Shooting the messenger

Education leaders believe the SAT is biased against minority students.

Some colleges have devalued or eliminated the SAT when it comes to their admissions process, saying it discriminates against minority students.

"In some technical sense, it's probably not a biased test," said Fairtest's Monty Neil. Fairtest is dedicated to ensuring fairness in standardized tests.

"The purpose of the SAT, why it got constructed, was to predict college grades, so what happens is that kids of color - black kids, Hispanic kids - are very often left out," Neil said. "They're predicted to not do well when, in fact, they could do well."

Laurence Bunin, from the College Board, the owners of SAT, disagrees. "Fairest is mistaken on this point. The SAT is absolutely predictive of how well students will do in college," Bunin said. "Every single question on the SAT is tested with real students from all races and all walks of life to ensure that every question is fair."

Bunin also believes the test is a fair test that helps mirror what is going on in the country. He also states students and parents should understand that colleges look at a variety of factors, not just the test.

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Uneducated guesses: Reforming education by committee rather than evidence

Statistician Howard Wainer doubts the salvation of public education will come from blue-ribbon commissions, a popular strategy in Georgia in which dense reports on how to fix schools stack higher than the Gold Dome. (As we discussed recently, the state is taking another swipe at funding reform, assembling its sixth commission to tackle the challenge.)

“If you try to change a very complicated system — and a school system is very complicated — the worst way is to appoint a blue-ribbon panel with a name like ‘Education 2030’ and ask them to come up with a plan to improve things,” Wainer said. “That is not going to work because we are not that smart.”

In an interview last week and in his new book “Uneducated Guesses” (Princeton, $24.95), Wainer maintains that education ought to look to manufacturing. Using paper-making as an example, Wainer said, “You might vary temperature a bit or you vary acidity by a little bit to see if it improves the quality of the paper. If it does, vary it some more in the same direction. If it makes things worse, retrace your steps and try something else. You should be in a constant state of experimentation all the time, seeing what makes things better. But you must make incremental changes so if it doesn’t work, it doesn’t kill you.”

Too often, schools blunder into change by mistaking anecdote for evidence, Wainer said. Tired of yelling at the TV when he saw news accounts of policy changes based on flawed evidence, Wainer uses his book to present evidence to help assess 11 such trends, including the entrance-exam-optional policies in many colleges and teacher evaluations based on student performance.

Wainer, who holds a doctorate in psychometrics from Princeton and lives near the university in New Jersey, was principal research scientist at the Educational Testing Service for 21 years and is now Distinguished Research Scientist at the National Board of Medical Examiners and an adjunct professor of statistics at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

To test the growing assumption that entrance exams are not a quality predictor of student performance, Wainer reviewed the SAT scores of students who opted not to submit their scores when they applied to Bowdoin, a premier liberal arts college in Maine that has made SAT scores optional.

Wainer found that Bowdoin students who took the SAT but chose not to submit scores posted lower scores than their peers who did submit them. The mean score of students who submitted their scores was 1,323 out of 1,600, while nonsubmitters had a mean of 1,201.

Wainer went a step further to see how well these students fared in college. His finding: Students who didn’t submit SAT scores earned grades 0.2 points lower (on a four-point scale) in their first year than classmates who did submit their scores. Their poorer performance at Bowdoin was well-predicted by their SAT scores.

Wainer understands that most people won’t see grave concern, for instance, in a 3.0 grade-point average vs. a 2.8 (although Georgia students know that it’s a critical distinction for the HOPE scholarship).

But he isn’t arguing that an SAT score ought to trump a high school transcript. “What impresses me is that a two-and-a-half-hour test predicts performance in college about as well as four years of high school grades,” he said.

(Because college rankings incorporate the SAT scores of admitted students, Wainer points out that an optional SAT policy can enable a campus to climb in the rankings because lower-scoring students are less apt to submit their scores.)

While he has played a key role in the testing industry, Wainer said he’s not trying to bolster the College Board, which administers the SAT. In fact, he concludes in another chapter of his book that the national push to get more students enrolled in demanding AP math and science courses, also overseen by the College Board, is misbegotten.

“Someone asked me which side am I on,” he said. “I am on the side of data. What I hope people will do, when confronted with policy, is ask what’s the evidence.”

And Wainer said the evidence isn’t there yet on one of the most controversial new policies in education, basing teacher evaluations and pay on how much “value” they add to student learning as reflected in test scores.

Acknowledging that he goes “deep in the weeds” on the defects of value-added models, Wainer said, “It appears, at least at the moment, that the more you know about value-added models, the less faith you have in the value of inferences drawn from them.” He urges caution in adopting such models.

Wainer applies more than statistical evidence to education policy; he also brings common sense to bear. He dismisses attempts to compare U.S. schools with the idealized country du jour, saying, “You can take a Swedish model but anything works for Sweden because Sweden is full of Swedes. There are very few countries that have our diversity, our serious diversity, not skin color or hair curl, but the diversity of opinion, of background, that is in effect here.”

What Americans have to accept is that education, not to be confused with schooling, is neither cheap nor easy. “Schooling is six hours a day, 30 weeks a year. Education takes places in the home, in the church, in the community, all the time,” he said.

When Wainer served on the Princeton school board, parents asked him how they could help their children do better in school. He told them, “Turn off the television and read with them.”

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Two-thirds of British schools ignore legal requirement to provide daily act of worship

Most schools ignore the legal requirement to hold a daily act of worship for their pupils, a new study has found.

Almost two-thirds of parents told a survey that their children do not attend a daily act of collective worship at school.

And a majority of people thinks that the law on daily worship on schools should be no longer be enforced.

A Church of England spokesman pointed out that the BBC Local Radio poll did not differentiate between primary and secondary schools, and argued that most primary schools do have collective worship or a daily period of reflection.

'The law states that all maintained schools must provide a daily act of collective worship, with the exception of those withdrawn by their parents,' he said.

'The Church of England strongly supports this - although it is not its job to enforce it - as it provides an important chance for the school to focus on promoting the spiritual, moral, social and cultural development of its pupils.

'Collective worship is when pupils of all faiths and none come together to reflect - it should not be confused with corporate worship when everyone is of the same belief.'

However, 60 per cent of the public do not support enforcing the law which prescribes a daily act of worship in all state schools, with older people more favourable towards the law than the young.

A small majority (51 per cent) of those aged 65 or over believe it should be enforced, but only 29 per cent of 18- to 24-year-olds agree.

Following the release of these findings, National Secular Society executive Keith Porteous Wood called for the law on collective daily worship to be repealed, saying it infringed pupils' human rights.

'As the BBC survey confirms, the law requiring daily collective worship is being widely flouted, and because the law should not be brought into disrepute in this way, it should be repealed,' he said.

'England is the only country in the western world to enforce participation in daily worship in community schools. 'To do so goes beyond the legitimate function of the state and is an abuse of children’s human rights, especially those who are old enough to make decisions for themselves.'

The survey was carried out by telephone in July and interviewed over 1,700 adults, including 500 parents with children at school in England.

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Huge police presence needed for British kids to get to and from school safely

As a grade-school kid in the '50s I walked a mile to school in bare feet every day under NO supervision at all. And I never once had trouble. But there were no Muslims or Africans around then

Thousands of children returned to school yesterday under police guard. Scotland Yard is deploying 1,000 officers to stand at school gates and escort pupils on to buses to deter robbers.

The move follows a 20 per cent rise in street robberies in London to 13,254 this year, with a third of the victims aged ten to 19. Youngsters carrying expensive smartphones and MP3 players are increasingly being targeted, even though robbery rates overall are down since 2006. Blood-stained necklaces have been offered to pawnbrokers as jewellery theft has risen, driven by the high price of gold.

Assistant Met Commissioner Ian McPherson said: `Smartphones and media players are becoming must-have items for many people. Young people, especially secondary school-aged children, are targeted - usually after school by other young people.'

Hundreds of police and community support officers are taking part in the crackdown until half-term starts on October 21, a period when thefts from pupils surge.

Figures show 10 per cent of muggings take place around transport hubs and the Met is stationing officers outside schools, Tube stations and on buses.

Met Commander Maxine de Brunner said the end of the school day between 3pm and 6pm was when many thefts take place. She said: `It is a really busy time for us, especially at the start of the school term.

`Ten years ago the figures were much higher. But we have seen a spike in robbery in recent months which is down to the upward trend in the availability of really expensive phones and iPads.

`It is unprecedented to focus this amount of officers on just the journey to and from school and around transport hubs.' But she added: `I think it makes young people feel safe that we are there.'

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Bring back danger: Councils should build old-fashioned playground as British children have been softened up

Old-fashioned playground equipment like climbing frames, sand pits and paddling pools are set to be re-introduced after research found a degree of risk helps children to develop.

For years councils have felt forced to remove older attractions from their sites fearing any potential injuries could result in costly legal battles.

But recent research has shown that children actually benefit from risk when they play as it helps them develop the judgement skills they need in later life.

In an article for the scientific Journal Evolutionary Psychology, Ellen Sandseter a professor at Queen Maud University in Norway said: 'Children must encounter risks and overcome playground fears - monkey bars and tall slides are great. 'They approach thrills and risks in a progressive manner. 'Let them encounter these challenges from an early age and they will master them through play over the years.'

In July, High Court judge Mr Justice Mackay ruled the National Trust could not be held responsible for the death of an 11-year-old boy who was killed when a branch fell from a tree at Felbrigg Hall in Norfolk in 2007. He told the court that the Trust's tree inspectors had exercised a reasonable amount of caution saying 'even the most careful risk assessment can be proved wrong by events.'

This landmark ruling is believed to greatly reduce the prospect of legal action in the event of injuries in play areas.

Last year David Cameron commissioned the report Common Sense, Common Safety, to look into the problem of unnecessarily strict health and safety regulations being enforced.

Outlining the problem he wrote: 'A damaging compensation culture has arisen, as if people can absolve themselves from any personal responsibility for their own actions, with the spectre of lawyers only too willing to pounce with a claim for damages on the slightest pretext.'

The report, written by Lord Young concluded: 'There is a widely held belief within the play sector that misinterpretations of the [Health and Safety] Act are leading to the creation of uninspiring play spaces that do not enable children to experience risk.

'Such play is vital for a child's development and should not be sacrificed to the cause of overzealous and disproportionate risk assessments. 'I believe that with regard to children's play we should shift from a system of risk assessment to a system of risk-benefit assessment, where potential positive impacts are weighed against potential risk.'

South Somerset Council has recently spent œ50,000 re-fitting two playgrounds in Chard and Yeovil, building sand pits, climbing equipment stepping logs and net swings.

Playlink, a national advisory body on outdoor activity, helped draw up the plans for the new playgrounds.

Chairman Bernard Spiegal told the Sunday Times he believed Britain had been obsessed with risk assessment which was having a negative effect on children. He said: 'We were crippling their confidence by not letting them learn through experience. 'We don't want children losing fingers in badly designed swings or getting their heads trapped under a roundabout. But there's nothing wrong with a bump, bruise and graze.'

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Parents know best how to fix schools

As moms and dads across America enter the education reform arena by the thousands through parent unions, capitol demonstrations, and expanded school-choice measures, some defenders of the current system have piped up against "parent power."

Take Jay Mathews of the Washington Post. He recently excused the American Federation of Teachers' efforts to block Parent Trigger legislation in Connecticut to allow a majority of parents at a failing school to make the school district do something about the problem.

"Many parents, particularly loudmouths like me, think we know exactly how to fix our schools. In most cases we don't," he wrote. Instead, he recommends parents let experts and "imaginative educators" figure things out for us.

In a Reuters op-ed, author Peg Tyre similarly worries that newly empowered parents "don't have a clue what they are doing" when selecting education for their children.

She points out, correctly, that expanding school choice means a lot to learn for many parents who previously had no choice but to send their children to (often horrible) schools assigned by ZIP code. Yes, some parents may find the new options confusing.

Initial confusion, however, is no reason to avoid -- or to let government purloin -- an exciting and important responsibility. If it were, none of us would ever have children in the first place.

Parenthood, after all, means absolute greenhorns have an entire human being (or several human beings) to raise to maturity, with no previous practice or qualifications and very little preparation.

Certainly, no expert or researcher would design such a risky system, but it has been pushing civilization along at an extremely rapid pace since, well, human beings have existed.

Experts such as Matthews and Tyre have a variety of reasons for the positions they take, and teachers and administrators have varied motivations for remaining in their present positions.

Parents, by contrast, universally maintain a single motivation: their concern for their children. The same visceral concern that prompts Mommy to rise yet again for a squalling baby at 3 a.m. and pumps Dad's adrenaline when he races to lift his spluttering son out of the pool also incites parents to (rightly) demand teachers' heads when they find out Johnny can't read, write or calculate.

It's a positive motivation that's largely blunted in a nation where 90 percent of kids are stuck in a school assigned by geography and government fiat.

Just as parents have for decades found their way around the system by spending extra money to live in districts with what they perceive to be better schools and asking principals to place their child with the better fifth-grade teacher, so, too, can and will their deep motivation inspire them to seek the best possible education in a system of real choice. They will do this for the same reasons they do everything else for their children.

Tyre may not notice, but she's one reason more freedom for parents will be successful: She has written a book teaching parents how to decide wisely among their expanding school choices.

As more and more parents search for these answers, their very need will create the necessary supply of information and advice. It's the same, simple system we all depend on to put milk on supermarket shelves and provide us gas on unknown roads: the consumer-empowering nature of the market.

The best education system puts children first. No one places children first more naturally and effectively than their parents. Freeing parents to do what they know and accomplish best will only strengthen American education.

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Australia: Foundation Studies Program "sells" entry to University of Adelaide for able students

All the whining below about money should not obscure the fact that this is probably a good way of getting kids into university who are more suitable for it. Public examinations are not terribly good predictors of success at university.

My son did something similar, though no payment was involved. The University of Qld. offered bright kids in their final High School year the chance of doing a university subject in that same year -- as well as their normal High school studies. Few apply as it sounds very challenging. My son was the only one in his school who took up the offer. But he did well in all his studies at both levels so was therefore of course a shoo-in to his preferred course at the State's most highly esteemed university

STUDENTS who pay $7800 can secure direct entry into all of the University of Adelaide's bachelor degrees based on their Year 11 results.

Students who complete the university's Foundation Studies Program, dubbed "uni without Year 12", offered through Eynesbury College, receive assured direct entry into all of its bachelor degrees.

Parent and student groups have questioned the program's fairness, criticising a system they say effectively allows students to buy their way into university. Entry into the program requires only successful completion of Year 11.

The flyer promoting the program states: "Students offered a place in the FSP will no longer have to compete with thousands of others as they are given a conditional offer of admission to their preferred Bachelor degree at the University. This means no SACE and no SATAC application."

Most South Australian Year 12 students who apply for university must complete their SA Certificate of Education and receive an Australian Tertiary Admissions Rank that provides a comparison to students who have completed different subject combinations.

Using their ATAR, students apply for a place in their preferred undergraduate course through the SA Tertiary Admissions Centre, competing for a place based on merit.

Eynesbury College (International) director and principal Peter Millen said that upon application, students would be assessed on their ability to successfully complete the program, which would include the prerequisite subjects the student needed depending on their chosen degree.

Mr Millen said successful applicants would receive an offer from the University of Adelaide that would specify a mark out of 500 they must achieve to maintain their place. "It's a completely separate program, they are scored out of 500 so, if for example engineering was 380, they would have to complete the program, get 380 and have the right prerequisites," he said.

The university sets the score on a degree-by-degree basis with "similar relativities" as ATAR scores, a spokeswoman said, however, she was not able to provide examples.

University of Adelaide major projects and development director Lynne Broadbridge said offering the foundation program for domestic students was about the need to have flexible pathways and reduce the traditional barriers to university.

"Opening our foundation program offered through Eynesbury College, which has proven successful for international students since 1994, is a logical step to encourage local students to follow the aspirations to higher education," she said.

SA Association of School Parent Clubs president Jenice Zerna said it was not fair that some students would effectively be able to pay for their university place. "We are concerned that students are being provided with a university place based on how much money they or their parents have," she said.

National Union of Students president Jesse Marshall said the program appeared to be a way to get a down payment from students from wealthy backgrounds in return for guaranteed access to its programs. "The Federal Government levelled the playing field when it abolished full-fee paying places," he said.

"This program appears to take us back to the days where if you have more money you can pay your way into university."

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Australian universities judged among world's best

There is a lot of arbitrariness in these rankings but it is encouraging that Australian universities do well in several ranking systems. From what I have seen of overseas universities,I myself think Australia's "sandstone" universities are as good as any -- but I hold degrees from two of them so maybe I am a bit biased. I am pleased to see that where my son is currently studying did very well in the rankings. He himself is pleased with his programme there

FIVE Australian universities have been rated among the world's top 50 but the latest global university rankings show dramatic falls by institutions outside the Group of Eight, prompting concerns over the methodology of the list.

Eight Australian institutions made it into the top 100 - 23 are in the top 500 - in the QS World University Rankings, released today.

The outstanding result has been welcomed by sector leaders, despite the big slumps among universities outside the Go8.

Top of the local league was the Australian National University, ranked 26 in the world, followed by the University of Melbourne at 31. The world league was led by the University of Cambridge, Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Yale University and the University of Oxford.

Australia's worst fall was registered by Flinders University, down 48 rankings to 299 globally. The University of Newcastle fell by 35, La Trobe University by 31 and Griffith University and the University of Tasmania by 23.

They were in a group of 13 whose rankings dropped, while nine institutions improved over past year.

The University of South Australia was up 25, Queensland University of Technology was up 22 and Curtin University and the University of Western Australia were both up 16.

Universities Australia chief executive Glenn Withers said: "To have something like 60 per cent of Australian universities in the top 500 shows the strength of our system by world standards, given there are some 16,000 institutions. (But) we need to maintain that strength.

"We are looking for the base funding review and the way the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency are going to operate to help us maintain that strength in the system."

Griffith University's deputy director, research policy, and QS board member Tony Sheil, said the rankings were "capturing more up-and-coming universities, especially from the fast-growing economies like China, Hong Kong, Singapore and South Korea".

This was in contrast to one of its rivals, the Academic Ranking of World Universities, previously known as the Shanghai Jiao Tong, whose methodology is heavily weighted towards research performance and tends to favour older universities.

"The good news for Australia is that it performs very well on both rankings - our universities conform to what some call the global university model," Mr Sheil said.

"(However) QS does need to have a closer look at the data accuracy contained in several indicators."

He said it was not credible that several middle-ranked Australian universities outdid the California Institute of Technology for employer reputation.

The QS methodology allocates a 40 per cent weighting for academic reputation, gauged via a worldwide questionnaire, 10 per cent for reputation among employers, 20 per cent for student-to-staff ratio, 20 for citations per academic staff member, and 5 per cent each for international staff and international students.

The area of traditional weakness for Australia in the QS rankings is student-to-staff ratios. "Once again, it's disappointing to see Australia falling behind in some of the student-to-staff ratios," executive director of the leading Group of Eight universities, Michael Gallagher said.

QS singled Melbourne out for comment. "In whichever evaluations you refer to in recent times, the QS World University Rankings by Subject, The Excellence in Research for Australia initiative, or the Shanghai rankings, Melbourne keeps getting stronger," QS vice-president John Molony said.

Mr Gallagher agreed that while "there are different perspectives and flaws in all rankings systems, the consistent message is that they reinforce different groupings, especially the top tier".

The field of global rankings for universities is intensely competitive. QS claims to be the most extensive of its kind, evaluating more than 700 universities.

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Zogby Back-to-School Poll: 57% Want National Standard for Advancement

54% Say Test Score Cheating by School Officials Is Widespread

A majority of adults nationwide (57%) say there should be a national standard level of learning in the nation’s public schools before students can move from one grade to another, and, 54% believe test score cheating by school officials to improve standardized test scores is widespread, a new IBOPE Zogby Interactive survey finds

In regard to the best way to evaluate teachers, 64% prefer an even mix of standardized test scores and classroom observation.

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Study Finds Day Care Rivaling College In Expenses

Jessica Rivera wants the best for her children. Being a working mom, she has had no choice but to pay for day care so that she could help her husband keep the house up and running.

“A thousand dollars a month for two children so that along with mortgage and everything it was hard.” It became so overwhelming that Rivera sought financial help. Her daughter America was accepted into a program called ChildCareGroup.

But millions of parents are feeling the pinch from child care. A new study released by the National Association of Child Care Resource and Referral Agencies found that in 36 states the average annual cost of child care was higher than a year’s tuition at a four year public college.

In Texas one year of public college averages $7,743. While one year of child care for a four-year-old is $6,600. But the cost of child care for an infant was greater than a year of college at $7,850.

Susan Hoff is a child care advocate for United Way. She says finding affordable quality child care is a huge problem, but adds educating babies and toddlers requires a significant investment just like higher learning does. “Those first four years of life are the greatest amount of brain development in young children… It’s important to our entire public.”

According to the study New York is the least affordable state for child care, while Louisiana is the most affordable. But that’s based on a two parent income. Its even more difficult for single parents. “A little bit more than half my income goes to paying day care,” says Maria Ruiz, who is raising her three-year-old son Sidney alone.

She just moved her son from one day care because they went up on the tuition, again. “It was hard trying to find something that would meet my budget and at the same time meet my needs for my son.”

And meeting their children’s needs is every parents concern– no matter the cost. “His education means a lot,” says Ruiz.

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Only 4 Percent of NEA Dues Dollars Dedicated to Improve Teaching

It looks like the National Education Association is not putting its money where its mouth is.

In its mission statement, the nation’s largest teachers union asserts that “we will focus the energy and resources of our 3.2 million members on improving the quality of teaching, increasing student achievement and making schools safer, better places to learn.”

But a secret union document reveals that the NEA’s commitment to “improv(ing) teaching and learning” works out to a paltry $7.44 per member every year. This is according to a document obtained from an internal source of the Indiana State Teachers Association, one of the NEA’s state affiliates. All dollar amounts refer to the NEA’s 2010-11 budget, and are the most recent numbers available.

While the majority of a teacher’s dues dollars stay with the state union, $166 is sent to the NEA every year, which is the parent union. As already stated, the NEA only spent $7.44 of that amount on efforts to improve teaching and learning.

To put that into perspective, the NEA spent four times as much ($31.05 of the $166) on “legislative and ballot initiatives” and “partnerships and public relations.” The union spent $68.69 of the $166 on administrative support, governance, legal support, and leadership development and constituency support.

That explains why the NEA could afford to pay its top three leaders more than $1 million in salary in 2009, the most recent year those figures were available.

The NEA is clearly more concerned about taking care of its leadership team than it is about improving student learning.

The reason the NEA gives anything at all toward improving teaching and learning practices is so the union can claim to care about students. That piddly amount is only meant to give the union a thin veneer of respectability.

We’ve got a lot of great public school teachers. But it’s a shame that they are being represented by such a self-serving, hyperpartisan group of activists.

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AD and BC ruled out of date for national curriculum

This is just going to force kids to learn two systems instead of one. Most reference works use BC and AD so will be incomprehensible to the kids unless they learn both systems

CHRISTIANS are outraged that the birth of Jesus Christ will no longer be cited when recording dates under the new national history curriculum.

High school students will not use the terms BC (Before Christ) and AD (Anno Domini) when referencing dates.

Although history dates won't change, with textbooks still using the birth of Christ as the change point, they will use the neutral terms BCE (Before Common Era), BP (Before Present) and CE (Common Era).

Archbishop of Sydney Peter Jensen said yesterday that removing BC and AD from the curriculum was an "intellectually absurd attempt to write Christ out of human history".

Do you agree with the changes? Vote in our poll below

"It is absurd because the coming of Christ remains the centre point of dating and because the phrase 'common era' is meaningless and misleading," he told The Daily Telegraph. It was akin to calling Christmas the festive season, he said.

A spokesman for the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority, responsible for developing the national curriculum from kindergarten to Year 12, said BCE and CE were to be introduced because this was an increasingly common standard for the representation of dates.

The little known term BP (Before Present) will be used when dealing with "very ancient history and archaeology, and allows for the teaching of more sophisticated understandings of representations of time".

In anticipation of the curriculum change, textbooks for student teachers such as Teaching And Learning In Aboriginal Education, by Neil Harrison, were already using the term BP.

Federal Opposition education spokesman Christopher Pyne said: "Australia is what it is today because of the foundations of our nation in the Judeo-Christian heritage that we inherited from Western civilisation.

"Kowtowing to political correctness by the embarrassing removal of AD and BC in our national curriculum is of a piece with the fundamental flaw of trying to deny who we are as a people."

The curriculum was to have been introduced next year but has been delayed.

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Why I'm Getting my PhD From the 'University' of Manitoba

James Delingpole

Hey, everybody, I’ll have none of that disrespectful “Mr Delingpole” from you lot any more. From now on it’s Dr Delingpole, got that? Though I admit I haven’t actually picked up my PhD yet, I can speak with considerable confidence that it’s in the bag. That’s because I’m planning to get my doctorate from the “University” of Manitoba, Canada. And just check out this story about what an enlightened attitude this august seat of learning has to people with “disabilities.”

The University of Manitoba said it is reviewing its policy on how to accommodate students with disabilities despite winning a victory in court this week over a controversial decision to grant a PhD to a student who failed his courses due to “extreme exam anxiety.”

Gábor Lukács, a former child math prodigy who started university at age 12 and was a professor by age 24, sued the university over its decision to grant the student, identified only in court documents as A.Z., a PhD in math although he had twice failed his comprehensive exams and was missing a graduate course.

Thursday, Manitoba Court of Queen’s Bench Justice Deborah McCawley rejected Mr. Lukács request that the court intervene and rescind the degree, saying he didn’t have standing to take the case to court.

The university had defended its decision, saying it was legally required to accommodate a student’s disability, in this case, exam anxiety.

Mr. Lukács had argued that the university had damaged its credibility and was at risk of turning into a “diploma mill,” a claim the judge said was “unsubstantiated.”

My disability, in case you wondered, is that I’m allergic to countries which are colder than England, which have big, beaver-infested lakes in them and where they pronounce “about” “aboot”. When I explain this to the “University” of Manitoba authorities, I’m sure they’ll grant me the necessary compassionate exemption from doing any work.

Has anyone else noticed the Last Days of the Roman Empire flavour to this story? Here we are living in times so intellectually decadent, so agonisingly in thrall to the suicidal values of the Gramsciite left, that in a toss-up between a substandard, academic inadequate and a gifted professor genuinely committed to maintaining standards, the university choses to take the side of the inadequate.

The case, which dates back to 2009, has bitterly divided the school. Administrators suspended Mr. Lukács, now 29, for three months without pay last year after alleging that he had gone public with the student’s name and revealed private information about his disability.

Supporters of the professor launched an online petition, collecting nearly 200 names of students and academics from as far away as Israel. Another 86 mathematicians from around the world signed a letter of support. The university’s faculty association sided with Mr. Lukács, while the graduate students association applauded the school’s decision to suspend him.

Graduate students of the “University” of Manitoba, eh? What a bunch of intellectual heavyweights they must be.

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Britain's "free" schools

Free schools will recruit the staff they want, set their own pay levels and create their own curricula

Next week sees the most innovative education experiment in memory, when 24 new free schools open their doors. Inspired by the charter school programme in the US and the free school movement in Sweden, they represent an important victory for parental rights over the power of the state. The schools, both primary and secondary, are non-selective, non-profit making, and independent within the state sector. They will be able to recruit the staff they want, set their own pay levels and create their own curricula. What they all have in common is that they have been brought into being by concerned parents who were prepared to fight for the kind of local schooling they want – and a Government that has had the good sense to allow it to happen.

The progress of the guinea-pig schools (there are hundreds more applications in the pipeline) will be watched with interest. Many are located in deprived areas where state schools are failing to deliver the excellence all parents have a right to expect. There will be variety in the kind of schooling on offer, but a uniformity of ambition. Free secondary schools expect all their students to achieve good GCSEs in English, maths, science and a foreign language. In the state sector, just a fifth of pupils manage that.

Many on the Left abhor the notion that parents should be allowed to create the kind of schools they want for their children, rather than putting up with what the state sees fit to offer them. Their criticism has been rather undercut by the decision of Peter Hyman, Tony Blair’s former education adviser, to set up a free school next year in Newham, east London, with the simply stated aim of educating its pupils for the top universities and successful careers. It is salutary that he feels impelled to bypass the state system in order to do that.

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Australian schools may need to take on underperforming students to ensure funding, report says

The usual Leftist push to reduce everybody to the lowest common denominator

HIGH-performing schools may be put under pressure to take on underperforming students as a condition of funding.

A report commissioned by the Australian Government Review of Funding for Schooling has made the suggestion, adding "we need to question the extent to which public funds should continue to subsidise those already well-resourced selective schools that are not providing 'value' add in terms of student performance".

The independent report - along with three others released by the panel yesterday - has been met with dismay by the private sector but praised by the Australian Education Union.

Comments released by the review panel yesterday state the reports "have made a case for fundamental change in the way we fund schooling at all levels of government".

School Education Minister Peter Garrett said the reports would help the review panel develop its final recommendations, but he distanced the Government from what was in them.

"They do not represent the views of the panel and are not indicative of the Government's intentions," he said.

One report, written by the Allen Consulting Group, recommends school outcome information, including NAPLAN and My School financial data, be used to help decide base funding for all schools.

"Loading" would be provided to schools identified as needing additional resources "to assist students with specific needs to achieve specified outcomes".

Another report, written by a consortium led by The Nous Group, said higher-performing schools should be encouraged to "take on more under-performing students and demonstrate their quality through student performance over and above what would have been expected from past performance. This may mean restructuring some or all of the public subsidies so that they are retrospective and 'reward-based"'.

AEU president Angelo Gavrielatos said the reports confirmed current funding contributed to a "deepening inequality in educational outcomes".

Independent Schools Queensland executive director David Robertson said the review had failed to provide any analysis of its own, leaving private schools still nervous that their funding could be cut in real terms and that top-performing schools might suffer under the new funding model.

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