TED WRAGG TRIBUTES

Sad news to hear that Ted Wragg, Emeritus Professor of Education at Exeter University, writer, broadcaster, and thorn in the side of successive governments, has died aged 67.
The Press Association received many phone calls and tributes from leading figures in the education world all wanting to share their memories.
Here is a selection. Feel free to add your own...

:: Ruth Kelly, education secretary, was known in Prof Wragg's numerous newspaper columns as "The Duchess of Drivel" or "Ruth Dalek". But she paid him warm tribute yesterday.
“His tremendous passion, knowledge and wit drawn from a working life dedicated to teaching meant his contribution to the profession was immense and his views could never be ignored,” she said.
"He taught at all levels from primary and secondary schools right through to university and held important educational board and advisory roles that gave him considerable insight.
“He will be greatly missed by everyone involved in education and beyond.”

:: Shadow education secretary David Cameron said: “Ted Wragg made an enormous contribution to the education debate in the UK throughout his distinguished career.
“Often controversial but always of interest, his views have inspired and provoked in equal measure.
“He was one of the educational establishment’s most enduring and prolific thinkers.”

:: Liberal Democrat education spokesman Edward Davey: "This is a huge shock to everyone in education. His thoughts will be missed in the education debates ahead of us. Yet he leaves a huge legacy of work which people will be quoting from for years to come."

:: David Butler, from the National Confederation of PTAs: "It is with great sadness we hear of the sudden death of Ted Wragg.
"Whilst being a great champion of teachers he always found the time to listen to parents and appreciate their views.
"Ted's death leaves a gap in the education world no one can fill he was unique or sympathies are
with his beloved wife and their family."

:: John Dunford, general secretary of the Secondary Heads Association, phoned us wanting to make a comment.
He said: “He was unique in his ability to cut through all the nonsense that teachers have had to put up with for many years.
“He is irreplaceable in the depth of his knowledge about teaching and about education.”

:: Mick Brookes, general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers: “NAHT collectively will mourn the passing of Ted Wragg, his scathing wit and his passion for educational issues. He will be sadly missed in the education world, not least by our members.”

:: Steve Sinnott, NUT general secretary, said: “Ted Wragg will be sorely missed.
“He was a champion of teachers, a champion of children and a champion of the education service.
“He towered over education for the last 30 years, seeking always to promote the interests of every single child and to support teachers in their efforts to provide the best education possible.
“He was never cowed by any politician, always keeping his sense of humour and perspective. He is a tremendous loss.”

:: Ken Boston, chief executive of the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority: “Ted Wragg was a giant of a man as an educator.
“Ted spoke with a great authenticity, as a man who had his roots in the classroom.
“I have never come across someone with such a rich understanding of classrooms and children. “His influence on education in this country will last for many years. I will miss him greatly.”

It is also well worth checking out the Guardian's education web site (http://education.guardian.co.uk/) and searching for some of his old columns for a sense of the man's wit and his willingness to lay into what he saw as daft ideas from teenagers in the Number 10 policy unit.
The BBC News education web site also recorded numerous personal tributes (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/4424628.stm).

LIBRARIANS HELD IN DAWN POLICE SWOOPS

Podcast of this post available for download
Armed police will storm the homes of innocent librarians in pre-dawn raids under the Government’s anti-terror plans.
While undergraduates sleep, their tutors will be awake, sweating over the wording of lectures on Middle Eastern history, desperately trying to avoid any phrase or footnote that could amount to “glorifying terrorism”.
And chemists will be forced to keep their hands firmly in the pockets of their lab coats to escape arrest for training terrorists in how to make “noxious substances”.
In short, the Terrorism Bill currently passing through Parliament will suffocate the freedom of thought and speech which forms the oxygen essential to academic life.
At least that is the scenario currently concerning vice-chancellors across the land.
Umbrella group Universities UK raised the spectre of such a police state-in-waiting at a press conference in the University of London’s Senate House building yesterday (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/4415520.stm).
The venue could not have been more fitting. George Orwell apparently used the monolithic white pyramid which towers over Bloomsbury as a model for his horrifying Ministry of Truth in 1984.
In Orwell’s classic novel, a young girl betrays her own father to the Thought Police.
Under the Terrorism Bill, lecturers will face jail at the hands of their own students.
A “climate of suspicion” will cast a chill over campus life across the country, according to Universities UK president Professor Drummond Bone.
Many will no doubt scoff at such suggestions. But bear in mind the American experience.
In the aftermath of September 11, the Bush administration pushed through equally controversial anti-terror laws in the form of the Patriot Act.
Reports quickly followed of abuses of civil liberties in the land of the free - innocent students found themselves the target of unwanted attention from the FBI for no reason other than their library borrowing habits.
In light of such reports from the US, Professor Bone’s predictions look less far fetched.
But there is another, much more serious problem with his argument.
The late Anthony Sampson, in his compelling Anatomy of Britain in the 21st Century, argued that the wise men of academe had long since lost their influence.
More worryingly, he wrote, they have now lost the freedom to follow their own noses in research, as funding constraints and publication deadlines tighten their grip.
Once a vital counterbalance to the heavyweights of Whitehall and Westminster, academia is now a sad, withered thing, unequal to the vital task of shaping the course of society, Sampson argued. He was not alone in his concerns.
One government adviser - and vice-chancellor of a leading university - told me that the days when academics could study what they liked as long as their research was good were now well and truly over. And quite right too, he added.
So Professor Bone’s warning that academic freedom is under threat has come too late.
Universities were evicted from their ivory towers and dragged into the Ministry of Truth long ago.

:: Should academics stop worrying about losing something that has already slipped away and get serious about the tough action that’s required to stop terrorism? Post a comment here...

BLAIR'S EDUCATION LEGACY

According to the papers this morning the Prime Minister is fast losing his grip on power. What does this mean for his plans for schools?
Tony Blair and his Education Secretary published a White Paper last week promising a new breed of privately backed Trust Schools and sweeping new powers for parents.
Already it seems their plans are in for a rough ride from unions and Labour backbenchers unhappy with what some see as moves to revive that old Tory policy of Grant Maintained Schools - “opting out”.
And this was graphically illustrated during heated exchanges at an Education Select Committee meeting in Parliament yesterday.
Somewhat distractingly, it took place in the room next door to the cancelled Work and Pensions Committee, which marked the first signs that David Blunkett was about to leave via the Cabinet’s revolving door once again.
In the resulting media coverage, the Education Committee proceedings were drowned out by the noise of journalists chasing Mr Blunkett round Portcullis House and the loud predictions of the beginning of the end for Mr Blair.
But to those who were there, the exchanges revealed just how deep Labour opposition to the Schools White Paper runs, as MPs grilled Ruth Kelly over the plans.
Barnsley MP Jeff Ennis told Ms Kelly the good ideas in the White Paper could be achieved without "the rigmarole" of turning secondaries into Trust Schools.
And Helen Jones, Labour's member for Warrington North, challenged her argument that Trust Schools would work because they would enjoy the same freedoms as City Academies.
What was so good about Academies? she asked.Their exam results are "patchy" and according to the DfES's own figures they're turning their backs on the very children they were apparently set up to help: those coming from poor families in the most deprived parts of the country.
Of course Ms Kelly rejected these criticisms and produced her own figures which suggested Academies were teaching plenty of children who receive free school meals (a key indicator of poverty).
But the Schools Bill, when it comes, is unlikely even to come close to defeat in the Commons, however much Labour politicians, local councils, John Prescott and teachers' unions hate the plans.
For the Tories are set to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Mr Blair just when he needs them most. After all, Grant Maintained Schools were their idea, and if they can't win an election to get the policies they want, they feel they may as well make the most of having friends in high places.
Even if the eventual Bill is passed, however, it may still fail to give Mr Blair the schools legacy he so badly wants.
The White Paper leaves it up to individual schools to decide whether they become trusts. And heads have already suggested that they will exercise their “choice” - and simply ignore the idea.