There are calls from the Conservatives to stop the removal of student funding for second degree courses.

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This forum bridges neuroscience and education...well, the subject I’ve been hearing about lately is neuroplasticity. PBS ran a special on it called “The Brain Fitness Program”; it talked a lot about how our brains change and specialize over time and how they keep changing throughout life. The key is getting them to change for the better. There’s even a new “brain fitness” industry on the rise, led by companies like Posit Science, who’s developed a software program for enhancing and maintaining memory and cognition.

The most obvious application of a program like this is with Adult Education. It’s been suggested by the results of a clinical trial called IMPACT that the Posit Science program can improve one’s cognition by a difference of ten years. But there could be many other potential uses for this branch of science. I think this is a really essential point for teachers, since it speaks to how learning is crucial for health (and vice versa).

Universities say choosing 'soft' subjects at A-level can narrow a student's chances of getting on a top course.

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The United States' system of higher education is widely seen to be the best in the world. That assessment has a large subjective component; nevertheless, it appears to be consistent with objective indicators of quality. For example, United States colleges and universities offer more choice, their graduates receive greater wage premiums, and they attract more than twice as many foreign students as any other country. 17 of the best 20 research universities in the world are in the United States, according to the Shanghai Jiao Tong University.
2.
The success of the US system of higher education is often attributed to its competitive and decentralised structure. These features distinguish it (in varying degrees) from both higher education in other countries and from primary and secondary education in the United States. Hoxby (1999) provides a discussion. Any changes need to build on these strengths.
3.
There appears to be scope for improvement, however. The United States' lead is more obvious in research than in teaching (though this may reflect difficulties in measuring the latter). And in some areas other countries are overtaking. For example, whereas the United States had the highest tertiary attainment
rate in the OECD a generation ago, it is now ranked 8th in tertiary attainment among 25-34 year olds. Enrolment rates are now below the OECD average.
3
The recent report of the Secretary of Education's Commission on the Future of Higher Education (2006), known as the Spellings Commission, "found ... much that needed urgent reform". The Commission and others have pointed to serious problems in the areas of accountability, quality, transparency, cost control, diversity and many other aspects of higher education. Box 1 outlines the Administration's response to the report. Furthermore, the newly elected Congress has its own priorities.
4.
Against this background, this paper addresses the issue of how governments, particularly the federal government, should be involved in the financing of higher education. The focus is on the efficiency and equity of support rather than its level. This is not to say that financing is necessarily the most important issue facing higher education. For example, it can be argued that inadequate prior academic preparation is a greater problem. However, a companion paper (Tulip and Wurzburg, 2007) discusses the performance of US high schools. Moreover, governments spend about two per cent of GDP on higher education, primarily to promote access. How well that money is spent seems worth considering. Especially so, given that policy-makers plan to substantially expand current programmes and that international experience suggests better approaches are possible.

This is from the OECD for more click here

Although the number of schools teaching Latin is rising, a leading academic fears the subject may disappear.

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Free English lessons will be targeted at migrants who are poor or socially excluded, under government proposals.

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The number of children in schools of more than 2,000 pupils has more than trebled since 1997, the Tories say.

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MITAKA, Japan — Japan is suffering a crisis of confidence these days about its ability to compete with its emerging Asian rivals, China and India. But even in this fad-obsessed nation, one result was never expected: a growing craze for Indian education.

Despite an improved economy, many Japanese are feeling a sense of insecurity about the nation’s schools, which once turned out students who consistently ranked at the top of international tests. That is no longer true, which is why many people here are looking for lessons from India, the country the Japanese see as the world’s ascendant education superpower.

Bookstores are filled with titles like “Extreme Indian Arithmetic Drills” and “The Unknown Secrets of the Indians.” Newspapers carry reports of Indian children memorizing multiplication tables far beyond nine times nine, the standard for young elementary students in Japan.

And Japan’s few Indian international schools are reporting a surge in applications from Japanese families.

At the Little Angels English Academy & International Kindergarten, the textbooks are from India, most of the teachers are South Asian, and classroom posters depict animals out of Indian tales. The kindergarten students even color maps of India in the green and saffron of its flag.

Little Angels is located in this Tokyo suburb, where only one of its 45 students is Indian. Most are Japanese.

Viewing another Asian country as a model in education, or almost anything else, would have been unheard-of just a few years ago, say education experts and historians.

Much of Japan has long looked down on the rest of Asia, priding itself on being the region’s most advanced nation. Indeed, Japan has dominated the continent for more than a century, first as an imperial power and more recently as the first Asian economy to achieve Western levels of economic development.

But in the last few years, Japan has grown increasingly insecure, gripped by fear that it is being overshadowed by India and China, which are rapidly gaining in economic weight and sophistication. The government here has tried to preserve Japan’s technological lead and strengthen its military. But the Japanese have been forced to shed their traditional indifference to the region.

Grudgingly, Japan is starting to respect its neighbors.

“Until now, Japanese saw China and India as backwards and poor,” said Yoshinori Murai, a professor of Asian cultures at Sophia University in Tokyo. “As Japan loses confidence in itself, its attitudes toward Asia are changing. It has started seeing India and China as nations with something to offer.”

Last month, a national cry of alarm greeted the announcement by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development that in a survey of math skills, Japan had fallen from first place in 2000 to 10th place, behind Taiwan, Hong Kong and South Korea. From second in science in 2000, Japan dropped to sixth place.

While China has stirred more concern here as a political and economic challenger, India has emerged as the country to beat in a more benign rivalry over education. In part, this reflects China’s image in Japan as a cheap manufacturer and technological imitator. But India’s success in software development, Internet businesses and knowledge-intensive industries in which Japan has failed to make inroads has set off more than a tinge of envy.

Most annoying for many Japanese is that the aspects of Indian education they now praise are similar to those that once made Japan famous for its work ethic and discipline: learning more at an earlier age, an emphasis on memorization and cramming, and a focus on the basics, particularly in math and science.

India’s more demanding education standards are apparent at the Little Angels Kindergarten, and are its main selling point. Its 2-year-old pupils are taught to count to 20, 3-year-olds are introduced to computers, and 5-year-olds learn to multiply, solve math word problems and write one-page essays in English, tasks most Japanese schools do not teach until at least second grade.

Indeed, Japan’s anxieties about its declining competitiveness echo the angst of another nation two decades ago, when Japan was the economic upstart.

“Japan’s interest in learning from Indian education is a lot like America’s interest in learning from Japanese education,” said Kaoru Okamoto, a professor specializing in education policy at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies in Tokyo.

As with many new things here, the interest in Indian-style education quickly became a fad. read more

The South African government and its partners should find ways to put effective measures in place so that better results could be achieved at all school levels in future, says Education Minister Naledi Pandor.

Addressing the media in Pretoria after announcing the matric results on Friday, Pandor said it was clear from various studies, as well as this year's results, that quality learning needed to be the department's concrete objective for all grades.

The national pass rate for 2007 stands at 65.2% - 1.4% below the pass rate of 2006.

This year, a total of 564�775 candidates sat for the exams and 368�217 passed, some 85�454 candidates passed with endorsement. This was 376 less than in 2006.

Pandor raised concerns that teachers were not yet teaching with the expectations that "we will have tough papers that will test high-level cognitive skills".

She raised the issue of poorer schools continuing to perform badly, saying that this was as a result of unqualified teachers in some classrooms, inadequate laboratories and negligible support to schools.

"I have now asked the director-general to look closely at these schools, and the department needs to regularly visit these schools, including those who were performing and suddenly declined," Pandor said.

The pass rate per province was (from the highest achiever):

* Western Cape - 80.6%
* Gauteng - 74.6%
* Free State - 70.5%
* Northern Cape - 70.3%
* North West - 67.5%
* KwaZulu-Natal - 63.8%
* Mpumalanga - 60.7%
* Limpopo - 57.9%
* Eastern Cape - 57.1%

The South African Democratic Teachers Union (Sadtu) said it was encouraged by the increased numbers writing and passing matric, including an additional 36�000 learners over 2006 and an additional 16�714 successful matriculants.

Sadtu secretary-general Thulas Nxesi said the union would be joining forces with other stakeholders in 2008 to form local education committees tasked to develop a code of conduct outlining the responsibilities of all the stakeholders.

"The committee will also monitor the implementation of the rewrite programmes," Nxesi said.

The National Teachers' Union (Natu), meanwhile, called on the department to invite all stakeholders to come and contribute meaningfully towards reshaping the country's education system.

"We will organise workshops to capacitate workers on the new curriculum and further empower them on how to devise alternative or improvising teaching and learning support materials while the department is redirecting the material resources to the very needy schools," Natu vice-president Allen Thompson said.

The number of gifted and talented pupils in secondary schools is to be included in league tables in England.

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