Half of pupils finish school without basic science grades: "The figures indicate that more than a decade after the Labour government promised radically to improve state education, there are still a handful of schools in the country where more than 70% of pupils left without the basic qualification of five A*-C GCSEs in any subject.

There are a further 440 secondaries where fewer than 30% got five good GCSEs including the vitally important English and maths. Those schools will now be put into an intensive improvement programme, or face closure."

# Posted by steve hooker at 14/1/09; 3:53:12 PM to the Education news dept.
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Education not for all

Lord Carter drops 'broadband for all' hint ahead of Digital Britain report: "Lord Carter has today hinted that his forthcoming vision for Digital Britain will include a promise to get broadband to everyone in the UK and that the government may have a financial role to play in the rollout of the next generation of superfast internet networks."

The deeper this recession seems to go the more socialist agendas become! Excellent.

# Posted by steve hooker at 14/1/09; 3:51:43 PM to the Education news dept.
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Broadband for all

One school is having some troubles with the concept of members and editors. Editors are powerful, super members. God like.

Members are ordinary plebs.

Then below them are non-members, just surfers who visit the site and we know very little about them.

If some one joins up, all by themselves, they can only become members. You wouldn't want it any other way :-) However, you can bump up these members to an editor. Go to /stats/members to first find their email address. You can only see it if you're logged in as a Managing Editor. Copy that email address.

Go to Editors only: ==> Prefs ==> Editorial ==> Managing Editors and paste the email address into the box, with the others that are already there. Submit and they're bumped up. Next time they login or reload they'll get the mystical pink buttons.

To join members and editors yourself, which is the best way to do it, go to Editors only: ==> Admin ==> Membership. There you can join one individually—good if you know what password they want and their first name. Or, bulk add members/editors in the bigger box. This isn't so hot as all you need to add is a list of email addreses. No name, no password, these are generated for you. Emails are sent out to each member/editor and to the main editor informing them of what email address and what password was used.

Or, as usual, and as in tomorrow's already booked mini howto phone call we'll do it together over the phone.

If you've lots of children to join up, read this, long explanation and tip sheet.
# Posted by steve hooker at 14/1/09; 12:57:50 PM to the How tos dept.
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Members and editors

Text messages to fight knife crime at school: "Pupils will be able to text a police hotline if they have seen a classmate carrying a knife from today.They will be able to make an anonymous police report by texting 88551 with the name, or nickname, of the pupil, the school they go to, the school year the pupil is in and the school's postcode."

# Posted by steve hooker at 14/1/09; 12:41:14 PM to the Psychology dept.
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No knives!