International News

Letter from London

Funds crunch dilemma in Oxford

J. Thomas

The obvious result will be a worrying cut in the number of admissions available to British school leavers, something which is not likely to please either state or private schools. A recent study has shown that such policies could cause as many as 600 British school leavers to be denied places at Oxford by 2008, rising to a figure of 1,400 by 2020.

A recent analysis of Oxford’s finances revealed that by 2012 the university could face a £14 million (Rs.113 crore) deficit on the cost of educating undergraduates, even if it charges the maximum £3,000 (Rs.2.5 lakh) fee allowed by the government from 2005 onwards. No doubt prompted by this revelation, the university authorities recently circulated a proposal to Oxford academics suggesting that the number of British students enrolled should be cut from September this year to make room for more foreign students. Academics have been given a few weeks to consider the proposal and make a response. As time is tight, with recruitment of foreign students already under way, decisions will have to be made fairly soon.

Moreover with the expansion of the European Union in May this year, when ten accession countries, including Cyprus, Poland, Malta, Hungary and the Czech Republic, will become full members, British universities will lose sizeable tuition incomes as in future EU students studying in Britain will become eligible to pay standard fees payable by UK students. That could mean as many as 30,000 accession country students in Britain by 2010. Coupled with this, an additional 180,000 to 250,000 British undergraduates are anticipated by 2010, causing for the first time in decades a potential shortage of capacity.

As far as Oxford is concerned, tuition fees for overseas (non-European Union) students in 2004-5 have yet to be decided. In 2003-4 the fees for students from beyond the European Union were £7,818 (Rs.6.3 lakh) for arts subjects, including mathematics; £10,424 (Rs. 8.4 lakh) for science subjects and £19,108 (Rs. 15.5 lakh) for the clinical stages of bachelors degrees in medicine and chemistry. Annual increases in fee levels are anticipated in the next academic year. In addition to this, living expenses of approximately £4000 (Rs.3.2 lakh) per annum have to be budgeted.

Already some universities barely make any effort to recruit students from the UK, preferring to concentrate on the international market. The University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology for example, a highly respected specialist institution soon to be merged with Manchester University, has restricted most of its advertising to the Far East in recent years, resulting in a foreign student population of over 80 percent.

Looked at globally rather than nationally, the benefits of recruiting international students are clear, not just financially but culturally as well. There is no doubt that foreign students who work hard and sacrifice much to gain entry into British universities, will raise standards of education in the country and teach indigenous school leavers to appreciate the value of higher education in the UK.

United States

Rising college fees threaten access dream

Movie star turned California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s approach to funding the state of California’s public universities shows all the hallmarks of Terminator. As part of his attempt to tackle the state’s budget deficit of $14 billion (Rs.64,400 crore), Schwarzenegger wants to cut state funding to the University of California and California State University (CSU) by at least 8 percent, at the same time raising tuition fees for the state’s residents by 10 percent for the next academic year (2004-05). And that’s on top of the whopping 30 percent hike students had to pay this year.

Schwarzenegger: Terminator approach

The cause of the steep rises is largely due to cuts in education spending by individual states, the main sources of funding for public universities. In fact states have been cutting their spending on higher education for years — the inevitable outcome of decades of low taxes and a general reduction in public services.

There’s plenty of blame going around in the current debate, and universities have not escaped criticism. Republican Congressman Howard "Buck" McKeon introduced legislation last year that would penalise institutions raising their fees by twice the rate of inflation or more, for more than two years. The bill has not garnered much support in Congress and has been overshadowed by the focus on Iraq and the terrorist threat.

Lyndon Johnson launched the Higher Education Act in the 60s to increase access for low-income students, and its cornerstone is the programme of need-based Pell grants. In a vivid illustration of the impact of rising education costs on access, the purchasing power of Pell grants has nearly halved in the past 20 years.

But Charles Reed, president of California State University says that when faced with the "tidal wave of students who want to go to college" and a massive state budget deficit, raising fees is "the only thing that we could do." CSU currently has 420,000 students and is expecting 15,000 to 20,000 new students every year until at least 2010.

With the US Senate having passed more than $87 billion (Rs.400,200 crore) in emergency funding for Iraq and Afghanistan last autumn, states and universities are not anticipating new money with the reauthorisation of the Higher Education Act. No one expects it, but everyone believes it’s essential if access is to be maintained, much less improved.

Iraq

New blueprint for post-Saddam era

British curriculum and teacher-training experts are advising Iraq’s interim government on the rebuilding of the country’s education system. British schools’ experience in subjects such as citizenship and English are likely to be fed into a blueprint for the future of schooling in the post-Saddam era. Iraqi experts, who are planning a major programme of reform to revitalise the country’s under-funded and dilapidated classrooms, are also interested in the history of the launch of the British national curriculum.

In January Dr. Alaa Alwan, the Iraqi education minister, met Charles Clarke, British education secretary and officials from the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA) and Teacher Training Agency, in a visit organised by the British Council. A report will be compiled and produced in April on plans for an Iraqi curriculum.

Tom Leney, principal international researcher at the QCA, says Alwan is particularly interested in citizenship work in British schools. "The minister is interested in looking at opportunities for teaching citizenship as part of building a different kind of civil society in a changing Iraq," he says.

Iraqi schoolchildren are taught English from the age of seven and British teaching methods in the subject could feed into Alwan’s report. Alwan is also interested to learn of any "positives and negatives" to be taken from major curriculum and examination reforms in Britain over the past 15 years. He is expected to take soundings from up to three other countries, believed to include the United States, before publishing his proposals.

Elections may happen in Iraq from June this year, making it impossible to be sure whether Alwan will be in a position to implement any proposals. But the British Council says it is likely that the Iraqi authorities would want to build on their work with the UK.

Japan

Government legislation to mandate nationalism

Teachers’ independence from government ideological influences is about to be watered down, sparking fears that the moral values of teachers and children will be subject to state control. Prime minister Junichiro Koizumi’s advisory body has proposed a revision to the country’s fundamental education law, so that concepts such as "love of one’s country" and "respect for Japanese tradition" would be written into it as key objectives for schools. These changes could be enforced later this year.

"This is an infringement of civil liberty," says Akio Furuyama, an educationist and researcher. "The government has no right to enter the minds of people," adds Takashi Ota, chair of the citizens’ group for children’s protection.

Japanese school students: state control fears

Already old nationalistic ideals such as "love of home town" and "respect for teachers" have crept into the primary curriculum under the heading of ethics. In 1999, the government made it compulsory for state schools to display the Japanese flag at biannual events and for teachers to sing the national anthem. The Tokyo educational authority has warned teachers they will be dismissed if they do not obey.

Hong Kong

Foundation under fire

Hong Kong’s major provider of english-style education has been plunged into turmoil by a series of crises that have left it leaderless and the subject of blistering attacks by its former chief executive as well as by the government. The Education and Manpower Bureau has demanded an answer to allegations that the management of the English Schools Foundation (ESF) is dysfunctional and its finances poorly controlled.

This follows the leaking of a letter in late February by former chief executive Jonathan Harris, previously director of education for Cornwall. In his letter, Harris says that if the ESF were inspected by Ofsted (Britain’s Office of Standards in Education), it would be classified as an institution with "serious weaknesses" or, at best, under-achieving. He called for chairman Jal Shroff to recognise the need for change and accused senior managers of wasting money on long lunches and afternoon drinking sessions.

Arthur Li, secretary for education and manpower, echoes Harris’s call for an independent audit of the ESF and says he would come down on it "like a ton of bricks" if it was found to be wasting public money. The government subsidises about a third of ESF costs.

Harris’ letter to Shroff was leaked anonymously. Harris denies he knows the source of the leak and declines to comment because of a confidentiality agreement. ESF, which runs 19 schools teaching 12,000 students has submitted its response to both the government and to parents and teachers, refuting most of Harris’ claims.

The crisis came a week after a bitter battle over the appointment of Harris’ successor. A selection committee chose Mike Haynes, a parent and member of its executive who works in the insurance industry, prompting opposition from parents and staff on the grounds that he is not an educator.

Comments Christine Houston, the parent who leads the campaign against Haynes: "We had an absolute sense of clarity that the process has been corrupted. All we are asking is that it be started again." Haynes was offered the job ahead of an assistant director of education for New South Wales and a deputy minister of education for Manitoba in Canada.

But Shroff has failed to secure enough votes to endorse the appointment, sparking his resignation, along with that of the vice-chairman and treasurer.

United States

Rising tide of creationism

A firestorm of bitter protest, led by former US president Jimmy Carter, engulfed America’s Bible belt in mid-February after Georgia’s education chief censored references to evolution in the state’s school science curriculum. Schools superintendent Kathy Cox branded evolution "a buzzword that causes a lot of negative reaction". "By putting the word in there, we thought people would jump to conclusions and think, ‘Ok we’re going to be teaching the monkeys-to-man sort of thing’," said Cox.

However, proposed changes to the state’s science instruction guidelines, framed by a panel of 25 educators and scheduled for adoption within three months pending public review, have drawn charges that religious extremism was being allowed to distort sound teaching. A chorus of teachers and academics criticise them as pandering to Christian fundamentalists, offended by evolutionary theory, who hold that life was created by God within the last 10,000 years and the Bible is the literal transcription of human origins.

Jimmy Carter

Despite being the world’s most technologically-advanced nation, America has a tricky task squaring an explanation, beyond dispute in serious scientific circles, with devout beliefs held by millions. Teaching creationism is outlawed in schools, but this hasn’t prevented proponents from de-emphasising teaching of evolution and stealthily promoting alternative quasi-religious explanations of biological development.

Florida, Illinois, Kentucky, Mississippi and Oklahoma have also airbrushed references to evolution from their syllabuses, while Missouri lawmakers recently proposed legislation that would require staff teaching evolution to also cover intelligent design theory. This argues that the intricacy of organisms can only be explained as the product of a purposeful creator, but commands scant currency among scientists who regard it as creationism in disguise.

The science community cannot look to the White House for support. "On the issue of evolution the verdict is still out on how God created the Earth," President Bush has said. A clause encouraging teaching evolution in a draft of the administration’s sweeping 2002 school reform law was relegated from the final version into an adjunct report.

Australia

Alleged bias towards private schools

Prime minister John Howard has accused state-school teachers of being too politically correct, sparking a nationwide debate over the values taught in Australian schools. Howard says parents are moving their children out of the state system because of the lack of traditional values. They are choosing instead "values-neutral" private schools, which are mainly run by churches. The prime minister claims state school teachers have an "incredibly antiseptic view about a whole range of things". "Some schools think you offend people by having nativity plays," says Howard. "I think that it’s a reflection of the extent to which political correctness has overtaken this country."

His comments mark the start of an election year in which the government is expected to inject billions of dollars into private schools. The opposition Labour party has promised to strengthen the public system if it wins power and will change the way money is allocated.

John Howard

State school teachers have bitterly criticised Howard’s remarks, claiming they are intended to distract attention from reports that thousands of school-leavers have failed to be offered a university place this year.

Critics point out that a study commissioned by the government itself found that state schools are good at teaching values. The study says that schools in both systems promoted values such as tolerance and understanding, and social justice and respect for others.

Italy

Oxbridge in Milan anniversary

An experiment in transplanting the concept of an Oxbridge college to Italy’s monolithic university system is completing its first full year of operation. Two years ago a group of graduate students who had spent some time at Cambridge enlisted the support of Italian author Umberto Eco and other prominent academics for an Oxbridge-style college in Milan with financial support from a consortium of 22 Italian companies.

Now, 100 of the top students from Milan’s seven universities live and work together in the Collegio di Milano. It is run by an independent foundation which aims to produce an elite of graduates who are not only excellent in their fields, but also have a good general education.

"We select from post second-year students who apply from any of the Milan universities," explains Louis Quagliata, the Italo-American engineer who directs the collegio. "Applicants must have high exam scores, but we also select through personal interviews. We give them extra lectures and seminars on a wide range of subjects. The physicists study economics and music, the philosophers physics and economics, the mathematicians philosophy and music, Greek culture and so on. Since we are independent, we can be very flexible."

The project is now in its first full year. A recent plan is to send mixed teams of collegio students — for instance a philosopher, an architect and an economist — to try to solve problems that crop up in private companies or in public administration.

Each collegio student pays €10,000 (Rs.5 lakh) a year for board, lodging and the extra courses. "Selection is financially ‘blind’ and those who cannot afford to pay receive assistance. This means we have the best students irrespective of social background," says Quagliata.

Russia

Poor pay forcing teacher exodus

Russian teachers will receive a 50 percent pay rise in return for a standard 36-hour week under plans put forward by the federal government. At present, teachers in Russia’s 63,000 schools may earn as little as Rs.8,000 a month, though the number of hours they are required to teach varies, usually between 12 and 24 per week.

Russian education minister Vladimir Filippov acknowledges "it is not enough". From January 1 next year he is offering a substantial pay increase in return for a fixed working week to include time for teaching, marking and preparation.

Even in Moscow, where the city pays a supplement of 80 percent on salaries, teachers have to make ends meet by taking private tuition after school. They complain that shop assistants often earn twice as much, though training to be a teacher takes four to five years.

Filippov hopes that better salaries will help to solve the recruitment crisis. In Moscow, an expanding private sector offers much more lucrative options for teachers of English, IT and PE (physical education). Male teachers are in particularly short supply. At school 1253, a Moscow secondary, three men have left during the past year because they could not feed their families. Just three men remain on a teaching staff of 62.

Svetlana Vysotina, a teacher for 20 years who spent a term on an exchange to King’s College, Wimbledon, a south London private school, has doubts about the proposed reforms. As head of the school’s English department, she earns about Rs.16,000 a month which she supplements by giving private lessons all day on Saturday. "It is impossible to say how many hours I work. Sometimes I get to school at 8 a.m and I do not leave until 9 p.m. I love my job and I would not want to do anything else," she says. But Vysotina wants to maintain the freedom of the present system. "I would not like to have to come into school at a fixed time and to leave at a fixed time."

Larista Kurneshova, first deputy chief of the Moscow city government’s education department and a former teacher, thinks a balance must be struck between giving teachers a decent salary and preserving the job as a vocation. "I am in favour of teachers being paid for everything they do," she says. "But many teachers do the job because they are enthusiastic. If they count up everything and want money for it, the psychology of teaching would change."

South Africa

Distance education dangers

South Africa has proposed a code of conduct that will clamp down on open and distance-learning courses across Africa found to be profit-driven or of dubious quality and relevance. Kader Asmal, the education minister, says that the great potential of distance education to open up access to quality lifelong learning for Africans can "too easily be negated by bad practice". The bitter experience in higher education locally and elsewhere has made him aware of this.

He says that aside from the "peril of technological determinism", perils in distance education include the emphasis on growing enrollments with little regard for the quality of learning or outputs, poor programmes with little relevance to human resource needs, and inappropriate curricula. The development of distance programmes by institutions is driven primarily by financial gain, which is unacceptable.

Asmal (centre): peril of technological determinism

The African Virtual University and the University of South Africa could play a vital role in enhancing access to tertiary education, as could collaboration in developing programmes and materials, for instance in teacher training. Another possibility would be a New Partnerships for Africa’s Development (Nepad) research network to mobilise intellectual capacity in Africa, to tackle development challenges and to act as a springboard for new ideas and their application, he says.