Education in England

The Guardian view on creativity in schools: a missing ingredient

The Guardian

By: The Guardian.

You can’t see it, smell it, hear it. People disagree on how, precisely, to define it, or where, exactly, it comes from. It isn’t a school subject or an academic discipline, but it can be learned. It is a quality that is required by artists. But it is also present in the lives of scientists and entrepreneurs. All of us benefit from it: we thrive mentally and spiritually when we are able to harness it. It is a delicate thing, easily stamped out; in fact, it flourishes most fully when people are playful and childlike. At the same time, it works best in tandem with deep knowledge and expertise.

This mysterious – but teachable – quality is creativity, the subject of a report published this week by Durham Commission on Creativity and Education, a body chaired by Sir Nicholas Serota, the chair of Arts Council England, with input from figures including film director Beeban Kidron, architect Sir David Adjaye and choreographer Akram Khan. The report, put together in collaboration with academics from Durham University, concludes that creativity is not something that should inhabit the school curriculum only as it relates to drama, music, art and other obviously creative subjects, but that creative thinking ought to run through all of school life, infusing the way human and natural sciences are learned.

The authors, who focus on education in England, offer a number of sensible recommendations, some of which are an attempt to alleviate theGradgrindish turn in education policy of recent years. When children are regarded as pitchers to be filled with facts, creativity does not prosper; nor does it when teachers’ sole objective is, perforce, coaching children towards exams. One suggestion from the commission is a network of teacher-led “creativity collaboratives”, along the lines of existing maths hubs, with the aim of supporting teaching for creativity through the school curriculum.

Nevertheless, it is arts subjects through which creativity can most obviously be fostered. The value placed on them by the independent education sector is clear. One only has to look at the remarkable arts facilities at Britain’s top public schools to comprehend this. But in the state sector the EBacc’s focus on English, maths and science threatens to crush arts subjects; meantime, reduced school budgets mean dwindling extracurricular activities. There has been a 28.1% decline in uptake of creative subjects at GCSE since 2014, though happily, art and design have seen a recent uptick.

This disparity between state and private is a matter of social justice. It is simply wrong and unfair that most children have a fraction of the access to choirs, orchestras, art studios and drama that their most privileged peers enjoy. As lives are affected by any number of looming challenges – climate crisis, automation in the workplace – humans are going to need creative thinking more than ever. For all of our sakes, creativity in education, and for all, must become a priority.

Source of the article: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/oct/18/the-guardian-view-on-creativity-in-schools-a-missing-ingredient

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Britain’s economics students are dangerously poorly educated

Phillip Inman

Por Phillip Inman

Universities that only train young people to be City analysts leave us unable to learn from the past or predict the future

Last year the chief economist at the Bank of England, Andy Haldane, gave a fear-inducing speech that warned of Armageddon in the jobs market. Robots threatened 15 million UK jobs, he said.

This dystopian picture of busy machines and queues of jobless Britons was replaced this month by a rosier view from PwC, which made the opposite claim: robots and artificial intelligence could create as many jobs as they destroy, which happens to be around 7 million.

Then the University of Oxford said 35% of UK jobs could be automated, while a 2017 McKinsey report warned 5% of UK jobs were highly automatable. The MIT Technology Review has identified at least 18 different predictions about automation.

This article is not about robots, AI or even the debate raging over the impact of Brexit. It’s about the detachment from history and real life – stemming from a disastrously narrow education – that allows economists to make such claims, and the damage that does to public debate about important matters.

This month, the pressure group Rethinking Economics said Britain’s universities were failing to equip economics students with the skills that businesses and the government say they need. Following extensive interviews with employers, including organisations such as the Bank of England, it found that universities were producing “a cohort of economic practitioners who struggle to provide innovative ideas to overcome economic challenges or use economic tools on real-world problems”.

Moreover, the group said, “when political decisions are backed by economics reasoning, as they so often are, economists are unable to communicate ideas to the public, resulting in a large democratic deficit.”

You could easily level that criticism at the economists forecasting the impact of AI. What are people supposed to think when those who study the field come up with such wildly varying predictions? More importantly, what will politicians think they should do? Nothing, probably, given the confusion.

The Rethinking group is concerned that university departments only train, rather than educate, huge numbers of graduates for econometrics jobs across the banking, insurance and consulting sectors.

In our increasingly student-led system, these young people don’t want to mess around with history or modules on inequality. They are on a mission to make money for themselves in the private sector.

If they were diverted into discussions of economic history, they might find out we are about to repeat the mistakes of the past and trigger another financial crisis. Even more inhibiting, their course might show that higher inequality dampens workers’ incentives to increase productivity, and might prompt them to ask why young economists in the City are paid colossal amounts of money to analyse bond yields or forecast oil prices. Pay them less, share the money around, and productivity might improve. Failing that, let a robot do their job.

It is an improvement, albeit an incremental one, that brings back a bit of Marxism (though just a discussion of Karl’s labour-market theory). The developers of the programme also claim it has freed itself from neoliberal thinking, which judges markets to be self-adjusting and consumers and businesses to be operating with the same information. The world is full of asymmetric power and information relationships, and Core reflects this.

Nonetheless, Joe Earle, chief executive of the charity Economy, says Core puts a gloss on a course that still puts maths first and critical thinking second.

“When people demand a revolution, minor reforms often gain support because they can be framed in such a way that they appear to simultaneously address the concerns of the critics while maintaining the status quo. This is exactly what is happening in economics,” he says.

It seems it is still seen as radical to analyse the flows of money in the world as if much of it was stolen, and how that skews investors’ decisions. But it’s not radical: it’s a fact. Tax alleviation structures dominate company decisions, but are rarely debated by students. Some of the money will be drug money or gains from organised crime. But most of it will be money that avoided tax in the country where it was generated.

Such a discussion would give students the chance to hear varied perspectives, challenge assumptions, and explore how different values and goals can lead to different conclusions. It shows that the academics behind Core still have work to do.

Source of the article: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/aug/04/economics-students-dangerously-poorly-educated

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Male students in England and Wales more likely to kill themselves

Noticias

Europe/England/Source: www.theguardian.com.

Suicide rates among university students in England and Wales have gone up slightly over the last decade, according to official statistics, which reveal that young male students are significantly more likely to kill themselves than female students.

In the 12 months to July 2017, figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) revealed that 95 students killed themselves, which equates to 4.7 suicides per 100,000 students.

The ONS said that although overall suicide rates in students had gone up, they had not risen consistently and remained lower than among the general population.

The analysis is published at a time of mounting concern about student mental health, as universities report record numbers of referrals for counselling services and amid greater media awareness of suicide among students. At the University of Bristol there have been 10 student deaths in little over 18 months.Advertisement

Later this week, the universities minister Sam Gyimah is hosting a student mental health summit at the University of the West of England in Bristol, where there have been two additional student deaths in the city.

The figures, published on Monday, show no dramatic increase in the number of suicides as some feared, but those in the sector say it remains an urgent challenge for universities.

On face value, the suicide rate for 2016-17 – the latest available figures – is the same as in 2015-16, but the real figure is likely to be higher because some deaths may not yet have been registered. Researchers note it can take months or even years for a suicide to be registered by a coroner’s court, so deaths that occurred in 2017 may not be registered until significantly later.

Sarah Caul, an ONS senior researcher, said: “Today’s analysis will help to develop policies and initiatives for those at greatest risk of suicide.

“The rate of suicide in 2016-17 in higher education students was 4.7 deaths per 100,000 students. Although higher than in earlier years, the comparatively low numbers of suicides per year make it challenging to identify significant differences. 
Meanwhile, the rate for suicide in female students is significantly lower than the rate in males.”

Between 2001 and 2017, 1,330 students died from suicide, of which 878 (66%) were men and 452 (34%) women. More than four-fifths of the deaths (83%) were among undergraduates doing their first degree, which accounted for 1,109 deaths, while postgraduates accounted for 17% (221 deaths).

There were also differences between students of different ethnic backgrounds, though the ONS urged caution about drawing any conclusions because the numbers involved are so small. White students had a rate of 5.1 deaths per 100,000, compared with 2.7 for those of black ethnicity and 5.4 for students with Asian ethnicity. Those classified as “other” had a rate of 5.9 deaths per 100,000.

Over the period examined, the suicide rate among university students was at its highest in the 12 months up to July 2005, with a rate of 5.2 deaths per 100,000 students, which then fell to 3.2 deaths per 100,000 students the following year and dipped further to 2.6 in the 12 months ending July 2008.

John de Pury, the assistant director of policy at Universities UK, said: “This new release is the most comprehensive data we have on the rate of suicide among university students.

“Although there is a lower rate of student suicide among university students in England and Wales compared with the general population of similar ages, there is no room for complacency here. This remains an urgent challenge for universities and society.”

Louis Appleby, who leads the National Suicide Prevention Strategy for England, said the figures were the most accurate to date as they were linked to national records at the Higher Education Statistics Agency.

He said the figures were reassuring because they showed students were not at high risk and that rates remained low. But he added: “It does look as if the rates may be going up in the last 10 years. It’s difficult to be certain about that because they are relatively small numbers.

“Ninety five students died in the most recent year. It’s difficult to get away from the human tragedy of that. The message to universities is just as it was always: they need to do more.”

On the higher rates of suicide among male students, he said: “Every suicide study has found found high rates in men. The difference is not unusual. It’s what you would expect in every population.”

Source of the notice: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2018/jun/25/male-students-in-england-and-wales-more-likely-to-kill-themselves

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