On Sun, 2005-07-31 at 09:19 +0100, John McCreesh wrote: > On Sun, 2005-07-31 at 10:36 +0900, Kazunari Hirano wrote: > > Hi Ian, > > Yey! > > Ian Lynch <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority > > Is this a part of the UK Education Ministry? > > Cheers, > > They're an English government 'quango' - a 'quasi non-governmental > organisation' - http://www.qca.org.uk/7.html. Our equivalent here in > Scotland is the SQA - http://www.sqa.org.uk. If governments in the UK > feel they are unlikely to deliver on key election promises, they > delegate the responsibility to a 'quango' so they have someone else to > blame when it all goes horribly wrong.
:-) - Or they would say they are following the industry model of breaking up a large organisation into smaller autonomous business units and making them accountable for delivery. Quangos really are just arms of government departments. BECTA does have influence with central government and with LEA advisors but I don't see much evidence of any major impact from them in many schools except on the broader scale of government policy which could happen anyway. (Better be careful here, I have to work with them ;-) ) I was told by someone that the SST gets 50 million a year in funding. Interesting that with this "free" advice available I can earn a good living from helping schools with their development plans without the need for any subsidies from the tax payer ;-) My belief is that the SST should sell services to schools and have no subsidies. If their services are any good, people will buy into them. BECTA administers E-learning credits. That alone is £100m a year forced into proprietary software development and just one of BECTA's roles. -- Ian Lynch <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ZMSL --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
