Education | An Unweeded Garden

Browsing All Posts filed under »Education«

Chinese lessons: part II

May 22, 2012

And so it begins, in earnest. Chinese lessons. Official Chinese lessons. Not Chinese lessons in a park, on a bench, with whoever has decided to take it upon themselves to teach me the Mandarin for Beijing Duck this week. No, I’ve enrolled at The Hutong School in Sanlitun. A proper school, with a proper syllabus, […]

Chinese lessons: part I

May 11, 2012

I’m not in the habit of talking to old men in parks, but sometimes you have to buck the trend and go with it. And so it was on Sunday, whilst sitting, reading by a lake in Solidify Lake Park, that I became embroiled in a conversation with an elderly Chinese gentleman. By conversation, of […]

Sunshine on a rainy day

May 8, 2012

Shiny, glitzy, sparkling – that’s what Hong Kong is supposed to be like. But when I looked out of my window at midday, reviewing the notes from the previous night’s focus group, it was so dark that it looked like it was ten in the evening! Rain, rain and more rain – interspersed with a […]

Why don’t Brits rule the world

February 7, 2011

Robert Peston’s recent article on the lack of Brits at the top of UK businesses is fascinating, especially in light of the BBC’s Who Gets The Best Jobs programme. He reasons that UK companies are no longer run by UK citizens whilst top companies in the US, Sweden, Germany, France and India do tend to […]

David Willetts – “Connexions hasn’t worked”

January 25, 2011

It seemed a simple enough question, but David Willetts looked, and sounded, somewhat surprised last night when asked whether the Government was intending to address the paucity of good quality information, advice and guidance in schools in England and Wales. Continuing a theme raised earlier by Adrian Thomas of Network Rail, that good quality careers […]

Social Media in internal communications

September 2, 2010

Social media tools have a core role to play in engaging an internal audience and can serve as platforms for both one-way communication or as more interactive platforms. Many organisations use social tools to deliver company information in a broadcast fashion, whether by way of update services such as Yammer or Twitter or via internal […]

Choose your news carefully

July 27, 2010

I feel there may be a paradox in using Twitter as a way of building credibility. The thinking goes something like this: Microblogging thrives on News News thrives on Novelty Novelty is at odds with Credentials So if you’re Tweeting about something, I will assume that it’s of novel value to you (something you’ve just […]

Universities should look to deliver real returns on investment

June 24, 2010

The emergency budget has hit Higher Education particularly hard with cuts in spending of up to 25% over the next four years. Coupled with the impact on capital expenditure that the VAT rise will bring about, leading universities are inevitably looking to an increase in fees to meet the shortfall. In itself, that shouldn’t be […]

Masters cash may be better spent on travel

December 30, 2009

Graduates who stayed on at university to do a masters degree with the aim of making themselves more employable might have been better off spending the money on travel. That is the view of some recruitment experts and employers who say that it has become more difficult for candidates to differentiate themselves, and that further […]