just give my money away
Discussion
am sooo glad i'm paying for this the councillors obviousely need the holiday:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/kent/4084076.stm
More than 100 Kent secondary school head teachers are to go to the US on a week-long study tour, at an estimated cost to the taxpayer of over £150,000.
Kent County Council (KCC) said the trip, which will include looking at the improved use of computer technology, will be of advantage to local schools.
The heads will visit schools in four cities - Seattle, New York, Boston and San Francisco - in the autumn.
Each one will pay £1,500 out of their school's budget to fund the trip.
They will be joined by 20 councillors and inspectors, whose trip will be funded by KCC.
'Cutting edge'
A spokesman for the council said most of its 106 secondary head teachers had accepted the offer to go on the week-long tour after consulting school governors.
"If head teachers thought that this was just a jolly, then they wouldn't go," he said.
"It is not LEA funding. The schools, out of their own balances, are deciding whether it is worthwhile and a lot of them are going because they are excited by it."
He said the group would be shown the "cutting edge" of computer technology, and how it can benefit the learning process.
Kent County Council runs the largest local education authority in England in terms of the number of schools, with more than 600 under its remit.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/kent/4084076.stm
More than 100 Kent secondary school head teachers are to go to the US on a week-long study tour, at an estimated cost to the taxpayer of over £150,000.
Kent County Council (KCC) said the trip, which will include looking at the improved use of computer technology, will be of advantage to local schools.
The heads will visit schools in four cities - Seattle, New York, Boston and San Francisco - in the autumn.
Each one will pay £1,500 out of their school's budget to fund the trip.
They will be joined by 20 councillors and inspectors, whose trip will be funded by KCC.
'Cutting edge'
A spokesman for the council said most of its 106 secondary head teachers had accepted the offer to go on the week-long tour after consulting school governors.
"If head teachers thought that this was just a jolly, then they wouldn't go," he said.
"It is not LEA funding. The schools, out of their own balances, are deciding whether it is worthwhile and a lot of them are going because they are excited by it."
He said the group would be shown the "cutting edge" of computer technology, and how it can benefit the learning process.
Kent County Council runs the largest local education authority in England in terms of the number of schools, with more than 600 under its remit.
Fat Tom, this guy I taught alongside got a "gift" in the name of professional development. As a biology teacher, it was necessary for him to go on a month long diving holiday in Java. My ex-bird was trying to get a gift so she could be a ski instructor (leadership, confidence, etc, bollox, bollox). It's a load of shit but since it's a dog eat dog world, their just taking what they can. I suppose we all would.
The problem lies with the clueless
wits who think these sorts of trips are the BEST value for money!
The problem lies with the clueless
wits who think these sorts of trips are the BEST value for money!
pesty said:
Why do the councilers need to go again?
spokesman for the council said:
the group would be shown the "cutting edge" of computer technology, and how it can benefit the learning process.
Wouldn’t it be cheaper to ship a couple of IT guys from the states to the UK for the demonstration
I have no problem with this at all, and neither should anyone else who wants our schools to see examples of good practice from other countries and implement them here.
For goodness sake, it was insular short-sightedness that caused many of the problems in this country in the first place, and in particular in the education system.
And as for the majority of those on here who continually suggest that teachers have it cushy, or are always whining...well all I can say is this:
I doubt if any of you would last five minutes in what is undoubtedly one of the most important, difficult and stressful jobs there is. Many of the most professional people I have ever met or worked with are teachers.
And for any of you who might want to say "Well I work in insurance and that's tough", or "I run a company in the real world", well let me leave you with this:
I have been a company MD of an award winning company with many blue chip clients. I have managed multi-million pound capital projects. I have also been a college and university lecturer, and a teacher.
And teacher is the toughest job without question.
>> Edited by alexkp on Monday 13th June 13:29
For goodness sake, it was insular short-sightedness that caused many of the problems in this country in the first place, and in particular in the education system.
And as for the majority of those on here who continually suggest that teachers have it cushy, or are always whining...well all I can say is this:
I doubt if any of you would last five minutes in what is undoubtedly one of the most important, difficult and stressful jobs there is. Many of the most professional people I have ever met or worked with are teachers.
And for any of you who might want to say "Well I work in insurance and that's tough", or "I run a company in the real world", well let me leave you with this:
I have been a company MD of an award winning company with many blue chip clients. I have managed multi-million pound capital projects. I have also been a college and university lecturer, and a teacher.
And teacher is the toughest job without question.
>> Edited by alexkp on Monday 13th June 13:29
anonymous said:
[redacted]
i have no problem with school seeing best practice but to have to send them to usa with councillors and other hangers on is a waste of my money. Theres nothing they'd see they couldnt see from a demo here and quite frankly if microsoft etc want them to see the systems then they should pay for it. Theres nothing theyd see that couldnt be demod here and chances are half the heads wont understand what they see anyway. Schools should use ICT but there is a horrendous waste by the gov of my money on hair brained schemes in schools. this is just an unnecc jolly.
i disagree with what u say about teachers but then i'm sure everyone has diff experiences and so will fell diff. my taxes are to pay for the minimum not luxuries for other people.
anonymous said:
[redacted]
Found where I heard it from, a Telegraph article from over a year ago, talking about a number of studies into the issue.
Perhaps the most prominent of which is The Pisa (Programme for International Student Assessment) report by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development . It concluded that computers in schools made no statistically significant impact for good or ill.
Full article below
There is scant evidence that children benefit from computers in schools, argues James Bartholomew
Ofsted has declared that the use of computers in schools is going swimmingly. The competence of teachers in Information and Computer Technology (ICT) has "risen dramatically", according to the inspectors report.
Some studies have found that computers could have a negative effect on learning
The resources in schools are now "at record levels". It is a "great achievement that is reaping benefits for pupils and staff".
The Government is very proud of it, too. Charles Clarke, the Education Secretary, recently boasted that the Government has spent £1.8 billion on ICT since 1997.
That reference to 1997 gives a clue to the political nature of this computer revolution. The Labour Party made a big commitment to information technology before its 1997 election victory.
It announced that it had agreed with British Telecom and the cable companies to create an "information superhighway", free of charge. There would also be a "national grid for learning".
But was there ever any cost/benefit analysis of this great change in British education? Was there even just a "benefit" analysis? Where was the evidence that ICT would improve educational attainment? Seven years on, where is the evidence that has accumulated now?
The British Educational Communications and Technology Agency (Becta) – one of the Government's educational quangos - commissioned a report last year. Like virtually every report that comes from government agencies, it makes many positive noises about ICT in schools.
The report starts - or so it seems - with the most definite statement: "The evidence… shows the positive effects of specific uses of
ICT on pupils' attainment." But note the word "specific". The researchers had found a way to please ministers without giving up their academic rectitude. On a close reading, it becomes clear that they meant "if
ICT is used in the best, specific ways, then there is evidence it can be beneficial". That is no more use than saying that if a plastic bowl is used by children at school in the best specific way, it can be beneficial.
You would not spend £1.8 billion on bowls on that basis.
Deeper in the report comes a sentence that describes the overall evidence of a positive impact: "It is clear from much of the available research to date that [empirical] evidence, if it is to be convincing, will take time to emerge and may not be as clear-cut as some observers might have hoped."
In other words, even now, seven years after the Government embarked teachers and children on to the "information superhighway", convincing evidence that it brings any benefit has not yet "emerged". If the evidence is thin on the ground now, how much more so must it have been in 1997.
Meanwhile, some evidence has emerged that the impact of ICT is not positive at all. The voluminous Pisa (Programme for International Student Assessment) report by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development looked into many things that could affect educational attainment, including the use of computers. It concluded that computers in schools made no statistically significant impact for good or ill.
Similarly, in 2002, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem reported on a study of Israeli schools. They found, for example, "a consistently negative relationship between the use of computers and Year Four maths scores".
How could this be? How could the new technology actually damage educational attainment? Let's say a child studying French is told to look on the internet for information about tourist sites in France. Anyone who has looked for such information knows it is possible to waste a great deal of time going to sites that do not provide quite the information needed.
One can go to one page, fail to find the required information, try another page and then another before giving up and going to another site for a similar experience. In the same amount of time spent searching fruitlessly, one might have learnt how to conjugate être and avoir. One might actually have learnt some French.
If the benefits of ICT are doubtful, the costs are not. The £1.8 billion of taxpayers' money that Mr Clarke boasts of spending may be an underestimate.
The figure probably does not include the cost of the time of teachers who have had to learn the technology, of headteachers who have had to organise the installation of all the equipment, and other add-on costs.
The money and time devoted to ICT has been taken away from causes whose value to children is much better established - such as retaining experienced teachers.
The time spent on ICT is lost to real education. The primary school of which I am a governor does not have French lessons at all. Instead, time is made for ICT lessons, and money was spent on a new computer suite.
I asked if this was sensible and was told that Ofsted would give a bad report if computer facilities were not up to scratch. Also, it would be against local education authority policy. In other words, the school had no choice.
Why do Ofsted and the local authorities demand that schools spend hundreds of millions of pounds on ICT? Not because of good evidence, but because a political party pushed the idea forward seven years ago. What evidence did the party have for the idea? Nothing solid.
So why did the party do it? We cannot know for sure. But it is possible that this major misuse of money and time was driven by its desire to sound "modern".
>> Edited by JagLover on Monday 13th June 14:13
Whether this particular jaunt is worth it I don't know. I guess if the head teachers gain 'better practise', then it probably will be. If I were a governor of a school (like I used to be) I'd want evidence that the £1500 investment yielded a benefit to the school. I will say this though, you don't see many teachers on PH, because it tends to be us lazy gits that have the time to devote to surfing the net every day. As such, I'd never become a teacher because it seems like it's hard work - and not for me.
Regarding waste, the Government really are good at that. A client of mine supplies and installs windows and doors. He's currently undertaking a £50k contract putting in new doors and windows into a school which is schedule for demolition in less than a year.
Regarding waste, the Government really are good at that. A client of mine supplies and installs windows and doors. He's currently undertaking a £50k contract putting in new doors and windows into a school which is schedule for demolition in less than a year.
Gassing Station | The Pie & Piston Archive | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff