How To Trick Or Treat

EDUCATION

 

      Alan Milburn – the coalition's child poverty adviser –has criticised the alternative to the EMA, saying the bursary scheme is flawed. Photograph: Dan Chung for the Guardian.

 

      The coalition made "a very bad mistake" when it abolished the education maintenance allowance (EMA) in England aimed at helping poorer 16- to 17-year-olds stay on at school, Alan Milburn, the government's adviser on child poverty and social mobility, tells the Guardian today.

      Before publication of his controversial report into improving access to higher education, Milburn also warns that there is no evidence that money being spent on tuition fee waivers designed to help low-income students at university is "in any way" effective.

      Universities run various waiver schemes but students might have their first year of university paid for by the state if they had been eligible for free school meals. Milburn instead calls for much of the fee waivers money – the budget is due to rise from £94m this year to £261m in 2015/16 – to be transferred to restoring a revised form of the EMA, scrapped in 2010.

      The suggestion is part of a wider assessment of how the government and universities spend nearly £600m to help children from poorer backgrounds attend higher education. Universities are estimated to spend as much as £81m on outreach.

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REDINED

                       

    WHAT IS REDINED?   
  

      Network of Educational Information Databases: Spanish researches, innovations, resources and journals on education, with links to the full text when available.

      Official members of REDINED are the Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport and the Autonomous Communities that have signed the affiliation to the project via their respective Boards.

      The main aim of REDINED is to be a vehicle of communication and exchange of data among the different Autonomous Communities and between them and other bodies, at the national and international scale

       Access to the web, here

DIGITAL CITIZENSHIP

      "Digital citizenship" is an umbrella term that covers a whole host of important issues. Broadly, it's the guidelines for responsible, appropriate behavior when one is using technology. But specifically, it can cover anything from "netiquette" to cyberbullying; technology access and the digital divide; online safety and privacy; copyright, plagiarism, and digital law, and more. In fact, some programs that teach digital citizenship have outlined no less than nine elements that intersect to inform a well-equipped digital citizen. It's an overwhelming array of skills to be taught and topics to explore.

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