PILING all your possessions into a small car and speeding up the motorway to St Andrews University is no longer any guarantee of escaping the clutches of Mum and Dad, reports The Times Higher Education Supplement (June 24). Hovering “helicopter parents” or “stage parents” yelling advice from the wings to offspring and educators alike are a part of campus life in the US, and UK universities may soon be facing a similar invasion by pushy parents who are paying more and so expecting good service. A THES leader column takes a dim view of universities encouraging parental participation: “becoming an independent thinker is a vital part of the higher education experience”.
Children and young people just want to hang out, says Nursery World (June 23), cautioning against the emphasis on “educational-driven activities” in the extended schools prospectus. Letting the little hooded ones learn to play nicely supervised by appropriately trained and well-paid playworkers or extended schools could turn into “warehouses that look after children”, says Tim Gill, a play consultant and the former director of the Children’s Play Council.
Leave well alone is also the message to Government in The MJ (June 23), which argues that the voluntary sector has become inextricably entangled with the state sector. Volunteering is no longer a selfless act, it argues, when the powers that legislate seem to have commandeered the Year of the Volunteer and tasked it with “solving the ‘social capital deficit’.” Altruism is dead. The Government’s More Than Good Intentions report (Jan) appeals to the vain: volunteering could help weight loss. “What next?” The MJ asks. “A Year of the Volunteer press release on Valentine’s Day, suggesting volunteering can help boost your sex life?”
Youth offending team workers are also groaning under the weight of government initiatives, reports Young People Now (June 22). “An extending, mainly unfunded task list” is to blame for the growing strain on the service, according to Professor Rod Morgan, the chair of the Youth Justice Board. The very nature of youth work has changed thanks to the Government’s ASBO and “respect agenda” but youth workers are reluctant to take on too much crime-reduction work. “There is an ongoing tension between doing universal youth work and targeted youth work,” says Pete Loewenstein, a development officer at the National Youth Agency. That youth work in some form is essential is not in question. “What I have learnt from working with pressure groups such as ASBO Concern is that young people are seriously getting it in the neck in communities where there is little or no youth provision,” says Graeme Tiffany, the vice-chair of the Federation for Detached Youth Work.
On the other side of the fence, Police Review (June 24) reports that police staff are getting a raw deal. The service has been labelled a “dinosaur employer” by the public sector union Unison for “sticking to its old ways”. The pay gap between men and women, differing holiday entitlement and unfair weighting allowances between officers and staff are among the gripes that could launch an avalanche of lawyers’ letters, it says.