Tag:

because

Education Secretary Justine Greening says she was turned down for a banking job because she had not taken a gap year

by Rajdeep April 5, 2024

written by Rajdeep

Justine Greening

The Education Secretary Justine Greening has revealed she was once turned down for a job in banking because she had not taken a gap year.

She spoke of an interview at Barings Bank, one of the world’s oldest merchant banks until it collapsed in 1995, where she was allegedly told that she was not suitable for the job as she had not travelled to enough exotic countries.

Speaking at the launch of her new social mobility strategy, she recalled how at the time she was “too embarrassed to admit that I simply couldn’t afford one”.

Taking a year out has become so common that it has prompted the mocking term “gap yah”, which arose from a comedy sketch about an upper class student boasting of his travels in far flung countries.

Companies have been criticised for favouring job applicants who have taken gap years, since they are more common among affluent students.

Ms Greening, who went to a comprehensive school in Rotherham before reading Economics at Southampton University, said she had never met a lawyer until she was an adult.

She urged businesses to take on more “rough diamonds” like her and help to “polish them up”.

“After my exams, I looked at going into the City. I remember a final interview with a long-established City bank,” Ms Greening said in a speech at PriceWaterhouseCooper’s London offices on Wednesday, at an event co-hosted with the Sutton Trust.

“I was sat in a wood-panelled office, being quizzed by one of their most senior managers at the firm. He wasn’t very impressed with my extra year of research post-university, doing research that was funded by Ladbrokes, looking at gambling behaviour.

“He looked me in the eye and said he felt I didn’t have enough of the ‘world experience’ that they wanted, and pointed out that I hadn’t had a gap year travelling. That was correct. At the time I was too embarrassed to admit that I simply couldn’t afford one.”

Ms Greening indicated she will press ahead with controversial grammar school plans in the face of stiff opposition. A consultation on expanding selective education closed before Christmas and the responses are being analysed by officials.

The policy has divided Conservatives and angered teaching unions. But Ms Greening insisted education reforms cannot be put “on one side because people feel that there are things we shouldn’t be looking at”.

She also said she does not support a ban on unpaid internships, which was recommended this week by the all party parliamentary group on social mobility.

Ms Greening said her social mobility programme will expand to target more areas where youngsters are failing to achieve their potential.

Doncaster, Bradford, Fenland & East Cambridgeshire, Hastings, Ipswich, and Stoke will join the six existing “opportunity areas”, including Blackpool and Norwich, in the £72million scheme.

The “opportunity areas” programme focuses on bolstering teacher support and improving schools as well as careers advice, mentoring and apprenticeship opportunities.

A new fund, made up of £1.5million of Department for Education funding and £2million from the Education Endowment Foundation, will be used to create new “research schools” in each area that will share evidence about the best ways of boosting the performance of disadvantaged pupils.

Kevin Courtney, general secretary of the National Union of Teachers, said it is “highly disingenuous” and “misleading in the extreme” for the Education Secretary to suggest that the funding is “new”.

“The £72million will not go far compared with the impacts of the worst funding crisis in decades for all schools and sixth form colleges,” he said.

[Source:- telegraph]

April 5, 2024 0 comment

Education

Ofqual on why exam performance improved after 2010 – and it’s not because of ‘dumbing down’ or pupil ability

by Rajdeep April 4, 2024

written by Rajdeep

Exam paper

Performance rose as pupils and teachers became more familiar with the tests, exams watchdog finds

Any improvements in GCSE and A-level performance since 2010 are likely to have been caused by pupils and teachers becoming more familiar with the tests, rather than by an increase in students’ ability levels or a “dumbing down” of exam papers, according to a new report from the exams regulator Ofqual.

The study found that pupils’ performance – as measured by marks rather than grades – improved significantly in the first three years after the introduction of new A-levels in 2010-11 and new GCSEs in 2011-12, but that this improvement slowed after that time.

The improvements probably result from teachers gaining more experience of teaching the new specifications and pupils having more past papers to learn from, the report suggests.

Limits of familiarity

It says benefits brought about by growing familiarity with the tests usually last for about three years. After this, the “limits of familiarity” are reached and the effect no longer brings about significant improvements in performance.

Ofqual’s report says the fact that pupils’ marks rose in the wake of exam reforms suggested that familiarity, rather than other factors, was the cause: “One would expect that improvements due to [test familiarity] can be made more quickly than [those] due to [genuine improvements in ability], meaning that improvements due to test familiarity might explain a greater portion of the more rapid changes occuring in the first few years.”

It adds: “The fact that most [grade] boundaries exhibited relatively rapid increases which seemed to lessen after the third assessment year…is consistent with the proposition that post-reform improvements in performance are test-specific and related to student/teacher familiarity (rather than reflecting more general improvements in ability). This is because one would expect improvements to subside once the limits of test familiarity and preparedness are gradually reached.”

Allaying concerns

Ofqual said its research, which covers the period since 2010, would “allay concerns of a systematic ‘dumbing down’ of assessments”.

This was because it was “unlikely” that improvements in pupils’ performance were “due to assessments becoming easier”, it said, adding: “Changes in test familiarity is a more plausible explanation.”

Ofqual’s report uses increases in grade boundaries, rather than in final grades, as an indicator of rising pupil performance. An Ofqual spokeswoman said the use of “comparable outcomes” – a system that has ended grade inflation by linking overall GCSE and A-level results to pupils’ prior attainment – would prevent grades from dropping and then rising as a result of new exams, which are being introduced over a three-year period from 2017.

However, she added that the years of rising GCSE grades between 1988, when the qualification was first introduced, and 2012, were not caused by increasing familiarity with the tests. This was because, during this period, there was a “year-on-year steady increase” in grades, rather than sharp rises in the wake of new exam specifications.

[Source:- tes]

April 4, 2024 0 comment

Education

Poorer graduates miss out on top banking jobs because of their clothes and accents

by Rajdeep April 4, 2024

written by Rajdeep

Poorer graduates are not being offered jobs because of their accents and the clothes they wear, it has been revealed, as experts warn classist snobbery is still rife within the financial quarter.

A report from the Social Mobility Commission found that investment banks are failing to hire talented graduated from less advantaged backgrounds because they recruit from a small pool of elite universities and hire those who “fit in” with the pre-existing culture.

Working class candidates are often rejected for jobs for being unaware of the traditional “opaque” dress codes abided by in the City – for instance wearing brown shoes instead of black – that richer children grow up knowing, researchers found.

Firms also prefer to select recruits who display “polish” and favour middle and higher income candidates who come from the UK’s top six or seven universities, leaving those from working class backgrounds with poorer access to top jobs.

Successful candidates within investment banking were likely to display “a combination of social skills” taught in private schools and at home “if they come from a middle or upper class background”, researchers said.

“To provide one example, for men, the wearing of brown shoes with a business suit is generally, though not always, considered unacceptable by and for British bankers within the investment banking, corporate finance, division.”

One candidate from a less affluent background was told by one bank that while he was “clearly quite sharp”, he was “not quite the right fit” and his tie was “too loud”.

An anonymous banker admitted that such discrimination was commonplace: “In corporate finance, if you’ve got the wrong cut of suit, if you are wearing the wrong shoes, or tie, or you look awkward in a suit, you’re done before you start.“

Research from Royal Holloway University of London and the University of Birmingham also found that young people who aspire to work in senior banking roles are expected to have a breadth of work experience within the field – something students with family connections in the industry were much more likely to obtain.

Commenting on the report, Alan Milburn, Chair of the Social Mobility Commission, said: “Bright working class kids are being systematically locked out of top jobs in investment banking because they may not have attended a small handful of elite universities or understand arcane culture rules.

“While some banks are doing excellent work in reducing these barriers, there are still too many that need to wake-up and realise that it makes sound business sense to recruit people from all backgrounds.”

“It is shocking, for example, that some investment bank managers still judge candidates on whether they wear brown shoes with a suit, rather than on their skills and potential.”

Overall, banks were more likely to hire from a handful of universities including Oxford, Cambridge and the London School of Economics.

But candidate case studies published in the government taskforce paper revealed a pattern whereby those with personal connections to managing directors were being offered jobs automatically by the time they had finished a work placement.

Olly Newton, Director of Policy and Research at the social mobility charity The Edge Foundation, said: ‘These old-fashioned prejudices impact not just on opportunities for young people, but on the UK economy if we overlook the most talented in favour of the best-dressed.

“The Social Mobility Commission’s recommendation to value vocational learning equally to academic routes is particularly welcome, and we welcome the fact that these barriers are slowly breaking down.

“One in four students now enter university with a BTEC qualification. We need better employer engagement in our schools and colleges to provide valuable social capital for youngsters from less advantaged backgrounds.”

[Source:- independent]

April 4, 2024 0 comment

Education

Teachers’ strike: Schools disrupted because of NUT walkout

by Rajdeep April 4, 2024

written by Rajdeep

NUT London rally

Thousands of pupils in England are seeing school closures or disruption as the National Union of Teachers stages a one-day strike over funding.

The government said figures so far suggested one in two schools was unaffected by the action.

The NUT is organising regional marches and rallies in support of the strike, which is also about pay and workloads.

Education Secretary Nicky Morgan said the strike was “unnecessary” and “harmful”.

The most recent government figures suggested that of England’s 21,957 publicly-funded schools, 52.7% were unaffected by the strike, 17.4% experienced some disruption, 10.2% were closed, while officials were unable to contact the remaining 19.7%.

Union officials claimed teachers across England were “solidly” supporting the 24-hour strike with hundreds of schools across the country affected, either closing completely, or teaching “reduced subjects”.

In Liverpool and Cheshire, more than 130 schools are closed and around 240 are partially closed
Across Greater Manchester 270 schools are closed or have reduced staffing
In Oxfordshire, 38 schools are closed or partially closed
In Hampshire, Portsmouth, Southampton and the Isle of Wight, 81 schools are affected
Dorset, Bournemouth and Poole have reported 44 schools affected by the strike

Teachers’ concerns

“We have seen a 10% loss of funding in the past year,” said Liam, a teacher at a secondary academy in the east London borough of Hackney.

“The government says it has ring-fenced funding to schools, but this is not actually happening.

“We are seeing increased class sizes and a decrease in opportunities for students.”

Asmah, a teacher at a north London primary, said they had just been informed of a huge budget cut for next year.

“The uncertainty is quite worrying,” she said.

“There have already been redundancies.”

Tom, another primary teacher, said heads were having to make “drastic staffing decisions” with cuts to “valuable aspects of children’s education” such as arts and music.

Workload was the biggest issue for Eleni.

“As a full-time teacher, it is impossible to get a work-life balance,” she said.

Molly and Rebecca, teachers at a south London primary, were worried about salary cuts if their school became an academy.

“Academies don’t have to stick to the national pay scale or pay teachers for marking and preparation time,” they said.

Academy teacher John said he and his colleagues were expected to provide revision classes on Saturdays in the run-up to exams, without any extra pay.

“We are just expected to come in at weekends and in the evenings.

“I think the worst thing is the impact on the kids of tired and ratty teachers.”

The union’s acting leader Kevin Courtney said school budgets were not keeping pace with rising costs.

Mr Courtney said “teachers do not take strike action lightly” and he “wholeheartedly apologised” for disruption to parents.

“The problems facing education, however, are too great to be ignored and we know many parents share our concerns,” he added.

He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “Class sizes are going up. We are being told of schools where there will be classes of 35 in September. Art, dance and drama teachers are being made redundant or not being replaced when they leave; individual attention for children is going down.

“This is all happening because the government is not allowing school budgets to keep pace with inflation. They are freezing the cash per pupil they give to schools.”

School funding

The NUT points to an analysis by the Institute of Fiscal Studies which says spending per pupil is expected to fall by about 8% in real terms by 2020.

He said the union wanted to resolve the matter through talks but the education secretary “does not acknowledge the reality”.

Mrs Morgan criticised the strike, saying it would “harm children’s education”, inconvenience parents and “damage the profession’s reputation in the eyes of the public”.

She said the government had protected school funding “when other areas of spending are having to be reduced”.

“Spending on education is the highest it has ever been this year at £40bn. It has gone up £4bn since 2011-12,” she told the BBC.

She said the way to resolve the issue was via talks rather than taking strike action.Labour’s shadow education secretary, Angela Rayner, also called for talks “to thrash out a better deal for the next generation, which is what every parent wants”.

“This Tory government is letting down parents, pupils and teachers.

“On their watch, class sizes have soared and the number of unqualified teachers in our classrooms is up,” said Ms Rayner.

April 4, 2024 0 comment