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20/12/04 Higher Education Minister 14/12/04 Bureaucracy in science SBS today strong criticised the government for the growing levels of central control and bureaucracy in British science. In an article in Innovation Policy Review, SBS highlighted concerns about the new "perfomance management system" that the Government is introducing to the science base. "It sounds like the sort of meaningless drivel you expect from third rate management consultants, but it actually means that the Research Councils will be at the mercy of political will," says the article. According to reports, each Research Council will have to publish annual reports on the number of patents their work is delivering, the number of papers and the quantity of citations to those papers. "Mandarins who have never been inside a laboratory will advise ministers to bring down the axe on areas of research they do not understand but which appear through their Treasury-tinted glasses to be "failing" in the short term. They will put a stop to any future Watson and Crick." 8/12/04 PISA results SBS was disappointed to see that schools in the UK had not been sufficiently willing this year to contribute a statistically significant set of results to the OECD's PISA survey, but even more disappointed that for those who did contribute, standards have fallen for maths and science. "When the UK currently invests only 4.4% of GDP in education and training, it is no surprise that our standards are lower than in countries such as Finland or Belgium which spend 5-6%" said Rosemary Davies, researcher at SBS, "there is a lot of competition for good science, engineering and maths graduates, so more needs to be done to attract them into teaching careers. Only with a better supply of teachers will we see a real improvement in educational standards." 02/12/04 Pre-Budget Report SBS today welcomed some of the measures in the Chancellor's pre-Budget report, but warned that the short-term crisis in university science needs the Government to make immediate changes to the ways it interferes in universities' flexibility to use their resources widely. 01/12/04 Primary Strategy According to current primary school assesment criteria, standards in science have fallen by about 1% since last year. The 1% improvement in maths standards lags well behind the 3% improvement made in English. If national targets can make a positive difference to maths and English education, then it is time to include science as well. |