Crisis of childhood. A critique of the Children’s Plan

 
 
Richard Murgatroyd and Martin Allen
 
Morning Star  04/01/08
 
 
New Labour’s recently published Children’s Plan sets itself the modest target of making Britain the “best place in the world to grow up.” Unfortunately, the mixture of good intentions, technocratic changes and small-scale reforms on offer don’t add up to sort of radical vision that is needed to tackle the growing [...]

Functional for who? A quick assessment of the new functional skills

Martin Allen   
Post-16 Educator  March-April 2008

‘Functional skills’ are being piloted in 1000 schools and colleges. Part of the Tomlinson working group proposals for 14-19 education, their introduction is a response to demands from employer representative for higher standards in literacy and numeracy amongst young people. Completing functional skills will be a necessary requirement for moving on [...]