Articles

• The more things change, the more we become the same – challenges in the new landscape of special school provision

  The National Association of Independent Schools and Non-Maintained Special Schools (NASS) is a membership association for special schools which are not maintained by local Authorities. The association represents 215 schools across England and Wales. Our schools cater for children with complex and severe special educational needs and disabilities and the vast majority of places in schools are publicly funded through Local Authorities. NASS has an outward facing role in representing the sector to Government and other key stakeholders and an inward facing role offering advice and support to members and investing in research and development to support best practice in areas such as mental health and succession management.

• Instrumental Music Teaching Needs a Radical Re-think

  As the Government grapples with the desperate state of our public finances, readers will not be surprised to hear that instrumental music teaching is often at times like this first in line to suffer funding reductions. This article offers an alternative approach to instrumental teaching in schools, which will not only deliver a better level of teaching but as importantly reduce costs to the taxpayer.

• On Becoming a Free School

  The Paces Project is born in the experience of disability; specifically, the experience of the parenting of children and young people with physical impairments and their related learning difficulties. The Paces Project also recognises the needs of the families and carers as well as the children and young people themselves; of the need for independence as well as the need for inclusion in wider community life. Paces is a charitable company, coming together originally in 1992 as an association of parents who had seen at first hand the benefits to children and young people with cerebral palsy of conductive education as practised at the Peto Institute in Budapest, Hungary. From the beginning, it has been clearly understood that Paces, as an innovator of education services and an advocate for conductive education, of necessity has a role to challenge orthodoxy and to find its own place in the mainstream. This role will continue. Paces’ core activity is the delivery of conductive education programmes to children, young people and adults.

  “On becoming a Free School” was written for Trustees, Governors, staff and parents of Paces around the time the charity’s Free School Proposal was submitted to DfE.

• Introducing a New Concept for Medical Education

  Guy Rughani, who is a second year medical student at the University of Edinburgh, gives to Expert Opinions a brief overview about his new website www.learnmedicine.org.uk. The aim of his site is to be a comprehensive, free online resource for medical students from across the UK (and perhaps internationally), providing easy to understand, innovatively designed content covering the preclinical sciences.

• Envirolearn - Building Even Better Schools for Our Children

  On 5th February 2010 the Editor interviewed Ray Kohn, Managing Director of QUESCO whose Envirolearn system focuses on best practice in educational environments.

• A Critic of Wind Turbines

  Simple answers to complex problems have always held a fascination for Governments, sometimes with disastrous consequences, and some people see wind power as a simple answer to the complex problem of energy security. Unfortunately the case for wind farms does not stand up to close scrutiny and, far from producing ‘free, unlimited and environmentally friendly’ electricity, they are anything but friendly to the environment of those in whose immediate vicinity these overwhelming structures are erected.

  In this paper Councillor Robert Barnard considers the modern fascination with wind power and the effects it can have on communities and the wider environment.

• The Brain Research Trust

  Since its founding in 1971, the Brain Research Trust has funded research totalling more than £30 million at the Institute of Neurology, Queen Square, London. The Trust aims to provide a steady income to sustain and expand the vital research carried out at the Institute of Neurology, which together with the National Hospital, is the UK's foremost centre for research into diseases of the brain and nervous system. From the more than 250 identifiable neurological conditions, the Institute's current research programme includes: Alzheimer's Disease, Brain Tumours, Multiple Sclerosis, Stroke, Parkinson's Disease, Epilepsy, Motor Neurone Disease, Migraine, Brain Trauma and Spinal Cord Regeneration. The Brain Research Trust is the leading UK charity for research into neurological disease.

• Every Child Matters

  Tim Clark, a Grammar School Headteacher offers his views on the state of the Government's ‘Every Child Matters’ document that follows up the inquiry into the death of schoolgirl Victoria Climbie in 2001

• ‘Morning Tea my Dear?' - Zimbabwe then and now

  A travel Journalist currently living in Zimbabwe gives an insight into life under the regime of Robert Mugabe. Describing how the ‘breadbasket of Africa’ became its ‘basket case', while the International community stood idle, a bleak picture is painted of a population struggling with food shortages, disease and crime.

• The Four Virtues: an Unfashionable Way Through to Music Education

  I understand, maybe sympathise with, what is often called our “target culture": if you are putting X amount of public money into an institution, or set of institutions, then you should get Y amount of products or benefits out of them. So with Music in education; more money goes in to provision of, say, instrumental lessons, so more expert musicians should come out of the school gates at 16 or 18. But it does not seem to work that way and the reason is that success; especially in something like Music which relies on sustained and appropriate nurturing depends so much for success on the culture and ethos of an institution and the quality of its social environment, and these things are incredibly hard to set targets for!

• Specialist Music Education in the United Kingdom Today - Is The Government Watering Down its Elite Musical Provision for School Children?

  The Purcell School of Music is one of just five specialist music high schools currently funded by the Government's Dance, Ballet and Music scheme through the Department for Education and Skills (DFES). The other four schools are Chethams (Manchester), Menuhin (Surrey), Wells Cathedral School (Somerset) and St Mary's (Edinburgh). Clearly, the geographic locations of these schools aim to give the best possible nation-wide coverage for the Government's highly acclaimed “specialist” music provision.

• Labour's New Dental Contract is Not Working

  In April 2006 the Labour Government finally “imposed” the New Dental Contract on the Dental Profession. The Contract had been “promised” on three separate occasions and was originally meant to be implemented just before the General Election of 2005. I believe the reason for holding the new Contract back for so long is obvious National Health Service (NHS) dentistry is now not only unavailable, but ordinary treatments - for example a simple filling, now costs the patient nearly 300% more. The New Dental Contract is not a good vote catcher!

• A new approach to water piping systems in Africa

  The loss of treated water from defective pipelines is one of Africa’s most serious problems. The supply of water is an expensive and ongoing headache for Donors and Water Authorities alike, which work together to satisfy disgruntled end users...

• The future of health care in the UK with special reference to dental practice

  One has heard much in recent months concerning the new Dental Contract. Government, under the banner of New Labour, believe that this new Contract will provide good affordable dental health care for all patients. But, this article will suggest that the Governmental drive to control dental care within a bureaucratic framework, actually places patient care secondary to that of financial constraints. And, at one and the same time, in actuality lowers productivity by forcing dentists onto a treadmill of bureaucratic paperwork, leaving them frustrated and disillusioned and patients with a poorer dental service.

• Is it time to consider plant power?

  Global climate change is now accepted by a substantial majority of the world’s climatologists. Together with the dangers of the overpopulation, come the environmental and resource issues that suggest we may face an apocalyptic future. Is there any reasonable solution to this?” Dr. Alexander Ruban, Lecturer in Biological Chemistry, Queen Mary College at the University of London sets out the case for the optimisation of photosynthesis as a means of increasing the future viability of ‘bioenergy'

• Mobile Phone Networks - Developing Consultation Best Practice

  Very few of us today could live without our mobile phone. Here Christine Jude from the Mobile Operators Association discusses potential health issues and the difficult subject of where best to site phone masts in our communities.

• More Accurate Water Charging - A Meter in Every Household?

  One of the leading water suppliers in the South East of England has recently required that approximately 60,000 homes have compulsory water meters fitted. Here Trevor Cave gives his professional insight into the current favoured approaches to charging for water, which if utilised might encourage better and more sustainable use of this valuable resource in Britain today.

• Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism - The Cost to Society and Family

  Sue Allchurch, Director of Mimosa Recovery which specialises in alcohol rehabilitation, writes for Expert Opinions on the need for a more long-sighted treatment based approach to the issue of alcoholism. She argues that the benefits to society as well as the individual of government funding for alcohol rehab would be immense- reducing related criminality, accidents and health problems as well as improving family relationships and worker productivity.

• Addicted to Prohibition?

  Addiction is, according to recent research undertaken at the University of Melbourne, an impairment of the frontal brain circuitry that affects the normal mechanisms of inhibition and control. Put simply it seems the classical view of abuse being solely the result of an up-regulated go system; in which drugs hijack the brains reward system making drug taking an intensely rewarding experience for the addict is not the whole story. Rather it is also a result of a faulty stop system that leads to the loss of control, frequency of relapse and the willingness to use drugs despite the dire consequences of chronic addictive behaviour. This new view on what exactly addiction is could yet help to colour our future view of how we perceive and deal with the problem of addiction as a society.

• Bottling up Trouble?

  When it comes to recycling the UK still has far to go, we presently only recycle a mere 3% of plastic bottles used each year. Chris Berryman looks to Switzerland and Germany to see whether we can learn from them on how to increase this shamefully low figure.

• An Innovative Way to help Young People

  The Herts Motor Project was a Charity originally formed in 1990 by a group of Watford magistrates who were looking for alternative community based sentencing options for the many young people who appeared before them, as a result of vehicle related offending.

• Erosion of Green Belt in the South East

  The Government’s current approach regarding the Green Belt in the South East is not sustainable. It should place greater emphasis on urban regeneration, and as a matter of urgency, re-open the debate with local communities whose very existence is being strangled by the continued development of the Green Belt.

• The Great Bus Pass Lottery

  London's “completely free travel zone” (for those who qualify) are struggling to come to terms with The Great Bus Pass Lottery...

• Regional Gridlock Coming to a Community Near You

  Councils across the length and breadth of England and Wales now know the truth. This Labour Party will stop at nothing to completely reconstitute the current local government structure. Simultaneously, and with almost wilful abandon, it is also pro-actively encouraging hundreds of thousands of new homes, in already overcrowded and often poorly resourced communities.

• What Could Possibly be Going Wrong with Our Society?

  I am convinced that the level of general cleanliness and maintenance in our communities is negatively impacted by three quite separate factors. All three issues need to be addressed, if society is ever going to dramatically improve the situation “on the ground” in our communities.