These are the education links we found interesting between January 11th and February 16th:
- University students pay £550,000 fines in a year – Oxford and Cambridge rank seventh and fifth respectively in the fines table. Fines for missing a supervision with a tutor vary from £10 to £200 across Cambridge colleges. While many colleges said the money was used to fund student hardship programmes, Downing college, Cambridge, admitted using the fines to fund the "annual staff outing".
- Birmingham children’s care homes and the £41million scandal – Birmingham Mail – [MAY 2011]: THE cost of placing troubled children from Birmingham in private care has rocketed after council chiefs closed four kids’ homes in the city. In a four month period last year, the bill was £13,772,491 – the equivalent of £41 million a year, compared to just £18,434,830 for the whole of 200
- Higher tuition fees caused ‘wild swings’ in student numbers, figures show – London Metropolitan University suffered the biggest losses (-43%) as it struggled to recover from the revocation of its licence to sponsor international students, also a major blow to its reputation among home students. The numbers enrolling at the University of Southampton (-13%), the University of Liverpool (-10%), the University of Sheffield (-9%), the University of Birmingham (-7%), the University of Leeds (-6%), Imperial (-6%), and Queen Mary, University of London (-6%) all fell on 2011.
- Michael Gove appoints Tory donor John Nash as education minister – Nash and his wife have given nearly £300,000 to the Conservative party since 2006, Electoral Commission records show and the Department for Education confirms. His appointment follows Lord Popat of Harrow being made a government whip this week. He has given the Conservatives £288,000 since David Cameron became leader. Nash runs a charity called Future that is active in sponsoring a range of academies, but it has been agreed with the Cabinet Office that he will play no role in decisions that could be deemed to affect his charity.
- Freedom of Information guide for academies – Welcome –
