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PART-TIME STUDENTS
There are half a million part-time students in Higher Education in Great Britain and the government is changing the financial support they are currently getting. From 2005, there will be a sliding scale of grants depending on exactly how part-time their study is, but what will the impact be for these students and their funding in 2006 when the new system of variable top up fees comes into existence? The Higher Education Act omitted to mention part-time study.
Libby Purves is joined by David Vincent, pro vice-chancellor of Open University where all of the students are part-time, and Jonathan Beck, president of Birkbeck College Students Union.
HANDYMEN
Many busy professionals have neither the time, the inclination nor the ability to turn their hands to those little jobs around the house. Now a London-based firm is helping white collar workers, most of them graduates, to find new careers doing everything from fixing dodgy taps to putting self assembly furniture together. All have current motorbike licences, allowing them to dodge the traffic and turn up on time.
Caroline Swinburne met Bruce Greig, the company founder, and talks to handymen and customers.
REMEMBRANCE
Every year the Second World War is commemorated on Remembrance Day but how much interest does it still hold for school children? With fewer and fewer veterans still around, the events of the thirties and forties are rapidly being designated as history rather than seen as having contemporary relevance.
At Abbey Grange school in Leeds a group of fifteen year olds have been making contact with local veterans, setting up their own Remembrance web site, designing murals and visiting commemoration festivals and events. Earlier this summer the pupils won the first prize of a competition organised by Imperial War Museum, challenging school children to think of ways to keep the memories alive.
Caroline Swinburne visits Abbey Grange and meets local veterans Gerry Briscoe and Peter Strachan from Bradford as they show the pupils some of their war memorabilia.
Libby Purves talks to Jason Nicholls, a researcher in comparative and international education at St Cross College, Oxford University. Jason is carrying out research, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, into the way World War II is taught in five countries - Japan, Italy, Sweden, USA and England.
Additional information:
Open University
Birkbeck College Students Union
National Union of Students
Abbey Grange School
Economic and Social Research Council (E.S.R.C)
St Cross College
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