Inclusive Education

With all the bad weather currently affecting the country, parents are glued to local radio stations listening for the name of their child’s school before heading out on a potential long and perilous journey.  Information about school closures is a potentially patchy affair, with each school contacting a variety of information providers in a bid to inform parents of school closures.

We have therefore decided to construct a central web site at schoolclosures.info to hold national school closure information to provide a single point of reference for parents wanting to know about school INSET/training days, closures due to bad weather or to check holidays – in effect any time a school is closed to pupils.

This also supports schools in delivery of their business continuity procedures by providing another communication medium through which to communicate with parents.

The service is free and there and no plans to introduce any charges for this service.  The site will be fully searchable on the name of the school as well as having the usual facility to browse an entire authority.

If you would like more information, please get in touch at enquiries@schoolclosures.info

Schools and education providers can benefit from an excellent offer from T-Mobile with 12 months pre-pay mobile broadband now costing only £127.65 + VAT (where applicable).

In addition to providing Internet access for remote schools/educational establishments, this offer also allows Traveller and other mobile communities to stay in touch with their base school and to continue their education throughout the travelling period.

More information is available by following this link.

Delays in the issuing of loan payments from the Student Loans Company (SLC) is hitting disabled students with many being unable to afford vital equipment or specialist help for the start of the new academic year.  Conservative estimates is that 80% of the disabled student population is being affected, with Government figures identifying that the SLC have so far distributed £43m less this year than compared to the same time last year despite a rise in the student population, due in part to the current financial situation.

There is currently disagreement over how long it will take to clear the back log, with some campaigners claiming this could be as high as 75 weeks.  Figures obtained from the SLC by the National Association of Disability Practioners show that by last week only 3,294 applications had been fully processed out of 15,371 applications.

The government allocates around £90m every year to disabled students. They can qualify for around £5,000 for equipment, and more than £20,000 to pay for a personal helper. This year the SLC took over the processing of applications, which are complex and require detailed medical evidence.  

A statement issued by the SLC apologising to disabled students caught up in the delays said: “We recognise that the work is more complex than general loan application processing, and so over the last two months we have doubled the size of the team working on the cases.”

The results of an official enquiry into the problem is expected by Christmas.

Not heard of BT Internet Rangers?  You may not know the name, but you may well be familiar with the concept.  This BT sponsored programme promotes intergenerational learning with the pupils taking the role of the teacher/tutor.  Instead of tutoring peer groups or younger students, instead pupils devise and deliver training courses for grandparents.

The BT Internet Rangers site provides pupils with lesson plans, certificates and even example homework to support their learning and has examples of successful schemes from across the UK.

The scheme also provides an incentive to pupils by awarding prizes to the most successful Internet Rangers.

The site doesn’t seem to be regularly updated, but should provide you with a method of starting off a similar scheme in your area.  Get in touch if you’re already taking part or are thinking of taking part and we’ll see whether can set up a support group via the site.

Storybird.com is a graphic intensive and very engaging web site focussed upon bringing together artists and storytellers into a single collaborative environment.  Registration is simple and straightforward, providing personal details and then authenticating your account by responding to a system generated email.

Logging in for the first time, the interface is friendly and easily understood – very picture intensive and intuitive.  Simply choose some artwork that takes your fancy and write your story around that artwork.  Then publish it to the community for people to leave comments or work with people across the globe to add to or tweak the story.

The site is primarily aimed at children between 3 and 13 years of age, with seemingly plenty of protection from any unwelcome attention which such a site may bring.  Collaborators must be invited to take part and join in the project, which ensures that any requests for connections are initiated by the author.

In addition to standard accounts, the system also has special accounts for Artists which allows the setting up of shops and subsequent retail of graphics via the site.

The service is free and shall remain so according to the web site, though premium services are to follow which presumably will be along the lines of Lulu.com – allowing self publishing and printing services.

Even though all of the pre-order sales prices seem to have dried up prior to Thursday’s launch of Windows 7, students can still get a great offer via http://www.microsoft.com/uk/education/studentoffer/

Choose from upgrades to either Windows 7 Home Premium or Professional for only £30.00 including VAT with an optional £9 for the postman to drop a copy of the software through your letter box, assuming there’s no postal strike.

If you choose to download the software, expect a wait of around 60 to 90 minutes based upon the standard speed of a home broadband connection for the 2.2GB download.