News in Brief

Enterprise education

Start-ups are not the only fruits

Enterprise education has been "ghettoised" in university business schools, an academic has claimed. Richard Beresford, director of the Centre for Creativity and Enterprise at Oxford Brookes University, said enterprise is still taught mostly in business and vocational studies. "The failure of universities to embed enterprise across the wider curriculum means that ... understanding of enterprise and enterprising careers is centred predominantly on the act of starting up in business," he said.

Safe public architecture

Counter-terror cornices

The next generation of architects is being encouraged to include counter-terrorism measures in its designs. A Home Office competition, which asks students to consider security and safety issues in planning a fictional public space, grew out of recommendations made by Lord West, the Security Minister, in his review of how to safeguard crowded places. It has been developed with the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, the Royal Institute of British Architects and the National Counter Terrorism Security Office.

www.rsadesigndirections.org/projects/projects5.html

Ucas website

Information upload

More information for students has been added to the website of the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (Ucas). Students searching for courses can now access information about the work-related skills that they should gain and the overall satisfaction ratings from the National Student Survey for each subject grouping that they view.

Vocational qualifications

Modular modernisation

A new modular approach will make vocational qualifications more relevant to the needs of employers and more accessible for learners, the Government claimed this week. Under the Qualifications and Credit Framework, all key vocational qualifications will be approved by sector skills councils and available to learners in small credit-based units by 2010. Sion Simon, the Further Education Minister, said the system "will ensure that no learning is ever lost" because qualifications will be flexible enough to incorporate relevant modules gained at a pace that suits the learner.

European science survey

Britons are least likely to ...

Young Britons are among the least likely in Europe to consider studying science subjects, a survey for the European Commission has shown. The study was conducted among almost 25,000 people aged between 15 and 25 across countries. Asked if they were considering studying scientific subjects, 86 per cent of Britons said they would probably or definitely not consider studying natural sciences, 76 per cent would not consider engineering, 76 would not consider maths and 66 per cent would not consider social sciences or humanities.

http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/index_en.htm.