
English muffins weren't invented in England.
We take English for granted, but if we explore its paradoxes, we find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea, nor is it a pig.
And why is it that writers write but fingers don't fing, grocers don't groce and hammers don't ham?
Doesn't it seem crazy that you can make amends, but not one amend?
If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it?
If teachers taught, why didn't preachers praught?
If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat?
Sometimes, I think all the folk who grew up speaking English should be committed to an asylum for the verbally insane. In what other language do people recite at a play and play at a recital? Ship by truck and send cargo by ship? Have noses that run and feet that smell? How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same thing?
Non-smokers can not only bask in their smugness, safe in the knowledge that their ability to give up the evil weed makes them vastly superior to everyone else, they can also check out in advance which movies are "non-smokingly correct". If you are a non- or, even worse, an ex- smoker who would like to move from being "irritatingly smug" to "all-out-no-holds-barred unbelievably smug", go to www.smokefreemovies.ucsf.edu/
World of Work Number 51 (June 2004)
Students on a scriptwriting course at De Montfort University have developed an online interactive soap opera. Written in collaboration with the BBC, Q Gardens tells the story of fictional residents in a real-life area of Leicester. Readers are invited to email their ideas on how the soap's plot should develop to help determine a character's fate.
Q Gardens appears every Tuesday at www.bbc.co.uk/leicester/q_gardens
Tony Tysome, The THES
Update comment: Oh no, addictive website alert!
Students at school were asked to write about the harmful effectStudents at school were asked to write about the harmful effects of oil on fish. One 11-year old wrote, "When my mom opened a tin of sardines last night it was full of oil and all the sardines were dead."
Clean Laffs 6 January
Examples include:
If you have to ask, you're not entitled to know. If you don't like the answer, you shouldn't have asked the question.
When eating an elephant, take one bite at a time.
Almost anything is easier to get into than out of.
When you are up to your ass in alligators, it is difficult to remind yourself that your initial objective was to drain the swamp.
URL: www.cpuidle.de/edition.htm
Via greenfairy.com, June 2004
The Living Room Candidate: Presidential Campaign Commercials 1952-2004 is an innovative online exhibition with more than 250 television commercials from every election year beginning in 1952, the era of the first campaign ads, up to and including offerings from this year's campaign. Users can watch nearly four hours of TV commercials and explore the expanding world of Web-based political advertising. The site includes a searchable database and features commentary, historical background, election results and navigation organised by year and theme. Each commercial is accompanied by a list of related commercials in order to help guide users through the collection. The exhibition also features a sidebar section, "The Desktop Candidate", about the growing role of the Internet in presidential campaigns. The site is presented by the American Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, NY.
http://livingroomcandidate.movingimage.us/about/guide.php?nav_action=about
via ShelfLife Number 166 (22 July) www.rlg.org
Update comment: I couldn't resist this – it's dreadful!!!
Guidance for transforming 14-19 learning pathways published
Historians to capture our web world for posterity
Internet Archive hopes to stave off digital dark age
Kahle's Quest: universal access to all knowledge
The National Archives launches new website
Treasures of the digital age at risk of being lost for ever
Don't get by, get on at Croydon
UK public libraries: roles in adult literacy provision
Pathways to Work – the way ahead?
Poor payers "blight British businesses"
Red tape still tying down UK business
Free care "should be given to all toddlers"
"Places to live must be living places"
A future for libraries in the 21st century?
Building Community through Social Partnerships around Vocational Education and Training
Greater power for communities to fight antisocial behaviour
One-stop shop to help transform lives
Renewal fund extended, but targets get tougher
The experience of the Community Links Social Enterprise Zone
Business Software Alliance publishes global software piracy study
Lion takes on Mouse in copyright row
Pirates – digital theft in the film industry
Unlicensed businesses risk legal action
All children to go on "big brother" computer
European Commission suggests UK's Data Protection Act is deficient
Launch of new comic book makes data protection easy for everyone
Ministers "should resist data protection upheaval"
Patients are denied the last rights under data protection law
Responsibility of confidential data unclear
Runaways require IT confidentiality
UK has not properly implemented the European data protection directive
Database Right - Legal Protection for Databases
Has devolution increased democratic accountability?
The draft bill on regional assemblies falls well short of Chambers' expectations of real devolution
DirectGov gets thumbs up from user survey
E-gov spending triggers Civil Service job cuts
Government tears up data contract
Local e-Government Partnership Programme
Smartcards launched in Black Country
Wales is European e-government beacon
E-Learning gains ground on rivals
New £12 million programme to support regional e-learning networks
On-line Scots university weaves worldwide web
Best economy since 1990s, says report
Economy grows at fastest rate for 4 years
Jobs growth set to spurt in Summer
North scorns study of gulf with south
The big ideas that will shape your future
Biometric testing could endanger disability rights
Bosses favour white men, finds research
CILIP equal opportunities briefing: Sexual Orientation in Libraries
Collar and tie battle causes 76% rise in sex-bias cases
Equality brings "huge rewards", concludes think-tank
Gender and the Labour Market in the European Union
Government delivering real change for disabled people
Landmark judgments for disabled workers
New commission to champion women in work
OfCOM puts disabled in the picture
Race equality body rejects merger
Reprieve for black leaders' project
Smith sets sights on disability rights breakthrough
Supermarket websites fail basic checks
Workers suffering serious illnesses to get job protection
European Social Fund improves skills and work chances
Markers protest at pressure to raise grades
Cautious Whitehall keeps the secret state alive
FOI commitment must be backed by action warns information commissioner's office
Ombudsman reports on openness of government to provide information
City colleges miss out on bonus cash
FE fury as Johnson attacks quality
FENTO calls for extra £4 million for training and development
Fforwm warns of funding shortfall
LSC seeks hike in college students' fees
Protect college title, heads say
Reprieve for black leaders' project
Graduate flood "will lead to crisis over jobs"
Graduates who can figure it out land highest-paid jobs
Job vacancies for graduates rise for first time since 2001
Recruiters offer £1 billion reason for employing graduates
"Bums-on-seats" policy leads more students to drop out
Bad advice hobbles apprenticeship scheme
Investing in Career: Prosperity for Individuals, Windfalls for Governments
New publications from the Guidance Council
10-year plan poses threat to autonomy
50% plan will cost extra £3 billion
Business "must sponsor" college courses
Clarke turns to business to fund vocational degrees
Final decision on degree-awarding powers and use of university title
Government blamed for "Mickey Mouse" degrees
Inquiry into chemistry crisis as more universities drop subject
Probe as 90% fail degree finals
Public "will accept" top-up fees
Rush of English students puts the squeeze on places
Scots students shun chance to study on the continent
Scottish funding councils pitch for overseas students
UK needs policy on student swaps
Homeless figures have soared under Labour
Integrated IAG service to launch later this year
A news search service from Micrososft
Benevolent "virus" helps reveal the hidden Web
BT blocks 20,000 attempts a day to access child porn
Computerising the body: Microsoft wins patent to exploit network potential of skin .
Oxford students in trouble over IT exposé
Resellers and distributors of computer hardware and recycling
Sacked clerk hits bosses with 5 million emails
Scotland Yard and the case of the rent-a-zombies
Sony e-book called a feast for the eyes
Supermarket websites fail basic checks
Windows XP Service Pack 2 to be delayed until August
Windows XP Service Pack 2 to be distributed on one million CDs
Worm sleeps to avoid detection
Worried firms consider email boycott
New anti-ID fraud one-stop shop
Fugitive documents evade Federal Depositories
From Communities of Practice to Innovative Knowledge Communities
UK sets up fund to protect patent holders
Employment growth flattens out
Flow of jobseekers from Eastern Europe dwindles
Full male employment "gone for ever"
Gender and the Labour Market in the European Union
Jobs growth set to spurt in Summer
Labour market statistics July 2004
SME recruitment outstrips large organisations
UK has a world class labour market
Unemployment in Wales falls again
"Trust" a key advantage for libraries
A future for libraries in the 21st century?
Broadening access to public libraries
CILIP equal opportunities briefing: Sexual Orientation in Libraries
Enjoy role as disruptive technology, libraries urged
Keeping technology in perspective
Manchester Library and Information Service looks at Sunday opening
Museums, Libraries and Archives Council Framework for the Future Progress Report
Spending review "missed opportunity" says leading library and information institute
Steep increase in UK library visits
UK public libraries: roles in adult literacy provision
Bedtime stories, by prison dads
Fathers failing to take up paid paternity leave
Fathers' involvement with their secondary-school-aged children
Millions of workers "condemned to poverty"
Older people face a lonely future, think-tank warns
Short breaks are the new Summer holidays
US-style Summer camps for every British teenager
Workers choose not to take holidays
Art world cheers VAT refunds for university museums
Blunkett hints at variable minimum wage
Jarvis's problems add to private finance fears
Public kept in the dark over true cost of PFI
Is it already cut and dried for policy forum?
Needed: a five-year plan for employment
Middle-class professionals are Britain's hidden poor
Shortlist for privacy "Oscars" announced
Jobs drive "boosting front-line staff" in schools and hospitals
Letwin savages Atkinson report
Public sector suffers image problems
Study says PFI value for money claim has never been tested
Ten-year forward look on local government launched
UNISON wins extension of two-tier workforce deal
100 foundation degrees are put on hold by awarding body
E-skills UK launches Passport – a national IT assessment tool
Employers "must check degree authenticity"
Fury as exams axed in "secret"
International Comparisons Of Qualifications: Skills Audit Update
Lingering snobbery against vocational
Vocational GCSEs "too academic"
Rhodri Morgan heralds the end of the quango state in Wales
BCC Response to Rural Strategy White Paper
"One size fits all" policy leads to unfair funding
70,000 will move home in hunt for good school
Continuing stability and certainty for school budgets
Heads roll at flagship academies
Key academy expels 10 times more pupils than state schools
Schools funding may be diverted to access drive
Skills Alliance: Skills strategy progress report
Investing in Skills: Taking forward the Skills Strategy
LSC launches 12-week consultation on resources for the Skills Strategy
Skills for Life Annual Review 2003-04
University for Industry and Investors in People UK join forces to develop workforce skills
Student mentoring "could bridge skills gap"
Including Young Mothers: Limitations to New Labour's Strategy for Supporting Teenage Parents
"There is such a thing as society"
Spending review "missed opportunity" says leading library and information institute
TUC reaction to Spending Review 2004
Government told to stop spinning statistics
Skills Council in dark over where the apprentices are
Statistics Commission calls for legislation to build trust in statistics
Students warned "loans may be late"
Row as AMs agree to let assistants teach
Teachers' TV channel is European first
Woodhead unleashes scathing attack on his successor
Usability – ignore it at your peril!
BBC ordered to make its website less commercial
BBC websites text reading – browsealoud
The National Archives launches new website
Worm sleeps to avoid detection
No test for access goal, Johnson says
Web of words challenges traditional encyclopedias
Basic skills and workplace learning: what do we actually know about their benefits?
High hopes for new insurance university
Way clear for private firms to hand out degrees
Work learning and change – older and younger workers
Work-based learning: still the Cinderella
All work, no play for two million employees who want to be on the job
Avoiding the "McJobs": Unemployed Job Seekers and Attitudes to Service Work
Big companies employing snoopers for staff email
Business warns government about dangers of U-turn on Temporary Workers Directiv
Consultation launched on long hours working
Employers back extension of flexible working rights
Employers tire of workers smoking
Exploring the paradox of unionised worker dissatisfaction
Four in five bosses break employment laws
Government seeks views on information and consultation guide
Quickie lunches don't work, says TUC
Small businesses reduce staff due to red tape
SMEs uncertain of employment legislation
The impact of employer policies and practice on the process of retirement
Understanding reward – competency-based pay
Workers suffering serious illnesses to get job protection
A 100K OfFA you may be able to refuse... unless you're hard enough
Computer kids: how young is too young?
Embattled Jarvis promises it will not evict students from its halls
Exhibition is a load of bullsh*t
How the thoroughly modern granny enjoys having it all
Jargon-busters pick top offenders after 25 years of rewriting history
Reed defies MPs' plea on prices