A question of education

There has been much discussion about university fees and the recent Browne report proposing that the present cap should be removed (and, by-the-by, once they increase by a particular amount then a substantial proportion would be paid to the government as tax).

I have been a full-time student twice. The first time around, at Imperial College, was so long ago that the tuition component was fully covered and a maintenance grant was available to all. In my case the maintenance part was reduced because of my parent's earnings but, thankfully, they gave me the difference. In order to have some spending money I worked each summer and took a part-time job during each term. I left college with a small overdraft.

Twenty-five years later, for my second time I studied with the Open University's Business School, where I had to pay the full tuition costs up front — some £10,000 or so. There were no grants, and I had to cover my own living costs.

The world had massively changed between those eras though; In the 1970s there was no expectation that lots of people would go to university; there was an understanding that undergraduate study was related to academic capability, to educate 'the best that schools turn out'. Others would go to a polytechnic, into on-the-job training, or an apprenticeship.

Now, it seems, that every schoolgirl and boy expects to go to university, no matter that they might not be capable of studying in that manner (many universities complain that new arrivals do not have the basic skills they used to expect) or, indeed, intend to study a course which is actually meaningful for study at 'university' level. Like school sports the race to find the best has become a non-competitive 'let everyone win'. It has become a rate of passage for all rather than a preparation for later life, and no longer benefits the country as it did in the past. Instead of targeting education to those who might make the best use of it we appear to be using some sort of scatter gun, often missing the target yet destroying the supporting structure.

So then, about those fees. Post-course student fees were, of course, first introduced by the Labour party under Tony Blair and, like income tax, now appear to be here to stay. The same Tony Blair who said he wanted everyone to go to university who wanted to. Not — I would suggest — because it would be better for the country, but because it gave the appearance of doing something about the poor state of tertiary education. And, of course, it would also delay the anticipated increase in the unemployment rate.

People seem to have little problem with purchasing a home with a loan. There is even a special name for that type of loan — a mortgage. To get this loan they have to agree to pay it back over an extended period, start those payments immediately, and agree to make them every month no matter what their income or change of personal circumstances. Yet there seems to be no reduction in the desire for people to take out mortgages.

And just as a home is an investment for your future so, I would argue, is a good education. And unlike the repayment demands for a mortgage that for a university degree is only repayable when you are earning above a particular income and, indeed, stops if you are not working.

The dropout rate at universities now is massively higher than it ever was in the past. Many students are failing to reach the end of their courses, let alone pass their exams and get their desired qualifications. That rising cost needs to be covered somehow.

There are three options to pay for higher education if one rules out paying for everything up front.

• Fully covered by the government - all taxpayers pay for those who go

• a 'Graduate tax' - all graduates pay a higher income tax no matter how their own education background or income level

• Student fees - paid by those who benefit directly and only after the event.

Just as I noted previously about how having children should be a cost on those responsible, so I feel that student fees should rightly be charged on those who benefit and who made the choice to go onto further education.

Ada Lovelace Day

Some month's ago, Suw (Charman-Anderson) suggested that there should be a celebration today of admirable women in technology, and invited everyone to pledge to write a blog about someone they'd chosen, alongside celebrating the life of the world's first computer programmer Ada Lovelace (1815-1852). Back, in the distant past of 1972, I was a schoolgirl in Hemel Hempstead, one of the over-spill 'new towns' around London built after the war. After I completed my GCE 'O'-levels I had to select the courses I would study during the final two years there in the sixth form. Initially I was only planning on taking two 'A'-levels (that being all which was required to get into university back then!) but in the end a third was added, and then I was told I "had too many free periods". I was given the option of either taking Human Biology 'O'-level, or taking the Computer Programming course. Well … as I'd not taken 'normal' Biology 'O'-level I quickly decided that I'd probably find difficulties in the more 'specialist' course (and, hey, it was something I would, ahem, "discover for myself" before too long!) so the programming course was the one I went for. Now you need to remember how long ago this was. 1972 was still the era of 'Big Iron' — large mainframe computers — and the web was some twenty years in the future. The teacher for this class was a young woman who had only recently joined the teaching profession and her 'qualifications' for teaching the course — the first year it had run at the school — were that she had spent that summer working for British Aerospace on computer programs designing the wings for Concorde! Her class of eager young sixth-formers numbered around 15, and she started out by teaching us BASIC (the acronym stands for Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code. Each lesson covered one instruction of the language and each week we students would write out our code on sheets of paper pre-printed with line numbers and boxes; each character of our program being carefully written in the boxes. This was then sent off to Hatfield Polytechnic which owned a PDP-10 made by DEC (Digital Equipment Corp. The college staff would type in our code to produce a punched paper tape, and then process this to produce an output printout. The paper tape and output would then be returned to the school in time for the following week's lesson. After a few weeks of this I found that computer programming was something that 'clicked' with me and I asked the teacher to let me borrow her manuals so that I could go faster — I was finding the 'one instruction per week' rate until that point far too slow. Thankfully, she did, and I raced on. I also got the agreement of the school that I could leave the premises every Friday morning (when everyone else was doing PE) and head into town to the F.E. College as, I had learnt, they had a teletype terminal connected by a phone line to the machine over in Hatfield. Quickly I had moved into the modern world of time-sharing, and later I started using my moped to go to the polytechnic most Saturday mornings to use the terminals just outside the machine room. After another couple of weeks I ended up taking over the class. I'd already been helping my classmates and the teacher realised that she had fallen behind me! A few years ago I met up with an old schoolfriend via Friends Reunited and she recalled the course and how I'd ended up in charge with some fondness (she having since become a teacher herself - of IT!) Subsequently, whilst still at school, I taught myself FORTRAN and then successfully applied to Imperial College to read Computing Science. I've been in the computer industry in some form or another ever since. And all thanks to that young teacher. Sadly, very sadly, I cannot remember her name all these years on. But I still remember the effect she had on me and my classmates in involving us in the very new science — or 'art', is it truly was then — of computer programming. Thank you Teacher, where ever you may be. I couldn't have done it without you.

Dyslexia a 'fiction'?

Labour backbencher Graham Stringer has attacked the very concept of dyslexia, claiming it is a myth designed to cover up bad teaching.

He suggests that, currently, 35,500 students are receiving disability allowances for dyslexia at an annual cost of £78.4m. "Certified dyslexics get longer in exams," he said. "There has been created a situation where there are financial and educational incentives to being bad at spelling and reading.

The story has been picked up by Janet Daley in The Telegraph who, quite rightly in my opinion, takes to task the figure given by the Chief Executive of Dyslexia Action, Shirley Cramer, that there are 6 million 'sufferers' from dyslexia — which amounts to 10% of the population! This hardly seems likely and, as Daley also points out, for those of us at primary school during the 50s and 60s it beggars belief that this high a proportion could ever be true.

It is bad, in the same way that going in to my bank to pay in three cheques and the assistant getting out her calculator to add them up — the cheques being for £40, £10 and £20 — is another comment on the atrocious state of teaching in this country.

In my view, children need to be taught how to do things and that means from first principles. Not the 'quick' way by using a calculator or spell-check to sort out their mistakes, but made to exercise their memory.

I am taking part in a televised discussion for Teacher's TV later this month — in part representing Wikipedia — and I've no doubt will make similar comments there. Know where to find the answer, sure. But know how to do it yourself too!