higher McLearning

Amazing, now you can even get your A-level at McDonald’s, cf. “McDonald’s and other big businesses will award their own qualifications equal to GCSEs, A levels and degrees, in subjects such as fast-food restaurant management, the Government will announce today.

Network Rail, Flybe and McDonald’s will become the first companies to be given such powers by the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA). Gordon Brown will announce the move today as he seeks to regain the initiative over the issue of the unskilled unemployed from the Conservatives. “

quoted from: The Times

attend school, get cell phone …

… or is it vice versa? Well, students in New York will get free phones, with a lot more perks added, to improve their attendance rates:

“Here’s the plan: in January about 15,000 middle-schoolers from high-poverty neighborhoods will be given free cell phones. Through those phones kids will then receive taped—and perhaps even personal—messages from entertainment and sports celebrities reminding them to try their best in class. They’ll be able to download “interviews” with well-to-do men and women who work as dentists, technicians, scientists and accountants and who will discuss the way they parlayed school success into financial security. Teachers will also use the phones to remind pupils about upcoming tests or an overdue homework assignment. When individuals or groups of kids improve their attendance, up their grades or display good citizenship in school, they’ll be rewarded with free minutes on their phones and tickets to shows and sporting events. Kids who get phones will also be assigned mentors.”

for more, see Newsweek

Big Brother in British schools?

A school in Doncaster is trying out a scheme to track students’ movement with RFID chips woven into their school uniforms, according to a report in the BBC online news service. And the scheme even provides for the pupils’ academic records to be stored on these chips.

Sounds definitely Orwellian, doesn’t it?