We should ensure that no young person leaves school without mastering the basics and they should not have to rely upon catch-up courses in colleges." The Skills for Life courses are provided for any teenager who leaves school without a GCSE at grade A-C in English and maths.The CBI has said one in three companies has to provide remedial training for school leavers to improve their writing and arithmetic. A written parliamentary reply from the Schools minister, Jacqui Smith, showed that in 2003-04, 278,000 youngsters aged 16 to 18 enrolled in Skills for Life "catch-up" lessons in English and maths. The Tories say the figures show the government's education policy is a shambles. On the same day, The Guardian's "Today on the web" spot provided links to several of these websites.The Birmingham Mail executive running the paper's coverage of the trouble said: "Throughout we've been acutely aware of measuring the tone, content and balance in our reporting. There was always the danger of inciting one sector through headlines, choice of pictures, intros or simply space given over to quoting one community leader."Responsible, or too careful not to offend? In contrast, the Telegraph drew attention to the BBC website's failure to mention ethnicity until the 14th paragraph of its Lozells report.Peter Cole is professor of journalism at the University of Sheffield. Tony Blair's claims to have improved school standards have been called into question because nearly 280,000 teenagers have had to take remedial lessons in literacy and numeracy after leaving school.
Reading it while reflecting about the reporting of the Lozells trouble, provoked the following thoughts:Does The Daily Telegraph either mean it, or think it helpful, to write: "It is becoming increasingly difficult to tell the difference between parts of Birmingham and South Central Los Angeles"?The trend to link print with the web broadens awareness of websites. Last Tuesday, the Telegraph reported apologies from websites and pirate radio stations for publicising the gang rape allegations which "caused a huge rise in tension between black and Asian communities". It is endorsed by Sir Trevor McDonald and is sensible rather than overly "PC". Why?First, there is a belief, particularly in the print media, that when ethnic minority communities are in conflict, traditional readers are little interested.Second, there is ignorance about the issues - political and religious, to name but two - dividing these communities.Third, in some areas of the media there is an over-sensitivity to the delicacy of the multi-cultural debate, a fear of "getting it wrong" that can lead to the sometimes risible excesses of political correctness The events of 7 July have compounded this. An absence of proper ethnic minority representation in the media, particularly regional newspapers, denies them the cultural knowledge that would be so useful in covering these sensitive stories.This knowledge deficit is addressed in a new Home Office-funded handbook, Reporting Diversity, published by the Society of Editors and the Media Trust. The Independent on Sunday was the only national Sunday newspaper to treatthe story properly - putting it on the front page.
The BBC did well, leading all its overnight bulletins with it But uthers were less plugged in. Sunday's national newspapers and the broadcast media heard about it on the Saturday night. It seems the good people of Dalston are a lot more sophisticated than our northern brothers and sisters. All around Dalston market there was much talk but little belief that this incident actually took place.. Now for the bad news.