Lucy Pearson

The structures of UKHE are a bit different (there’s not really such a thing as an Associate degree for example) l but agree with your broader point that these smaller campuses have a specific function which is important

Unbelievable isn’t it? These satellite campuses opened up opportunities which have been snatched away so casually

When people talk about the idea that some universities must go under, there’s a certain tendency to behave as if these smaller local campuses are negligible- regrettable casualties perhaps but not ‘real’ universities. This report does a great job of illustrating why that’s wrong.

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In the UK academic recession, you will be at one of these stages since many unis buy the same cuts model from the same consultancies. It is always the same process:
*Talk of belt-tightening
*Incidental savings (e.g. printing, refreshments)
*Travel budgets cut
*Promotion freeze (1/4)

Based on the experience of the people involved I'd say 'centre grows' is a net bad for all as it is actually 'centre grows but resource shrinks'. People are taken out of well functioning local teams and 'centralised for efficiency' which in practice means 'pick up the work of two other teams'.

www.alcs.co.uk www.bl.uk/services/plr

Mainly relevant if you live in the Uk- this is a requirement for PLR. ALCS accept members from anywhere but there are other similar organisations in different places apparently (but I don’t know what they are!)

Alas!

Mass detention camps. Or, as they were called in other contexts (such as South Africa during the Boer War and a few places since), concentration camps.

(This is also why it’s not just convenient but ethical to get your library to arrange scans for teaching use because then that goes straight into the ALCS data and the people who wrote your course reading get paid! Now I think about it also a good reason to set your own work haha!)

It’s not a straight indication but if you sign up for ALCS and PLR you can see if they’re being copied or borrowed. ALCS especially is likely to reveal teaching use because it shows legitimate making of copies and who else is using these but teachers! Even better you get paid for all these usages!

I really enjoyed Clare Furniss, The Things We Leave Behind, a near future dystopia which invites UK readers to imagine how easily they could become refugees. It's a very pertinent read in the context of the current ascendancy of the far right.

This street passes a school with over 2000 students and prioritises vehicles. People are hemmed in to narrow pavements which are blocked by bus shelters, side roads have fast, sweeping entrances, crossing points have tiny islands, and the cycle lane is narrow, painted and has a rough surface.

It really can’t Bridget.

When are you expecting to give outcomes? Only that I am getting paranoid about whether I actually managed to submit!

Absolutely! Everything is pushing kids onto screens and then we complain they're addicted.

Highly informed by your research Alison!

Sidenote: the irony of being told children must be off social media at all costs while simultaneously being told that it's inevitable that young people use AI and we should be embedding it into all our education is not lost on me.

This isn't easy or uncomplicated (as a scholar of childhood I am well acquainted with the way 'protecting children' can be weaponised against other minoritised groups) but I believe that a genuinely child-centred approach would be better than simply trying to squeeze kids into ever smaller spaces.

What if our starting point was that we should do everything in our power to make the public realm (physical and virtual) safe for children, even if that's difficult, inconvenient, or expensive?

This is bad for everyone. We all suffer from highly trafficked streets, with the consequent pollution and risk of road death. Similarly I don't want to exist in an internet ecosystem which is riddled with violent and extremist content.

The response to the increasing danger from cars on the streets was to say children shouldn't be on the streets rather than to seek to restrict cars and prioritise children's access to outdoor spaces. The result is that children now spend radically less time outdoors and have been pushed online.

As a parent, I find social media terrifying and want to keep my child off it as long as possible. However the calls for a ban for under 16s continue a long pattern of seeking to shrink young people's presence in the public realm rather than tackling other issues.

No, just the book. I'd also forgotten the TV show!

I didn't love it but I liked it ok at the time. But it really isn't comfortable with actually being a lesbian, looking at it now! It's pretty nice to think that modern readers have many more texts to choose from!

They were linking it to Aidan Chambers' Dance on My Grave which was a set text. Despite being about 20 years older than Sugar Rush it holds up much much better as a text you might actually want to share with a LGBTQ reader today!

I don't think so but the assignment was for a history of YA literature module: they had to find a text of their choice to present to the rest of the class. It got a lot of press at the time and is still in print so I'm not too surprised they landed on it as an example

This is a super awesome opportunity!

ah well at least we restructured the entire contemporary university, the product of many centuries of slowly accumulating human ingenuity, to boost this

Some of my students did a presentation on Sugar Rush last year. I remembered it as annoyingly laddish but unremarkable; they were swift to identify its essential homophobia and the way that's rooted in a deep dislike of femininity. Sorry Julie but the kids have moved on from your 'edgy' self hate.