A national policy conference to explore current and emerging challenges and approaches to widening participation in adult education, is being held by NIACE and The Open University today, as part of Adult Learners' Week (12-18 May 2012).

Those attending Widening participation in adult education: vision, reality and policy will be amongst the first to hear the findings of NIACE's 2012 annual participation survey, which tracks the current and recent participation of adults in all types of learning.

The conference will include an input from John Hayes MP, Minister of State for Further Education, Skills and Lifelong Learning, as well as responses from Gordon Marsden MP and Baroness Sharp of Guildford.

Delegates will also hear from a range of speakers including:

• David Hughes, Chief Executive, NIACE (co-chair)
• Will Swann, Director, Students, The Open University (co-chair)
• Rajay Naik, Director, Government and External Affairs, The Open University
• Ruth Spellman, Chief Executive, Workers' Educational Association
• Michelle Dawson, Community Manager, Hammerson plc
• Dr. Fiona Aldridge, Head of Workplace Learning, NIACE

Will Swann, Director, Students, at The Open University, said:
"We are delighted to be supporting Adult Learners' Week to celebrate the achievements of adult learners and to highlight the importance of widening participation in education. Widening participation is at the very heart of The Open University's mission and since the University was set up 43 years ago, 1.7 million people have studied with us. Currently, 37 per cent of students are studying part-time to develop themselves professionally and personally. We are proud to have helped so many achieve their educational dreams and hope that this year's Adult Learners' Week inspires many more to take up studying."

The conference is one of a series of national events to celebrate Adult Learners' Week (12 - 18 May 2012), the UK's largest festival of learning.

The Department for Business Innovation & Skills (BIS) has today appointed Rajay Naik, Director of Government and External Affairs at The Open University, to the newly formed National Council for Careers. The Council will drive excellence in and the development of careers guidance, the National Careers Service and other important policy areas. The Council will bring together experts from business and the careers sector to resolve challenges and recommend reforms in the careers and skills sectors.

Skills Minister John Hayes said: “The National Council for Careers will help to create a new beginning in careers guidance by improving professionalism, forging links with business and ensuring advice reflects the competition and complexity of the labour market.

“I am delighted that a team of experienced and dedicated professionals have agreed to work on this extremely important council which will be at the forefront of transforming careers guidance. The Council includes representatives from across the public, private and third sector, as well as from the careers profession, and with a range of backgrounds including HR, finance and communications.”

Commenting on his appointment, Rajay said: “I am honoured to have been invited to join the new National Council. Boosting employment and skills is paramount if we are to stimulate growth and a strong economic recovery. I look forward to working with colleagues on the Council, Ministers and other partners to ensure that we give all people in society the opportunity to make the most of their talents and abilities. It is imperative that, with the aim of building a stronger and fairer society, we ensure the opportunities of employment and a successful career are open to all.

“I am proud that of our 264,000 students around the world, it is younger Open University students who are the fastest growing cohort. Through our longstanding relationship with the BBC and other innovations, we are extending the opportunities of learning and skills to those from the most disadvantaged backgrounds. I look forward to bringing this experience to the Council in our work over the period ahead.”

The Open University has extensive experience working with business to address the skills gap, including a recently launched higher apprenticeship scheme with CapGemini. 70% of OU students study while in employment and our part-time learning model has proved to be successful in delivering flexible, relevant and cost-effective learning.


Editor's Notes
The Council is chaired by Dr Deirdre Hughes OBE, and the ten members are Rajay Naik, David McNerney, Steve Higginbotham, Jennifer Rudge OBE, Linda Taylor OBE, Heather Jackson, Chris Heaume, Kieran Gordon, Tony Watts and Ruth Spellman. Simon Surtees, Nick Chambers and Brian Lightman will be Associate Members.

Scientists at The Open University are collaborating with TAP Biosystems to produce robust 3D human central nervous system (CNS) tissue models for use in drug discovery and pre-clinical testing. This approach could contribute to reducing the number of pre-clinical animal studies.

The collaboration will run for three years and focus on developing technology to generate and manufacture advanced 3D CNS tissue models. Using TAP's RAFT (Real Architecture for 3D Tissue) technology, glial cells and neurons will be made into gel-based tissues. Cells are seeded in collagen gel in a rectangular mould and tethered at each end. The cells contract the collagen and become highly aligned, mimicking the cellular arrangement of living CNS tissue. These tissue models could be used to monitor the responses of glial cells and neurons to simulated damage, and could have applications as a tool for pre-clinical screening of novel therapies for neurological damage and disorders such as Alzheimer's disease.

Dr James Phillips, Lecturer in Health Sciences in the Faculty of Science at The Open University explained: “Astrocytes are CNS glial cells that normally support neuronal activity, but they change behaviour following damage and can inhibit regeneration. 2D cell cultures of astrocytes and neurons don't behave in the same way as they do in a living organism and this can limit their range of uses.”

Dr Phillips continued: “We are using the RAFT process with astrocyte-seeded collagen gels. The cellular alignment created then allows the other types of cells in our 3D tissue model to organise themselves as they would in a natural environment. This means we can simulate the interaction between glial cells and regenerating neurons after CNS injury and monitor both cell types continuously. We can also carefully control variables, allowing us to test specific hypotheses, and we can look at the way each cell type responds, for example to specific drugs, in a very tightly controlled way without the additional complexity present in an animal model.

“We hope this collaboration will enable us to develop highly reproducible CNS tissue models, and make them available to academic groups and pharma companies for research and drug screening,” Dr Phillips concluded.

Dr Rosemary Drake, CSO at TAP Biosystems stated: “We are excited to have Dr Phillips' group as partners to extend the application of the RAFT process. We will be working together to develop novel 3D human CNS tissue equivalents that closely mimic the cells' in vivo environment, as well as reduce the cost and variability associated with current models, and could be a significant step change in current pre-clinical research. Such models could contribute to generating more accurate data from novel therapies, and may even result in a reduction of the numbers of animal studies necessary for screening potential neuroprotective therapies.”

Editor's Notes
The Open University (OU) is the largest academic institution in the UK and a world leader in flexible distance learning. Since it began in 1969, the OU has taught more than 1.7 million students and has more than 264,000 current students, including 18,000 overseas.

The OU has been one of the top three UK universities for student satisfaction in the National Student Survey every year since the survey began in 2005. In 2010/11 it had a 93 per cent satisfaction rating. Over 70% of students are in full-time or part-time employment, and four out of five FTSE 100 companies have sponsored staff to take OU courses.

In the UK's latest Research Assessment Exercise (RAE 2008) the Open University was ranked in the top third of UK higher education institutions. More than 50% of OU research was assessed in the RAE as internationally excellent, with 14% as world leading.

Regarded as Britain's major e-learning institution, the OU is a world leader in developing technology to increase access to education on a global scale. Its vast 'open content portfolio' includes free study units on OpenLearn, which has had more than 21 million visits, and materials on iTunes U, which has recorded over 50 million downloads. The OU has a 41 year partnership with the BBC which has moved from late-night lectures in the 1970s to prime-time programmes such as Frozen Planet, Bang Goes the Theory, James May's Big Ideas and The Money Programme.

TAP Biosystems (the new corporate identity of The Automation Partnership) provides innovative cell culture systems, associated reagents and consumables to improve productivity in life science research, development and production.

For over 20 years TAP Biosystems has been the leader in the design and development of automated cell culture and processing systems with applications in bioprocessing, drug discovery and regenerative medicine. Systems include ambr, CompacT SelecT, Fill-It and RAFT.

TAP Biosystems is a privately-owned company with headquarters near Cambridge, UK and a sales and support facility near Wilmington, Delaware, USA.

Natural History Museum scientists have identified the world's smallest mini mammoth, May 2012.

Natural History Museum scientists have identified the world's smallest mammoth, May 2012.

The origin of the unusual beak of pufferfishes has been discovered by Natural History Museum scientists.

A research project is delving into the challenge of how new media can help citizens to shape their own environment. The Open University has been awarded £226,000 to undertake research on 'community-led design', which will establish the value of creative citizens engaged in designing their own communities including public spaces, community facilities, housing or neighbourhood regeneration.

Dr Katerina Alexiou and Lecturer Dr Theodore Zamenopoulos from the Department of Design, Development, Environment and Materials will investigate how developments in digital media are enabling people to self-organise and participate in peer-to-peer social networks that aim to create, support and sustain local design projects.

Currently, there is insufficient understanding of the way that existing media platforms and technologies support these projects. The research will look at web 2.0/3.0 technologies and how new ways to support the co-design process can be developed. It aims to uncover how valuable creative contribution from citizens can be intensified and sustained for future community-led design, and to offer potential future benefits to policy-makers and cultural and creative businesses.

The research funds have been secured as part of a £1.4million Media, Community and the Creative Citizen grant, led by Cardiff University's Professor Ian Hargreaves. The work is based on the idea that creative individuals and community activities that develop around them play a crucial role in sustaining the vibrancy of the UK creative economy, and enhance quality of life. The other two elements of the three-pronged creative citizenship project will focus on hyper local publishing through social networking, looking at platforms such as blogs and Twitter, and everyday creativity from individuals and groups, such as amateur video production or art forms.


Dr Alexiou said: “Our core challenge is to unearth, record and support practices that promote the creative skills and potential of individuals and communities. We will look at the emerging media landscape and particularly web 2.0/3.0 technologies and how we can develop new ways to support the co-design process with local communities, help people express themselves creatively, and ultimately create a better built environment and generate social, cultural and economic value.”

The grant is jointly funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council as part of the Cross-Council Connected Communities and Digital Economy Programmes. Dr Alexiou and Dr Zamenopoulos will work closely with The Glass House Community Led Design (www.theglasshouse.org.uk/), NESTA's public services lab (http://www.nesta.org.uk) and researchers from the Helen Hamlyn Centre.


For media enquiries, please contact Alicia Babaee
Email: alicia.babaee@open.ac.uk or press-office@open.ac.uk
Direct line : 01908 858434
General press office : 01908 654 316
Out of hours enquiries : 07540 668963



Notes to editors

The Open University
The Open University (OU) is the largest academic institution in the UK and a world leader in flexible distance learning. Since it began in 1969, the OU has taught more than 1.7 million students and has more than 264,000 current students, including 18,000 overseas.

The OU has been one of the top three UK universities for student satisfaction in the National Student Survey every year since the survey began in 2005. In 2010/11 it had a 93 per cent satisfaction rating. Over 70% of students are in full-time or part-time employment, and four out of five FTSE 100 companies have sponsored staff to take OU courses.
In the UK's latest Research Assessment Exercise (RAE 2008) the Open University was ranked in the top third of UK higher education institutions. More than 50% of OU research was assessed in the RAE as internationally excellent, with 14% as world leading.

Regarded as Britain's major e-learning institution, the OU is a world leader in developing technology to increase access to education on a global scale. Its vast 'open content portfolio' includes free study units on OpenLearn, which has had more than 21 million visits, and materials on iTunes U, which has recorded over 50 million downloads. The OU has a 41 year partnership with the BBC which has moved from late-night lectures in the 1970s to prime-time programmes such as Life, Coast, James May's Big Ideas and The Money Programme.

Professor Gerard Hastings, Director of the Institute for Social Marketing, Stirling and the Open University, will be calling for urgent social change at a one-day Taking Responsibility conference at The Open University on Wednesday 9th May. He believes marketing is paving the way for us to destroy ourselves and our environment.

Hosted by ISM-Open: The Institute for Social Marketing, a collaboration between The OU and the University of Stirling, the conference will reflect calls from government and policy makers for communities and organisations to take responsibility for responding to global social and economic challenges. More than 30 research papers will be presented around the themes of social marketing and socially responsible management.

Key note speaker Professor Hastings, Director of the Institute for Social Marketing and the Centre for Tobacco Control Research University of Stirling and The OU, will talk about what he calls 'the dark side of marketing'. He said: “I think we are destroying ourselves, our communities, our society and our planet - and we marketers are the cheerleaders and overseers of this insanity.

“Marketing provides corporate capitalism with both its motive force and acceptable face. There is much talk about the unsustainability of an economic model based on assumptions of perpetual growth; less about the fact that this depends on us all perpetually consuming more – which we obligingly do. Marketing drives this increasingly unnecessary consumption and encourages our inurement to its catastrophic consequences.”

Professor Hastings says he has chosen the topic as a result of 'the blindness with which we continue to shop'. He said: “We have no regard for the obvious downsides: materialism, wage-slavery, physical health damage (such as obesity), perpetual disappointment (why would we go on shopping otherwise?), appalling inequalities, fatuous choice (such as £40k of products in large UK supermarkets) - and, of course, global warming.”

In his speech he will be calling for individuals and academics to help bring about change. He said: “We bring about social change through individuals shopping less and more fairly, through collective education and through regulating the corporate marketer. Business academics have to research, write and teach more, leading the debate about how to correct these wrongs. We need to do this energetically and fast.”

Professor Hastings will be joined by fellow key note speakers Agnes Nairn and Frank den Hond. The social marketing sessions address the following topics: reaching target groups, communities, sustainability, critical social marketing, and the big picture. The socially responsible management sessions address the topics of: social movements, consumers and voluntary organisations; working towards sustainability, conceptualising and measuring socially responsible management, and managing socially responsible management in different contexts. The settings for these studies range from fashion, schools and the charity sector, to professional sport, oil and gas, and the water industry.

Notes to editors

The Open University
The Open University (OU) is the largest academic institution in the UK and a world leader in flexible distance learning. Since it began in 1969, the OU has taught more than 1.7 million students and has more than 264,000 current students, including 18,000 overseas.

The OU has been one of the top three UK universities for student satisfaction in the National Student Survey every year since the survey began in 2005. In 2010/11 it had a 93 per cent satisfaction rating. Over 70% of students are in full-time or part-time employment, and four out of five FTSE 100 companies have sponsored staff to take OU courses.
In the UK's latest Research Assessment Exercise (RAE 2008) the Open University was ranked in the top third of UK higher education institutions. More than 50% of OU research was assessed in the RAE as internationally excellent, with 14% as world leading.

Regarded as Britain's major e-learning institution, the OU is a world leader in developing technology to increase access to education on a global scale. Its vast 'open content portfolio' includes free study units on OpenLearn, which has had more than 17.7 million visits, and materials on iTunes U, which has recorded over 50 million downloads. The OU has a 41 year partnership with the BBC which has moved from late-night lectures in the 1970s to prime-time programmes such as Life, Coast, James May's Big Ideas and The Money Programme.

Taking Responsibility Conference
Venue: Michael Young Building, The Open University, Milton Keynes
Time: 09.00 – 17.00
If you would like to attend, please contact alicia.babaee@open.ac.uk
To see the full programme, please visit: www.open.ac.uk/ism

Speaking at a CBI East of England event, Director of Communications Lucian Hudson said that The Open University had the 'winning formula' to bridge the rising skills gap, and emphasised the university's intentions to engage more with employers. He said that “In an increasingly competitive world, we at The Open University believe higher education and business are natural allies; and The Open University is open for business and open to business – wherever that business is.” He added that fellow speaker, CBI Director General John Cridland ”is providing tremendous leadership at a time when the economy can only benefit from stronger collaboration between business and the Higher Education sector.”

The Open University is a world leader in distance learning and works closely with businesses to tailor learning to employer's needs. 70 percent of OU students are in employment while they study with four out of five FTSE 100 companies sponsoring staff to study with the OU. Hudson said that businesses "find our part-time learning model is uniquely flexible, relevant to work and cost-effective"

Citing the recently launched higher apprenticeship scheme with CapGemini as an example of where this integrated relationship between higher education and business has been a success, the Director of Communications said that "developing employees skill base through this model is a win for employers, it's a win for employees and it's a win for the economy, because we all know that re-skilling and upskilling staff is vital to boost recovery."

Director of Communications at The Open University, Lucian J. Hudson, was speaking at the CBI East of England Dinner with CBI Director General John Cridland CBE.

To the untrained eye, one human skull looks a lot like any other. So in how does a scientist distinguish a modern human, Homo sapiens, from other extinct human species. Prof Chris Stringer, human origins expert at the Natural History Museum, explains and also writes on this topic in the journal Nature, May 2012

Social Science Bites, a new podcast containing interviews with leading social scientists on different aspects of the social world, was launched today. The series is produced and presented by well known authors Nigel Warburton (Senior Lecturer in Philosophy, The Open University) and David Edmonds (Senior Research Associate at the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics) following the enormous success of their existing podcast series, Philosophy Bites, which has had more than 13 million downloads.

“We've been stunned by the success of Philosophy Bites which is listened to around the globe,” said Nigel Warburton. “Short podcast interviews provide an excellent vehicle for communicating ideas in an accessible, direct, and interesting way. We're delighted that SAGE has encouraged us to turn our attention to the Social Sciences.

“This is a fantastic opportunity to engage with some of the most important issues of our day with leading thinkers and researchers. We've already recorded interviews on topics as diverse as the nature of the social sciences, equality, co-operation, children and the Internet, and the spirit of cities, and have many more interviews planned with top social scientists on a very broad range of topics.”

The series is launching with three episodes: Danny Dorling on Inequality; Rom Harré on the Nature of the Social Sciences; and Richard Sennett on Co-operation. These will be available with transcripts from www.socialsciencebites.com (hosted on the international blog network www.socialsciencespace.com). Future episodes, released monthly, will include interviews with Sonia Livingstone, Angela McRobbie, Stephen Pinker, Steven Kosslyn, Stephen Reicher, and Avner de-Shalit.

“SAGE has long championed the value of the social sciences in shaping our understanding of society and culture,” said Ziyad Marar, Global Publishing Director, SAGE. “As a true addict of Philosophy Bites I have long admired the creative energy and unobtrusive skill that Nigel and Dave have brought to each podcast. I'm thrilled to see them bring the same blend of intellectual enthusiasm and know how to Social Science Bites, and expect there will be wide interest among academics, media, policy makers and the general public.”

To listen to the first episodes of the podcast and download transcripts follow link (right).

Editor's Notes
Initial podcast summaries:
Danny Dorling: Current inequality in the rich world is at the highest it has been since the 1920s. Hear Danny Dorling discussing the “staggering” disparity between rich and poor which has become a defining measure of our times. How did it happen? Why does it matter? And is it sustainable?

Rom Harré: “Everybody lives in a society...They want to know what it is they're living in,” says Rom Harré in this exploration of the nature of the social sciences. How do they differ from the physical sciences? What challenges do they face? What is their value?

Richard Sennett: Co-operation is working with people to do things you can't do yourself. How can you co-operate with people who don't share your values? According to Richard Sennett, such co-operation is a craft that needs to be learnt.

The History of English in Ten Minutes, one of The Open University's iTunes U/YouTube commissions, has been recognised at the British Universities Film & Video Council's Learning On Screen Awards. The series won the 'Education In-House Production Award' at the ceremony at the BFI, Southbank, London, on Thursday 26th April.

The Awards celebrate and reward excellence in the use of moving image and related media in learning, teaching and research. Giving The OU's series a unanimous vote, organisers praised it for its originality, graphics and humour.

Voiced by Clive Anderson, The History of English in Ten Minutes is a light-hearted look at the history of English that squeezes 1600 years of history into ten one-minute bites. It uncovers the sources of English words and phrases, from Shakespeare and the King James Bible, to America and the Internet, and follows the story of English growing from a small tongue into a major global language, later reflecting on its future in the 21st century. The series has clocked up almost two million views on the OU's iTunes U and YouTube channels.

The news comes just weeks after The OU became the first University in Europe to reach more than one million active subscriptions through the iTunes U app, and more than 50 million international iTunes U downloads.

On winning the award, OU Executive Producer Catherine Chambers, said: “We hope that this series demonstrates the value of taking a creative approach to Open Educational Resources, in terms of using informal yet highly informative learning, to engage potential students. We're delighted to have won this award for a series that was a lot of fun to make. I would like to thank everyone involved for their continued support of iTunes U/YouTube, and for being so great to work with in developing creative, engaging content for mainstream audiences and inspiring existing and potential students.”

The idea and vision for the bespoke Open Media Unit-funded production originated and was managed in-house, with a script writer and animator brought in to help execute the vision. Philip Seargent in the Faculty of Education and Language Studies was the academic consultant on the series.

Notes to editors

The Open University
The Open University (OU) is the largest academic institution in the UK and a world leader in flexible distance learning. Since it began in 1969, the OU has taught more than 1.7 million students and has more than 264,000 current students, including 18,000 overseas.

The OU has been one of the top three UK universities for student satisfaction in the National Student Survey every year since the survey began in 2005. In 2010/11 it had a 93 per cent satisfaction rating. Over 70% of students are in full-time or part-time employment, and four out of five FTSE 100 companies have sponsored staff to take OU courses.
In the UK's latest Research Assessment Exercise (RAE 2008) the Open University was ranked in the top third of UK higher education institutions. More than 50% of OU research was assessed in the RAE as internationally excellent, with 14% as world leading.

Regarded as Britain's major e-learning institution, the OU is a world leader in developing technology to increase access to education on a global scale. Its vast 'open content portfolio' includes free study units on OpenLearn, which has had more than 17.7 million visits, and materials on iTunes U, which has recorded over 50 million downloads. The OU has a 41 year partnership with the BBC which has moved from late-night lectures in the 1970s to prime-time programmes such as Life, Coast, James May's Big Ideas and The Money Programme.

Leading IT players in higher education and industry training to address 'most pressing' skills gap in IT

A ground-breaking collaboration between The Open University and Global Knowledge, a worldwide leader in IT and business skills training, has today launched a new Postgraduate Certificate (PGC) for IT Service Managers (ITSM). The Postgraduate Certificate in Advanced Professional Practice (IT Service Management) combines existing Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL®) best practice education with modules developed by The Open University. It aims to support ITSMs increasingly important role and asks them to assess how they apply what they learn in the workplace.

The certificate will benefit both employers, by focusing staff development on broader business objectives, and individuals, who receive a transferable academic qualification that recognises experience gained through the existing ITIL® best practise publications, but in a way that demonstrates capability in the workplace.

The importance of finding a new approach to ITSM education can be seen in research published by e-skills UK that found professional (postgraduate) ITSM skills will be the most pressing learning need in the IT industry over the next decade [1]. The report estimates that of the additional IT skills required by the UK PLC up to 2020, 40% will be in service management. Yet whilst some sections of the IT industry are starting to mature, service management has remained an area with little scope for practitioners to prove their worth through robust academic qualifications. ITIL® is the worldwide ITSM standard, owned by the Cabinet Office that provides best practice guidelines but does not require the individual to prove they can apply them in the workplace.

Kevin Streater, Head of IT Industry Engagement at The Open University, said: “Despite it being the skills set IT employers demand most of all, service management has for many years been one of the least covered topics in higher education. At the same time industry certificates don't always convince employers of their successful application. By combining an existing training infrastructure with an independent and robust academic pathway, The Open University and Global Knowledge are bridging the gap between individuals getting certified and organisations seeing the benefit.”

Allan Pettman, UK Managing Director at Global Knowledge, said: “ITIL® remains important and as the IT industry continues to mature we need to develop it even further to demonstrate the professionalism in ITSM that is required for broader organisational success. With this new postgraduate certificate we are enabling employees to demonstrate they can apply what they have learnt in their day-to-day role and the tangible difference it has made to their organisation. They also get a more transferable qualification within a recognisable academic framework that proves their capability to existing and prospective employers.”

Ben Clacy, Chief Executive of The IT Service Management Forum, said: “The e-skills figures from last year represent a growing awareness of the value of ITSM skills in industry, but also a need to improve the profession's underlying personal development programmes to better reflect the changing nature of the role.

“The 100,000 ITSMs working in the UK today are integral to the success of their organisation, with the resource and responsibility to strategically embed technology to best achieve business objectives. This is a huge change in role and requires modern ITSMS to be great communicators, people managers and strategic thinkers. This must be reflected in how we develop this and future generations.”

The new PGC builds on Global Knowledge's ITIL® training curriculum with modules jointly developed by The Open University's Business School and Faculty of Mathematics, Computing and Technology. The certificate provides students with full Open University and Global Knowledge tutor support throughout the one year course, and recognises their existing ITIL® experience. The certificate can also be counted towards a Masters in Technology Management, an MBA or other Masters level learning programmes.

This initiative from The Open University and Global Knowledge represents a new model for innovative commercial and academic partnerships that can be rolled out across industry to address critical skills gaps in other areas.

Whilst IT continues to interact with the rest of the business, it has created a need for IT Professionals to develop a more 'rounded' set of business competencies. Global Knowledge has aligned its portfolio to IT skills standards in order to help organisations develop the skills of their workforce. They offer learning programmes in areas such as Project Management, enterprise architecture frameworks (including TOGAF) and Business Skills for IT Professionals – which is part of its 'building performance' series.

An Open University and Capgemini UK Higher Apprentices (HAs) project launched last week (17th April) has already been so successful that it is expanding. The London event introduced the first intake of 32 Higher Apprentices (HAs) to the five-year training scheme that they will begin next month, on which they will earn The OU's IT Practice Honours Degree while working at international IT services company Capgemini UK.

Since the first intake of HAs was recruited in October 2011, interest has peaked within other operations at Capgemini and the next intake of HAs in October 2012 could more than treble in size. Capgemini UK is the largest in a network of corporate partnerships formed under The OU's HA scheme, and is the largest apprenticeship of its kind in the country.

Capgemini UK senior managers were on hand at the lunchtime event, which included presentations by speakers, networking opportunities and a buddying-up scheme for the new HAs, as well as an overview of the overall qualification structure and an introduction to their first course. The scheme incorporates The Open University's BSc (Hons) in Computing and IT Practice and a Diploma in Professional Studies (ICT), delivered by QA Training, the UK's leading supplier of IT training.

Capgemini UK was looking to fill a skills gap in software development, so the company wanted to commit to a learning scheme investing in training young graduates at the start of their careers, with the aim of developing long-lasting relationships. Nick Whitlock, Corporate Development Manager at The OU, said: “There's a great link between the job that these people are doing and the degree. They are fee-generating very quickly, while still learning. Capgemini required a flexible distance learning partner, so we were the perfect choice. We are delighted to be working with them.”

Lance Doughty, Vice President, sponsor of Graduate and Apprentice programmes, and Head of Systems Development and Integration for Capgemini in the UK, added: “Our people need to be mobile because they often commute to where our customers are based, which could be anywhere in the UK. We needed a partner that could offer a substantial track record of success in provision of distance learning.”

Capgemini's launch event attendees included Chief Technology Officer Andy Mulholland, UK HR Director Francis Duffy and Chairman Christine Hodgson, along with other UK board members. Helen Pickering of the National Apprenticeship Scheme and Ben Sweetman of QA was also in attendance.

In addition to these large corporate programmes, the Open University Higher Apprenticeship Solution also offers a study pathway focused on small and medium enterprise (SME) students.

The Open University has received a £953,523 grant from Kusuma Trust UK for Teacher Professional Development in Secondary Science and English in Hardoi, Uttar Pradesh, India.
The project builds on the OU's work in the award-winning English in Action programme in Bangladesh and the Teacher Education in Sub-Saharan Africa (TESSA) programme. It is based around practical activities for teachers to carry out in their classroom practice, which drive professional development and improvements in student learning. Low-cost materials, including audio-visual ones, will be made available through mobile phones, and teachers will also receive face-to-face training and support, provided as part of the Hardoi implementation of RMSA*, the national strategy for improving the quality of secondary education.
The Kusuma Trust's grant supports the first phase of the project, which runs to through to 30 June 2013, reaching all Science teachers of Classes 9-12 in Hardoi, and will produce fully bespoke materials and programmes for Science and English. Subject to funding, subsequent phases will train all teachers of Science, English and Mathematics (Classes 9-12) in the Hardoi district.
Dr Balwant Singh, CEO of Kusuma Trust UK, said: “Education has the power to transform lives and every child should have the opportunity to grow and develop as an active and productive citizen. Our main priority is to support interventions that improve education outcomes for young people from economically disadvantaged backgrounds, enabling them to realise their potential and break the inter-generational cycle of poverty. By supporting the OU to train teachers and develop educational materials, we intend to help students receive a better quality secondary education and progress to higher education”
Martin Bean, Vice-Chancellor of The Open University said:
“Using the power of technology to unlock great learning outcomes lies at the heart of this project. We have already proved that this approach works with our award-winning English In Action programme in Bangladesh and our Teacher Education in sub-Saharan Africa (TESSA) which improves teaching in 12 African countries. Here, we are taking that expertise into secondary education, helping more Hardoi students get the grades they need to participate in Higher Education.”
Although the project targets the Hardoi district, the resulting programmes and materials will have the potential for much wider uptake. The project outputs will ultimately contribute to a national network of Open Educational Resources (OERs) under a Creative Commons licence, enabling free access, use or adaptation, in programmes across India.

Notes to Editors

1.*The project supports the district and state implementation of Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan (RMSA), the national strategy for improving the quality of secondary education; and the implementation of the National Council for Educational Research and Training (NCERT) national curriculum and examinations frameworks for science and mathematics.

2.Kusuma Trust UK is a UK-based philanthropic trust founded by Anurag Dikshit and Dr Soma Pujari, and it supports interventions, innovations, research, training and advocacy to improve education and employment outcomes for young people in secondary and tertiary education. For more information, visit www.kusumatrust.org or contact the CEO, Dr. Balwant Singh, at balwant.singh@kusumatrust.org

3.English In Action (EiA) is a major Department for International Development-funded programme initiated by the Government of Bangladesh. The OU is working with international management firm BMB Mott MacDonald, BBC World Service Trust and local partners, to improve English language skills for 25 million people in Bangladesh. Following a successful initial phase from 2008, a further three-year contract for EiA was signed in 2011. The OU is leading in two areas of the project which are 1) primary and secondary teacher training delivered through school-based professional development, enhanced with mobile technologies, including mobile phones, and 2) cross-project research, monitoring and quality assurance. http://www.eiabd.com/eia/

4.TESSA – Teacher Education in Sub-Saharan Africa – is a pan-African network of teacher educators working to improve teacher education and training in Africa using Open Educational Resources (OERs). The Open University is a founding member of TESSA. More than 300,000 teachers, many working under highly disadvantaged circumstances, have benefited from TESSA resources. The TESSA network has developed an extensive range of high-quality multilingual, audio and text OERs to support improvements in teachers' classroom practice. The resources are designed for all teachers, including those with little or no formal training. http://www.tessafrica.net/

There are an estimated 10 million more species to be discovered. And, although it sounds an impossible task, this could be achieved in less than 50 years, according to scientists, including those at the Natural History Museum, repoprting in March 2012.

A learning unit about the Ancient Olympics hosted on The Open University's free educational resource website OpenLearn has been recognised internationally with an Award for OpenCourseWare Excellence. One of five global winners in the multimedia category, the award for Ancient Olympics: Bridging Past and Present was announced at the OpenCourseWare Consortium's OER12 Conference in Cambridge on Monday (16 April 2012), with the unit's use of multimedia highly praised.

The Ancient Olympics: Bridging Past and Present learning unit helps users explore the differences between ancient and modern games with maps, timelines and video materials. An unusual element of the unit is the use of animation videos illustrating how athletes in ancient Olympic Games were naked, partly in order to compete equally – a long way from today's high-performance ergonomic kit.

The academic behind the unit, Lecturer in Classical Studies Dr Aarón Alzola Romero, said: “It is tremendous news that the Ancient Olympics unit has attracted recognition from such a large global community and it is a unit that we are very proud of producing. Sharing learning materials via our OpenLearn website is a key way that The Open University stays true to its mission of extending education to all. With only 100 days to go to the London Olympics we expect this unit to prove increasingly popular, as part of our dedicated Olympics portal.”

“We're very pleased to honour these courses,” said OCW Consortium Executive Director Mary Lou Forward. “They are truly outstanding examples of the amazing educational resources being shared openly by the members of the OpenCourseWare Consortium.”

The Awards for OpenCourseWare Excellence provide annual recognition to outstanding courseware and OpenCourseWare sites created in the OCW Consortium community. They also recognize individual leadership in moving the ideals of OpenCourseWare and Open Educational Resources forward. The awards were judged by the OCWC Board, including Anka Mulder, the President of OCWC and were presented at an event attended by academics from around the globe.

A screencast giving an overview of the unit is available at: http://bit.ly/OUAncientOlympics

The Open University's Olympics Portal contains a breadth of resources and interactives around the Games, including video interviews with academic experts and athletes including Usain Bolt and Matthew Pinsent. A fun online game, Olympicize Me, gives people a way to get their own personal experience of the Olympics – the interactive assesses physical, psychological and social factors to help determine which sport people should compete in and what medal they would win.

For a look at the portal visit http://www.open.edu/openlearn/olympics2012

ENDS

Notes to editors
Ancient Olympics http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=4450
About OpenLearn
OpenLearn, a free learning resources website from the OU, has had over 20.9 million visits since its launch in 2006. It has around 11,000 hours of learning materials including 6,697 hours taken from our undergraduate and postgraduate modules

About The Open University
The Open University (OU) is the largest academic institution in the UK and a world leader in flexible distance learning. Since it began in 1969, the OU has taught more than 1.7 million students and has more than 264,000 current students, including 18,000 overseas.

The OU has been one of the top three UK universities for student satisfaction in the National Student Survey every year since the survey began in 2005. In 2010/11 it had a 93 per cent satisfaction rating. Over 70% of students are in full-time or part-time employment, and four out of five FTSE 100 companies have sponsored staff to take OU courses.
In the UK's latest Research Assessment Exercise (RAE 2008) the Open University was ranked in the top third of UK higher education institutions. More than 50% of OU research was assessed in the RAE as internationally excellent, with 14% as world leading.

Regarded as Britain's major e-learning institution, the OU is a world leader in developing technology to increase access to education on a global scale. Its vast 'open content portfolio' includes free study units on OpenLearn, which has had more than 21 million visits, and materials on iTunes U, which has recorded over 50 million downloads. The OU has a 41 year partnership with the BBC which has moved from late-night lectures in the 1970s to prime-time programmes such as Life, Coast, James May's Big Ideas and The Money Programme.

Visit www.open.ac.uk

A revolutionary new camera is producing the first detailed pictures of our neighbouring galaxies, revealing vast, dusty stellar nurseries where the next generation of stars is being created. “This exquisite image from the galaxy M66 in the constellation Leo is exactly the promising start we were hoping for,” said Dr Stephen Serjeant, the team's co-leader from The Open University. "This is a wonderfully exciting taste of things to come."

When looking up at the Milky Way, an irregular pattern of dark regions obscures the light of the stars. The dark patches are caused by clouds of dust trailing through the spiral arms and blocking out the starlight; they contain vast stellar nurseries where the next generation of stars is being created. These dark lanes are not exclusive to the Milky Way, but can be found in all spiral galaxies.

Although they are dark to our eyes, these dust lanes actually glow brightly at sub-millimeter (sub-mm) wavelengths. A brand new camera, called SCUBA-2, is ideally suited to detect this long-wavelength dust emission. It is mounted on the world's largest sub-mm telescope, the 15-meter James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT) in Hawaii, and is the most powerful camera ever developed for observing sub-mm wavelengths. It detects light waves 1000 times longer than human eyes can see.

This image promises to be the first of many stunning results from the JCMT Nearby Galaxy Legacy Survey (NGLS). The main aim of the survey is to understand how the broader environment of a galaxy affects its gas and dust content. For example, galaxies in dense clusters can lose their gas and dust through interactions with other galaxies in the cluster or simply by the head wind they feel while moving through the hot gas trapped inside the cluster. The NGLS is an international collaboration led by astronomers from Canada, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom which is using SCUBA-2 to observe 150 galaxies in the local universe.

The NGLS team has spent much of the last five years studying molecular hydrogen emission using another instrument on the JCMT. “It is very exciting to now see the first results from the SCUBA-2 side of our program starting to come in,” says Professor Christine Wilson, the Principal Investigator from McMaster University in Canada. “We have a unique sample of galaxies that we are studying and having SCUBA-2 data will let us measure their gas and dust content. Gas and dust usually go hand-in-hand in galaxies, but from time to time, you find a surprise.”

The project was funded by the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC), the Joint Astronomy Centre (JAC), and the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI).

Photo caption: The red colors in this image show the galaxy M66 as it appears at the sub-mm wavelength of 850 microns, while the white background shows the galaxy as it appears in visible light. Regions of cold dust that appear as dark streaks in the white image glow brightly in the red image. The center of the galaxy contains much more dust than is obvious from looking at the visible image and the sub-mm image also picks out an unusual compact cloud in the southern part of the galaxy that is a prime site for future star formation.

Photo credit: VLT/ESO, JAC, G. Bendo

More than a third (39%) of SME owners aged over 65 still do not know when they will retire, according to the Quarterly Survey of Small Business in Britain(*), produced by The Open University (www.open.ac.uk/quarterly-survey) with support from ACCA (The Association of Chartered Certified Accountants) and Barclays business banking.

Half the UK's SME owners report that they have changed their retirement and succession plans as a result of the economic downturn. 42% of owners are expecting to carry on running their businesses for longer, delaying their retirement, while 7% expect to close or sell their business sooner. More than half (59%) of those which expect to close early report that their turnover was down over the past year. Despite the financial crisis, almost half (47%) of owners are still confident they will be able to retire by the age of 65, but 18% expect to retire between the ages of 66 and 70 and 11% believe they will be running their business beyond their 70th birthday.

Pensions have been highlighted as a concern, with 28% of SME owners expecting to struggle in retirement. This proportion increases to 35% for the smallest businesses and drops to 20% for medium-sized firms.
When asked what their plans would be should they be unable to work due to illness or injury, 16% of respondents said that a lack of continuity arrangements would mean they would have to close their business. This increased to 48% among business owners who work alone. Three quarters (44%) of owners felt they could rely on fellow owners or staff in such circumstances. More than half (53%) admitted they had no insurance protection against illness or injury that would make them unable to work.

Professor Rebecca Taylor, Dean of The Open University Business School said: “The economic downturn has created a number of serious challenges for Britain's SME owners. Our latest survey findings suggest that many owners, particularly those with smaller businesses, are having to make significant changes as they plan for retirement and succession. While some owners may never have intended to give up the business, many now expect to work for much longer than they had envisaged.”

Sue Hayes, Barclays business banking, said: “It is never too early for business owners to start planning their retirement. These research figures show that, especially in the current economic environment, the need for retirement planning advice is even greater, particularly for those who are nearing or beyond retirement age. Our business relationship managers are available to provide support and advice to older entrepreneurs so that their businesses can continue to thrive when the time comes to hand over the reins.”

The survey also examined SME performance and prospects, and asked owners and managers about the major problems they were facing. While some SMEs remain optimistic, the picture is mixed with large variations by sector and region. SMEs in the East Midlands reported the best sales performance (+24%) for the sixth time in the last seven surveys. It was a different story for their neighbours in the West Midlands, which saw significant deterioration in the sales balance (from +20% to just +4%), and were the only region to report a negative sales expectation balance (-1%) for the first quarter of 2012. Scotland's SMEs were the most optimistic, with a balance of +19% expecting an increase in sales. Yorkshire and the Humber's SME owners reported a marked sales improvement from -7% to +14%, and they rated themselves as the most entrepreneurial region in the country. The East of England rated itself as the least entrepreneurial region.

As in every survey in the past year, retailers reported the worst sales performance (-16% compared with -6%), cutting jobs far more often in this survey. Manufacturers, wholesalers and agricultural firms saw the best sales performance. SMEs once again cited 'economic climate and demand' as their top problem (59%), as per the last four years, followed by 'cashflow, payment or debtors' (31%) and competition (31%).
-ENDS-

Notes to Editors

Open University Business School
The enterprise research team at the Open University Business School publishes the Quarterly Survey of Small Business, which was founded in 1984 as the first national, regular survey of small firms in the UK. It is edited by Dr Richard Blundel and Emeritus Professor Colin Gray; the researcher and writer is Andy McCann. This report is the 109th in the series. Single printed issues of the report can be purchased for £55, or £200 for an annual subscription. A PDF version of the report is available to download free from The Open University website. For more information, please contact Julie Sullivan at: oubs-enterprise@open.ac.uk or visit www.open.ac.uk/quarterly-survey

The world’s most invasive ladybird, the harlequin, has caused rapid declines of UK ladybirds, according to a recent report that used help from the public. Natural History Museum beetle expert Max Barclay says the beetle is more nocturnal than our native species.