International News

Letter from London  Spring cleaning preparations When prime minister Tony Blair was re-elected for his second term almost a decade ago, he famously declared “education, education, education” as his government’s top three priorities. Therefore it’s come as a shock to the public that significant numbers of children are still slipping through the secondary school system without adequate literacy and numeracy skills. The reaction from the government to this development is a promise to reshuffle the education system. Too many exams for pupils and overload of paperwork for teachers have been identified as the major problems of school education. The prime minister’s response was contained in a recent speech in which he mooted the idea of the International Baccalaureate exam replacing current secondary level exams. According to Blair, students should have the option of choosing between A-levels, the International Baccalaureate, new specialised diplomas, vocational qualifications or apprenticeships instead of being restricted to the traditional GCSEs and A level school-leaving exams. Although this different-strokes-for-different-folks proposal has been derided as a divisive “sheep and goats” approach in the past, public opinion is veering around to view that the spreading of options is the way forward. Nevertheless there’s still a question mark over the proposed diploma programmes which won’t be ready until 2008, and the general consensus is that International Baccalaureate is unlikely to spread beyond a tiny minority for many years. Meanwhile prime minister Blair’s designated successor Gordon Brown, who will move next door to 10, Downing Street next year, has called upon students to work harder, learn more and generally prepare to become competitive in the international marketplace. This is his prescription for genext to become better-qualified, wealthier and more efficient within the tried and tested school system. On the higher education front there’s growing awareness of the need to become more visible in the international market. To this end British universities are asking the chancellor to boost funding by at least 20 percent which will provide them an extra £1.3 billion which would help them admit 22,000 more students annually between 2008-2011 and help modernise ageing buildings and infrastructure. In any event from their next year’s allocation of £6.9 billion (Rs.58,600 crore), £738 million (Rs.6,273 crore) will be spent on buildings and infrastructure upgradation. This is just as well because the growth in higher education in the 1990s had been achieved at the expense of long-term investment in infrastructure. Now it’s time to match the facilities and infrastructure of British universities with our international competitors so that British graduates are well qualified and respected at home and abroad. Jacqueline Thomas is a London-based academic United States Student loan companies under scrutiny America’s $17 billion (Rs.75,600 crore) per year student-loan industry has come under scrutiny from the Democrats as they prepare to assume power in Congress. The industry, a longtime ally of the newly rejected Republican majority, has been accused of everything from bribing university officials to profiteering from government subsidies. The Democrats have called for the investigation of one loan company and for new…