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A report by Carol Vorderman says that school pupils in England should study maths up to the age of 18.
It says radical change is needed to give children the mathematical skills needed to succeed in a workplace where numeracy is increasingly important.
Almost half of 16-year-olds fail to achieve grade C at GCSE, with just 15 per cent studying maths beyond that level.
In almost all other industrialised countries either all, or nearly all, students study maths to the age of 18.
More than 300 000 16-year-olds each year completed their education without enough understanding of maths to function properly in their work or private lives.
24 per cent of economically active adults were ?functionally innumerate?, and universities and employers complained that school-leavers did not have necessary maths skills.
The report concluded that the GCSE curriculum leans towards advanced topics needed by those who will study maths at A-level, which puts off less gifted pupils.
It recommends that the current maths GCSE should be split into two separate exams:
One would offer a higher standard of education in the core areas of the curriculum, such as basic numeracy and personal finance, while the other acted as a preparation for A-level.
Source
27 April 2014
Micro businesses want to grow, but struggle to find the right staff, reveals British Chambers of Commerce report:
In a survey of over 2000 micro businesses, over half (55%) are looking to increase the number of staff they employ. However, one in two (50%) find it difficult to recruit the right people.
Micro businesses are vital to the success of the UK economy. These firms generate a fifth of private sector turnover in the UK, and employ a fifth of all its employees.
Many micro firms are frustrated by being unable to find the right skills in the local labour market. When asked how confident they would be that a school-leaver with A-levels or the equivalent would have the necessary skills for their business, almost half (47%) said they would be fairly or very nervous; with only 22% saying there were very or fairly confident.
When asked the same question with regard to graduates, only a third (36%) of micro firms was very or fairly confident that university leavers would have the right skills for the job.
The report also found:
- Over half of micro firms (55%) are looking to increase the number of staff they employ before 2015. Only 2.5% are looking to decrease their staff numbers over the same period with one in five looking to double their staff numbers.
- Less than half of micro firms (40%) felt well informed about changes to employment legislation.
- 39% of micro businesses stated that rules around dismissal were extremely or fairly burdensome.
Source
27 April 2014
Although money is shown as ?available? in their accounts, many people don?t realise that the money can still be ?clawed back?.
PayPal, to be fair, tells you that money received into your account can be subject to ?charge backs?, but UK banks don?t advertise the ?loophole? in their system which is exploited by scammers.
When you pay a cheque into your account, the funds become available for you to use after three working days, but the cheque is not fully ?cleared? for another three working days. This means that if the cheque is stolen, fraudulent or fake, the bank can ?claw back? the money up to six business days after you have paid it in.
Scammers take advantage of this by writing you a cheque for something you are selling and ask you not to send the item until you have checked that the funds are in your account. You send the item, and shortly after that the bank ?claws back? the money from your account.
A variation of this scam is where the scammer writes a cheque for an amount which is more than required for, say, a holiday let. You are then asked to do a Western Union transfer or forward some of that extra money to someone else and to keep some of it ?for your trouble?.
27 April 2014
Significant, notable and interesting dates.
27 April 2014
One of the problems for Apple newbies is that some of Windows? keys seem to be missing. An example of this is the Delete or ?del? key.
The delete key on the Apple Mac is the Backspace (<- ) key, but the problem with this is that it is a ?backward? delete - not the ?forward? delete of Window?s Delete key.
?Forward? delete can be achieved on the Apple Mac by pressing the ?fn? key at the same time as the Backspace key.
27 April 2014
Monday 3 October - Labour Day (AU: NSW, SA); Queen?s Birthday (AU: WA); Tag der deutschen Einheit (DE)
Tuesday 4 October - Moon?s 1st Quarter 03:15 UT; World Animal Day
Friday 7 October - Yom Kippur begins at sunset
Source
27 April 2014
I had just completed a movie on iMovie and wanted to make a DVD of it for my mother. So I clicked ?Share? > ?iDVD...? and a ?Preparing project...? message box appeared. After about an hour of processing, a ?Choose Application? message box dropped down with a list of applications - iDVD nowhere to be seen amongst them.
The truth of the matter is that iDVD is not included with OS X Lion which is very disappointing considering that when I was researching whether to buy an Apple for my next computer, I was led to believe that OS X Lion included the iLife suite and the iLife suite included iDVD and iWeb (which is also missing).
It seems Apple have decided that optical media are ?old hat?, ignoring the fact that DVDs are still the most popular format for distributing videos. How many people do you know who don?t have the means for playing a DVD?
The only way you can get a copy of iDVD is by buying the boxed set of iLife which - guess what - comes on optical media. I am very reluctant to pay 46 (70 for a family licence) for a suite of programs when three of the five programs are already installed on my computer and I have no use for the fifth.
If you don?t want to buy iLife, you will need export your movie by clicking ?Share? > ?Export?, selecting the size of file and using a third-party DVD burning program such as Burn which can be downloaded from:
http://burn-osx.sourceforge.net/Pages/English/home.html
27 April 2014
Depending on your provider, you can receive free text notifications of our news items by following us on twitter.
If you are already on twitter, but haven?t registered your mobile phone, log into you account and click on:
Profile > Edit your profile > Mobile
Here you can register by:
- Choosing your country
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- Choosing your carrier and
- Texting GO to 86444 (in the UK)
If you don?t have a twitter account, you can easily set one up by going to:
twitter.com
Once you have a twitter account and your mobile phone has been registered, go to twitter.com/LearningPages, click on the ?Follow? button and then click on the mobile phone symbol which is next to the ?Following? button.
27 April 2014
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