For that reason it is being held up as a prototype for dispersed communities in the UK
For that reason it is being held up as a prototype for dispersed communities in the UK and around the world. Other areas of Britain, notably Cornwall and Cumbria, are eyeing it with interest, and the World Bank has expressed interest in the institute as a model that could be used in developing countries.The first of its kind, the UHI is a hybrid institution, fusing further education, higher education and specialist research establishments. I think they have been quite sensible, quite state-of-the-art in the sense that they understand you can’t expect people to sit at home on their own and use PCs. It calls itself a “networked” institution, a partnership of 14 colleges and research institutions, and of 50 learning centres dotted around the Highlands and Islands. You have to use video-conferencing so that students can talk to their tutors.”In addition, it reaches residents who are spread over a huge geographical and mainly rural area, from Campbeltown in the south to the Shetland Islands in the north, a distance of 400 miles.
They can learn about fish-farm production and gamekeeping as well as Gaelic, computing, business and health.And students are not isolated at home staring at their personal computer. Although the UHI uses distance-learning techniques, mainly video-conferencing, it is not a virtual university. It provides real places where people can go to learn and meet one another, staffed by real people.”It’s quite impressive, that,” says Professor Oliver Fulton, who has been in charge of partnerships with further-education colleges at Lancaster University “You really have to hand it to them If you are a student, you have local access. “It was a long-standing injustice that such a large part of the country didn’t have higher education,” says Sir Alistair MacFarlane, UHI’s rector and the former principal of Heriot-Watt University. “This is important for Scotland economically as well as culturally. I believe that UHI will emerge as a major force because it’s a completely new kind of thing.”Launched in 1993, the institute is an amazingly ambitious project costing £100m, much of it from the Millennium Commission.
And it is beginning to make waves as it pioneers a new kind of education. It has flexible entry and exit points so that the 4,500 students can get on and off their studies where they choose. They can do a range of programmes, from degrees to certificates, in subjects that are vocationally relevant to the area. The result has been that the most remote and beautiful corner of the British Isles has become increasingly depopulated.
Economically, it has been depressed and the local language, Gaelic, has virtually disappeared.
The hope is that all that will change with the new University of the Highlands Millennium Institute (UHI). From time immemorial, the people of the Highlands and Islands of Scotland have had to leave home to get an education. They have said goodbye to the sheep and the mountains and headed for universities in the cities of Glasgow, Aberdeen and Edinburgh, and, of course, St Andrews Usually, they have gone never to return. If the results are good, word could spread even further.For more information, contact anne.lubbock milton-keynes.gov.uk education independent.co.uk. Milton Keynes will look at the new assessment to see whether the Kaleidoscope idea can successfully transfer to other schools, or be taught by other teachers. Lubbock has trained others at her own school, so this seems likely. At Pepper Hill, absences are down by a third, and SAT results have improved by the same amount, although Lubbock is wary of attributing the latter purely to Kaleidoscope until the group on which it was started has passed right through the school.Kaleidoscope does chime with the times – the Government recognises that a lack of social and emotional skills acts as a barrier to learning, and is running a pilot Behaviour Improvement Programme in 25 local authorities, focusing on promoting “solutions that are inclusive and constructive”, rather than relying on punishment and exclusion, which, it notes, could lead to more serious problems later on.Pepper Hill awaits the results of its independent audit in September.
