homework

Educational Achievement In Schools
There are many different explanations for differing levels of educational achievement in schools.
Functionalism considers the functions performed in society by institutions. They believe that if an institution exists, there must be a reason for it. Parsons believes that the educational system ensures that children are committed to society's values – playing a vital part of the socialisation process – and prepares people for their location in the social hierarchy. This idea of differentiation – derived from Durkheim – matches skills to societal needs. Durkheim believes that more complex societies require an enhanced division of labour. People fill occupational positions on the basis of achievement. Functionalists believe that educational achievement is based on a system of meritocracy.
Interactionists consider individuals and how they behave within society and how they interact with each other. They believe that each individual has different values and attitudes so society cannot be generalised about. Becker interviewed 60 school teachers in Chicago about the “ideal pupil”, finding that this ideal consisted of somebody highly motivated, intelligent and well behaved, usually from a middle class background. Rosenthal and Jacobson experimented in a predominantly lower class elementary school in America, giving students an IQ test called “The Harvard Test of Inflected Acquisition”. They told the teachers which students had scored the highest and then repeated the test at the end of the school year, to find that these students' scores had significantly increased. They concluded that this was due to self-fulfilling prophecy, because the teachers were warmer and more enthusiastic about teaching them, causing the students to believe that they were more intelligent. Ball discovered that self-fulfilling prophecy worked on a larger scale, and that middle class students were in higher sets because it had been expected that they would do better than their lower class peers. Labelling theory believes that how an individual is labelled influences their behaviour. The halo effect describes an observer bias in which previous characteristics influences how other aspects of a person's personality is viewed. These can all influence how a teacher views and treats a student, therefore affecting their progress.
Material deprivation is given as a reason for low educational achievement. High prices of essential items such as school uniform and equipment can result in poorer children being sent home or otherwise punished for having incorrect equipment because they can't afford it. Living conditions can make a child's life difficult, for example, overcrowding leads to a lack of private space, making it difficult to do homework properly, negatively affecting their educational achievement. Working class children are not offered the same opportunities as middle class children.
Cultural deprivation is also given as a reason for low educational achievement. Working class children from ethnic minority groups can be affected by this. Middle class white children dominate schools, similarly middle class white values dominate the social constructs of the educational system. Middle class children gain more opportunities and as a result have a higher level of educational success.
It is theorised that ethnicity, particularly membership of an ethnic minority group, can negatively affect a child's academic success. Studies have shown that members of certain ethnic groups do significantly worse in terms of educational achievement. Heinstein and Murray believed that this was due to genetics. Some sociologists believe that language differences have an impact of academic success. If English is not a students' first language communication between teacher and pupil can be difficult. Also, their results in exams can be disadvantaged by language difficulties because exam success can largely depend on a students' ability with language, particularly in essay-type questions. Family life can have a significant effect. The West Indian population has a high number of lone parent families which may mean that children are left without adult supervision in their younger years. Driver and Ballard found that South Asian parents have high aspirations for their children which could lead to high academic success. The idea of material deprivation also comes into effect, as many people from ethnic minority groups are also lower class. Cultural deprivation equally comes into effect. Afro-Caribbean underachievement has been explained in terms of lone mothers failing to provide the support and stability a child needs to for academic success. Ethnic minority culture can be different to mainstream culture. Educational achievement has also been explained in terms of racism. Courel believes that black children feel inferior in school, as West Indian students are told that their accent is inferior. Attitudes are carried from the classroom to the playground and this leads to bullying. Wright found that Asian children receieved less attention from teachers and that their culture was disapproved of. Black children are considered to be “trouble makers”, and white teachers can see “black youth as undermining their authority and even threatening to them personally” (Bourne). Afro-Caribbeans are more likely to experience the frustrations of racism and poverty, so express this through bad behaviour in the classroom.
However, criticisms can be made of each of these viewpoints.
Criticisms of functionalism say that factors such as social class, gender and ethnicity are important “indirect determinants” affecting a person's educational achievement. The concept of meritocracy can lead functionalists into the area of genetics rather than culture. It is said that the functionalist viewpoint is idealised, depending solely on the idea that educational achievement is based on merit.
The interactionist viewpoint also has problems. For example, interactionist studies are typically micro, meaning that ideas concluded cannot be generalised to the whole of society.
Pilkington argued against the concept of genetic differences between the intelligence of people from ethnic minority groups. He does not believe that race is a “biologically meaningful concept”. Driver and Ballad found that Asian children with a first language other than English were at least as competent as their peers by age 16. The 1985 Swann report also found that language was not a significant factor in educational achievement. Pilkington believes that explaining educational achievement in terms of cultural explanations has problems in that there are not clear boundaries between ethnic groups, and there is a danger of ethnocentrism. Mizra studied two comprehensive schools in South London and found that black girls did better in education than black boys and white pupils.
It is difficult to determine exactly which theory is “correct” and the main reason for different levels of educational achievement. In my personal opinion, no one theory is completely to blame for differing levels of educational achievement. Each different theory plays its own part in affecting how a person does in school.




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Record rise in UK undergraduates
[Frame1] A record number of students started university courses in the UK in 2007, according to latest figures.
The statistics have been described as "encouraging" by Ucas, which collated the data.
The higher education body found that 22,540 more undergraduates were accepted in 2007 than 2006.
The number of applicants rose by 5.6% from 506,304 in 2006 to 534,495 in 2007 and both applications and acceptances beat the previous record in 2005.
The total number of students starting university in 2007 was 413,430 - up from 390,890 in 2006.
Ucas chief executive Anthony McClaran said: "These figures are encouraging news for the higher education sector and demonstrate that students' desire for a university education in the UK has not diminished.
[Frame2] "There were many predictions that the new fee system would deter students from progressing to higher education, but today's statistics portray an impressive recovery in application numbers, a pattern that was also evident following the introduction of fees in the 1990s."
There was a rise of 5.9% in the number of applicants aged under 20; a rise of 6.9% for those aged 21 to 24 and a 3.3% rise in those aged 25 and over.
The proportion of places awarded to women grew from 53.8% to 54.1%, continuing the long-term trend of more women going to university than men.
The year-on-year growth in the number of women accepted on courses rose by 6.4% and men by 5.1%.
Overseas students
Nationally, the percentage of students accepted from lower socio-economic groups increased by 6.9% from 82,245 in 2006 to 87,946 in 2007.
Other social groups experienced a 5.5% rise.
There was a 7.9% increase in overseas students - Norway (17.5%), Malaysia (14.4%), China (12.4%), Sri Lanka (8.6%), Hong Kong (7.9%) and Canada (7.5%) saw the largest rises outside the EU.
The National Union of Students (NUS) is not wholly encouraged by the findings.
NUS president Gemma Tumelty said: "These figures are extremely worrying.
"Although the overall number of accepted applicants has risen since 2005, there are now fewer students from poorer backgrounds and fewer students over the age of 25 - exactly the students the sector is trying to attract.
"In 2005, before variable top-up fees were introduced, there were 89,050 successful applicants from lower socio-economic backgrounds - this has now decreased by 1.24% to 87,946.
"And the number of successful applicants over the age of 25 has also decreased over the same period - from 42,471 to 42,261.
"Top-up fees could be seriously hampering the government's agenda to widen participation in higher education.
"This must be acknowledged in the 2009 fees review. Unless a fairer system is implemented, university will only be accessible to those who can afford it."
Higher education minister Bill Rammell said: “I am extremely pleased to see that acceptances from England are at an all time high, with a continuation in the positive trend in the take up in sciences and languages.
"The increase of 7.7% in the number of students from England from the bottom four socio economic groups entering HE is very encouraging and shows that our policies are having a real impact






What is the new school appeals code?
[Frame3] Schools and councils in England have been given a new code to govern appeals against their decisions on school places.
The mandatory code is aimed at balancing the right of parents to a fair hearing against the right of schools to not admit so many pupils that children's education suffers.
From Thursday, all admission authorities, governing bodies and appeals panels have to follow the code - previously they only had to have "regard" to it.
An admissions authority might be a local council, or in the case of faith schools - a diocese.
Schools minister Jim Knight said: “Today's new mandatory appeals code makes the existing system even more fair, robust and independent – and every local authority and school has to comply with it.
“I want every child to have a fair and equal chance to get into a school of their own choice.
"And it is absolutely right that parents have a statutory power to appeal against admission decisions, before a completely impartial appeals panel."
The Code says:
Anyone who has a connection with the school or who could be seen as partial must not sit on an appeal panel or act as clerk
Members of appeal panels must be trained on the admissions code and related law including the Sex Discrimination Act, Disability Discrimination Act and Race Relations Act.
There have to be specific timescales within which an appeal must be held
All parents must have appropriate guidance and information from admission authorities, to help prepare their case for appeal
All panels must have regard to the impact of additional admissions on the quality of education and use school resources
local authorities and diocesan bodies should consider centralising the recruiting and training of panel members and clerks, and take responsibility for administering the appeals process - leading to greater independence and consistency

genevieve

genevieve

the hospital where genevieve was born had filthy waiting room carpets, chairs the colour of the tender fleshiness of inside-skulls and smelt of pale wax candles, bodily fluids on a surgeon’s hands, mould edged petals and an underlying pale-pink cloy –

(this stifling candy scent was chemical; tears on a wastebin kleenex, kisses the mottled blue of prayers, hearing-but-not-listening. empty sunsets for the rest of your life-)

genevieve was bon on the wrong ward and the first breath she took was full of meat and morgue-cold. she was slippy-fish wriggly, a slimy peach thing with matted twists of coral-coloured hair and a tiny mouth like a shell. in the same second when genevieve took her first salty, shivery breath;
1.

poem...thing?

for once i'm going to tell you a story
then keep your mem'ry in my heart's inventory
score was 15-love and second serve
baby when you struck a nerve
inside my curves
touched me in that way i don't deserve

for once, i'll tell you a story about
all the things i've read about;
in teen magazines
sunday spleens
and hipster jeans

let's tak about the monsters under the bed
in the fairytales and fables i've read,
or all the slimy things in the sea
or all the doctors who ever touched me
(and you'll say you guess i was right
when i said incubi sometimes wear white)

the app

just to transfer onto the other comp innitttt



The ApplicationName:
rhiannon. hi, nice to meet you.

Gender:
female. apparently.

Age:
15. 16 in three weeks, oh yeah.

Status:
single, as per always.

Location:
pluto.

Sexual Preference:
i’m bi.

Who invited you?
that would be ---danny---

Tell us about yourself:
i’m a hyper-emotional, bitter girl, and i love creativity and honesty more than anything in the world. i never lie about myself; i am perfectly happy within my own skin and even though everybody says it, i mean it right down to the pit of my stomach. even if everybody turned around to me one day and said "i’ve never seen anybody else as ugly as you," i could still look in the mirror and say "you’re beautiful."

i try to be nice to people because being nasty isn’t in my nature. it makes me feel so guilty i might as well be being eaten up from the inside. i get along with everybody i can because i’ve found out that there’s no point in having enemies. people are only in your life for a short time so it’s best to be their friend.

i have fallen in love and had my heart broken only once in my life and that’s quite enough for the time being. i don’t think i want a family but maybe one day i will live in a big old house where i can paint rotting meat on huge canvases while my two little girls, regina and kimya, play barefoot and wild in the garden. maybe.

i love to dance barefoot in the rain. i love comfort-eating chocolate and sitting on the grass on warm days with my friends. writing is my life; it’s all i’ve ever wanted to do and all i ever will.

i live on pluto because i decided a long time ago that if i didn’t get out of the real world soon, i was going to die of boredom.

ps. i hate capital letters like i don’t hate many other things.

Choose a topic, and tell us your opinion about it:
children.
perhaps it will seem a weird topic to discuss.
it’s not so much that i have an opinion on "children", rather, i have an extremely vehement opinion on the lack of morals that children seem to display now.
i want to know what happened to the days when kids ran around with mucky knees, playing hide and seek and riding their bikes, thinking their imaginary games were the absolute bomb. when make up and boyfriends were icky things for teenagers. i want to know what happened to the innocence of childhood.
i’d like to know when it decided to go on holiday, leaving some tarted up ghost of what childhood once was behind it.
why are ten year olds suddenly wearing as much make up as i do, and clothes that anybody with half a sense of moral decency would consider slutty? i just want to know when all of a sudden children decided they don’t want to be children anymore. they want to be miniature adults.
my temper was particularly sparked when reading a magazine article the other night, concerning a ten year old girl. she spends 17 hours a week and several hundred pounds a month on her beauty regime – her make up, dying her hair, getting a fake tan. she went shopping every weekend, and always got the "latest fashions" – cropped tops, short skirts and boots. i hope i’m not the only one seeing something wrong with this picture! she gets up early for school every day so her mum can do her make up and curl her hair, even though her teachers don’t like it. it’s against the school rules to wear false nails, but she has them done anyway. she claims she has to look "beautiful" because "nobody wants to talk to you if you’re ugly".
a nine year old girl featured in the same article claimed she would never wear supermarket clothing "because it looks tacky and people would laugh".
and it’s not like these girls are particularly mature, sensitive, intelligent girls either! the first girl says that if she doesn’t get something she wants, she "screams and shouts and cries" until her mum gives in and buys her it.
this disgusts me. i do, understand, however, that it’s not the children who are to blame. it’s the parents. yes, it’s likely that little girls are going to ask for make up and clothing that’s too old for them – it’s the parents’ job to say no to things that are unsuitable! their parents seem to be under the impression that the way they dress their children isn’t causing any harm to them. oh no, because making your little girl all the more attractive to paedophiles isn’t harming her at all! turning your child into a vain, self-obsessed little shit – that’s perfectly all right!
whatever happened to teaching your children morals? what happened to parents encouraging their children to do well academically, or do well in sport, or to be creative? when i was a kid, i knew it didn’t matter if somebody was "beautiful" or "ugly" – because either way, it wouldn’t stop them being a decent, honest person - and that, in the end, is what is truly important.


Post from 3-7 pictures of yourself.
Must include:
-Body Pic
-Picture of your face
-Salute

just written so i can get to it from my other compyuter.

next door but one, a little girl in mismatched lingerie sat down to breakfast, eyes bleared with demerara sugar left from long shell-lid kisses at 4am.she did not understand, and neither did god or the boy with steady breathing curled at the foot of her bed, why she had chosen the best china this morning. little wheat "o" mouths of surprise drifted like latex inflatables on a halcyon ghost-bath of pooled hormones. the spoon rested, heavy as an osmium hummingbird round her neck, on the table by her right hand. she considered her bloated under-eyes in the curved mirror-surface (curved like the sweet dipped shape of a girl's back) and suddenly felt cold. this was not peculiar within itself; it was mid-may and early, windswept morning, but this tender, breakable girl often ran naked into snowdrifts to create midnight ice-angels without goose-pimples rupturing her flesh. a tremble shot along her spinal cord. she contemplated dressing; she thought of the too-tight diesel jeans crumpled on her floor, and a soft, comfortable moth-brown sweater to hide her breasts and stomach. she thought of the boy in her bed and him watching her dress, and did not move.*his eyes had become car headlights long before she had become roadkill. hunched over a strawberries-and- crème frappucino in an armchair the colour of "swimming" mac eyeshadow, the colour of the hands of the sandman and the colour of gang rape, she had felt his eyes exploring her. her skeleton was piano keys in his gaze and the murky lighting. her mountain-peak spine bone became a yin yang of shadow and highlight, the edgelines of her nose and chin were achromic contours but her cheekbones were smudged valleys. her false eyelashes unfurled against her cheeks and then her eyebrows in treacle-thick slow motion. she was a dusty, cloying movie still; a coffee shop dream-fragment of ecru skin, lace-bone chin kissing curls and melancholy honey-pout lips.the beautiful illusion girl underneath his eyes did not turn around when he approached her; he surveyed the fluid satin top, the soft rounded breasts and the down on her ivory arms, then finally the eyes on his reflection in the oil-slick window. he couldn't ignore her then, ignore those intense, pearlescent eyes (like planets under her lashes), couldn't walk on past like he'd stopped only to check his watch or answer his mobile. "ever wondered-" and he stopped. waited for her to look up. she did not show him her true face but kept watching. "ever wondered what colour a mirror is when it reflects nothing?"the girl moved. she turned her face from the window, rested her elbows on the table and gazed into her plastic glass. her eyelids were half-moon clouds, were blankets and feathers and chicken wings. "the colour of my heart," she muttered, with an open-bracket sigh and a polluted-cloud voice fracturing between the words. she spoke without cynicism; without acknowledging the clumsy, awkward conversation that was otherwise false as silicone. "i have wondered," she said,but they could both hear within the plastic-surg'ry words the naked fizzing thirst to fall in love; the desperation for each other’s hands, each other’s bodies and lips. and they could both see the other press this deep within their flesh, regardless of it kicking and biting against their walls like butterflies caught in nets. his discomfort at this knowledge was apparent in the choked laugh and the way he apologised; “i’m sorry. that was the-”“most peculiar chat up line ever?” she finished with a wry smile.“i was going to say the weirdest thing i’ve ever said, but close. i was thinking about it, and then i saw you, and i wondered if you were ok, and it just fell out.”“i suppose “hi, are you alright?” is kind of overdone, huh?” she chuckled at this, her eyes still on the tabletop like it was all that was stopping her from losing herself. as though if she looked up she would shatter. “at least you said something. most people would have just walked past.”he thought about that. how if he had not been so intrigued by the raw silk skeleton looking like she might fall to pieces, and had he not seen pluto vivid and spinning inside her skull, his heart might never have stopped in time and her heart may never have shared that silence. they might never have met. “you know how much you look like some tiny lost-soul, sitting there? i had to know you were ok.”“i’m ok.”he placed the edge of his finger on her jaw; his hand was so strong she felt like she had been brought back to reality, like she was stable enough to fall without gravity disappearing from under her and shooting her, whirling and silent, into the solar system or into a new dimension. and at the words, “who are you, little ghost girl?”, she looked up.*i am a girl who has gone wrong many times in her life. i am a moonlit-geisha with starlit cheeks and eyes without starlight. i am a bruised baby with a painted face and sugar lips. i am the worn patches on a pair of jeans. i am a strange alien. i am a bald man who sings with a voice that is scratched and brown. i am a splinter-thin mexican child yearning for a hummingbird boy or girl to fill the empty part of her chest. i am an old woman who is sick and smelly, and who has become a lonely hearts advertisement within herself; “i am old and with skin like a crumpled elephant and i am fat and i am broken like a pot doll and i have nightmares still every night and i am hurting and i am hurting, WON’T ANYBODY LOVE ME, WON’T ANYBODY LOVE ME, WON’T ANYBODY LOVE ME” until she was only a rabid shaking monster-woman by the letterbox waiting for somebody who would say “i will” and hold her until she no longer could shriek. somebody who would never come with roses like used kleenex and a love that was chocolate-sweet enough to fill the gaping black-hole within her body. i am the girl that he kissed.*he moved in drumbeat-pulse slow motion; they were both fluid under each other’s hands – his fingers on her hips and her lifeline at the base of his neck. his fingerprints found her waist and then the edge of her face while she explored his lipcracks and faint brown eyelashes like he would fade within seconds of her blinking (as though she wanted to remember this boy forever).she saw his septum like a record scratch and his forehead like the aura of the stars. his eyes could be the inner cold of iris-petals but she found the tears and the aching locked in uneven eyelid folds (briefly wondering whose empty chest had trapped them there) before sweeping the angles of his jaw and tilted cheekbones. it was then the dim lights locked along his spine and skull and spread, seeping through the old-parchment map of his skin, consuming the edges of his body until he was an angel within her touch - and she nearly ran in fear of that the fibre-thin tea stained pages of the bible had never warned her he’d be as beautiful as a movie star too.when he touched away from her lips, she whispered, “lolita.”my name is lolita, and you will never love me.

chapter16: things.

hmmm.
once upon a long time ago, i posted a blog about being highly confused about a certain boy and my feelings for him.

at the time, i tried to convince myself that i did not fancy him.
lies.

i have since fallen so heavily for him i hardly know what to do.

it sounds pathetic and yes, yes it is pathetic,
but he is just about my every thought.
i go so crazy-shy when i am around him and blush and giggle and tbh it's pathetic and i ought to know better.

i am meant to be telling him how i feel tomorrow.
there are three days left at school before study leave and exams,
and i want to get it out of the way and tell him how i feel about him.

but i am scared.
i am so scared.

i tried so hard to tell him on friday,
honestly i did,
but my throat clammed up and my mouth wouldn't open and i was shaking so ferociously and i just couldn't bring myself to open my lips and say "i like you."

i think i may have to go for the send-a-letter option.
my friends say it's oh-so-impersonal but i think it might be the only way i'll be able to do it.

i wish i wasn't so shy!!
it's annoying!

i promised myself i'd hype myself up this weekend to do it but i don't think i've managed it.
friday night i was like "yeah i'll tell him i'll tell him"
but now i'm just like "oh fuck i can't tell him i can't tell him"

i have to do it.
i have to do it.

i mean, he's nothing to be scared of. he's certainly a nice guy and (hopefully) he wouldn't turn me down in a really harsh way but...

ohh.
ARGH!

STUPIDSTUPIDGIRL

chapter15: word of the day and peculiar coincidences?

june4th,2006
word of the day: extricate
to free or release from a difficulty or entanglement


that's certainly an interesting coincidence.

i really don't give a shit about all the stuff that happened last year,
i'm long since over it and i don't even get upset about it anymore.
i just found this vaguely amusingly coincidental.

chapter 15: ekk.