Is this the beginning of the technological future? - Ben Evans, Sixth Former

In Back to the Future part 2, Doc Brown and Marty McFly travelled to October 21st 2015. It’s now November 16th 2018.  So, where’s my hoverboard, why don’t my shoes tie themselves, what gives? The future always seems to be so far away, and every time there’s a technological breakthrough, people seem less and less amazed. We’ve become numb to the rate at which technology progresses, and now, it could be slowing down.

In 1965, Gordon E. Moore predicted that the power of computers would double every two years. This was an ambitious claim to say the least, and people had many doubts about the computing industry, as shown in these quotes:

‘I think there is a world market for maybe five computers’ – Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943
‘Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons’ – Popular Mechanics Magazine, 1949 
‘There is no reason anyone in the right state of mind will want a computer in their home’ – Ken Olson, President of the Digital Equipment Corporation, 1977

It came to pass that the people who were the most successful in the next 50 years were those who saw the potential of computers. Gordon Moore obviously believed in this potential and he later became a co-founder of Intel. His prediction was so accurate in fact, it became known as a law, Moore’s law. However, Moore’s law is ending. Not because we are getting worse at making computers, in fact we’re finding more efficient ways to do it all the time, which I will talk about later, but we are hitting some barriers. A processor is made up of billions of tiny switches, called transistors. Just like a light switch, these can be on or off and nothing else. If on is represented as a 1 and off as a 0, you can create a binary system, and this is the basis of all classical computing. As we make transistors smaller, we can fit more into the same space and thus we get smaller computers that are just as powerful. This effect is known as miniaturisation. The issue is that we have become so good at making transistors small, that the next smallest thing is a single atom. This poses a few issues, and it is the main reason that processors are no longer becoming twice as powerful every two years. The other reason is that the more power we put in, the hotter the computer gets. We have reached a level where if not cooled properly, most of the computers we use would simply melt and burn. Electronics are also far less efficient unless they are cooled. This is why the computer cooling industry is somewhat booming at the moment, and the prices show it.

While it may seem like we are reaching the end of technology development as we know it, we’re not and there are many things to be excited about in the future. I’ve personally noticed that advertisement for ‘futuristic’ technologies has certainly increased. The other day I saw four adverts in a row on new technologies. The first was for Microsoft AI, a project that involves programs that allow deaf people to ‘see’ sound, something I am actually researching for my computing coursework, drone security and helping architects recreate history in virtual reality. The next was completely about virtual reality, and how it could be used to affect people going through therapy, children going through education and using it to see chemical molecules in 3D. I then saw an advert for Samsung’s new 8k TV and finally a Siemens advert for voice controlled appliances. I didn’t really know what to think. Why would you need to spend hundreds of pounds on a virtual reality headset to see molecules in 3D, when you can just buy one of the model kits we have in our department for a fraction of that. 8K TV? Just to put that into perspective, that’s 33 million, 177 thousand, 600 pixels. The human eye can barely see the difference in 4K. Enough pixels! As for voice controlled appliances, if you’re going up to the washing machine to put the clothes in anyway, you may as well press the button while you’re there.

To read the full article, please visit our academic blog page www.canford.com/Academic-Blog

The positive effects of parkland on academic achievement - Tom Whipple, Science Editor at The Times

We say often how fortunate Canfordians are to have access to such inspirational space in which to live and work.  Here Tom Whipple explains the power of parkland on positive academic achievement and on general wellbeing.

"Green spaces could be good for grey matter, a study has found. The research showed that children living in areas with more parkland had better spatial working memory, which is linked to academic achievement.

Almost 5,000 English 11-year-olds were involved in the study, which was published in the British Journal of Educational Psychology. The authors wanted to see how important shared green spaces were to a trait strongly linked to academic performance, among other things. Spatial working memory is a measure of how effective people are at orientation and recording information about their environment. It enables us to navigate through a city or remember the position of objects. To make sure that they were not measuring only socioeconomic status, with the children of the rich tending to live in leafier areas and have more educational advantages, the scientists looked at the level of deprivation of the neighbourhood. They found that irrespective of wealth more green space was associated with improved spatial memory.

Eirini Flouri, of University College London, said that the study emphasised the importance of parkland in urban planning. “Our findings suggest a positive role of green space in cognitive functioning. Spatial working memory is an important cognitive ability that is strongly related with academic achievement in children, particularly mathematics performance,” she said. She added that factors for which they had not accounted could be behind the link.

The research is the latest to link urban greenery to health benefits. Scientists have also found evidence that living close to parkland leads to a sustained improvement in mental wellbeing. In 2014 Exeter University contrasted these long-term effects of green space to the impact on happiness of promotions, pay rises or windfalls, all of which increase happiness only temporarily. They suggested that it helped to lower stress levels."

Subscribers to The Times can read the article online at 
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/a-local-park-boosts-pupil-achievement-2fpzszrls

The Currency of Language - Dr Patricia Gibbons

We face a difficulty when we use language, because we need it to stretch in all kinds of directions to say so many things.  The contents of one language is needed to do it all – from expressing feelings of elation, to making abstract thought concrete, to talking about practical things.  It is ordinary language but we need it to do extraordinary things.  The language we use about education matters.

Increasingly, language from the area of Economics is used about education.  Our colleagues in the Economics Department regularly use terms such as customers, market exchange, consumers, commodities, money etc.  It is entirely appropriate to engage those terms concerning the transfer of goods, such as coffee or oil, from one person to another.  Transactions occur when a person wants to secure an item they desire which they do not provide for themselves.  The transaction occurs through the exchange of money for commodity.  The value of the commodity has no intrinsic value but has the monetary worth of what someone is willing to pay for it.  But is the language of Economics appropriate in matter of education, and do the economic ideas and assumptions faithfully portrays the vision of education we hold?

I suggest that as far as education is concerned, and very specifically private education where parents pay fees, adopting economic language is inaccurate and has a potentially corrosive effect, devaluing and distorting the high vision we have of education.

To read the full article, please visit www.canford.com/academic-blog

Has Rap replaced Poetry? - a debate presented by Kacper Kazaniecki (Upper Sixth Former)

If I were to ask you who’s the current Poet laureate, the people’s poet, I don’t presume many of you would know. I for certain didn’t until pretty much yesterday. However, if I were to ask you who won the latest Grammy award for the best hip-hop album, I presume many more would know. 

The MP Emma Dent Coad has pointed this out in the houses of parliament after the Grenfell Tower disaster. She says:
“At times of national disaster, poet laureates are often called upon to commemorate and reflect upon events. In North Kensington we have our own Ben Johnsons and Alfred Lord Tennysons. Our poet laureates are Akala, AJ Tracey, Lowkey, Peaky .. we have Stormzy and Potent Whisper calling out what he calls “Grenfell Britain” in gut-wrenching prose."

Although the two art forms share the same fundamental medium that of rhyme and rhythm, there is a great discrepancy between how the two are perceived within society. If you were to take the average GCSE student, chances are that they wouldn’t have the greatest opinion on poetry. ‘It’s boring’, ‘the language is too confusing, ‘I can’t relate to it’ they might say, views that they wouldn’t necessarily hold of rap music. So, has rap music replaced poetry for (at least) our generation? Or is poetry the eternal art of humanity that is here to stay for millennia to come as it has done in the past. Does one deal with the depths of the human condition, that of: love, eternal truths, and our relation to the world. And does the other cover the superficial and primitive aspects of humanity that of: greed, intoxication and sexual obsession. Or maybe the two aren’t entirely antithetical, as many parallels and influences can be drawn between them.

Before we delve deeper into the analysis of both, here are some sentences either from Shakespeare or from ­popular hip-hop.  Guess which one the line comes from.

• “To destroy the beauty from which one came” – Jay z, You Must Love Me
• “Maybe it’s hatred I spew, maybe it’s food for the spirit” – Eminem, Renegade
o Later in the song Eminem says: “See, I'm a poet to some, a regular modern-day Shakespeare”
• “Men would rather use their broken records than their bare hands” – Orthello
• “I was not born under a rhyming planet” - Shakespeare: Much Ado About Nothing
• “The most benevolent king communicates through your dreams” - Wu-Tang Clan, Impossible
• “Socrates, philosophy and hypotheses can’t define me” – Wu-Tang Clan, Triumph

The reason to play this mini-game, isn’t to cherry pick some obscure, unknown tracks just to be able to say ‘look, hip-hop has clever lines as well’. But more so to show that the boundary between the two, once the context has been removed, can be very blurred. The hip-hop bars were chosen from very well-known artists who are or were at the forefront of hip hop. Wu-Tang-Clan for example, had the first hip hop album to reach no.1 in the UK charts. Perhaps the appeal that the British audience found in the album was the resemblance to the more traditional aspect of English literature.

To read the full essay and other latest writings from Canford pupils, please visit www.canford.com/Academic-Blog

Language learning is thriving - Richard Wilson, Head of German and Other Languages

Despite the national press reporting a decline in pupil interest in learning a foreign language, Languages at Canford are thriving. The school currently offers French, German and Spanish as core subjects at IGCSE and Pre-U, and saw 145 entries at IGCSE last summer and 19 at Pre-U. Results are excellent, with on average 70% of IGCSE graded A*/A and over 70% of Pre-U examinations at D1/M1 level in these languages in 2017. 

Alongside these main languages, last year also saw the biggest ever year for the ‘Other Languages’ department. There were record numbers of native-speakers, bilingual and non-native speaking pupils learning and/or taking exams in a record ten different world languages – Arabic, Chinese, Dutch, Italian, Japanese, Russian, Portuguese, Polish, Turkish and Urdu. Worldwide these languages are spoken by 2 billion people across four continents. A Level saw an A* in A2 Russian and As in AS Arabic, Italian and Polish and at IGCSE all examinations taken were awarded A*/A grades in Chinese, Dutch, Portuguese, Russian, Turkish and Urdu. In addition, pupils also take the internationally recognised HSK Chinese and the JLPT Japanese language proficiency exams. On leaving Canford, many pupils also decide to study one of these languages as part of their degree at top universities. Recent languages combinations include Chinese, Spanish with Chinese, Spanish with Arabic, French and Japanese, Arabic and Ancient Greek, Italian with Danish, French with Italian, Italian and Japanese, Japanese with Russian and many more.

As one Canfordian commented:  "I love travelling to different countries and learning about new culture and I think languages will really help me in my career as now Europe is becoming very international. I am now fluent in English, Dutch and Russian, so hopefully they will guide me to many exciting career opportunities.”

It is a real pleasure to manage such a diverse range of languages and to learn about the pupils’ personal and cultural connections to them. My congratulations go to all pupils involved in our Other Languages programme and their excellent efforts.   

The Benefits of Music - Christopher Sparkhall, Director of Music

There are frequent articles in the press talking about the beneficial effects of learning a musical instrument. In recent times, music has variously been credited with developing better synaptic pathways, helping fend off dementia in later life, improving cognitive function; aiding the process of speech and language learning and more besides.

Canford is currently involved in a long-term study with the Psychology department at Goldsmiths, University of London, which is investigating whether learning a musical instrument has an effect on attitudes to academic work in teenagers and, related to that, whether it can then show an improvement in academic outcomes. Last summer, almost all of our Shell pupils sat some standardised and specially designed tests which measured aspects of their musical and academic abilities and their attitudes to work. Although the most interesting and useful conclusions will only come in several years’ time, the information from last summer’s testing provided both some helpful confirmation of things we thought were the case, as well as some useful observations which will inform some lively discussions at Canford.

There was some initial evidence for a positive impact from musical learning on academic attitudes too. As the study develops and the evidence base builds, we will continue our involvement with the project. Looking beyond the study, analysis of our own A Level and GCSE results from last summer showed that those pupils involved in learning a musical instrument and musical ensembles gained significantly better academic GCSE and A Level grades than those who were not.

As Dr Wilkinson, our Director of Studies rightly observes, “Correlation is not causation: there will be many factors behind why an individual pupil achieves the grades they do. However we can be reasonably certain that involvement in musical activity does not distract from academic work and that there may well be some substantial benefits to it beyond the purely musical.”

A Level Results Day - keep a cool head: Michael Doherty, Head of Careers

The third Thursday in August is awaited with a mixture of eager anticipation and apprehensive dread by all Sixth Form students – A Level Results Day.

It is very important to keep a cool head and make rational decisions on a day of such frenetic activity.  Here are a few points to keep in mind:

DO’s

·         1. Have access to the internet and a phone on the day

·         2.Ensure you have your UCAS ID Number and access codes easily accessible

·         3.Check your results as early as possible to enable you to act quickly if necessary

·         4. Constantly check UCAS Track – sometimes, even if you haven’t achieved your offer grades, you can receive a place from your Firm Choice or Insurance Choice

·         5. Ensure you have signed up to the UCAS Clearing contact list so universities can contact you if you are in Clearing

If you have achieved the grades for your CF offer, confirm acceptance via UCAS Track and find out whether any further information is required.   If you are in the fortunate position to exceed your expectations and grades, you can put yourself forward for ‘Adjustment’ and contact other universities to ask about possible places available.  You have 5 days to find an alternative acceptable offer.  You might achieve the grades for your insurance offer, in which case you can either confirm acceptance via UCAS Track or, if you are having second thoughts, consider a Gap Year and reapply or find a similar course at a preferred university through Clearing.  Finally, if you don’t achieve the required grades for either offer but are still keen to go to university, you can apply through Clearing and then await confirmation via UCAS Track.  

DON’Ts 
 1. Delay – Start early and if you have no offers, act quickly to identify alternative options

·         2. Make arrangements or organise to work on the day – you may need time to resolve problems

·         3. Request a marks review of your papers without checking the grade boundaries and with your HoD first

·         4. Rush into hasty decisions and commit yourself to an option that you are not totally sure about

·         5. Ignore the help that is available at school: The Careers Department via phone or email, The Exams Officer via phone or email or Heads of Department via email

Finally, remember that deciding on a university course is a big decision so it is important that you don’t panic if you don’t get the grades you need and think clearly about whether that particular university or course is going to be right for you.

Should education be decided in the corridors of power?

According to the United Nations 57 million children globally receive no formal education. Many millions more receive only a very rough and ready education which leaves them barely able to read, write or add up. Most developed nations have cut their funding to support worldwide educational provision and the UK is now the largest direct donor to basic education but the overall situation is critical.

And yet in this country we are in real danger of losing our sense of what a high quality education should consist of. Pressure of rising pupils numbers, inflationary costs, increased costs to cover regulation and compliance has meant a projected 8% fall in per pupil funding in state schools between 2014/15 and 2019/20. 

Britain is ranked only 109th for the proportion of budget it spends on education – just below Kazakhstan and Cambodia. In 2014, the UK government spent 11.78% of its budget on education, while Zimbabwe, which came top, spent almost three times this amount. (As a benchmark, achievement of the UN’s sustainable development goals for education is calculated to require a 20% spend.). In 2015, the UK government spent 4.7% of the country’s GDP on education, down from 5.8% in 2010.

Leaving the turmoil created by recent GCSE and A Level academic curriculum developments aside, the education white paper, ‘schools that work for everyone’ , suggests yet more change on the educational horizon. But will it deliver high quality educational outcomes which serve all our young people?

One of the major reasons why independent schools are so successful is that they can and do devote significant resources to the development of the whole child both in and beyond the classroom. Independent schools such as Canford will seek to use those resources and their greater freedom of action to ensure that the educational experience we offer is driven by more than just financial expedients. We know that academically – and in a broader sense – the personal development of our young people must be rich and diverse if it is to be truly valuable and effective. Our maintained sector colleagues are just as passionate about these issues, but they are starved of resources: four out of every ten academies were in deficit last year and the number of schools with pension deficits doubled.

A high quality education is such a valuable and life-changing asset in so many ways.  Yet a narrow perspective of education and its aims has been asserting itself ever more actively in the corridors of power.

Stepping up to the exam challenge with confidence

“I’ve always taken an approach to just get on with the job.”

So says Theresa May and her words strike a chord with me, even if I don’t agree with all of her policies.  With the exam ‘season’ now upon us, I think it is important to reflect on just how hard we are working in independent schools across the country within an ever shifting educational landscape.

Schools are currently tackling significant operational changes such as a major reform of examination systems and more strategic matters such as what is the right ‘type of school’ to best educate our young people – grammar school, free school, academy and so on.  In the independent sector we are working hard to protect the freedom of decision making and action that we currently enjoy and use so effectively “to get on with the job”.  

Alongside the academic and intellectual there is a heightened importance on developing soft skills, building mental toughness, and supporting the well-being of both pupils and staff in an age where the pressures of social media and an ever increasing demand for instant communication and transmission of information has significantly increased the impact of workload expectations, stress and accompanying mental health issues.

We could not “get on with the job” effectively for our pupils without the dedication and commitment of our staff.  Teaching staff shortages have been well documented in the press and statistics show shortfalls across a wide range of subject areas, such as STEM, Humanities, MFL and the Creative Arts.  We are fortunate to attract high quality staff and it is fundamentally important to us that we support their professional development.  A recent joiners’ ‘post induction’ feedback process at Canford revealed that this commitment is highly recognized and much valued.

For pupils sitting external examinations this summer, I hope that that sense of purpose, intellectual curiosity and the blend of those soft skills of self-discipline, resilience, leadership and teamwork, which we work so hard as educators to instil will combine to ensure that those facing the public exam challenge step up as individuals and support and spur each other on collectively to achieve their very best.