Welsh Blogs.com

Today the High Court awarded victory to Sarika Singh, a Sikh schoolgirl, who was excluded from school for wearing a religious bangle. The human rights group Liberty, representing 14-year-old Sarika Singh, successfully argued that Aberdare Girls’ School breached race relations and equality laws by excluding her since November 2007 for wearing the kara (a plain single bangle widely accepted as a central tenet of the Sikh race and religion). Sarika Singh, of mixed Welsh/Punjabi origin, has been raised in the Sikh faith and was the only Sikh at the Aberdare Girls’ School. The school’s uniform policy prohibits the wearing of any jewellery other than a wrist watch and plain ear studs. When the school noticed that Singh was wearing the kara, she was isolated for two months, including...

Move over Rhys Cycle… here are a couple of singing and dancing worms and bugs who know a thing or two about composting. YouTube Linkvideo link...

Sport banned in Cool Brittania...I couldn't help comparing the energy, the vibrancy, the camaraderie with another event I attended: a non-competitive team morning at a primary school. Emphatically this was not a sports day: sport, for the head teacher, needed to be eradicated in all its forms, as pernicious an evil as sexism and racism. Sport represented competition at its most corrupting: trying to beat someone else at games was, to this head, morally indefensible.And so the children were obliged to stand in line, hanging around waiting to do things like tip water into a bucket or sort plastic bricks into colour-coded lines. Running was banned (someone might hurt himself) and winning didn't happen.**Wow, tip water into a bucket. Now that will really teach them "life skills" that they...

Congratulations to CILIP's Information Literacy Group (ILG) (as reported in the March Update 6(3) and the Information Literacy Blog) on their success in persuading the DfES that the school curriculum in England needs to incorporate effective information literacy training when changes are made in 2008-9.The Update article (page 3) goes on to report that: "DfES Deputy Director for Curriculum Julie Bramman has since notified the Training Development Agency, with the implication that the ILG will help develop training materials for teachers, as well as pupils.">>Technorati tags: CILIP; DfES; informationliteracy; education; curriculum; teacher_training>>IceRocket tags: CILIP; DfES; informationliteracy; education; curriculum;...

Over on the Croydonian blog there's an 'epic undertaking' going on to work out what each and every MP did before entering parliament. They expect to find that almost everyone in the Commons has at some time practiced law. What a wonderfully diverse bunch.But what about the Senedd? Is that brimming with barristers too? Well, no. The professional breakdown of the Assembly is a rather nice little indicator of quite how different the place is from the whips and wigs of Westminster. One in three Assembly Members formerly worked in the education sector: 14 in schools or further education colleges and six as lecturers. No wonder plenary sessions often take on an unbearably preachy quality. I also found some basis for the accusation that the Assembly is no more than a glorified council meeting:...

Over on the Croydonian blog there's an 'epic undertaking' going on to work out what each and every MP did before entering parliament. They expect to find that almost everyone in the Commons has at some time practiced law. What a wonderfully diverse bunch.But what about the Senedd? Is that brimming with barristers too? Well, no. The professional breakdown of the Assembly is a rather nice little indicator of quite how different the place is from the whips and wigs of Westminster. One in three Assembly Members formerly worked in the education sector: 14 in schools or further education colleges and six as lecturers. No wonder plenary sessions often take on an unbearably preachy quality. There are rumours that AMs have to raise their hands to speak and even ask the presiding officer's...

Ar hyn o bryd mae Gynogr Dinas Casnewydd yn cynnal Ymgynghoriad Cyhoeddus ar Gynllun Addysg Gymraeg (Drafft) [PDF]. Mae'n edrych yn addawol, gyda sôn am ail ysgol gynradd i wasanethu ochr dwyreiniol y ddinas, ac hefyd byddant yn edrych ar y galw am ysgol uwchradd o fewn y sir.Ar hyn o bryd, dim ond 50% o blant sy'n mynychu cylchoedd meithrin Cymraeg yn y ddinas sy'n mynd ymlaen i ysgol cynradd Cymraeg. Y gobaith yw cynyddu hyn i o leiaf 60%.Ar hyn bryd mae 360 o ddigyblion yn ysgol Ysgol Gynradd Cymraeg Casnewydd. Mae 276 o ddisgyblion Ysgol Uwchradd Gwynllyw (sef 30%) yn dod o sir Casnewydd. Y dyddiad cau ar gyfer sylwadau yw 16eg o Chwefror 2007. Mae'r cyngor wedi derbyn un ymateb hirfaith yn gwrthwynebu'r Cynllun - os hoffech weld y Gymraeg yn ffynnu yng Nghasnewydd, addysg...

In a BBC Panorama programme to be shown this evening in the UK, presenter Jeremy Vine asks the minister for police and security, Tony McNulty, his advice for what an individual should do when faced with a young man first aggressively shouting at an old woman in the street, and then beating her up. The minister replies we should phone the police and, while waiting for them to arrive, attempt to distract the violent thug by jumping up and down. The adult who attempts to put a stop to destructive or delinquent activity among local thuglets will face the immediate danger of being attacked by the thuglets or by their vengeful and unapologetic parents, and the later one of being charged with assault There was a time, within living memory, when virtually all self-respecting members of society...

In its most recent assessment, British 14-year-olds were out-performed by their contemporaries in 17 other countries. The average score in Singapore was 605, in Korea 589 and Hong Kong 586. In England and Scotland it was 498. In Western Europe, only Norwegians and Italians did worse. Niall Fergusson, Are we too thick to realise the world isn’t flat?,......

The Sun thought it had the Lib Dems by the balls yesterday after it apparently caught the respective education spokespeople in England and Wales singing from different hymn sheets over extending the school age.Sarah Teather (in Westminster) said, "I welcome this important reform as a constructive proposal from Alan Johnson," while our own Peter Black said, "This sort of compulsion will just cause resentment and disaffection amongst youngsters who are ready to leave school."The Lib Dem defence was that Sarah and Peter were indeed singing from different hymn sheets, but since hymn sheets are a devolved issue it is perfectly acceptable for different ones to be used in England and Wales.This is much the same as the Tories' excuse for their divergent views on top-up fees. David Cameron has...

At a dinner in Westminster this week I met a Welsh language journalist whose academic career was almost the exact mirror of mine: same high school, same Cambridge college, same Japanese university, then returning to take the same course in Cardiff. Truly bizarre.It was all the more odd, we noted, given that our school gave us no help whatsoever in getting a place at Oxbridge, the factor which kickstarted those other opportunities. In fact, the culture in our Welsh language school towards Oxbridge was positively negative.I'd even say that, within the Welsh language community, there's a degree of antipathy towards English universities in general.Look no further than Plaid Cymru's election pledge to help students pay off their graduate debt if they work in Wales. The catch is they must...

Karen Buck, a former transport minister, said she will move her son, aged 12, to a local comprehensive after one term at the Paddington Academy. Ms Buck said the teaching facilities and accommodation were “appalling”. So the parent - and she has a lot to loose as Labour MP withdrawing her child from a flagship Labour schools programme - says the eaching facilities and accommodation were appalling. What does the DoE say? The Department for Education and Skills said the academy had made a “sound start” in difficult circumstances. According to recent BBC Newsnight documentary, the school’s toilets were an alleged health hazard, fewer than half the school’s computers worked, rubbish was dumped on the premises and graffiti was written on the school...

The former head of John Major's policy unit says the comprehensive school system isn't working:Lord Blackwell argues that all children – and particularly those from poorer backgrounds – would benefit from a selective system. For recent research has shown that those few able children from poorer backgrounds who do attend grammar schools today do exceptionally well. Yet the vast majority of bright children in the 76% of LEAs without grammar schools have no or little chance of going to a selective school. Shock...

Agored, a new free office software suite has been launched by Culture Minister Alun Pugh. The suite, a Welsh and English dual-language version of the OpenOffice suite used worldwide, has been developed over the past two years at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth. Agored represents a major investment by the Welsh Assembly Government, S4C and the Welsh Language Board in the provision of a comprehensive office suite functional in both English and Welsh. Most significantly, Agored is free of charge! Whatever your purpose – domestic, educational, governmental, or commercial – you can download a complete and legal copy of the Agored today from www.agored.com. Take Agored for a ‘test drive’: if you like it, keep the keys! “Agored is going to be an extremely useful tool to many...

Assembly Minister Jane Hutt was a keynote speaker at the ‘Inter-Faith Meal’ organised by the Chaplaincy to the University of Glamorgan this week. The meal was shared by members of staff, students and guests of different faiths from the wider community. Vice-Chancellor of the University Prof David Halton said, “The University is proud to welcome students and staff from many nationalities and cultures, and of the contribution this makes to its work and to diversity in the local community. We value and encourage the contribution which the different faiths communities make in this University and recognise their part in the equipping of individuals to develop into mature contributors to society as a whole”. Jane Hutt, Minister for Assembly Business, Equality and Children said, “I was...

"Negroponte says that the first working models, so-called B machines, will come off the assembly line in November, after which they'll be put through a torture course of testing in five developing countries--Brazil, Argentina, Libya, Thailand, and Nigeria--to see how they hold up. And even if they do work, the task of persuading governments to buy them still remains. Negroponte has made real progress on this front. In October, Libya signed a memorandum of understanding that effectively commits it to buying a million laptops, assuming the B machines pass their tests, and the other four test nations seem nearly as likely to sign up if the machines work as planned. But five million laptops is, by OLPC's self-defined standards, just a start."Interesting (if a little fawning) article to be...

I have been thinking for a while that blogs could be used pretty effectively to show the process of art in the making. I came across this today on bb, and although I can't say I'm crazy about the subject matter (yeah, go on, call me a humourless feminist and then go watch this.) I think it's really cool to see the the work in the making.I was pretty impressed with ArtisanCam when I came across it about a year ago. Back then it was a lot less polished and was in the process of featuring it's second maker. I though there would only be a small number of artists that would be happy to work with a webcam trained on them in their studio. Going back to ArtisanCam now I find that I really prefer the paintblog entry as a model, because though it lacks polish it also lacks a third party mediating...

I have been revisiting my past this weekend. I was forced to perform a cull on my 'big box of computer stuff' that lives under the bed. During the process I came across a couple of floppy disks circa 1993. On one desk was unreadable and labeled 'dissertation'(I already new in my heart that I lost the digital copy having tried it out in other PCs and heard the drives go crazy).The other disk was labeled 'mydis / report'. I am working my way through those files this weekend. A lot of them are corrupt, but there are also a number of intact files, they mostly seem to be notes that never made it into the dissertation. (which I recently dusted off and scanned as a PDF, available here) .The writing is pretty patchy and many of them come to screeching halts or just kind of trail off... but after...

A while ago I came across her Draft Craft Manifesto and was impressed enough to pass it on to B who riffed off it in her second cast-on show. For some reason it popped back in my mind a couple of days ago and I googled Ulla-Maaria Mutanen and found a link on her blog to Thinglink. It peeked my interest, but I didn't entirely 'get' it.Then I found a video on Google and decided to give it a whirl for some of my paintings. So.if you want to know anything about Thing:093UWW, Thing:645BJT, or even Thing:546ZCW (or any other of my registered things, you can because they now all have their own little homepages.What's the point? Well, until there is a way of searching for 'Things' on Google, not a lot. I can't see myself putting a sticker on the back of the paintings, (I'm more your...

I was reading ‘Little Chicken’s’ post on Find a place in the party. And not for the first time, she has inspired me to post. I post on here and I post a fair bit. But I do, however, hold back on the more political postings. Mainly due to the fact that I know that people who are, lets say, much more politically mature than I am. I’m not calling anyone old but mature, been involved a lot longer than me. Sometimes, I fear to post because I don’t know what I’m talking about. Sometimes I will read up and then post, hoping for a comment. I understand that as soon as I open my mouth with an opinion there is always someone who disagrees with you. But, there is having a different opinion and not having all the facts. This was the main reason I join, Labour, Amicus...

Well, duh… how did I miss these until now. Webcast and podcast courses from Berkley, from Art 23 - Foundations of American Cyberculture to Psych 130 - Clinical Psychology. Index of courses here. berkley...

Ex-NUT President John Illingworth: Probably a third of you and a third of our members will experience mental illness at some time Here’s why John thinks he was under so much strain: I tried as a primary head to lead my school in a way that was consistent with NUT principles, resisting imposition of initiatives by Tories and New Labour That’s a bit clearer. I’m not sure I can think of any other job where a senior employee could deliberately work against the clear and legal policies of his employer without being sacked. What gave John here the idea it was fine - though difficult, apparently - to take direction from his union rather than the people who pay his salary I can’t imagine....