Monthly Archives: December 2011

Help Me Investigate Education’s top education stories of 2011

Tweet The new year is right around the corner and so the writers at Help Me Investigate Education thought it would be a good time to reflect on the last 12 months. We’ve compiled a list of what we think … Continue reading

Posted in Links | Leave a comment

The exempt charity status of Academy Trusts…

TweetRecently, on a post on the Help me Investigate Blog, Chris Dodd discussed the ways in which you can look into the actions of charities and not-for-profit organisations. During the follow-up of this post, he discovered that all Academy Trusts … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Access to Unreliable Children’s Services Data…

TweetIn early November, Paul blogged about local authorities submitting shaky figures to the Department for Education, as reported on the Channel 4 blogs. As Paul quoted and Patrick Worrall stated; “So to recap, these spending figures don’t actually reflect the … Continue reading

Posted in Data, Links | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

School buses: transport information from Better Transport

TweetWe’ve been digging a bit into the recent story generated by The Campaign for Better Transport’s use of FOI requests to investigate cuts to school bus services to see if the data behind it was available for others to build on.

Posted in Data, Links | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Investigating academy charities and other nonprofits

TweetOver on the main Help Me Investigate blog, Chris Dodd has written a guide to investigating nonprofit companies, including Academy Schools which, Dodd points out: “… are regulated by Department for Education (DfE). It’s worth noting that all three regulatory bodies … Continue reading

Posted in Links | Tagged , , , , , , | 2 Comments

What is RAISEonline data – and why should it be publicly available?

TweetThere’s a vast store of information about our schools, but access is limited.  Read about why we need to make it freely available… What is it and who runs it? RAISEonline is an online tool commissioned jointly by the then DCSF … Continue reading

Posted in Data | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 9 Comments

Link: Now you need permission to protest at Birmingham University

TweetBirmingham University has taken out an injunction against anyone occupying its campus in protest. The Guardian reports:

Posted in Links | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Link: Tuition fee problems in waiting and other education context

TweetThere’s both historical context and future warning in a Guardian interview with Cambridge historian Simon Szreter. Among the best quotes:

Posted in Links | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Links: School transport cuts and obligations

TweetThe BBC report on the number of cuts being made to “optional” school transport services, following a series of FOI requests by the Campaign for Better Transport (CBT). There’s some important background in the report on what services are not … Continue reading

Posted in Links | Tagged , , , , | 4 Comments

How to: Use spreadsheets to organize data

Tweet If you’re dealing with a lot of data, one way to organize it is by using a spreadsheet, such as Excel. This is especially useful if you’re interested in data journalism. But the problem for many beginners is where … Continue reading

Posted in Links, Tips and How-Tos | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment