Author Archives: Hilary
Making The Most Of Daylight Saving: Research On British Summer Time
British Summer Time begins at 2 a.m. on Sunday 25th March this year (2007). Surveys suggest that both safety and energy saving would ensue from BST year-round, and a large majority of people will welcome the lighter evenings. But why have we just had to endure five months of days which end before the afternoon teabreak?
The evidence becomes ever more compelling…. As the Transport Research Laboratory has demonstrated over many years, British Summer Time is indeed best for almost all of us.
There are inevitably risks in any change, but sometimes the biggest risk lies in Doing Nothing. That’s what applies to the odd practice of reducing afternoon daylight (in favour of ‘lighter mornings’) at the very point in the year when there is already least of it.
The 1968 – 71 ‘experiment’
The oft-recycled stories about children ‘hating’ having to wear fluorescent jackets because of the super-dangerous mornings during the ‘experiment’ of 1968 – 71 are selective recall, I’d suggest. I don’t think I ever saw one child so clad.
But the debate goes on. And recently, as the TheyWorkForYou.com website admirably demonstrates, Tim Yeo MP has been proposing Single / Double Summer Time, which has incensed some even more.
The Scottish dimension
We know of course that there are people in Scotland who would prefer to keep the status quo, regardless of the proven greater overall risks of accidents, depression and poor health, but with devolved government, as Tim Yeo and before him Lord Tanlaw acknowledged, these can surely be addressed by those most involved.
But even in Scotland opinion is divided and the evidence for the status quo doesn’t fully stack up (unless Scottish cows have learnt to tell the time and will rumble their herdsman adjusting
the alarm clock to keep their bovine stock’s milking hours stable…).
The evidence
As Tim Yeo and Lord Tanlaw have emphasised, even in Scotland there are plenty of people who would prefer the lighter evenings, whilst YouGov have found (December 2006) that 51% of workers feel less safe travelling home in the dark, with 71% of women saying the dark makes them feel uncertain and worried.
Likewise, when Victor Keegan ran a campaign a few months ago, he easily achieved his objective of 50 people asking their MPs to support Tim Yeo’s bill. On energy saving grounds alone there are compelling reasons to suppose we should abandon British Mean Time. A majority of those voting supported it, but Tim Yeo’s non-party Bill fell on 26 January
2007 because it did not gain more than one hundred votes.
Another way forward?
So what’s holding things up? There are rather feeble claims (see TheyWorkForYou.com, as above) that an experiment in Portugal was not successful, but perhaps political nervousness about Scottish issues is, short-term, at the heart of the matter.
There is, however, a very simple and easy way to resolve things once and for all. Why not actually undertake a serious Government-led enquiry into all the evidence available, on energy, accidents, health, business and other impacts, examining England (and Wales and Northern Ireland) separately from Scotland?
And let’s ask for the report to be produced by Sunday 28 October 2007, before the next grim return to Winter darkness, when
British Summer Time is due to end. This, it seems to me, is a genuinely good example of when policy can indeed be informed by best practice in natural and social scientific research.
It really does need to be done, and soon.
The full debate about BST is in the section of this website entitled BST: British Summer Time & ‘Daylight Saving’ (The Clocks Go Back & Forward)…..
See also:
Save Our Daylight: Victor Keegan’s Pledge Petition
The Clocks Go Forward…And Back… And Forward…
British Summer Time Draws To A Close
Time Is Energy (And ‘Clocks Forward’ Daylight Uses Less)
The Clocks Go Forward … But Why, Back Again?
Read the discussion of this article which follows the book E-store…
The Cost Of Childcare: Women’s Work And Women’s Wages
Pre-school childcare is generally regarded as expensive. Even with government financial support, it stretches many household budgets. But there are now many more childcare places than hitherto. More places and higher costs, properly handled, may together be a longer-term sign of better status for women in the labour market.
The cost of pre-school childcare, we are constantly reminded, is ‘spiralling’ – highest, as ever, in London, and lowest in the north-west of England. The Daycare Trust tells us that the average cost of a full-time nursery place for under-twos is now (as of January 2007) £152 a week in England, and £131 in Wales. With individual average earnings at £447 a week, this is a hefty chunk out of some household budgets.
Early years support
Few would deny, however, that the government is doing its best to provide quality care for pre-school children. Welcoming recent developments, Alison Garnham, joint Chief Executive of the Daycare Trust called on the Government, as well as other political parties, to deliver the Ten Year Childcare Strategy:
‘At long last we have a government that is committed to making
progress in childcare facilities in this country. When New Labour came to power they faced major challenges in delivering high quality and affordable childcare to all families and we welcome wholeheartedly the improvements that have been made under the Ten Year Strategy.‘
Big changes from the past
Long gone is the grim time when finding childcare was an individual (mother)’s nightmare, relying only on a hunch and perhaps a local health visitor – who probably didn’t ‘approve’ of working mums – in the exhausting search for someone reliable to care for one’s children whilst the money to feed them was earned.
In 2007, Sure Start is metamorphosing into Children’s Centres,
and the tax credit system – to the daily tune of more than £2m for almost 400,000 families – helps many parents, as do tax-relief childcare vouchers (now up to age 12); and three- and four-year olds are entitled to 12.5 hours of free nursery education a week. In London, there is also a Childcare Affordability Programme which subsidises the cost of childcare by up to £30 for eligible parents.
Direct costs are up
Nonetheless, parents in the UK pay about 70% of the costs of childcare, compared to an average of about 30% for other European parents. (Where, of course, childcare patterns are sometimes very different.) And costs have risen more quickly than inflation – almost 6% in 2006, against inflation of less than half this.
Alongside this, there are reports that affordable childcare is
difficult to find in many areas.
Not all bad news
I have three takes on this situation:
There is the individual problem for parents who find it hard to fund good childcare; there is the opportunity for business-minded child carers at last to earn a decent living; and there is a shift in the labour market which, longer-term, may well serve everyone well.
Parents’ stretched budgets
First, I have every sympathy with parents who struggle to make ends meet and find the costs of ‘quality’ childcare so difficult. Raising young families is always a challenge and it is crucial that every possible support is given to parents in their efforts to do this responsibly and well.
It’s very important from every perspective that parents – including, but not only, single parents – and their children receive all the help which can be mustered by their communities, employers, and the government.
Childcare entrepreneurs
Second, this situation is by no means bad news for those entrepreneurs – almost all of them women – who see a childcare market opportunity and grasp it.
Childcare providers, at least in Britain, has traditionally been appallingly badly paid. It is about time that this changed. These days many people are concerned about the quality of what they eat. If there is now a public debate also about the quality of care for their children, this can only be to the good.
The market will rise to the opportunity; but, just as with quality food, provision may not always be cheap. (Though expense is not always the issue: sometimes it’s actually organising the right thing which is the problem. Neither home-grown food nor local, small-scale quality childcare need be so very expensive.)
The labour market
Finally, if I were a feminist economist (assuming such persons consciously exist), I would be pleased about the current scenario.
It is likely that most of those who are pushing for higher wages in response to childcare costs will be women. By the logic of the market this demand will have to be addressed and to some extent met.
And a corollary, given only finite amounts of available money,
may well be a market shift towards more equality of income between women and men. If women demand more pay, male employees (or indeed their managers / shareholding employers) will have to give way to a degree at least – especially as women are increasingly vital to the workforce, now often taking the field in terms of qualifications (sometimes gained whilst their little ones are receiving childcare) and skills.
Courage in transition
It’s a long, hard struggle, this childcare – equality scenario. But things overall are already better than they were, and the likelihood is that more pressure, higher expectations and political will together really can make a difference.
The Government’s Every Child Matters programme can of course be improved as experience in ‘how to do it’ is gained in
communities and by decision-makers. Potential for improvements in childcare is however a positive, never a negative. The Government must keep its nerve.
The debates about affordability and quality in early years provision are welcome signs that every child does indeed ‘matter’, and that, slowly, the economy is adjusting to recognise just that.
Policy-Related Scientific Research In Context
Avian influenza (‘bird flu’) has again made us aware of the scientific research which underpins government policy. Some have great faith in this science, others have none. Our growing understandings of how scientific research and public policy inter-relate can however help inform both science itself, and how political / policy decisions might be taken in real life.
Avian influenza has provoked quite a debate in The Guardian about how science and politics inter-relate.
Recent contributors to this debate include Erik Millstone and Simon Jenkins, who are right to raise the issue of scientific advice to the Government in respect of avian influenza – just as Ministers are right to take this advice seriously.
But in reality there is no such thing as ‘pure’ scientific research. All research, whether ‘natural’ or ‘social’, is predicated on often taken-for-granted understandings of context.
However inadvertently, therefore, the gap between scientific advice and policy / politic, whether in the case of avian influenza or any other issue, is wide not as Prof Millstone and Mr Jenkins might in different ways seem to suggest.
The questions underpin the research
Scientific advice arises from scientific research questions, and scientific research tends to be structured largely around ‘received’ understandings of the issues involved – including, inevitably, contexts of those issues.
In other words, natural scientists, as non-experts in matters socio-economic, will tend, if unchallenged, towards uncritical acceptance of the status quo or predominant contextual view of the situation in the same way as any other ‘person in the street’.
It is not surprising therefore that science, in selecting which techno-scientific issues to address, has in the past often focused on the interests of the most collectively powerful and visible operators.
Socio-economic impact and policy
This is now changing as questions about socio-economic impact are, rightly, articulated more loudly.
It is encouraging that Government politicians and policy-makers are beginning to recognise the critical importance of framing scientific research, from its inception, around contextual as well as ‘purely’ scientific questions.
Articulating these wider understandings better from the inception of any piece of research is the way to ensure that scientific advice can best inform political decision-making. And doing this certainly does not diminish the robustness of scientific endeavour; rather the converse.
Scientific and poltical responsibility shared
The selection of ways forward in policy is ultimately a political responsibility; but making sure that ‘scientific’
questions acknowledge the whole spectrum of contextual interests is a responsibility which, thankfully, scientists advising decision-makers are themselves increasingly aware that they must share.
A version of this posting was published on The Guardian letters page of 17 February 2007.
Further commentary follows the e-bookshop.
International Mother Language Day
Today is International Mother Language Day. Celebrated for the first time in the Millennium Year, it is a programme promoted by UNESCO, the 2007 theme being multilingualism.
But why is it important?
The promotion of multilingualism lies at the heart of International Mother Language Day. Introduced in 2000 by UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, 21 February is the day in the year when we are asked to recognise the uniqueness and significance of the 6,000 languages known to humankind.
In doing this however UNESCO has not set itself against the grain of ‘progress’, for the other emphasis on this date is acknowledgement of the value of shared language, of the ability to communicate in more than simply one’s own mother tongue.
Powerful instruments
UNESCO offers a strong rationale for its promotion of mother languages and multilingualism.
These are, it says, ‘the most powerful instruments of preserving
and developing our tangible and intangible heritage…. [helping us to develop a] fuller awareness of linguistic traditions across the world and to inspire solidarity based on understanding, tolerance and dialogue.’
Linguapax
A corollary of this approach is the on-going (since 1986) UNESCO Lingupax project, which aims to promote a ‘culture of peace’ through the promotion of multilingual education and respect for linguistic diversity.
In that respect it seems sensible that people resident in a country learn to speak its main, official language/s, that they are also encouraged to respect and use the language of their immediate culture, and that schools offer those who wish it the opportunity to learn languages which may be culturally and geographically far
removed from immediate experience.
Idealistic but important
Idealistic and architypically platitudinous these notions may be….. but who could deny the truths behind them?
The need to talk meaningfully and insightfully with one another has surely never been more pressing.
BRCs: The Science Golden Triangle Wins Again
England’s Northern Universities are upset that the Biomedical Research Centres (BRCs) of excellence are all in the ‘Golden Triangle’ of Oxford, Cambridge and London. ‘Added value’ economic impact has been sidelined. With intimations of southern advantage and selective assessment perspectives, is this a re-run of the 4GLS synchrotron debate on location in the ‘north’ or ‘south’?
Prof Alan Gilbert, Vice-Chancellor of Manchester University, is championing medical science in England’s northern universities, after his institution was not selected as a comprehensive biomedical research centre of excellence (BRC). This accolade, worth 8-figure sums to each institution, has been awarded only to universities in Oxford, Cambridge and London.
Once again, the Golden Triangle has triumphed over everywhere else in England.
And once again the southern economy hots up as northern sensitivities are similarly inflamed.
Who decides?
The decision to support only Golden Triangle universities was made by the Department of Health / NHS National Institute for Health Research
(NIRH) high command, on the basis of assessment by a panel of experts working outside England of the international excellence of medical science in the competing universities.
This panel does not seem to have laid much emphasis on the impact of macro-investment in the knowledge economy on regional economies as such.
History repeats itself
So here we go again.
More science money is being invested where money has already gone. Comparatively less is made available where investment has historically been more difficult to obtain.
When the big debates about synchrotron investment in the North of England were conducted, the medical science people were
hardly to be seen. The Wellcome Trust, a major player in bio-medical research, was widely regarded as unhelpful to those making the northern case, and even some northern university medical scientists did not support it.
Yet investment (usually of government money) in scientific institutions with capacity and established further potential is critical to wider long-term prospects for the UK economy.
Biggest impact, greatest added-value
Prof Gilbert says that universities must not ‘ask favours because we have been disadvantaged historically’. But in fighting his case he could look at the Daresbury (4GLS) – Rutherford Appleton (Diamond) synchrotron debates to see that the issues may be slightly different.
It is not ‘asking favours’ if those of us, the public whose money is
being spent, demand equity in terms of investment opportunities for top-level science.
Wider perspectives
The NHS is a very closed institution which has not, historically, been good at acknowledging it is now an important part of the wider knowledge economy.
Patient care is the aspect of this huge organisation which most members of the public experience, but that should be a fundamental ‘given’. It cannot provide refuge from the fact that, medically or otherwise, international science knows no silos.
Excellence in context
Nor can a rightful emphasis on patient experience permit us to forget, as collectively holders of the public purse, that any public investment needs to work in as many different ways as possible.
As the growing success of the U.K.’s ‘northern’ Darebury Laboratories has shown, internationally excellent science, public benefit across the nation and added-value regional development can evolve hand in hand, if enough decision-makers have the vision and courage to ensure that this will happen.
Children’s Music Workshops In Liverpool: 5 April 2007
Live-A-Music (Liverpool) is planning a series of Children’s Music Workshops at Easter (Thursday 5 April) and over the Summer break. The workshops, run by fully qualified and experienced leaders, are for children aged 7-plus (younger siblings may be accepted) and will be in Mossley Hill Parish Church Hall, Rose Lane, Liverpool 18.
Purpose of the Children’s Music Workshops
The workshops will encourage children to enjoy, explore and create music, bringing together stories, music, ideas and imagination in different ways.
Every child will have something individual and personal to bring to this very positive and engaging musical process.
Venue and date/s
The first Children’s Workshop will be held on Thursday 5 April , in Mossley Hill Parish Church Hall, Rose Lane, Liverpool L18 8DB.
Further Workshops are planned for the Summer holiday period.
Sessions and times
Each Children’s Music Workshop will run for just under two hours, with a dedicated theme for each session. Sessions will be 9 am – 10.45, 11.15 – 1 pm, and 2 pm – 3.45.
Children may attend as few or as many of the sessions as they wish, within the constraints of the maximum number of places available for each workshop.
To register your interest, please click here, or via the link below.
Instruments and themes
The themes of the workshops will be varied and challenging, to engage the participating children fully.
Musical equipment will be provided for the sessions and children who already play musical instruments are encouraged to bring these with them.
Workshop leaders
The workshops will be run by two very experienced professional musicians and animateurs / teachers:
Martin Anthony (Tony) Burrage, LRAM, GRSM, ARAM and
Richard Gordon-Smith, ARCM, GRSM, Cert. Ed.
Additional teaching and professional support will also be available.
Children’s ages; parents & other family members
It is expected that most children will be aged seven or over. Parents, Guardians or other previously agreed responsible adults are welcome also to attend the sessions, and younger children may be accepted for the sessions if accompanied at all times by older siblings or an agreed adult.
Cost
The fee per child per session is £6.50. (Two sessions: £13; three sessions: £19.50.) Any available combination of sessions is
permissible. Accompanying adults and infants may attend at no additional cost.
Each child (except infants with adults) must have a formally booked and paid-for place by the beginning of the session.
Lunchtime supervision responsibilities
Please note that
*** supervision of children can be arranged separately if required between 1 pm and 2 pm ***. (Details on request.)
Refreshment and supervision arrangements for the lunchtime break are the sole responsibility of Parents / Guardians or other previously agreed responsible adults. Children may stay in the venue at lunchtime under direct adult supervision.
Refreshments during sessions
Water and juice will be provided, but children are asked to bring any other suitable refreshment / special preferred drinks for the brief interval which will occur midway in each session. (It will be assumed that children may have the juice provided, or any other refreshments, unless there are clear instructions that this is not the case.)
Parents, Guardians or other agreed responsible adults are, as above, very welcome to accompany children for particular sessions or the entire day, and may also bring their own refreshments. Tea and coffee will be provided.
Registration
To register your interest in the Children’s Music Workshops on Thursday 5 April or in the Summer break please contact us with full details (name and age of child/ren, address, name of
responsible adult contact etc) via this link.
Please click here for a report and pictures of this Live-A-Music (Liverpool) Children’s Music Workshop.
Single-Sex Schools Or Classes? What’s The Longer Term Impact?
Recent figures confirm that girls are doing better at school (and university) than boys. Single-sex classes within co-ed schools are not however generally seen as a way to resolve this inequality. But how much do we know about the longer-term impact on men and women of single-sex or mixed gender teaching?
Increasing concern about the higher academic achievement of girls than of boys in the U.K. has again raised the issue of single-sex classes (or even schools) as the norm.
Reasons for this concern are interesting, given the historical lack of concern* when girls under-performed relative to boys (and given also that even highly women still earn much less than their male counterparts). Nonetheless, current concerns are both legitimate and pressing.
[* With honourable exceptions – e.g. the fourth letter by Edward Brotherton in this 1864 Manchester Guardian correspondence.]
There is an uncomfortable feeling, overall, that the underperformance of boys is likely to lead to a larger disaffected ‘underclass’, than when things were the other way around.
And we can add to that the obvious consequence of
underperformance, in restricting the availability of talent to the economy, whether this be a male or female issue.
‘Solutions’?
For these reasons, as well as for reasons of equality of opportunity as such, much debate has recently occurred on the subject of mixed-sex and single-sex classes and schools. The general (but not unanimous) opinion on the basis of available evidence, it seems, is that there is little impact either way.
Frankly, I have my doubts about whether this analysis is adequate.
The evidence over many decades is that women do significantly less well economically and professionally than men, if you look at mature outcomes. And this happens even for people with the same qualifications. In other words, any initial advantage
diminishes as time goes on, almost regardless of family, parenthood (men become parents, too) and much else.
Early impacts
But there is one element of background which seems to make a difference, for women if not for men – and that is the ‘space’ in the secondary years which single-sex classes offer girls, to learn (some) things independently of boys.
It seems, especially in the more mathematically-related curriculum, that this helps girls; and it probably also helps in terms of self-determination and a conviction that it’s OK as an independent person to go ahead and do things with one’s life.
Certainly, this was a major indicator, in research undertaken quite early on by myself and others looking at how women scientists hold their own.
And perhaps the same applies to boys. If the girls aren’t there to talk about all the soft stuff in class, maybe the boys would have to have the courage to talk about it themselves – which could be an important help when ‘real life’ catches up with them in later adolescence and adulthood.
Balancing different agendas
There is a suspicion that some schools prefer mixed teaching because they see the girls (more mature and less disruptive?) as a stabilising influence on the boys. But this is not an equitable way forward and two wrongs do not make a
right.
I’d go for the so-called ‘diamond’ arrangement – segregated teaching for some core subject in the early years of secondary school – but not, if at all possible, for totally separate schools for girls and boys. There can surely be a middle way.
Even more critically, I’d make sure that analysis of research findings routinely extends beyond formal education to life outcomes, so we begin to understand more fully ‘what happens’ when individuals receive single-sex or co-ed teaching in their formative years.
Would You Choose The Iberian Lynx – Or A Road?
People who care about the environment do not always have the same priorities. For some the emphasis is on maintaining the habitat of ‘natural’ flora and fauna. For others the most important objective is sustaining an environment in which human beings can flourish now.
Who is right, and can these two objectives both be achieved?
There is a story going the rounds of a fairly recent environmental conference in southern Europe. The issue under debate was whether or not a large road should be built across the Iberian peninsula, to reduce the economic disadvantage of those who live at the ‘far end’ of it.
The problem however is that this region is a very significant natural habitat for rare species of animals and other living things – including the endangered Iberian lynx. Many conservationists therefore strongly oppose the idea of economic regeneration in the areas where the lynx is still minimally present. “How do I choose?”, demanded one policy maker.
Conflicting priorities
Here is an example of where ‘normal’ politics – regeneration and increased economic advantage for people with relatively very
little in the way of the claimed benefits of modern living – seems to clash fairly directly with the concerns of the environmental conservationists.
Obviously, there is an argument that, without environmental conservation and attention to natural diversity, there is likely to be no life of any kind on earth. But this may be a less immediate or pressing concern for those who have little material advantage, than for those more economically blessed. So what should the politicians and policy makers do?
What’s the way forward?
Can these two concerns be brought together in the context of real-time politics?
Would you go for the road or the lynx?
Big Ships And Big Ambitions For Liverpool
There’s much emphasis in city centre regeneration on Liverpool’s waterfront. Plans for great ship visits are vital to the city’s resurgence; as are plans to improve the city’s road system. This photograph, taken today (7 February 2007) near St. Nicholas’ Church in the business and commercial district, gives a glimpse of what may be to come.
Carbon-Neutral Villages, British And Czech Alike
Self-sufficiency in energy is an ambition shared by many. Increasingly we are recognising that carbon-neutral living must be for real. Communities in Ashton Hayes, near Chester in the U.K., and Knezice, an hour east of Prague in the Czech Republic, provide different real-life examples of how this might be achieved.
Co-incidence or, perhaps, rather more than that? Perhaps the renewable energy agenda is at last becoming mainstream.
Dreaming Realist 