I received the following mail today regarding the Education Forum. It seems we are no longer regarded as an educational content provider;

"Dear Content Provider,

Becta, as the lead agency for shaping and delivering the e-Strategy has been tasked with developing strategic advice and co-ordination of a resource discovery strategy. This resource discovery strategy will aim to ensure practitioners and learners have access to systems, channels and networks so that they can easily select and access appropriate, high-quality content.

In providing best practice guidance as this strategy develops, Becta will review how it provides access to content through its own systems, channels and networks. The first element of this review is to rationalise our services. You will be aware of the recent closure of the National Grid for Learning as part of this process. Further activity is now underway to review the scope of the content types included in the repository Becta manages, the partnerships which will be developed around it and our responsibility for Curriculum Online. The repository will be focused on high-quality, free resources for practical application in a teaching and learning context. This means that some sites which had been included in the National Grid for Learning now fall outside the scope of the revised repository.

As a result of our initial review we have found that your site lies outside of the scope for the repository. This decision does not imply any criticism of your site. It is because we are only including sites where the primary purpose is to provide resources freely available online. These resources are not be dependent upon or purchases, donations or subscriptions.

May I also remind you that all references to the NGFL, logos and links need to be removed from your site. We would like this to be completed by 30th June,2006. To help with this process it would be useful to consider

* Does your site list the NGFL within a useful links section?
* Does your site link to the NGFL either within local navigation or from within the content itself?
* Do you use the RSS feeds service provided by the NGFL?
* Do you make reference to the NGFL in the content?

I hope that this is helpful in understanding why your site is no longer included in our repository. If you have any queries about the new service please contact us at content@becta.org.uk

Yours sincerely,

Michelle Morris"

Wow! They're really trying to win friends and influence people, aren't they!

They've got one for life here
I really don't think they can have bothered to have looked at this site very much to have made such a decision but heigh ho!

Becta who?

Anyway we need a place on the banner for the new e-Help logo!

Good idea
Are you thinking of that lifebelt thingy or do we want something different?

I cannot see how we provide resources that are "dependent upon or purchases, donations or subscriptions".

Neither can I.
There is plenty of teaching and learning stuff provided for free in the Curriculum Subjects section. This will continue to be the case.
As usual with these bureaucratic pillocks they haven't looked further than their own noses

Along with all e-Help members, I will see the new logo proposal for the first time in next Thursday's meeting.

How exciting!- will there be a drum roll and a ribbon to cut?

Perhaps someone hit the "today's active posts" button and discovered that -- like today -- almost all the traffic on the forum was about "conspiracy theories" about JFK's assassination, Watergate, 911, etc, etc rather than about education... I know that one could make links between JFK's assassination and education, but the "image" projected by the forum has increasingly become one which is more interested in whether the USA really landed a man on the moon than it is in educational issues...

Why is it that the only time you seem to contribute to the Forum is to make this point? Why don't you post in the the large number of threads on education and history?

This isn't true. I have contributed often to posts on many different topics, including the one about political philosophy started by Andrew and several about religion and politics. That I haven't contributde recently is a sign that very little has been posted that had anything to do with anything in which I am interested or in which I have any experience or expertise.

To be fair to Mike he has made 223 very welcome contributions to this forum the vast majority of which have been on educational issues.
It is self evident that the teachers on this forum post far less than the conspiracists and undeniable that at the wackier end of the spectrum some of the conspiracy stuff posted here is somewhat "touched" to say the least.
Whether BECTA used this fact in making its decision is something about which we can only conjecture.

However I'd rather people spent their energies posting new educational content, sharing ideas, testing opinion, sharing experience and when the mood takes them even testing out their own BECTA conspiracy theory

You're right. I'm sorry.

BECTA asked me to remove its links from my website many months ago. It would be tempting to think that they have succumbed to pressure from American intelligence agencies because of my content on the assassinations of JFK, RFK and MLK, Iran Contra, the CIA drug trade in South East Asia, Operation 40 and Operation Condor (CIA sponsored assassinations of left-wing activists in the underdeveloped world), Watergate, Operation Sandwedge, etc.

Although the CIA do monitor my website (and the contents of this Forum), they are not the reason why Becta does not want to be linked to Spartacus or this Forum. The conspiracy is far closer to home. They dislike our postings about the corruption of the e-learning credits. I like that bit about our content not being free. There was a time at the beginning of the e-credits scam where they refused to give links to free websites. Instead, tax payers money was used to promote the material being produced by multinational corporations. Why? Could it have something to do with those companies providing donations to the Labour Party?

As someone who worked for the Guardian and who sat in some of those meetings at the Department of Education, I know how this scam worked. In my view it was blatant corruption and a wicked use of tax papers money.

Do you have any evidence of this because I haven't?