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Today, Thursday 30 June, is the last day shoppers can use cheque guarantee cards, which ensure payments are honoured by a bank even if the buyer doesn?t have sufficient funds. The scheme has run since 1965.
Banks are scrapping the scheme because they say it?s too costly; last year they lost £43m due to fraud. It means millions of people will be unable to offer protected payments by cheque in shops, train stations, to delivery and tradesmen across the country. This is likely to lead to a mass refusal to accept cheques.
The banking industry body - the Payment Council - has also announced that cheques will be scrapped in 2018. The public outcry against this was so great that they were forced to say that cheques would not be scrapped until there was a suitable alternative. To date, they don?t seem to have any idea about what that alternative might be - although it is rumoured that it is likely to be a ?paper-initiated? transaction system.
It is the small trader who is likely to lose most with the demise of the cheque: transaction charges if people switch to debit cards or a greater likelihood of being robbed if people switch to cash. If cash becomes the preferred method, it is also likely that the government will lose revenue through an increase in tax evasion.
1 February 2014
A new network of volunteer business mentors, mentorsme.co.uk, has been launched by the British Government.
Mentorsme.co.uk is Britain?s first online gateway for small and medium-sized enterprises looking for mentoring services.
The free site offers businesses access to a list of business mentoring organisations across Britain. A search engine allows businesses to refine their searches according to the life stage of their business and their location in Britain.
Mentorsme.co.uk also aims to raise awareness about the benefits of business mentoring through its library of online resources, which includes articles about mentoring and case studies of successful business mentoring relationships.
Mentorsme.co.uk is operated by the Business Finance Taskforce, which has been set up by the British Bankers? Association and is made up of five banks: Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds Banking Group, Royal Bank of Scotland and Santander. The taskforce was established to help businesses access the finance they need to grow.
Source
1 February 2014
Concerns have been raised by the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Education that the coalition Government?s focus on phonics will contribute to a decline in literacy standards.
Their report is based on evidence from 584 teachers and educational stakeholders including the teachers? unions, literacy associations, publishers and outreach organisations.
The report emphasises that literacy policy should focus on instilling a love of reading in order to increase children?s motivation, wellbeing and attainment. The APPG also found that literacy policy should not be the responsibility of the Department for Education alone. Social factors ? such as parental involvement ? and health issues ? such as eye care ? are significant contributors to children?s reading success.
The government?s focus on systematic synthetic phonics is at odds with the views of many within the education community, who believe that it risks making reading a dull exercise for English classes. The report identified that phonics and reading are being used interchangeably by policymakers, but reading isolated words is not reading for meaning.
Many respondents also wanted to dispel the myth about how phonics is currently used. Most teachers already use phonics to teach reading, but they do so by blending phonics with other reading strategies.
Source
1 February 2014
"Don?t go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first." Mark Twain (1835?1910)
1 February 2014
Despite competing priorities, leaders need to focus on creating a culture in which teaching and learning are truly a priority, according to the think piece - Leading Learning in Further Education - by the 157 Group and CfBT Education Trust (May 2011).
The effective leadership of learning appears to involve four areas of practice:
- Investing time and resources to promote the professional development of staff.
- Having a close involvement in the management of the teaching programme.
- Setting clear directions for the organisation, including the centrality of teaching and learning.
- Establishing a culture that respects the professionalism of teachers and empowers them to innovate.
The report also recommends the use of supported experiments - an action learning approach in which staff are involved in identifying areas that need to be improved and investigate new approaches for making these improvements.
Source
1 February 2014
An online entrepreneur says that poor spelling is costing the UK millions of pounds in lost revenue for internet businesses.
Charles Duncombe says an analysis of website figures shows a single spelling mistake can cut online sales in half.
He says the big problem for online firms isn?t technology but finding staff who can spell.
The concerns were echoed by the CBI whose head of education and skills warned that too many employers were having to invest in remedial literacy lessons for their staff.
Source
1 February 2014
All schools in England should offer university scholarships to their poorest pupils.
The deputy Liberal Democrat leader Simon Hughes said that linking scholarships directly to schools and colleges would motivate children and this would end the situation where some schools sent no pupils to university.
This was one of 30 recommendations made in his final report as champion of university access.
Source
1 February 2014
"The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes." Marcel Proust (1871?1922)
1 February 2014
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