11.07.2009

In pictures: Theatres at risk

A look at some of the buildings on the Theatres' Trust at risk register, which lists buildings under threat from ruin and demolition.



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Masters of the classroom?

By Mike Baker

Teacher and whiteboard

Should teaching be a masters-level profession

Would it raise the status of the profession and, more importantly, the quality of teaching if all teachers were required to have a postgraduate qualification

The government clearly thinks so.

Recent announcements have come close to making a postgraduate qualification compulsory.

Schools Secretary Ed Balls, said: "Our aim is that every teacher over time should have the new Masters in Teaching and Learning."

The new qualification, the MTL, is already in preparation.

The government hopes it will become the education equivalent of the MBA - the must-have qualification for all ambitious staff in business and commerce.

New teachers who start their first job this September in north-west England, or in "challenging" schools elsewhere in the country, will be the first cohort eligible for the new postgraduate qualification, with enrolment starting in January 2010.

Scepticism

But is this just another hurdle for teachers to leap

Will it overload newly-qualified teachers in their toughest years in the job, just as they are struggling to cope with maintaining classroom discipline

Judging by teacher blogs there is a lot of scepticism in the country's staffrooms.

They foresee a lot of extra work with little benefit to show for it.

Some of those doubts are shared by leading academics.

Dylan Wiliam, deputy director of the Institute of Education, said he is fearful that the notion of a masters-only profession has been imported from Finland, which is the current Holy Grail of education systems.

He has a phrase for the recent tendency to attempt to transplant key features of successful foreign school systems.

He calls it "policy tourism" and says it is dangerous because models of education work where they are but do not necessarily work elsewhere.

He also argues that there is no research evidence to show that gaining a Masters makes teachers any better at their job.

However, he adds, that is hardly surprising as current Masters degrees in education have not been designed to make teachers better in the classroom.

They are academic exercises, which involve writing dissertations rather than practising teaching methods.

So he believes the MTL could be a success if it is practical and classroom-based with the specific aim of improving teaching.

However, he argues that current approaches to in-service training for teachers do not necessarily inspire confidence.

He has worked out that, in the 20 years since the Education Reform Act, teachers have now each had 100 "Baker days".

He wonders whether there is anything to suggest that all these training days have had much impact on improving teaching.

No pay rise

The Training and Development Agency for Schools has been charged with making the MTL work.

It too believes the new qualification should be practical and school-based.

"The MTL remains a big task for teachers who are in the early years of a new and demanding job"


Mike Baker

Mike Baker

It expects the bulk of the MTL to take place in schools, with new teachers each assigned a more experienced member of staff to be their mentor or coach.

In this way, it hopes that the MTL will be a means of extra support through the tough early years of teaching, rather than an extra burden.

There will be academic input too, with every MTL student assigned a tutor from a university education department.

There is no pay rise for teachers who gain the MTL but, equally, there is no cost either.

Although Masters degrees usually cost several thousand pounds in fees, the MTL will be free.

It is also assumed that teachers will, on average, take three years to complete the MTL, so they can adapt the workload to suit their circumstances.

Nevertheless, the MTL remains a big task for teachers who are in the early years of a new and demanding job.

There is a risk that, although not formally compulsory, the MTL will be seen as essential for any teacher wanting to gain promotion and a higher salary.

Motivation

There is another danger too.

Fashions in teaching methods come and go. Not all are successful.

Usually, though, the damage is limited because not everyone teaches in the same way at the same time, as each generation has been trained in different methods.

There is a risk that certain teaching methodologies will become the pattern for all MTL students.

If all new teachers are being taught the same government-endorsed teaching method, this could become the new orthodoxy, just like the numeracy and literacy hours.

If it works, fine. But if it does not, it could be disastrous, as everyone will be doing the wrong thing.

Hopefully, this will be avoided. The MTL is intended to be as much about teachers reflecting on, and evaluating, their own teaching methods as being taught a particular pedagogy.

It could raise teaching standards. It could raise the motivation and enthusiasm of teachers.

But it will depend on whether teachers feel it is something they have chosen to do, as and when they are ready, rather than feeling under pressure to do it within the first five years of qualifying. 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Google tackled on e-mail security

Log-in screen, BBC

Google has been asked to explain why it is not making its Gmail e-mail service more secure.

In an open letter to Google boss Eric Schmidt, security experts, lawyers, and privacy advocates ask why Gmail users are "needlessly" being put at risk.

The 38 signatories want Google to start using the secure version of the HTTP protocol to protect Gmail users.

In response, Google said it was considering trials of the secure system with a select group of users.

Secure session

"As more of us end up using insecure internet access - such as wi-fi in coffee shops, libraries, and so forth - there's a real risk of session hijacking," said Ben Edelman, a signatory of the letter and assistant professor at Harvard Business School.

When users sign on to Gmail, their login name and password are encrypted as the data passes back and forth using the secure version of HTTP known as HTTPS.

However, said Mr Edelman, this is turned off once sign-on is completed. A similar system works for Google Docs and Calendar.

The risk, he said, was from hi-tech criminals who snoop on the unencrypted data passing back and forth to steal ID files called "session cookies" generated when these applications start being used.

Mr Edelman said that using the cookies could let a criminal pose as a user. In Gmail's case, this could mean they might send e-mails in the owner's name, abuse their identity, change a password, or hijack an account.

Laptop in coffee shop, AP

"It's a frightening prospect," said Mr Edelman.

The open letter pointed out that Google used HTTPS to protect the data of users of its Health and Voice applications.

While Google does make it possible to use HTTPS all the time when signed on to Gmail, Docs, or Calendar the option was so hard to find that few would use it, suggested the letter.

It pointed out that most users retain default options and were likely to be leaving themselves at risk.

"...unless the security issue is well known and salient to consumers, they will not take steps to protect themselves by enabling HTTPS," said the letter.

If Google took the step to turn on HTTPS all the time, the risks would be removed.

In response, Google said it was looking into whether it made sense to use HTTPS all the time in Gmail. But, it said, before it did so it wanted to be sure that the average user experience of Gmail was not markedly changed by turning it on.

It feared that enabling the encryption would slow down response times as data was scrambled and unscrambled on a PC and Google's mail servers.

"We're planning a trial in which we'll move small samples of different types of Gmail users to HTTPS to see what their experience is, and whether it affects the performance of their e-mail," said Google.

Mr Edelman said it was not just Google that was putting users at risk. Every webmail company faced the same problem and should do more to protect the its users .

He said it was a problem that would get more acute as services move towards so called "cloud computing".

"Many of the systems we have built for authentication and session maintenance assume no man-in-the-middle attack," he 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