Letter from London
Widening participation debate
There is a specially positive feeling at the beginning of the academic year when university corridors and canteens are full of apprehensive first year students, and there is the whiff of fresh polish and enthusiasm. Meanwhile news-papers are busy analysing a barrage of statistics — how many students are from state (non fee-paying) schools, the numbers from European countries, how many from ethnic backgrounds and how many applied this year to avoid the higher top-up fees payable from next year.
The picture that emerges is that admissions are up on last year, which is good news for prime minister Tony Blair as he strives to achieve his goal of persuading 50 percent of young school leavers to press on for higher education. Not so encouraging is data which indicates that the proportion of students from state schools entering university has fallen for the first time in five years, a finding which will undoubtedly disappoint the prime minister who is trying to widen access to higher education.
Widening participation is crucial to universities, to meet government targets and increase student numbers. This makes the maintenance of high academic standards difficult as universities have to take on students who may not have traditional A level qualifications. They know that if they take the risk of admitting ‘non traditional students’ i.e from working class backgrounds with no family history of higher education, ethnic minorities with English as a second language, and more mature students, intake percentages from state schools and university dropout rates are likely to increase. Quite obviously it’s not just a matter of enrolling higher numbers of students, it’s also important to retain them until they complete their degree programmes.
Recently published statistics indicate that dropout rates among first year university students are rising. The number of students quitting after the first year rose from 7.3 percent of intake in 2001 to 7.8 percent in 2002, an increase of nearly 1,800. A further 1,000 mature students also quit during the same period and some universities had shocking dropout rates of more than 15 percent. What the statistics reveal are broad differences between institutions, some still managing to reduce dropout rates while recruiting a high proportion of working class and mature students.
Graduation percentages vary depending on the subject, and confirm the close link between A-level grades and the successful completion of degree courses. As one might expect, the higher the grades the more likely that students will stay the course in university. Statistics indicate that medical schools, which demand very high grades, experience an average dropout of only 1.8 percent while architecture, building and planning, engineering and technology institutes lose more than 10 percent of enrolled students. This data is grist for the mill in debates about widening participation, the aspirations of students, their families, schools and universities.
(Jacqueline Thomas is a London-based journalist/ academic)
United States
Evolution teaching row
President George Bush has added new fuel to the debate over teaching evolution in schools by suggesting that a theory backed by fundamentalist Christians but derided by scientists be given equal teaching time with Darwin’s theory. Asked where he stood on intelligent design, a quasi-religious theory on the origins of life advanced by evolution’s opponents, he told a White House press conference: “I think that part of education is to expose people to different schools of thought. You’re asking me whether or not people ought to be exposed to different ideas. The answer is yes.”
Amid intense lobbying of US schools by anti-evolution activists, and weeks before Kansas state officials are tipped to allow its schools to teach criticism of evolution, President Bush’s remarks were seized by evolution detractors, but condemned by teachers’ representatives and scientists. “President Bush is to be commended for supporting (students’) right to hear different scientific views about evolution,” says John West of the Discovery Institute, a pressure group which has led efforts to undermine evolution and promote intelligent design in schools, now proceeding in several states.
But Gerry Wheeler, executive director of the National Science Teachers Association, says intelligent design is a pseudo-science and that President Bush’s comments offer the “religious Right a foothold in science classes”.
Intelligent design holds that life can be explained only as the product of deliberate creation. But scientists say it is a re-packaged version of creationism, the belief that life sprang from the hand of God, and has no scientific standing.
Biology teachers wanting to teach evolution face “scary times” says Wheeler. A poll of teachers in March found that hostility towards it was having a chilling effect on teaching.
Other causes cherished by conservative Christians include public prayer and Bible study. A watchdog group says a Bible study course offered in 300 education authorities “endorses the Bible as the word of God” implying that historians consider it — and not the US constitution — to be America’s founding charter.
Nepal
Spreading Maoist movement
The morning is drizzly. far below the forested peaks, women in the fields plant rice seedlings, oblivious to events in the house built of mud and stone. Inside, 24 men and women sit cross-legged on the floor, listening intently to their instructor. They are the first batch of teachers being trained to teach a curriculum devised by the Maoist rebels who have been plotting to overthrow Nepal’s monarchy for nine years.
A red banner reads ‘New Pro-People Curriculum Development Training Programme’. This is a maths lesson with a difference. The instructor holds up a graph, calling out: “Rifles — 50; long machine guns — five; self-loading rifles — 40.” The graph depicts the weapons captured by rebels in an attack on security forces and will be used in lessons for children between six and eight.
The syllabus also includes biographies of Maoist ‘martyrs’, school defence, and intelligence gathering, while a booklet that teaches the alphabet depicts guns and Karl Marx. After 25 days at a secret location in Salyan, the cradle of the insurgency, the trainees will teach in their home villages.
The Maoists, who control the countryside in two-thirds of Nepal have taken their war to the classroom ideologically and physically, seeing schools as vital in their battle for the country.
The Maoists’ changes have barely begun — so far they control only 40 schools, attended by children of party cadres or fallen Maoist fighters. In a school above the training centre, children still learn traditional lessons and their teachers collect government salaries. But, says Comrade Tufan Singh of the Maoists’ education department, they want to spread their methods “even in schools run by the old regime and up to school-leaving age”.
Teacher training represents the benevolent face of the Maoists. Its protagonists are proud of its egalitarianism. Yet there is another side to the rebels’ classroom war. Every week hundreds of students and teachers are abducted from classrooms for indoctrination. Most are released, but Amnesty International says some are retained and recruited to fight.
The guerrillas also order schools to close, temporarily or permanently. The orders are enforced through threats or bombings. The result is massive educational deprivation. Wealthier families flee to cities while poorer children go without education altogether.
The government has also entered the curriculum battle. Since King Gyanendra took direct power six months ago, promising to quell the insurgency, his government has announced plans to make education more “nationalist” which means greater adulation of the royal family.
The Maoists, however have done more to devastate schooling. Eighty percent of pupils in government schools failed the recent school-leaving exam. According to Hari Gautam, government education officer in Rolpa district the percentage is 84, clearly a consequence of the frequent closures and abductions.
Gautam says the Maoists should understand that ideologies cannot be imposed. “I hope they won’t forcibly spread their curriculum. Children should be allowed to study in a free environment.”
Italy
Hard times in Urbino
The University of Urbino, one of Italy’s oldest universities, faces financial collapse and may be forced to sell some of its historic buildings in the medieval town that has been its home since 1467. The town has 15,000 inhabitants and the university with 22,000 students, 500 academics and 410 non-teaching staff, is a vital part of its economy and cultural life. A number of Urbino academics have formed a task force to secure support for the university and have collected more than 2,000 signatures of support from eminent international academics.
The university, which is a public institution, receives 23 percent of its income from the government, compared with about 80 percent given to state institutions. Student fees are comparable to those in state universities and financial support from various local authorities makes up only a little of the funding shortfall.
Urbino’s appeals to the government to be given the same regular financial support as state universities have been rejected. Instead, the government is to make two payments of €15 million (Rs.82.5 crore) in 2005 and 2006, on the condition that Urbino’s board of directors accepts two government commissioners to “restructure” the university and the suggestion that it sells off some of its buildings to balance the books.
Marion Pianta, professor of economics at Urbino, dismisses the government action as an “insufficient, short-term injection of cash”. “We are providing the same, or better service to students as the state universities while costing the taxpayer much less. In a situation in which we are having real difficulties in paying our employees’ salaries, the government is offering no medium or long-term solution,” says Pianta.
Urbino has an international reputation for quality. The ISI Journal Citations Report ranks it as the best Italian medium-sized university for research impact.
Pakistan
Madrassas shake-up campaign
General Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan’s president recently added a ban on foreign students to the country’s wide-ranging plans to reform its religious schools (madrassas). The toughening measures followed British newspaper reports which suggested that at least one of London’s July 7 bombers visited a seminary in Lahore. The government and the madrassa in question have both denied that the trip took place.
Education minister Javed Ashraf Qazi says that foreign students are being singled out because the international community associates them with terrorism, and not because of a genuine threat. “These foreign students bring an unnecessary pointing of the finger at us, so we don’t want them,” says Qazi. “The bombers were British citizens born and bred, brought up in Britain… but they say they studied here, so we automatically get the blame,” he adds.
In a rare briefing to the foreign press, General Musharraf recently announced that no more madrassa study visas would be issued and that any foreign student presently in the country would be asked to leave. The announcement comes as the Pakistani government is preparing legislation that will help to enforce the current programme of madrassa reforms.
Typically when seminary students graduate they are only qualified to call the faithful to prayer or to work as madrassa teachers themselves. “These students have learned nothing apart from religion,” says Qazi. While the wide-ranging shake-up of the madrassa system may be motivated in part by international pressure, the minister insists that the measures will also benefit the students. “I would like to see the children becoming useful citizens, able to get jobs,” he adds.
Sri Lanka
Child recruitment charge against Tamil Tigers
Sri Lanka’s military authorities have accused the Tamil Tiger rebels of stepping up the recruitment of underage soldiers, and claim the guerrillas have abducted at least seven teenagers in August. “This is a serious violation of the ceasefire,” military spokesman Brigadier Daya Ratnayake says of the reported recruitment of children in Sri Lanka’s volatile east. Child recruitment is banned under the February 2002 ceasefire, which ended fighting in a two-decade civil war between the government and the Tigers.
According to Ratnayake the rebels had taken five boys, aged 13-15, against their parents’ wishes and two 17-year-old girls were abducted on their way to a church. The affected families have complained to the military and police, who have informed the European teams monitoring the ceasefire. Monitors have confirmed an increase in complaints about child recruitment by the Tigers.
Ratnayake adds that the abducted teenagers had been in school and the rebels have stepped up child recruitment in response to serious problems within their ranks, including many desertions. These accusations come amid reports that the guerrillas had returned five underage combatants to their parents and 15 others to an education centre.
The guerrillas began fighting in 1983 for an independent state for the country’s minority ethnic Tamils, who claim discrimination by the majority Sinhalese. About 65,000 people were killed in the conflict before the government and rebels signed the ceasefire brokered by Norway. Subsequent peace talks have stalled because of disagreements about how much autonomy the Tigers should have.
Australia
Varsity defends right to study terrorism
An Australian university has defended the right of academics and students to research terrori- sm after one of its students was questioned by police when he borrowed books on the Palestinian conflict. Monash University says academics and students who are being monitored by security and police officials as the federal government prepares to announce new laws against terrorism, should not be singled out for investigation. The politics Ph D student borrowed books from Monash and Melbourne university libraries and bought books over the internet.
Monash vice chancellor Richard Larkins says that while the university recognises the need for vigilance in identifying potential terrorists, it’s important to maintain a reasonable balance with the retention of personal and academic freedom. “Academic inquiry into the rationale and thought processes of terrorists is important if we are to achieve better approaches to the problem,” says Prof. Larkins. “Academic staff and students undertaking such studies should not be singled out for inappropriate attention.”
The student, who calls himself Abraham after converting to Islam three years ago, says he was questioned by a federal police officer at home late at night about the books he borrowed. He was the only student in his course to be interviewed.
The police action has angered academics who believe it has set a dangerous precedent and threatens academic freedom. Dr. Wright-Neville says the incident was indicative of the sort of paranoia “that is taking root in society” after the London bombings.
“I think we need to be cautious about people who come here apparently to study something such as physics and then switch to leading-edge biotechnology studies or other sensitive areas,” says Clive Williams, head of the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, at Australian National University.
(Compiled from The Guardian, The Times Educational Supplement and The Times Higher Education Supplement)
