Student Tutor UK

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-Margaret Fuller (American journalist)

Private eyes to track down EU students who owe £50m in loans

Published 12 May 2013

Private investigators have been called in to track down hundreds of overseas graduates from UK universities who have gone missing owing millions of pounds in loans bankrolled by the British taxpayer.

The Student Loans Company (SLC) has been forced to take dramatic measures to claw back its money after the amount owed by European Union graduates who are not repaying their tuition-fee loans rose to more than £50m in five years.

Hundreds of EU nationals who have returned home and reached the income threshold at which they should be paying back their loans have slipped into arrears. Many have failed to provide any salary details, so that officials cannot even start the process of reclaiming their debts.

But many more, who are responsible for loans totalling £41m, have not revealed crucial information about where they are living, whether they are working, or how much they are earning.

MPs complained yesterday that a failure to maintain tight controls over EU students had allowed them to disappear back home, leaving the British taxpayer to pick up the tab for their education. The Labour MP Frank Field said he would urge the National Audit Office to investigate the system of keeping tabs on EU students. “This situation has turned the loans into a grants system for many EU students,” he said.

Read the full article on The Independent

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Universities ‘forced to lower entry grades to fill places’

Published 28 April 2013

Top universities may be setting students up to fail by admitting applicants with D grades at A-level in a bid to fill places, a leading vice-chancellor has warned.

Some members of the elite Russell Group have been forced to “significantly drop” their entry requirements to plug a shortfall in demand for degree courses, according to Prof Sir Christopher Snowden.

The academic – incoming president of Universities UK, the vice-chancellors’ group – said a number of institutions advertised places for students with A and B grades last year but took in teenagers with Cs and Ds to prevent courses lying empty.

In an interview with the Telegraph, he said the move was a reflection of the problems faced by top universities after a rise in fees, toughening up of A-levels and changes to student number controls led to a drop in the number of well-qualified applicants.

Sir Christopher, vice-chancellor of Surrey University, which has adopted a strict B grade minimum entry threshold, said institutions were attempting to avoid a repeat this year but insisted there was “no guarantee” this would happen.

It comes after the publication of figures suggested that Britain’s 24 Russell Group institutions started the academic year with around 11,500 vacancies last September.

Read the full article on The Telegraph

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Panorama North Korea briefing for LSE students held in a pub

Published 17 April 2013

The key meeting where BBC journalists briefed students on the risks of travelling to North Korea with an undercover journalist for John Sweeney’s Panorama documentary was held in a busy London pub where the group drank alcohol.

Two students at the briefing in the George IV pub on the London School of Economics (LSE) campus complained that it was “informal” and “involved alcohol consumption” ahead of the trip to Pyongyang where Sweeney intended to film an undercover documentary.

One LSE student, who went on the trip but declined to be named, claimed the meeting was billed as an “opportunity for meet-and-greet and discussion of the trip technicalities”, but did not fully explain the risks of getting an undercover journalist into North Korea.

According to the BBC, the students were not told before they left London that Sweeney was the undercover journalist. The BBC has said the LSE group were told this in Beijing before changing planes for the flight to Pyongyang.

Read the full article on The Guardian

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Students warned not to get stuck in low-skill jobs

Published 07 April 2013

Graduates who “dumb down” their employment aspirations can find themselves stuck in low-skilled jobs for years, according to research to be published later this week.

A study by the New Employment Foundation shows one in four graduates who take non-graduate jobs – such as in retail, construction or catering – can find themselves employed in the same position three and a half years later.

The reverse is true, too, with researchers claiming “a strong positive relationship” between those employed in graduate jobs six months after leaving university and 36 months later.

The report, commissioned by the National Union of Students for its annual conference on Tuesday, says the spectre of “underemployment” (where people want to work longer hours or in higher-skilled jobs than they do) among graduates is likely to continue well after any economic recovery; prospects for entering low-paid employment and top-ranking jobs are improving but median-paid employment remains scarce. At present 3.3 million adults fall into this category, compared with 2.3 million five years ago.

“Study leavers face a perfect storm,” says the report. “Underlying fractures in the labour market, such as pay polarisation, have surfaced.

Read the full article on The Independent

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Four held as university protesters are evicted

Published 02 April 2013

Four students were arrested on Tuesday as police evicted protesters who had occupied a building at Sussex University, near Brighton, for nearly eight weeks. The arrests follow a 10-month campaign against the outsourcing of catering and facilities services at the university.

Protesters said up to 30 bailiffs, 80 police officers, about 13 police vans and 20 private security guards attended the scene.

Sussex police said they arrested a 21-year-old man on suspicion of violent disorder and criminal damage following a large protest at the university last Monday which university authorities allege culminated in campaigners smashing glass doors, setting fire to documents, and dismantling fire alarms and CCTV cameras. Two women, aged 23 and 24, and a man aged 19 were also arrested.

The top floor of university building Bramber House has been occupied by students since 7 February. Protesters said they targeted areas used for conferences and not teaching facilities, and claim on their Twitter page, @occupy_sussex, to resist “enforced privatisation of University jobs”.

Bailiffs were sent in on Tuesday following a high court order granted last Monday to the university. The injunction banned students from “entering and remaining on the campus and buildings of the University of Sussex for the purpose of protest action” without the university’s consent.

Read the full article on The Guardian

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Schools told to narrow gap between rich and poor

Published 25 March 2013

Schools in England will no longer be rated as “outstanding” by inspectors if they fail to close the attainment gap between poor and affluent children.

Schools Minister David Laws said schools should not be relying on their brightest pupils to score well in inspections and league tables.

Mr Laws said there would be increasing focus on how well schools boosted the results of their disadvantaged pupils.

They must focus “relentlessly” on closing the achievement gap, he said.

Speaking at the annual conference of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers conference in Liverpool, he said: “The chief inspector [Sir Michael Wilshaw] has made clear that Ofsted will increasingly prioritise this area too.

“No school, however impressive, can be an ‘outstanding school’ if it is not achieving excellence for its most disadvantaged pupils.

“So, even where overall attainment is high, we want schools to focus relentlessly on closing this gap by improving outcomes for those from disadvantaged backgrounds.”

Read the full article on The BBC Website

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School sport set to receive funding boost from the government

Published 12 March 2013

The government is preparing to make a major announcement on new funding for school sport in the next few days, the BBC has learnt.

A new strategy for school sport has been debated within Whitehall for months, and the precise details remain shrouded in secrecy, but I’m told the amount of money involved is “significant”.

Between £100m and £150m could be committed by the Department for Education in a bid to help primary schools improve the quality of their sports provision.

That could mean schools each receive thousands of pounds of ring-fenced funding which must be spent on sport, with national sports’ governing bodies encouraged to help provide expertise and coaches to work alongside teachers.

I understand the Football Association, England and Wales Cricket Board, Lawn Tennis Association and other organisations are being briefed on the plans on Thursday by the government. An announcement is being planned for this week, with plans overseen by No 10 Downing Street. The Premier League is also in discussions with the government over how its club community projects might be used as a delivery vehicle for the new policy.

Read the full article on The BBC Website

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Introducing New Response Time Ratings

Published 05 March 2013

Like in any other service industry parents expect ever better ‘customer service’ from their private tutors. This doesn’t just mean good knowledge of the subject and easy to understand explanations – i.e. being a good tutor – but it all begins with good communication. First impressions count and getting the first well worded response in, and quickly, can make the difference between a won or lost opportunity.

To reward tutors who respond quickly, we’ve just introduced a new response time rating. This measures the tutor’s average response time to queries and displays it as a speed rating from 1 to 5. Five lightning bolts indicate the fastest speed with an average response time of less than 48 hours, while a single lightning bolt is used to show an average response above 5 days.

To maintain your speed rating as a tutor you should aim to respond to all enquiries as soon as possible. If for any reason there’s an enquiry that you can’t reply to as quickly as usual, the average calculation means that it won’t drag your score down if you normally reply very quickly.

The new speed ratings now allow communicative tutors to distinguish themselves from the crowd, while giving parents and tutees a realistic guideline as to when they might expect a response from their favourite tutor.

Posted in Feature Announcements | Tagged parents, private tutors, response time, service | Leave a comment

£30m plan for hundreds more postgraduate places

Published 28 February 2013

HUNDREDS of extra post- graduate places are to be created at Scottish universities under a £30 million scheme.

The Scottish Funding Council (SFC) will target part of its funding for higher education over the next five years at creating an additional 850 taught postgraduate places in 18 universities.

The places are focused on courses that support industry and meet skills demands from key sectors such as energy, financial and business services, food and drink, life sciences, tourism and creative industries.

Last year, a leading university figure warned the nation’s economic future depended on an expansion in the number of Scottish postgraduate students.

Professor Sir Timothy O’Shea, principal of Edinburgh University, said creating a larger pool of more skilled workers was vital to allow Scotland to compete globally. His call followed the publication of a major independent inquiry into postgraduate education across the UK which also called for urgent reform.

Read the full article on Heraldscotland.com

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Students offered cocaine for scientific trial

Published 25 February 2013

Students at a London university have been offered the chance to take cocaine as part of a clinical trial examining the drug’s effects on the body.

Undergraduates at King’s College London were sent an invitation to enrol in the trial which will involve “nasal administration” of the class A drug under the supervision of researchers.

Potential participants were advised that there is “no direct benefit from taking part”, but that they could expect “reasonable financial compensation” for their time, effort and expenses.

The trial, which will involve seven hospital visits over 120 days, is only open to men aged 25-40 who are not normally users of recreational drugs.

First patients will be screened for their suitability for the study, and on the second visit they will be given the drug. On five further visits researchers will take samples of blood, urine, hair, sweat and oral fluid to assess how the drug spreads through the body.

Medical and dental students are not permitted to take part, and volunteers were warned they would be banned from cutting or dyeing their hair for the duration of the trial and follow-up period.