ponedjeljak, 19.09.2011.
Pressure On Attorney General To Block Met Move Against Press Freedom
The attorney general, Dominic Grieve, is facing growing pressure to block an attempt by the Metropolitan police to use the Official Secrets Act to force journalists to reveal their sources.
As senior Liberal Democrats indicated that Nick Clegg was "sympathetic" to journalists, police sources also expressed unease after Scotland Yard applied last week for an order under the 1989 act to require the Guardian to identify its sources on phone hacking. One police source said the decision to invoke the act was "likely to end in tears" for the Met.
Lib Dem sources said that as deputy prime minister, Clegg was unable to express a view on what action the attorney general should take. But senior Lib Dems lined up at the party conference in Birmingham to call on the attorney general to use his powers to rule that the Yard's use of the act is not in the public interest.
Simon Hughes, the Lib Dem deputy leader, who is suing News International over alleged phone hacking at the News of the World, said: "Millions of people believe the Guardian has done a public service by exposing the series of scandals behind phone hacking carried out on a regular basis by individuals on behalf of other media organisations like the Murdoch empire. It is entirely inappropriate for the Officials Secret Act to be used to try to prosecute journalists who have taken these actions.
"I hope that the law officers, or the government more widely, will make it clear that such an intervention and such a prosecution would not be in the public interest. The police or the Crown Prosecution Service may be able to justify on technical grounds that this is the proper thing to do. But the wider interests should prevail and the sooner a decision is made to end plans to prosecute the better."
Don Foster, a veteran Lib Dem MP who advises the culture secretary, Jeremy Hunt, informally on media issues, called on the attorney general to block the "extremely bizarre" use of the act. "I understand the attorney general has the opportunity to use this power," Foster said after a fringe meeting, organised by the Hacked Off campaign, that was addressed by the actor Hugh Grant. "He should use it and say this is not in the public interest."
Foster, who praised the Guardian for "fantastic journalism" in exposing phone hacking, found unanimous support at the fringe meeting when he asked whether the Guardian's disclosure that Milly Dowler's phone had been hacked – the revelation that prompted the police use of the Official Secrets Act – was justified. The MP said: "If it was in the public interest for the Guardian to do what they did, it is extremely bizarre, it is almost unheard of, for the Metropolitan police to have used the Official Secrets Act as the basis for seeking to get hold of the information they want.
"It is absolutely vital that we find out first of all who actually signed off agreement to use the Official Secrets Act and, secondly, we have to have a very, very clear explanation of why they are doing it. A final decision is made by the attorney general as to whether to allow it to happen. The one good bit of news is that, in making his decision, the attorney general can use public interest as one of the criteria that he considers. I hope he will very seriously indeed."
The Met's actions were also condemned by other newspapers: in a leader in the Times, the Met is accused of using the Official Secrets Act "not to protect the public interest but as a punitive measure to curb journalistic inquiry and pursue a sectarian and self-interested campaign". It goes on to say that the "principle and the method in the Met's action are wrong. They are not only a constraint on the Guardian's reporting, but an attack on the principles of free expression, the workings of a free press and the future of investigative journalism".
The Daily Telegraph described the situation as a "direct attack on the freedom of the press" and "an intolerable abuse of power". Its leader asks if the Met are "seriously contemplating that the first prosecutions arising from the phone-hacking scandal should involve the very people who exposed it?"
Tom Brake, chair of the Lib Dem home affairs committee, said: "The use of the Official Secrets Act in these circumstances is very unusual, and all the more worrying because it does not allow the defendant to argue that their actions were in the public interest. The Met need to explain why they think it is appropriate to use the Official Secrets Act in this case. While this is clearly a matter for the police and the attorney general, I do question whether this action is in the public interest given everything that has happened, or indeed in the interests of investigative journalism."
The political unease was echoed in police circles. One insider asked: "When was the last time the OSA [Official Secrets Act] was used successfully against the media?"
The source added that the Met had to be seen to be rigorous, but threatening to get a production order requiring the handing over of notes and the revealing of sources was a step too far: "No one was expecting us to use the OSA. Usually the use of the OSA ends in tears." With the new Met commissioner, Bernard Hogan-Howe, not due to start his job as Britain's top police officer officially until later this month, the source added: "He is not even in office and he is facing his first crisis."
Grant said at the Hacked Off meeting: "A lot of us victims and campaigners had come to the view that the new police inquiry – [Operation] Weeting under Sue Akers – was good cops. It was a new investigation. They were embarrassed by the behaviour of their predecessors and colleagues. So for them to suddenly turn on their fellow goodies in this battle is worrying and deeply mysterious."
The Met said that the application for a production order was made under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act and did not seek to use powers under the OSA. But the police said that the OSA was mentioned in the application because a possible offence under that act might have been committed.
News By:
guardian.co.uk
- 12:21 -
Schools Prevented From Becoming Academies By Bank Fears Over PFI Deals
The government's flagship programme to convert hundreds of schools to academies has been delayed after banks refused to sign private finance contracts.
At least 16 schools that were due to leave local authority control at the start of this term have been put on hold after banks questioned whether councils would still be liable for PFI repayments.
Councils have been forced to step in to run the schools while the problems are resolved. Teachers have been transferred back to local authority payrolls and the disbanded governing bodies reformed.
The delay could hit dozens more schools that were rebuilt under PFI schemes, and the government is calling in lawyers to reassure the banks. Ministers could be forced to rewrite legislation, which was fast-tracked in the weeks after the coalition was formed, to clarify the situation.
Labour blamed the problems on the pace at which Michael Gove, the education secretary, has pursued the reforms.
Nearly 1,000 schools have converted to academy status since the election including 185 this month. Under Gove's legislation, a local authority ceases to maintain a school when it converts to academy status. Banks fear this means councils no longer have the authority to make repayments.
At least nine authorities, including Nottinghamshire, Sheffield, Devon and Kent have been affected. In Northamptonshire, which had the biggest PFI school-building programme in Britain, two schools are affected – but a total of 41 were either built or remodelled under PFI.
An email sent by John True, Nottinghamshire county council's schools service director, suggests that the legislation may have to be amended.
The email, written on Thursday and which the Guardian has seen, says: "The schools were due to formally change their status on 1 September, however due to a last minute technical issue in respect of the PFI contract this has not been possible.
"The DfE [Department for Education] are working on the issue on a national basis, as it has implications for all PFI academy conversions and may ultimately require a change in the education bill due to be enacted in January 2012."
John Mann, the Labour MP for Bassetlaw in Nottinghamshire, who has two affected schools in his constituency, said: "It's an extraordinary incompetence and error by Michael Gove.
"There are issues about academy schools, about whether they are a good idea. There are also issues about PFI. But for him on his flagship policy to get the law wrong brings into question whether he should be in the job."
At the two schools, Portland and Valley, teachers are still employed by the council but are being managed by the Outwood Grange Academy Trust. Northamptonshire county council said Weston Favell secondary and Duston schools were "officially operating in the guise of academies because the relationships have all been set up – but technically they're not".
News By:
guardian.co.uk
- 12:15 -
Michael Gove Slackens Rules On Use Of Physical Force In Schools
Ministers are scrapping a requirement for teachers to record instances when they use physical force, as part of a wider move to "restore adult authority" in the wake of the riots in England.
The education secretary, Michael Gove, said that he wanted greater numbers of men teaching, particularly in primary schools, so as to provide children with male authority figures who could display "both strength and sensitivity".
In a speech delivered at Durand academy, in Stockwell, south London, Gove said the regulations on the use of force inhibited teachers' judgment.
He said: "So let me be crystal clear, if any parent now hears a school say, 'sorry, we can't physically touch the students', then that school is wrong. Plain wrong. The rules of the game have changed."
Gove said men considering teaching were deterred by a fear of rules that made contact between adults and children "a legal minefield".
The government was planning to start a programme this autumn encouraging former members of the armed forces to take up teaching, specifically to ensure more male role models, Gove said.
In a speech that sought to address the causes of the riots in August, Gove began by making a moral distinction between what he called a "hard-working majority" and a "vicious, lawless, immoral minority". But he went on to examine what he said were the policy failures that lay behind the creation of the "educational underclass".
He said: "To investigate where the looters came from is not to make excuses because of background. It is to shine a light on failures that originated in poor policy, skewed priorities, and the deliberate undermining of legitimate authority."
Gove said he was haunted by the thought that, if circumstances had been different, he might have been a part of this underclass. The education secretary highlighted his own family background. "I was born to a single parent, never knew my biological father and spent my first few months in care.
"Thanks to the love of my adoptive mother and father, and the education I enjoyed, I was given amazing opportunities. So I know just how much the right parenting, the right values at home, and the right sort of school matter in determining a child's fate."
Gove said there had been a slow erosion of adult authority, subverted by a culture in which young people felt able to ignore civilised boundaries. "The only way to reverse this dissolution of legitimate authority is step-by-step to move the ratchet back in favour of teachers."
Gove also spoke of an "iron-clad link" between illiteracy, disruption, truancy, exclusion and crime.
More than 430,000 children were absent for 15% of school time, and more than a million pupils missed 10% of the academic year, he said.
He added that only a third of those students who missed between 10% and 20% of school got the "basic minimum" of five good GCSE passes.
The government is asking Charlie Taylor, a headteacher and Gove's adviser on behaviour, to look at improving "alternative provision" units for children with behavioural problems.
Taylor will be asked to work with Lord Harris of Peckham, who sponsors academies, to speed up the ability of those entities to create provision for excluded and disruptive pupils.
Brian Lightman, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, welcomed Gove's statement concerning the use of force against pupils.
He said: "ASCL is delighted that the secretary of state has responded to our advice with the wise decision not to proceed with these regulations. The requirement would have imposed yet another bureaucratic burden that did nothing to improve discipline or safeguard children.
"The use of physical restraint is thankfully required very rarely in schools. On occasions where it is needed, detailed guidance exists and staff fully understand the need to follow it to the letter. Schools already keep records of breaches of discipline."
News By:
guardian.co.uk
- 12:14 -
četvrtak, 08.09.2011.
Key U.S. Rule Hitting For-Profit Schools Softened
WASHINGTON, June 2 (Reuters) - A rule that threatens to cut off tuition aid to some programs run by for-profit colleges was softened in the final version issued by the U.S. Education Department on Thursday.
Officials delayed until 2015 before a program can be denied tuition loans over too many former students in the same course having defaulted on their loans.
The draft rule had said students in troubled programs would lose their aid as early as the 2012-2013 school year.
The modified final rule could give a boost to the stocks of for-profit education companies such as Apollo Group (APOL.O), Career Education Corp (CECO.O) and the Washington Post Co (WPO.N), parent of Kaplan Higher Education.
The S&P education index .GSPEDUS of such companies gained 1.7 percent on Wednesday after it was reported the final version of the so-called "gainful employment" rule was near.
"Many of the for-profit career colleges do a great job of preparing students for work," Education Secretary Arne Duncan told reporters on a conference call, but "there's been some whose intentions we frankly doubt."
Duncan said there were "bad actors who recruit aggressively" in the industry and he hoped to give them "plenty of time to improve."
Nevertheless, the government expects 5 percent of for-profit education programs to fail under its new requirement and 2 percent of all programs, once private and public colleges are included.
For-profit schools remain unhappy about the prospect of programs potentially losing access to federal loans, arguing that the proposed rule is outside the Education Department's authority, said Harris Miller, president of the Association of Private Sector Colleges and Universities.
The association has not decided yet whether to appeal the rule in court, but has already filed suit against other new rules that would curb deceptive advertising by schools and bar recruiters from being paid based student enrollment numbers.
"Our final opinion will be based on a factual analysis on our students and our programs," he said. "We're going to need to trust but verify."
Miller did give the department credit for confining the latest rule to debt used to pay for tuition, after schools complained they should not be responsible when students take out oversized loans to cover other expenses.
The Education Department under President Barack Obama has been cracking down on the for-profit learning sector, arguing that some of the vocational schools and colleges they run fail to educate students while burdening them with unpayable debt.
Other new rules require schools to disclose graduation rates and job placement rates to new students.
Under the latest rule, which is due to go into effect mid-2012, at least 35 percent of graduates and dropouts of programs must be paying back loans, or their loan payments must equal 30 percent of discretionary income or 12 percent of total earnings.
Schools which fail to meet this standard three years out of four will no longer be allowed to accept students who pay with federal loans. And for the first year they fail to meet the standard, they must tell new students of that failure.
Under the original proposal, programs would have been barred from taking students with federal loans after just one year of missing the target.
Students who attended for-profit schools defaulted on their school loans at considerably higher rates than students who went to private or publicly funded colleges and universities, according to draft U.S. Education Department data issued last month. [ID:nN20288208]
The Education Department blames the default rate at some schools on poor quality teaching while schools say their students come from poorer backgrounds with fewer resources to repay loans in a sluggish economy.
News By:
reuters.com
- 12:38 -
