Planning, teaching and assessing the curriculum for pupils with learning difficulties: a response from EQUALS

EQUALS is a national organisation that has a major concern for the development of a curriculum that promotes the inclusion of all pupils. The EQUALS movement has, in the past, published its own materials in support of curriculum development for pupils with learning difficulties. In this article, Keith Humphreys, EQUALS' quality assurance manager, provides a response to the publication of the QCA/DfEE guidelines. He discusses EQUALS' response to these guidelines and proposes a way forward for schools already using EQUALS materials. While acknowledging that the implementation of the QCA/DfEE guidelines will lead to an evolution of good practice, he articulates a concern that staff should continue to appreciate and value their own development work. Keith Humphreys details the ways in which EQUALS intends to support this process of evolution in the future.     

Recent Developments in the Funding of University Research

The UGC norm-based allocation of 1986, the current proposals for the rationalisation of departments, and the proposals of the Advisory Board for the Research Councils (ABRC) for R, X and T class universities are assessed against the actual operations of productive science departments and their patterns of expenditure on research as revealed born a recent sample survey. It is concluded that the UGC's norm-based allocation did not in any systematic way secure increases related to current research activity except for those cases where this came from the student number-based teaching element. Only the creation of larger departments seems likely to increase research output, and often that will best be achieved by increases in student numbers and their associated funding. Institutions similar to T class universities can be achieved by encouraging the recruitment of students at the expense of the public sector, but the distribution between R and X class universities is unsustainable.