Blog Archives
Visa advice for A-level college students
1. VISA INFORMATION – GENERAL OVERVIEW How have visa applications changed? Over the past two years, visa applications have changed, introducing a ‘sponsorship system’. In order to apply for a student visa, the student’s proposed school, college or university must have a Tier 4 sponsor license. The student’s proposed school will then sponsor their visa and consequently the student’s visa is specifically linked to their course. Whereas in previous years, students had a non-specific visa, meaning they were free to move from school to school, now students can only change course or school with permission from UKVI. What kind of Continue Reading →
Newton, The Man By John Maynard Keynes
It is with some diffidence that I try to speak to you in his own home of Newton as he was himself. I have long been a student of the records and had the intention to put my impressions into writing to be ready for Christmas Day 1942, the tercentenary of his birth. The war has deprived me both of leisure to treat adequately so great a theme and of opportunity to consult my library and my papers and to verify my impressions. So if the brief study which I shall lay before you today is more perfunctory than it Continue Reading →
Educational conferences and festivals:
A visit to the Sunday Times Festival of Education 2012 Wellington College is a magnificent hotchpotch of a building, in which the architectural styles of Christopher Wren, Louis XIII and Victorian Gothic collide, to spectacular effect. All in all, it looks surprisingly French for a school founded in honour of Napoleon’s nemesis, the Iron Duke. The cloistered atmosphere, however, is uniquely that of an English public school, even though the library’s dusty tomes have been mostly replaced by cutting-edge IT under the school’s Master, the political historian Anthony Seldon. In this aptly eclectic setting, the Sunday Times’ annual conference offered Continue Reading →
City & Guilds of London Art School
This distinguished private art school is a nineteenth-century foundation whose fees (around £6000 a year) have become highly competitive given the increased expense associated with state-funded institutions. The School has around 200 students taking Foundation courses and BAs in fine art or conservation, as well as MAs and highly specialised, distinctive Diplomas in carving or conservation. The School is currently refurbishing a new building to house the highly successful Foundation programme, which will grow from 60 to around 75 students. Some of the Foundation students proceed to the School’s own BA programme while others move to art colleges elsewhere in Continue Reading →