August 27, 2010 · 7:20 am

The Commonwealth Youth Orchestra and Choir

The creation of an exciting new orchestra – the Commonwealth Youth Orchestra and Choir – has just been announced.  Its mission is “to bring together young musicians of the 54 countries of the Commonwealth, uniting them in the pursuit of musical excellence while transcending all cultural, political, social and economic boundaries, and promoting, by example, these values of excellence for the benefit of all people throughout the Commonwealth”.

The Orchestra has four aims:

  • To give students of the Commonwealth (aged 18 – 24) the opportunity to perform concerts throughout all the 54 countries of the Commonwealth.
  • To give composers of the Commonwealth international opportunities to have their music performed.
  • To give conductors of the Commonwealth international opportunities to conduct a world-class orchestra.
  • To give young soloists of the Commonwealth international opportunities to perform with a world-class orchestra.

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August 24, 2010 · 6:30 am

Jobs or degrees for young people in the UK

It’s that time of year again: school exam results, and pictures of happy young people getting the results for which they hoped, alongside grim stories of those who have failed to make the grade! “Desperate for a degree?” in the Metro on 28th August, ‘”Carnage’ as pupils scramble for university places“, or “Universities swamped in mad dash for places” in the Times

Much of this reporting is highly misleading, especially concerning the difficult decisions young people are facing when they do not get the results that they had wanted. The Metro, for example, comments that “”Up to 200,000 youngsters were expected to miss out on higher education places despite record A-level results”.  Not a bit of it.  Why should anyone think they are missing out?

To be sure, it is very unfortunate when school leavers do much less well at their A levels than expected.  However, they should always have kept one of their university options as a safety net, in case of this eventuality.  There is absolutely no point in keeping  an offer of AAA and another of AAB, when realistically there is a possibility that you might get BBB.  Moreover, there is a fundamentally misplaced assumption that anyone who gets A levels – even low grades – should automatically be able to go to a university!  Why?  University entry is not an automatic right. It should be reserved for those who can benefit most from it, and can best use the opportunity to enhance their knowledge and understanding.

Although youth (18-24 year olds) unemployment in the UK fell by 16,000 over the last month, it is still 324,000 according to the Centre for Economic and Social Inclusion.  Many young people are therefore choosing to try to go to poor quality universities, rather than entering the ranks of the unemployed.  Even with average student debt around £25,000 after three years, this is seen as being desirable primarily as a lifestyle choice.  The expectation is that graduate salaries will more than enable this debt to be paid off.  Anyway, at this age, who really cares?

There is little point, though, in many young people with poor A levels scrabbling to go to a university.  Many degrees offer few skills that will ever be of relevance in the job market. Indeed, employers regularly complain about the low skill levels of graduates in the UK! These people would be far better off starting on apprenticeships or entering the work environment immediately. They would not saddle themselves with debt, and in many instances their career prospects are just as good as those of graduates.  Moreover, by the time they are 21 they will have three years of income over and above their peers who waste three years simply ‘having a good time’ at university.  Graduate employment is tough – it is currently estimated that there are now some 70 people searching for every graduate job!  So, instead of going to university, those young people who are not really interested in academic studies should turn to the job market (see report in the Sunday Times on the university of life!).

This is really where we are failing young people.  Youth unemployment is far too high.  We need to encourage more apprenticeship schemes, and create opportunities for more young people to be gainfully employed.  It is far better for them to be working productively rather than costing tax payers money simply to enable them to gain increasingly worthless degrees at low quality universities.  Better still, we should close down half of these so-called universities, and instead create training institutes that would enable young people to gain the skills needed  to compete successfully in the global employment market!

So let’s stop fooling ourselves. Very few young people are actually missing out on university places!

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August 19, 2010 · 3:07 pm

Vacancies for Two New Members of the Commonwealth Scholarship Commission

The Secretary of State for International Development is looking to appoint two new members to the Commonwealth Scholarship Commission in the UK.

The Commonwealth Scholarship Commission is a non-departmental public body, responsible for delivering the UK’s contribution to the Commonwealth Scholarship and Fellowship Plan. It achieves this through the provision of (mainly postgraduate) scholarships and mid-career fellowships to some 700 individuals from throughout the Commonwealth each year. The Commission also nominates UK candidates to take up awards made by other Commonwealth countries. The Commission receives funding from the Department for International Development, the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the Scottish Executive, and most UK universities.

There are 15 Commissioners, drawn from a range of academic, development, diplomatic and private sector backgrounds. Their roles are to:

  • provide policy direction and oversight
  • monitor the effectiveness of awards
  • ensure appropriate structures for governance and accountability
  • through selection committees held in February and March of each year, select recipients of awards

Candidates are also encouraged to find out more about the work of the Commission from its website, from which annual reports and other key documentation can be downloaded.

Full details of these vacancies are available at http://www.cscuk.org.uk/about/vacancies.asp

As Chair of the Commission, I would be very happy to discuss the post with interested applicants.

Applications should arrive by 17.00 (GMT) on 10 September 2010.

All forms should be completed and returned to the following address:

Dr John Kirkland
Executive Secretary
Commonwealth Scholarship Commission in the United Kingdom
c/o The Association of Commonwealth Universities
Woburn House
20-24 Tavistock Square
London
WC1H 9HF

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August 18, 2010 · 8:16 pm

ICTs and Urban Micro-enterprises in Mumbai

P.Vigneswara Ilvarasan and Mark Levy have just made available the final report from their exciting and innovative IDRC funded research on the use of ICTs by urban micro-enterprises in Mumbai, employing fewer than 20 hired workers.  This is one of the most important analyses of ICTs and entrepreneurs that I have recently read.  The methodology is much more rigorous than that of most research in the field of ICT4D, which means that considerable credence can be placed on the reliability of the results. Some 329 male owners or managers of micro-enterprises, and 231 female owners were interviewed between April and June 2009, and a further 102 men and women were surveyed in September and November 2009.

Whilst I might have some quibbles over definitions – surely in general usage, the term micro-enterprise is used to refer to much smaller units than those employing 20 people – this is a really excellent piece of research that deserves widespread citation.  Its key findings are:

  • “Nearly everyone who owned or managed a microenterprise—regardless of sex—had a mobile phone.
  • Many female and male microentrepreneurs who owned or managed microenterprises and who used a mobile for business communication reported that the year-over-year income of their business had risen.
  • Urban microentrepreneurs experience different levels of economic growth depending on how they use their mobiles for business communication.
  • The positive impact of mobile phones on microenterprises might emerge only after two years of use. Microentrepreneurs who owned a mobile for two years or less saw some growth in business income; those who had begun to use their mobile more than two years earlier experienced even greater income growth.
  • Levels of PC ownership and usage at home and work were low.
  • Few microentrepreneurs frequented Internet cafés for business purposes.
  • Only small numbers used their mobiles for the full range of business-enhancing activities.
  • Consideration of a microentrepreneur’s full repertoire of ICT use showed a positive relationship with microenterprise growth, especially when other factors such as gender and motivation were also taken into account.
  • Compared to women-owned microenterprises, microenterprises owned or managed by men had much greater increases in business income, although female owned microenterprises also experience some growth
  • The more positive a female microentrepreneur felt about her status and power because of her business, the more she was motivated to use ICTs in support of her business.
  • The more that a woman entrepreneur used mobile phones, workplace computers, etc., the more her microenterprise grew, especially businesses in the trade sector of the informal economy.”

Thanks Vignesh and Mark for enriching us with this important study.

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August 14, 2010 · 4:39 pm

Glitch with using Google Mail View – be warned!

Wow – managed to track down an elusive error!  Has anyone else come across this glitch? Guess they must have….

A colleague was transferring data from a large number of .doc forms completed in Microsoft Word into an Excel spreadsheet, and instead of downloading the .doc files, simply opened them in Google Mail’s View function.  However, the data ‘appeared’ different to what was shown when the files were downloaded and opened in Word – so, most of the figures incorporated into the spreadsheet were actually wrong.  Basically, Google View represented the figures  incorrectly.

The problem seems to have been because the forms on the original .doc documents had been completed using drop-down menus, and therefore that the View function did not pick these up correctly.  There was no way of knowing that the figures were wrong, unless the original files were actually opened and checked.  I wonder how many other people have therefore incorporated incorrect data into their work as a result of this glitch?

So, don’t rely on Google Mail’s View function if your document includes such things as drop-down menus!  Just wondering, is this actually a subtle way of Google trying to undermine Microsoft?

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August 7, 2010 · 6:52 pm

UK Government switches off child database

I have previously raised concerns about the creation of the national ContactPoint database of all children that was put in place in 2009. I’m therefore delighted to note that this is to be shut down.

The BBC  reports that the “£235m government database containing the records of England’s 11 million children has been switched off. … Within two months of the switch-off all the data collected for the system is to be destroyed, although the information will still remain in the social services, education and health departments it had been gathered from. But there have been concerns that there is nothing collating key information centrally in one place. The system, which has been running since January last year, was always controversial and was set to cost a further £41m a year. After successive delays, it was rolled out to only 15,000 users, out of the initial target of 330,000. The system was used by doctors, social workers, schools, charities and other individuals involved in the protection of children. Many said it was useful in tracking children and discovering the truth about the way they are cared for. …  But civil liberties groups criticised it as intrusive and disproportionate.”

While it is of course crucial that we find ways to try to ensure that all those seeking to support “children at risk” can share information efficiently, the creation of a national database of information about all children raised huge ethical issues.  Whilst it seems that the reason for the closure of ContactPoint was largely on cost grounds, it is good to see that this represents at least a small step back from the excessive use of ICTs by the UK state to maintain databases of information so that it can more effectively monitor and control the country’s population.

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August 7, 2010 · 6:37 pm

Google waves goodbye to Wave

So perhaps Google is not so all-seeing and all-wise after all.  After a year of dismal take-up, Google has decided to stop developing Wave as a stand-alone product according to Urs Hölzle (Senior VP Operations and Google Fellow) in an update on Google’s official blog on 4th August 2010.

Wave was launched in 2009 with a great fanfare – and was described by Google at the time as “how e-mail would look if it were invented today”.  In essence, it combined e-mails with instant messaging and features to allow people to collaborate in real time on documents.

However according to Urs Hölzle on Google’s blog, “Wave has not seen the user adoption we would have liked. We don’t plan to continue developing Wave as a standalone product, but we will maintain the site at least through the end of the year and extend the technology for use in other Google projects”

For other reports:

  • BBC Report on 5th August 2010

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August 3, 2010 · 8:25 pm

Putting the USA in its place

Am I the only one who gets infuriated when I hear citizens of the USA referring to themselves as Americans, as though the only Americans in the world are US citizens?  America is a continent, indeed for some two continents: South America and North America.  Guatemalans, Canadians, Argentinians, Brazilians, Peruvians are all Americans.  We therefore need to invent a new word to refer to citizens of the USA, and their language.

Perhaps we should all start referring to USans (as in Jamaicans but from the USA),  USish (as in English or Spanish) and USese (as in Portuguese).  The trouble is that these do not roll easily off the tongue!  However, at least it might begin to stop the rot.  Why do so many US citizens really  think that they have a natural born right to rule the world!  If we stop calling them Americans, it might make them think twice about the real place of the USA.

Britain once imposed its rule over much of the world, but most of us born here now realise the perils of imperialism. By encouraging USans to realise that they  come from a relatively small country lacking in culture and history, we might actually be doing them a huge favour, helping them to find their true place in the world – not as an aggressor seeking to impose one particular vision of so-called democracy on the rest of the world, but instead as a peaceful neighbour seeking to do good.  After all, the USA has merely 4.5% of the world’s population, and is dwarfed by China with 19.5% and India with 17.3%.  When China and India take their rightful places as world leaders, what will poor USans do then? At the very least, the next time you hear a US citizen referring to themselves as an American, do ask whether they come from Ecuador, Venezuela or Costa Rica and see what the reaction is!

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August 3, 2010 · 8:03 pm

Illiterate UK graduates find it hard to get a job!

I was interested to read a report by Jack Grimston in the Sunday Times on 1st August under the headline “Top firms forced to reject ‘barely literate’ graduates”.  What amused me is that anyone should find this surprising!  For years, schools have paid insufficient attention to the teaching of good English, and most university academics simply do not have the time to correct the spelling, punctuation and grammar of essays written by students.

The report commented that:

  • “Waitrose and other blue-chip employers are struggling to fill graduate trainee schemes, despite receiving thousands of applications, because candidates fail to fill in forms properly and sometimes seem barely literate”
  • “Will Corder, UK recruitment adviser at Kimberly-Clark, the manufacturer of brands such as Kleenex and Andrex, said his company had been able to recruit only eight graduate trainees, fewer than in previous years. One candidate, asked how he or she had developed leadership skills, replied: “At church Im [sic] in charge of some organisation.” Corder said: “Surprisingly, it is particularly bad among those doing master’s degrees — bad grammar, bad spelling and they do tend to be very, very verbose and say very little”
  • A shortage of qualified university and school leavers is holding back the economic recovery, according to early findings by the Institute of Directors in a poll of members.“A surprising number have vacancies they are unable to fill,” said Mike Harris, the institute’s head of skills, who will present his findings to Vince Cable’s business department. “They cite lack of skills and bad attitude. They are flagging up clearly that it is a real struggle to find workers and this is holding back recovery.”
  • “Recruiters complain of applicants unable to spell company names, answer simple questions or provide information instead of vacuous buzzwords”

This is a damning indictment of the British higher education system.  Whilst I would be one of the last to say that a university education should purely be about providing skilled employees for top firms, it is critically important that academics listen to what employers say.  The message is clear: universities are turning out graduates who often seem barely literate, and more worryingly still who have a poor attitude to the workplace.  Surprise, surprise!

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July 23, 2010 · 10:01 pm

ICTs and Special Educational Needs in Ghana

Godfred Bonnah Nkansah and I are delighted that our paper on the contribution of ICTs to the delivery of special educational needs in Ghana has just been published in Information Technology for Development, 16(3), 2010, 191-211. The paper not only provides rich empirical evidence of the usage and potential of ICTs in the special educational needs sector in Ghana, but also argues strongly that much more attention should be paid to the positive benefits that ICTs can bring to the lives of people with disabilities across Africa.

Abstract
This paper explores three main issues in the context of Ghana: constraints on the delivery of effective special educational needs (SEN); the range of information and communication technologies (ICT)-based needs identified by teachers, pupils and organizations involved in the delivery of SEN; and existing practices in the use of ICTs in SEN in the country. It concludes that people with disabilities continue to be highly marginalized, both in terms of policy and practice. Those involved in delivering SEN nevertheless recognize that ICTs can indeed contribute significantly to the learning processes of people with disabilities. Governments across Africa must take positive action to ensure that such experience with ICTs can be used to enable those with SEN to achieve their their full potential, whether in special schools or included within mainstream education.

For media comments on this research see:

  • The Commonwealth Secretariat News

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