High Street Piracy

Could some of last weeks looting in England be put down to the pirate culture that the majority of 10-30 year olds have grown up with in the UK? This continues my thoughts from my previous post about the riots.

Much has been written about the volume of online piracy over the past 14 years since the early days of Napster and the reported damages to the music, film, games & software industries. I’m 31 and would struggle to find someone my age who has not, at one time or another engaged in some sort of piracy. Whether that be downloading an MP3, buying a bootleg DVD in the pub or streaming a Premiership football game over the Internet. 

I would estimate that 90%  of the young people I work with have done so, and that the majority ‘steal’ in this way on a regular basis. In fact when I discuss this with them when I spot iPods full of music/games which i suspect have been downloaded illegally the young people involved have no grasp at all that they are stealing. It’s something they’ve always done, as have their peers and parents (& teachers?!?). I normally give them an easy way to understand wether it’s theft or not: “Did you pay for it?” “Would you have to pay for it in HMV?” A no and a yes = theft. The number of pupils this surprises is huge. 

So many people have grown up with this culture of free, is it such a leap for them to then help themselves from a shop? My gut says yes, looting a shop feels like it should be a greater crime, but is it really? Smashing your way in in the first place certainly is. But what about everyone in the crowd who followed the first two in? Is that so different to downloading a film on a torrent site because everyone else is doing it? I think this may go some way to explaining the number of people who have jobs, qualifications etc who have been charged for opportunistic looting over the past week. They, and millions of others have been doing the same in the safety of their own home for years  Was their crime any worse than when you watch your football team next Saturday online because it’s not the game being shown on Sky or download that episode of Top Gear / CSI / Doctor Who because it’s not being aired in your country for another 6 months?!

What do you think?

School colour-codes pupils by ability

I’m trying to work out just how wrong this is? I know it’s not right because it just feels terribly wrong. But. I do support setting, we do it in Maths in every secondary school I’ve ever worked in because it just works. Pupils do need to work at different paces and ability levels. But taking that one step further to have school ‘houses’ based on ability just feels, well, wrong.

What do you think?

Source: Guardian

Estelle Morris on Gove - Is there a master plan?

Amongst the consternation with Michael Gove this weekend - particularly his comments on the Andrew Marr show about the upcoming strike, Estelle Morris gets to the heart of the issue. Where is the long term plan amongst the cost cutting and curriculum narrowing? There surely is some big picture in the head of Gove other than taking us back to his halcyon 1970s schooling?

Changes introduced this year could mean that in four years’ time, local authorities will have so little capacity and resource that they won’t have a central service to support vulnerable children.

Abolishing the TDA meets today’s political agenda for cutting quangos, but where is the vision as to how teachers will be recruited and trained, and how they will access professional development? Teaching schools that arguably will take on this role don’t yet exist and not enough are planned to support every school and every teacher.

Getting rid of Becta helps to cut Gove’s budget, but what about the consequences? Where are the plans to embed technology in schools, to make sure children benefit from the technological revolution and develop the digital skills the economy will need? It is difficult to find any ministerial comment on information technology, let alone a strategy for the future.

Source: Guardian

A 'Technical Baccalaureate'?

The education charity Edge, which promotes technical and practical learning and of which Adonis is a trustee, is working closely with the Baker Dearing Educational Trust to come up with such a qualification. Under the plans, seen exclusively by Education Guardian, pupils aged 14 to 16 would spend 60% of their time studying for GCSEs in English, maths, science and another subject. The rest of their time would be taken up with a technical qualification, such as an engineering diploma or a construction course. They would also be expected to study a language, but not necessarily to GCSE standard.

This would be known as a Professional Technical Baccalaureate, and the organisations hope it would be used as a measurement in school league tables, as the Ebacc is now, and offered in all schools.

Whilst I’m no fan of the English Baccaluareate do we need yet another measure that the majority of people aren’t going to understand?

What exactly was wrong with relying on straight up single exam results any way?