UK: Denying loans to students with weaker A-levels will ‘penalise poor families’

More likely to help poor families by protecting them from spending that is unlikely to benefit them.  As is acknowledged below, children from poor families tend to do badly throughout the educational system.  They should be encouraged to find work that suits them, not pushed into likely failure. Besides, Britain is in more need of tradesmen than possessors of useless degrees in any of the Mickey Mouse courses that abound these days.

As one person below says: "More support for FE would be a good thing because it has been “neglected and underfunded for years”. FE is is Further Education -- education typically leading to trades qualifications and technical certificates.

The whole article below is founded on the typical Leftist refusal to acknowledge individual differences.  Most of my academic career was devoted to studying individual differences.  But what is good for one -- or even the majority -- is NOT good for all.  Not even a university education is good for all.  There is more money in the trades for many people

I am not disrespecting Northerners in any way.  At the risk of being laughed at, I can even say that some of my best friends are Northerners.  But the reality in Britain is that the North is poor and smart people tend to move South to where the money is.  Some move as far South as Australia.  I have met many of them.

But the upshot of that is that the North is these days a lot like Ireland:  Enough of the smart people have left to leave the average IQ there depressed.  As it says below:  "There is an attainment gap of more than four months between disadvantaged children and their classmates when they first start school".  And IQ is by far the biggest predictor of educational success. Nothing else comes close.  So the article below is by and large wailing at the inevitable


Plans to deny student loans to those with lower A-level grades would hit poor families in regions where social mobility is already stalling, data obtained by Education Guardian shows. In the north-east a third of students who would be denied a university education come from the most disadvantaged backgrounds.

Four months ago, the education secretary, Damian Hinds, launched Opportunity North East, a £24m campaign to raise aspirations and stop children in the region feeling they’ve been “left behind”.

But the prime minister’s review of post-18 education is, according to leaks, proposing that young people with less than 3Ds at A-level should not be allowed a loan.

Data from Universities UK, the vice-chancellors’ umbrella body, shows the change would hit the north-east – where 33% of students with lower than 3Ds are from the most disadvantaged families – much harder than any other region.

A prominent Conservative MP, who asked not to be named, told Education Guardian: “Are we seriously saying young people in the north-east are thicker than those in the south-east so they don’t deserve to go to university? This is penalising young people for failures in the school system.”

The north-east has the worst youth unemployment rates in the country, and although it has some of the best-performing primary schools, poorer children are much less likely than in other regions to have access to a good secondary school, according to the Social Mobility Commission.

The MP adds that the policy wouldn’t stop students from wealthier backgrounds who perform badly at A-level from going to university, because their parents could pay for them to do retakes or simply bypass the loans restriction by pay their fees.

“Tarquin still gets into university. But you create a secondary modern/grammar school situation where some people are just written off,” the MP says.

The second-hardest-hit region in terms of social mobility would be Yorkshire and the Humber, where UUK’s data shows that 22% of those no longer entitled to a loan would be the most disadvantaged students.

Vice-chancellors have branded the idea hugely regressive. They say poorer students are more likely to have low attainment, but this doesn’t mean they can’t succeed at university – and that universities, not the government, should make judgments about who has potential.

Alistair Jarvis, the chief executive of UUK, says: “If the government is looking for a policy that keeps large numbers of students from lower socio-economic backgrounds out of university, it would be hard to come up with anything more exclusionary than setting a flat minimum entry tariff.”

He points out that there is an attainment gap of more than four months between disadvantaged children and their classmates when they first start school, and this rises to more than 19 months by the end of secondary school.

But he says students can overcome this disadvantage and thrive at university, with 73% of students from the poorest areas [who get in] netting a first or 2:1 degree.

Anand Shukla, the chief executive of social mobility charity Brightside, says: “Attainment at the age of 18 is not a measure of potential at all. It is typically a measure of the amount of resource you’ve been able to benefit from at school.”

The PM’s review, which is being chaired by former equities broker Philip Augar, is also widely expected to recommend cutting £9,250 university fees to £6,500.

Sources close to the Department for Education say that No 10 is keen to go public with the review’s recommendations as soon as possible, to demonstrate that “domestic policy is back on track” despite the chaos surrounding Brexit. But they say the Treasury wants to delay publication until the next spending review.

Vice-chancellors fear the review is being used as a means of pushing more students who would have gone to newer university into further education instead. One leak said Augar’s team was considering offering loans to college as well as university students.

Shukla says more support for FE would be a good thing because it has been “neglected and underfunded for years”. But he warns: “We need to be very careful about creating a segregated system in which richer students go to university and poor students are hived off down a different route.”

He adds: “Britain is a very class-ridden country. If students with lower grades are funnelled in one direction and students with higher grades in another direction, I think we all know how that story ends.”

Claire Callender, professor of higher education policy at UCL’s Institute of Education and Birkbeck, University of London, says: “You could argue that we need more vocational training, but if we push more people into the FE sector are we really sure they will get jobs? We know employers really value degrees.”

She says that if employers want graduates and there is a shortage of them, graduate salaries will rise. “That means there will be an even greater divide between those who have been to university and those who haven’t.”

According to the CBI, 79% of employers expect to need more staff with higher skills in the future, with two-thirds saying they aren’t confident there will be enough people to fill highly skilled jobs.

One source close to Westminster says: “Augar is doing the easy part because he will say fees must be cut but the funding per student should stay the same. But the DfE knows the Treasury can’t do that. Even if they put in a bit of funding in the first year, within three years it will be gone.”

University heads say that if they have to shoulder a loss of £3,000 per student, spending on trying to encourage more disadvantaged young people to come to university will be one of the things they will have to cut.

The VC of one Russell Group university says: “I don’t think they are thinking through the consequences of all this. If we face cuts of this size, some of the investment we would immediately have to cut would be on outreach.”

Prof David Green, vice-chancellor of Worcester University, says he has heard other universities saying they will have to cut widening participation budgets, but that this is a grave error. “If we threaten to cut the widening participation budget we threaten our students, our raison d’etre and our institutions.”

At present universities are required to invest 30% of all fee income over £6,000 to widening participation programmes.

SOURCE  






Massachusetts lawmakers propose to regulate student loans — all but inviting a lawsuit

Beacon Hill lawmakers are reigniting efforts to scrutinize student loan companies, a move that could inject Massachusetts into a still-unfolding legal battle pitting states against the Trump administration — with millions of borrowers in the middle.

Proposals filed in both the House and Senate would subject loan servicers to new registration requirements, create an ombudsman to field complaints about unfair practices, and empower the state to investigate and pull the licenses of “deceptive” companies.

The bills’ proponents frame them as consumer protection measures that would fill the void created when the Trump administration rolled back Obama-era policies designed to protect borrowers. But even the authors recognize that state legislation would probably draw a lawsuit amid an escalating fight nationwide between the states and the loan servicers, which have been backed by the Trump administration.

Similar efforts in other states have prompted a rash of litigation, with some courts allowing states to go after companies for allegedly unfair practices. Others, however, have sided with the servicers, which argue that federal rules supersede state and local laws, potentially complicating how, and whether, local officials craft student loan rules.

“Whenever you see different decisions out of separate circuits, that is a case that’s ripe for Supreme Court action,” said Adam S. Minsky, a Boston attorney who represents student loan borrowers but is not directly involved in any of the servicer lawsuits.

Minsky cautioned that there’s no guarantee the high court will hear a case. But with the “arguably minimal federal oversight” of loan servicers, he said, states are trying to give borrowers tools to navigate a trillion-dollar industry.

“I think there are solid legal arguments for allowing states to regulate,” he said.

The loan servicers often work as middlemen for the federal government, ensuring that borrowers make their monthly loan payments. But the companies have also faced increasing scrutiny amid complaints about errors and allegations that they have overcharged borrowers.

At least five states and Washington, D.C., have passed legislation to bolster borrowers’ rights, according to Higher Ed Not Debt, a coalition of labor and progressive groups that advocates on student debt issues. The laws run the gamut from creating new regulatory frameworks to establishing an ombudsman to aid borrowers. Some — such as Connecticut’s, the first laying out a so-called student loan bill of rights — feature both, as do the Massachusetts proposals.

The Trump administration, however, has repeatedly pushed back. It warned last year that state attempts to rein in the companies “may conflict with legal, regulatory, and contractual requirements,” and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has singled out efforts in Massachusetts, where Attorney General Maura Healey has sued the Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency, alleging deceptive practices.

And federal officials have alleged that the District of Columbia, via its ombudsman’s office, tries to “second-guess” federal evaluations of contractors. That’s according to paperwork federal officials filed last year in support of a lawsuit brought by the Student Loan Servicing Alliance, a trade group that counts roughly 30 servicers as members.

In November, a federal judge delivered a split decision in the case, ruling the city is not allowed to license companies servicing federal direct loans or those owned by the federal government, but it is within its rights to regulate commercial loans. Both the city and the Student Loan Servicing Alliance are appealing.

Against that backdrop, Massachusetts lawmakers are weighing the state’s role. While the Senate passed its measure last year, a bill never emerged from the House. The sponsor of the House bill this session, Representative Natalie M. Higgins, said there were questions about how to structure licensing fees and properly fund the ombudsman position the bill would create. “I think that is the biggest piece to this,” the Leominster Democrat said.

The legal wrangling could also give pause to the more conservative members of the lower chamber. House Speaker Robert A. DeLeo last week spoke of the importance of tackling student debt issues, but was noncommittal on specific proposals, saying he’d wait for the bills to make their way through the relevant committees, which can take months.

“I think one of the biggest issues we have right now is student loan debt,” he said.

Higgins and Senator Eric P. Lesser, the sponsor of the Senate legislation, argue the state should be more proactive.

“This is no longer a conceptual idea,” said Lesser, who pointed to the growing number of states that have passed similar legislation, including Virginia last year. But he acknowledged that should the Legislature pass a bill, the state would probably be sued. “And so be it,” the Longmeadow Democrat said. “My hope is, frankly, that there would be a lawsuit. Because I think we need to defend ourselves, and we need to make our case . . . ”

Lesser said he crafted the initial bill with Healey’s staff, and under the Senate proposal, the ombudsman would be housed in the attorney general’s office. In the House version, it would fall under the Division of Banks. A spokeswoman for Healey said she would support “new strategies” to protect students but did not specify how active Healey would be in pushing the legislation.

Any move is likely to be watched closely on the national level. Scott Buchanan, executive director of the Student Loan Servicing Alliance, said servicers want to work with the states, but he pointed directly to the federal decision in the suit his group bought, arguing that “states can’t license federal contractors.”

“Conflicting requirements at the state and federal level could make it more confusing to the very borrowers we both want to help,” he said in an e-mail.

Seth Frotman, former student loan ombudsman at the US Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, argued the states have long had consumer protection obligations.

Frotman, who quit his federal job in August, has since launched the Student Borrower Protection Center, which has opposed the government’s argument that its rules preempt state laws on regulating student loans. “The fact that the federal government came into a state trial court in Massachusetts and argued that the state’s power to stand up for its citizens didn’t apply to student loan borrowers is outlandish,” Frotman said. “The federal government has walked away from this battle.”

SOURCE  







Australia: Teachers to push for students to read more books featuring gay characters after study encourages educators to 'challenge heterosexism'

Rubbish! If you want to get kids into reading you have to have stories that they can relate to

University researchers have called for high school students to read more books with gay characters to better reflect sexual diversity.

Researchers from the Queensland University of Technology found two of the 21 texts recommended for study during English classes by the national curriculum authority have gay characters or themes - The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald and Shakespeare's Twelfth Night.

In an analysis of their research, the group behind the findings said teachers should 'challenge heterosexism' and 'give voice to a wider range of perspectives on love'.

In an editorial published in English in Australia - the Australian Association for the Teaching of English's journal - the group made reference to the legalisation of same-sex marriage in 2017, calling it a 'watershed moment in Australian history'.

'English teachers surely need to respond to this endorsement of same-sex marriage on the part of an overwhelming majority of the population,' the editorial said.

QUT researchers Kelli McGraw and Lisa van Leent have asked those who choose the texts used in school curriculums to better represent 'diverse sexual identities', The Australian reported.

'By queering the senior ­English sample text list in the Australian curriculum … at the very least, LGBTIQ+ youth will see aspects of their lives reflected at school,' they wrote in the editorial.

In their analysis, Dr McGraw and Dr van Leent said the texts on the current curriculum 'grossly represents that under-represented queer life'.

Jennifer Buckingham, a senior research fellow at the Centre for Independent Research Studies, said the selecting of books should be based on quality rather than 'fulfilling an arbitrary quota of LGBQIT characters'. 

Associate professor in social work at Flinders University Damien Riggs, supported the calls for more diverse sexual representation in texts studied at school. 'Children who are gender or sexually diverse get to see themselves reflected,' he said.

SOURCE