How the world sees Greece
Charges, threats mount in Greek Orthodox feud Salt Lake Tribune The Greek Orthodox church of Greater Salt Lake will hold a special assembly Aug. 25 at noon at Prophet Elias church, 5335 Highland Drive, to discuss the Utah parish's financial problems, with has resulted in a cut of priestly pay and the cessation of ... |
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Yahoo! Finance (blog) | 5 Economic Lessons Europe Can Learn From Greece Yahoo! Finance (blog) As the IMF itself now acknowledges in a commendably frank report, over the past four years Greece's economy has contracted by 25 percent and its unemployment rate has risen to a staggering 27-½ percent of the labor force. Yet despite this economic ... Greece to seize tax dodgers' assets Austerity: It Saved Greece and It Will Save America, Too Spending deprived Greece of primary surplus |
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LiveScience.com | 300-Year Drought Was Downfall of Ancient Greece LiveScience.com A sharp drop in rainfall may have led to the collapse of several eastern Mediterranean civilizations, including ancient Greece, around 3,200 years ago. The resulting famine and conflict may help explain why the entire Hittite culture, chariot-riding ... |
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Latest figures show private school pupils 9% more likely to be admitted than those at a state school with same grades
Students from private schools retain a significant edge in gaining admissions to Oxford University over state school pupils even when they go on to achieve the same A-level results, new figures reveal on Thursday, as hundreds of thousands of pupils receive their A-level results.
The figures, supplied to the Guardian from the university under a freedom of information request, show that between 2010 and 2012 applicants from private schools who gained the very highest possible grades – three A* grades or more at A-levels – were 9% more likely to have been offered a place at Oxford than state-educated pupils with the same grades.
The gap increased to 14% for independent school applicants gaining three A* grades when compared with applicants from non-selective or comprehensive state schools achieving the same grades.
A spokesperson for Oxford said the figures compared applicants' final A-level results, whereas the university made admissions decisions using a number of factors including predicted grades.
"Admission to Oxford is based purely on aptitude and potential for the chosen course, without regard to school type or any other factor. The university puts enormous effort into assessing individual aptitude and potential, using a wide range of means," the university said.
"We do not know students' A-level grades when selecting, as they have not yet taken their exams. Aptitude tests, GCSEs and interviews, which are used in our selection process, have not been explored in this analysis."
The figures appear at odds with a long-standing myth – perpetuated by sections of the media and independent school sector – that state school applicants are given preference over similarly qualified private school applicants.
In the three years' worth of data, offers were made to 28% of applicants from independent schools, while 20% of applicants from comprehensive state schools received offers.
In total over the period, 3,196 state school applicants scored three A* grades and above, with 1,474 gaining offers. Meanwhile, 2,175 independent school applicants achieved the same grades but 1,098 – just over half – were offered places.
State school applicants did, however, appear to have held their own in winning places to study in three of Oxford university's most sought-after undergraduate courses.
Offers to study medicine, PPE (politics, philosophy and economics) and economics and management degree courses showed no statistically significant differences between offers to independent or state school applicants – which suggests that the overall gap in admissions could be explained by state school pupils applying in greater numbers to the most competitive courses.
Independent school pupils were most successful winning offers to read Classical studies, the least competitive course with an overall rate of one offer for every three applicants. Admission in most cases requires previous study of Latin or Greek, subjects that are less commonly offered in the state sector.
According to the figures, black and minority ethnic applicants were statistically less likely to receive offers than white applicants with the same A-level grades, regardless of school background. The lowest success rates were seen in minority ethnic applicants from non-selective state schools.
The figures support previous analysis by the Guardian which found that white applicants to some of Oxford's most competitive courses were up to twice as likely to get a place as black or minority ethnic applicants, even when they achieved the same A-level grades.
The figures may be ammunition for those who question Oxford's admissions procedures, which include individual interviews.
And as thousands will discover – some to their cost and others to their delight – when they hear their final exam results today, A-level predictions are notoriously unreliable, with a 2011 study finding that less than 52% of predictions were accurate.
This year, students have an opportunity to enter the clearing system if their results are higher than they anticipated, thanks to a new policy that removed the cap on the number of students with at least an A and two B grades that universities can recruit.
That gives an incentive for over-performing students to seek to trade up to more prestigious courses, and as a result universities are expected to offer more places through the clearing system.
Last year, the proportion of A grades awarded fell for the first time in more than two decades, with just 26.6% of exams earning an A or A*, a slight fall from 27% in 2011.
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It's all Greek to you Post-Bulletin Be "Greek for a Day." It sounds simple enough, especially with the 50th annual Greek Fest in Rochester just around the corner. Being Greek may be as much a state of mind as it is an ethnicity, according to the festival organizers. The three-day ... |
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Our correspondents report on business life in Germany, France, Italy, Greece and Ireland
Germany
For one of the 340,000 small- and medium-sized businesses that make up Germany's renowned Mittelstand economy, Wednesday's figures proved the wisdom of sticking doggedly to long-term goals. Phoenix Contact, an electronics manufacturer based in Blomberg in central Germany, decided not to take the axe to its operations in southern Europe when the eurozone tipped into crisis.
"In Europe last year, growth was flat," said Frank Stührenberg, vice-president of global sales at Phoenix Contact. "And in southern Europe, we were seeing minus growth." Yet rather than desert Europe completely for its more profitable American or Asian markets, the firm kept its workforce and waited for recovery.
"We didn't take our people out of Spain for example, we even put more investment in. And that's paying out returns now," he said.
And as Wednesday's figures show Europe's crisis economies slowly picking up, the Mittelstand economy is set to reap the benefits. Steady increases in investment in energy and transport infrastructure in southern Europe have already bolstered Phoenix Contact in Italy and Spain this year, where the firm is finally seeing growth after years of losses, said Stührenberg.
"We're benefiting from that as a subcontractor," he said, "everybody in Germany is profiting a bit now from this."
Mittelstand companies like Stührenberg's employer have not been complacent, and have used the dead time waiting for European recovery to scan the horizon for the next big innovations. For Phoenix Contact this means focusing on Germany's future as a leading producer of renewable energy.
Now seeing annual growth of around 4.5%, the company – which supports a global workforce of 12,800 – is, like the rest of the German economy, "not about to sit back and relax," said Stührenberg.
France
News that the eurozone's second largest economy had exited recession came as an unexpected fillip for France's socialist government, which has based its 2014 budget on 0.2% annual growth. Official data showed that the economy grew by 0.5% in the second quarter. The French finance minister, Pierre Moscovici, said: "The figure, higher than available forecasts, confirms that the French economy has come out of recession, which was already hinted at in recent surveys and figures for industrial production, consumption and foreign trade, and amplifies the encouraging signs of recovery."
The manufacturing sector was particularly dynamic, showing 2% growth in the second quarter, with production in the automobile and aeronautic industries leaping by 8.2% in the second quarter.
Greece
Like many Greeks, Kostas Xexakis was left bewildered by the news that the eurozone recession is officially over. For the 62-year-old framer, working out of a two-room atelier in Athens' Kolonaki district, the downturn feels anything but over and he counts himself lucky: he still has a job and a few customers to boot.
"In no way could you possibly say the recession has ended," he said. "Everyone I know is squeezed and with unemployment at more than 27% I don't see things getting better anytime soon." The Green economy contracted by 4.6% on an annualised basis in the second quarter of 2013 – the 20th consecutive quarter of decline.
Across Athens tens of thousands of family-owned businesses and shops – once the lifeblood of the Greek economy – have been forced to close, their shuttered exteriors one of the most visible signs of the collateral damage wrought by the nation's worst crisis in modern times.
In upmarket Kolonaki, Xexakis does not have that problem. But work has dropped dramatically, and like all Greek businessmen he has been hard hit by reduced earnings, consumer prices that have remained stubbornly high, and a cascade of "emergency" taxes enforced in a bid to increase revenue.
Echoing a widely held view, Xexakis believes things will only begin to improve when international creditors propping up the economy decide to ease off on the austerity that has plunged Greece into ever deeper recession. "Our only hope, unfortunately, lies with Germany deciding to give us a break because, clearly, austerity isn't working," he insisted.
Ireland
In the heart of Ireland's traditional folk music scene, in county Clare on the west coast, there are signs of a recovery in the country's struggling services sector. Donal Minihane, owner of the Hotel Doolin, has seen an upturn in European visitors for the first time in years. "We saw people coming to us from all over Europe and the UK and even the United States. But there were a huge amount of European visitors for the first time in many years."
Situated at the edge of Doolin village, the hotel has enjoyed a spike in tourist numbers this year with room rates now up by 15% and an increase in staff to 80. Having staged three festivals at the hotel this year – for lovers of literature, beer and folk music – Minihane is optimistic that business is starting to take off and that perhaps the worst of the recession in Ireland is over.
"Next year is looking very good, especially the weddings market. I have no vacancies in 2014 from May to October."
Italy
The eurozone's exit from recession comes amid cautious predictions in its third-largest economy that an eight-quarter long recession there may soon be over, too. Enrico Letta's government is predicting a return to modest growth by the end of the year. That hope was boosted by news the economy contracted less than expected in the second quarter, by 0.2%.
"For the time being we still have some domestic headwinds which are weighing on growth," said Marco Valil, chief eurozone economist for UniCredit in Milan. "But we think that in the course of the year we will see Italy exiting the recession."
He said the drivers of this modest recovery would be an easing of fiscal consolidation, low inflation and improving global growth due to improvements in Italy's top two trading partners – Germany and France.
For the moment, however, the spumante will be kept on ice. Italy's longest recession since the second world war has seen unemployment rise to over 12%, with youth joblessness at over 39%.
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