As I’ve said here before, improving social mobility is vitally important to fairness in our society and ensuring that wealth is both created and distributed more evenly. In other words, it’s not “Stronger Economy, Fairer Society” which we as Liberals ought to be shouting about, rather, we should be arguing that the creation of a fairer society is the best way to a stronger economy. Only then does our unwavering support for the reform of our democratic and economic institutions . . . → Read More: Misrepresenting statistics doesn’t help social mobility]]> I read with interest earlier on today the news of the Social Mobility Commission’s report into access to higher education.

As I’ve said here before, improving social mobility is vitally important to fairness in our society and ensuring that wealth is both created and distributed more evenly. In other words, it’s not “Stronger Economy, Fairer Society” which we as Liberals ought to be shouting about, rather, we should be arguing that the creation of a fairer society is the best way to a stronger economy. Only then does our unwavering support for the reform of our democratic and economic institutions start to make sense. I happen to think that this is the only way we can build a narrative which will differentiate us from all other parties come the next election, but I’m not expecting a call from Lord Ashdown any time soon!

Back to the report. One of its headlines is that admissions to the Russell Group universities from state schools, as a proportion of overall enrolments, is down slightly since 2002/3. However, there are an additional 1,464 attending from such schools as total enrolments have gone up by 2,900 during the same period. It’s this statistic which is used to justify the claim that the Russell Group universities are becoming “less socially diverse”.

However, the proportion of students in private education has increased dramatically since 2002/3 – as an examination of the Independent Schools Council 2013 census (pdf) demonstrates.

© 2013 Independent Schools Council

Against this background maybe the Russell Group universities aren’t doing quite so badly after all. I’d go so far as to say that when these changes are taken into account, the report’s claims start to look like the use of a dodgy statistic to justify the imperative of improving social mobility. Using dodgy statistics, however well-intentioned, really doesn’t help the cause of social mobility at all(*).

I don’t make a habit of agreeing with David Willetts, but his comment in response to the report that “getting a university education should be based on ability, not where you come from” is exactly what we should be aiming for. However, this does assume that equality of opportunity is provided to all students at school, regardless of the sector they were educated in.

At the moment, even with additional money going to less advantaged school students by way of the pupil premium, we’re a long way from such an ideal.

(*) The sharp-eyed amongst you will have noticed that the bar chart from the ISC is a little “dodgy” too, as it compares pupils in ISC schools across the whole of the UK against the general trend in pupils numbers in England.

Having been alerted by the Times Higher Education last Friday to expect some real insights into how to address the crisis in part-time higher education (a 40% decline in new part-time enrolments since 2010), the IPPR’s report devotes just 4 out of 156 pages (between pages 83-88) to the concerns of the 35.7% of England-resident students who study part-time in higher education.

The first of these few pages are recycled statistics and a fairly shallow analysis of material already published elsewhere. To be honest, I think that even I’ve done a better job of covering the . . . → Read More: Part-time HE study is largely ignored by the IPPR’s ‘critical path’ report]]> Well, that was underwhelming.

Having been alerted by the Times Higher Education last Friday to expect some real insights into how to address the crisis in part-time higher education (a 40% decline in new part-time enrolments since 2010), the IPPR’s report devotes just 4 out of 156 pages (between pages 83-88) to the concerns of the 35.7% of England-resident students who study part-time in higher education.

The first of these few pages are recycled statistics and a fairly shallow analysis of material already published elsewhere. To be honest, I think that even I’ve done a better job of covering the core issues surrounding part-time study than this think-tank has managed by assembling a range of HE experts. (See here and here, for example).

Page 87 consists of its recommendations for part-time study, which (paraphrasing) are:

• We don’t understand why part-time enrolments have declined so much in the last two years, so we can’t make any concrete recommendations.
• It might be a good idea to extend loans to part-time students already holding a degree – but only for ‘strategically important’ courses. A timid suggestion, even though the report offers evidence in a footnote that part-time students across all subjects are likely to overpay their loans by 8.5%.
• We probably need to reform the whole system surrounding part-time study, but we don’t really have any ideas about how to do it. The decline in part-time study has been the “unexpected consequence” of the reforms in HE that introduced the £9,000/year tuition fee cap aimed primarily at 18-21 year olds.

Unexpected consequence? They’ve clearly never canvassed the views of Open University students, that’s for sure.

And that’s it. No wonder these recommendations on part-time study didn’t even rate a mention in the top 23 the IPPR lists on its summary page and all that the mainstream media seem to think the report is about is reintroducing polytechnics.

And as for mature students? It’s not encouraging. The phrase “lifelong learning” is used just 3 times in the entire document.

I’m so disappointed that I really can’t face reading any more of this report tonight, but I do want to have a proper look at what they’re suggesting for postgraduate HE. If anything, this is in an even more dire state than part-time study. Maybe I’ll have calmed down enough in a couple of days to read and write about it then.

But on the basis of what I’ve read so far, I’m not holding my breath. This report seems far too easy for BIS to dismiss by damning it with faint praise – which is exactly the strategy the department seems to be following at the moment.

I’m not quite sure why. It’s not as if there isn’t lots happening in my own life at the moment, nor are then any shortage of things in the wider world which are either engaging me or frustrating me. The problem is, if I were to start to write on most of these topics at any length, you’d find them a very dull read or I’d simply become incoherent with rage far too quickly – and so be a very dull read.

A . . . → Read More: Writer’s block, sex at the OU and right wing isolationism]]> I’ve been finding writing difficult recently, culminating in the “Meh” post of a couple of days ago.

I’m not quite sure why. It’s not as if there isn’t lots happening in my own life at the moment, nor are then any shortage of things in the wider world which are either engaging me or frustrating me. The problem is, if I were to start to write on most of these topics at any length, you’d find them a very dull read or I’d simply become incoherent with rage far too quickly – and so be a very dull read.

A few days ago, I couldn’t even manage to string together a whimsical post on the OU coming third in the “University Sex” league table. I knew that the average age of students was rapidly coming down at the OU, but with the scarcity of face to face tutorials and residential schools these days you have to wonder if it all isn’t simply virtual via the medium of Facebook and Skype. Either that, or it’s just students acting in the way that students always have done – making stuff up and shouting it loudly in a hopeless effort to impress.

Making stuff up, shouting it loudly and then killing people is what Eddie Izzard suggested that fascists do when I saw him in Nottingham a couple of weeks ago. Earlier on in his performance, and to an audience which seemed eerily quiet in parts, he’d also equated the rise of UKIP with fascism too. Surely there aren’t people who like Eddie Izzard that would vote UKIP? Yet this would seem to be the case. At least in Nottingham.

I really mustn’t get started on why a large number of my fellow citizens seem to believe that an isolationist lurch to the right is just what we need to get the economy back on its feet again. We all know how successful that tactic was in Hitler’s Germany, Mussolini’s Italy and Galtieri’s Argentina. (Hyperinflation, anyone? No thanks, I’ll have the cake). But, for whatever reason, large swathes of the electorate either believe that it is genuinely what we need, or alternatively, that UKIP is some kind of lovely, cuddly “anti-politics” party that is a safe home for a protest vote. I don’t know which of these explanations scares me the most.

If you’re from the “UKIP are harmless, cuddly eccentrics” school of thought, you should really read this piece from the Institute of Employment Rights on UKIP in the workplace. It certainly left me speechless and very, very worried about the future if they were ever in a position to enact their policies.

I’m going back to my bunker now. I may be some time.

(This post was inspired by a Facebook friend, in response to my whinge about having writer’s block)

A study conducted by Haslam and others(*) came to the conclusion that if a group has a specific goal to achieve and you want to maintain or strengthen that group, you’re better off choosing your leader at random – provided that the group already has a salient social identity and actually wishes to achieve the goal set.

Paradoxically however, leaders . . . → Read More: Don’t bother with selections or elections – the best leaders are picked randomly]]> I’m currently working my way through Alex Haslam’s book Psychology in Organizations – The Social Identity Approach. One of the more intriguing pieces of research it presents is on the impact of systematic and random leader selection on group performance.

A study conducted by Haslam and others(*) came to the conclusion that if a group has a specific goal to achieve and you want to maintain or strengthen that group, you’re better off choosing your leader at random – provided that the group already has a salient social identity and actually wishes to achieve the goal set.

Paradoxically however, leaders and their followers tend to perceive that randomly selecting a leader is somehow unsatisfactory, ineffective and illegitimate, even when there is clear evidence that picking a leader at random results in demonstrably better outcomes.

Perhaps on the basis of this evidence, political parties should abandon internal selections and elections, and choose people randomly from within their ranks to lead. It would certainly be an interesting hypothesis to test when the time eventually comes for Nick Clegg to relinquish the leadership of the Lib Dems. While I appreciate that may be a step too far for many in the party (and myself too,  if I’m being absolutely honest), perhaps there is a lower-stakes experiment we could conduct to see if this genuinely could be the way forward.

For example, it would certainly be fun to see if Manchester United would fare even better if the club randomly picked one of its fans to take on the job so recently vacated by Sir Alex.

(*) Haslam, S.A., McGarty, C., Brown, P.M., Eggins, R.A., Morrison, B.E., & Reynolds, K.J. (1998) ‘Inspecting the emperor’s clothes: evidence that randomly selected leaders can enhance group performance’, Group Dynamics: Theory, Research and Practice, 2, 168-84.

There is always a careful balance to strike between security and individual liberty and I have always agreed that we must help our law enforcement agencies keep up with the challenge of policing in the internet age – like the technical issue of what to do when there are more mobile devices with not enough IP addresses to go round.

While it . . . → Read More: Say what, Nick Clegg?]]> A massive round of applause from me for Nick Clegg and his vetoing of the “Snooper’s Charter” – alternatively known as the Communications Data Bill. But can anyone understand this paragraph in his email to Lib Dem members?

There is always a careful balance to strike between security and individual liberty and I have always agreed that we must help our law enforcement agencies keep up with the challenge of policing in the internet age – like the technical issue of what to do when there are more mobile devices with not enough IP addresses to go round.

While it is true that there is a shortage of unallocated (as opposed to unused) IPv4 addresses, it’s not a problem which is solely restricted to mobile devices. In any event, the world is gradually moving towards the IPv6 standard, which has enough addresses for around 2^128 devices. Put another way, that’s enough for a trillion devices a second to be allocated a unique address for the next trillion years.

In any event, the technical “issue” of IPv4 addresses being shared between multiple users and devices is almost as old as the internet itself. It’s not usually all that difficult to work out who(*) was using a specific IP address at a particular point in time if usage is being logged by your internet provider. Unless, of course, someone is attempting to hide their activity by using services like TOR. The use of such technologies to obfuscate illegal activities is a far more serious issue for policing and security than any shortage of IPv4 addresses.

(*) Within limits, of course. It becomes far more difficult to pin activity down to an individual device if you have several devices connected to the internet through the same router – for example, a BT HomeHub or similar.

However, this phrase from their letter did make me smile:

Please note if you receive a letter confirming that we have not heard from you – please ignore this letter as we have received your completed requirements.

Say what, . . . → Read More: Say what, Aviva?]]> I’ve recently received a letter from Aviva about an endowment policy which is due to mature at the end of this month. It’s performed appallingly over the 20 years that I’ve held it and because of their seeming inability to acknowledge this honestly and openly,  I won’t ever buy another product from them again if I can possibly avoid doing so.

However, this phrase from their letter did make me smile:

Please note if you receive a letter confirming that we have not heard from you – please ignore this letter as we have received your completed requirements.

Say what, Aviva?

However, as I was a  thoughtful  student of social psychology at the time, . . . → Read More: How to start a riot]]> At the time of the August 2011 riots I was on holiday in Cyprus. By the time I came home, they were over. As I had far better things to think about at the time (or rather, not think about), I didn’t really pay very much attention to them. I do remember hearing Tottenham MP David Lammy condemning the rioters as “mindless people”, David Cameron stating that it was “criminality pure and simple” and Ed Miliband asking him if he was being tough enough on those involved.

However, as I was a  thoughtful  student of social psychology at the time, I was also wondering about the causes of the riots. Too much of what I was hearing simply prompted more questions. How could the media and politicians really know what had happened and so quickly, before anyone had properly investigated the circumstances of the riots.? Worse, if our parliamentarians hadn’t correctly understood the causes of the riots, how could they know that they weren’t simply prescribing treatment for the symptoms, rather than the underlying disease?

Of course, I wasn’t the only person wondering these things. Sometime afterwards, I purchased Reicher and Stott’s ebook “Mad Mobs and Englishmen? Myths and Realities of the 2011 Riots” which was the first truly satisfying explanation of the causes of the riots I’d read, as well as having the only evidence-based suggestions I’d seen for reducing the risk of future riots.

It turns out that at much the same time, members of Worklight Theatre were not only asking similar questions, but got the chance to work with Dr. Clifford Stott on a theatrical exploration of them. The result is “How to start a riot“, which played to an almost capacity studio at Derby Theatre last night.

In it, the cast start from the position of having no knowledge about the causes of the riot – “Maybe they were just all knobheads”. They then explore popular but discredited theories such as de-individuation which argues that people in crowds become “mindless”.

Through the creative use of mainly hand-held lighting effects, they eventually lead the audience to the conclusion that instead of people losing their identities and being unable to control themselves in a crowd, people shift from thinking of themselves as individuals to thinking of themselves as being members of a social group. Control is not lost, but as individual identities are redefined in group terms, control moves to become an expression of what the group values. In other words, people behave in accordance with their perceived social identity at the time.

It was refreshing that the play explored the creation of social identities not only in the context of the rioters, but also from the police’s perspective. If I went into the auditorium already convinced that I’d never want to be put into a position of feeling that I had to join a riot, I also came out of it with a much greater understanding and sympathy for individual policemen and women who are put into the terrifying position of having to temporarily adopt the social identity of a “riot policeman” when such disorder occurs.

“How to start a riot” is currently on tour with dates in Truro, Reading, Cheltenham, Barnstaple and Leeds already in the calendar for 2013.

Do go and see it. It’s only an hour long, but it is a far more convincing explanation of the causes of riots and a starting point for change than any politician or media outlet came up with at the time.

The aims of the old SDP, embodied in the “preamble to the constitution” of the Liberal Democrats, are as relevant today as they were then.