Mapping teaching, learning and assessment in the MPharm in UK schools of pharmacy

Aim To undertake a national study of teaching, learning and assessment in UK schools of pharmacy. Design Triangulation of course documentation, 24 semi-structured interviews undertaken with 29 representatives from the schools and a survey of all final year students (n=1,847) in the 15 schools within the UK during 2003–04. Subjects and setting All established UK pharmacy schools and final year MPharm students. Outcome measures Data were combined and analysed under the topics of curriculum, teaching and learning, assessment, multi-professional teaching and learning, placement education and research projects. Results Professional accreditation was the main driver for curriculum design but links to preregistration training were poor. Curricula were consistent but offered little student choice. On average half the curriculum was science-based. Staff supported the science content but students less so. Courses were didactic but schools were experimenting with new methods of learning. Examinations were the principal form of assessment but the contribution of practice to the final degree ranged considerably (21–63%). Most students considered the assessment load to be about right but with too much emphasis upon knowledge. Assessment of professional competence was focused upon dispensing and pharmacy law. All schools undertook placement teaching in hospitals but there was little in community/primary care. There was little inter-professional education. Resources and logistics were the major limiters. Conclusions There is a need for an integrated review of the accreditation process for the MPharm and preregistration training and redefinition of professional competence at an undergraduate level.

Local-authority led economic regeneration strategies in the aftermath of the Foot-and-Mouth Disease crisis of 2001

The Foot-and-Mouth Disease (FMD) outbreak of 2001 in the UK was completely unprecedented in its scale and severity, with over four million animals culled and a cost to the Exchequer of over £4 billion. Local authorities were at the front line in dealing with the outbreak, in coordinating the cull of livestock, the disposal of carcasses as well as attempting to deal with its aftermath and, in particular, the impact on the wider rural economy. This article examines the impacts of this crisis on three local authorities, Devon, Herefordshire and Cumbria. It examines how far the crisis acted as a catalyst in developing strategies to deal with a future outbreak as well as new local initiatives to promote regeneration in the areas most adversely affected. It focuses on developments that can be directly attributed to the crisis and shows that FMD had a considerable impact on communications and 'joined-up' activity within local authorities and with local stakeholders. © 2006, LEPU, South Bank University.

Stakeholder performance measurement:general approaches and methods of economic evaluation

This paper begins by suggesting that when considering Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), even CSR as justified in terms of the business case, stakeholders are of great importance to corporations. In the UK the Company Law Review (DTI, 2002) has suggested that it is appropriate for UK companies to be managed upon the basis of an enlightened shareholder approach. Within this approach the importance of stakeholders, other than shareholders, is recognised as being instrumental in succeeding in providing shareholder value. Given the importance of these other stakeholders it is then important that corporate management measure and manage stakeholder performance. In order to do this there are two general approaches that could be adopted and these are the use of monetary values to reflect stakeholder value or cost and non-monetary values. In order to consider these approaches further this paper considered the possible use of these approaches for two stakeholder groups: namely employees and the environment. It concludes that there are ethical and practical difficulties with calculating economic values for stakeholder resources and so prefers a multi-dimensional approach to stakeholder performance measurement that does not use economic valuation.

Cost-based pricing in the NHS internal market : accounting choices and the achievement of economic efficiency

Since 1988, quasi-markets have been introduced into many areas of social policy in the UK, the NHS internal market is one example. Markets operate by price signals. The NHS Internal Market, if it is to operate efficiently, requires purchasers and providers to respond to price signals. The research hypothesis is - cost accounting methods can be developed to enable healthcare contracts to be priced on a cost-basis in a manner which will facilitate the achievement of economic efficiency in the NHS internal market. Surveys of hospitals in 1991 and 1994 established the cost methods adopted in deriving the prices for healthcare contracts in the first year of the market and three years on. An in-depth view of the costing for pricing process was gained through case studies. Hospitals had inadequate cost information on which to price healthcare contracts at the inception of the internal market: prices did not reflect the relative performance of healthcare providers sufficiently closely to enable the market's espoused efficiency aims to be achieved. Price variations were often due to differing costing approaches rather than efficiency. Furthermore, price comparisons were often meaningless because of inadequate definition of the services (products). In April 1993, the NHS Executive issued guidance on costing for contracting to all NHS providers in an attempt to improve the validity of price comparisons between alternative providers. The case studies and the 1994 survey show that although price comparison has improved, considerable problems remain. Consistency is not assured, and the problem of adequate product definition is still to be solved. Moreover, the case studies clearly highlight the mismatch of rigid, full-cost pricing rules with both the financial management considerations at local level and the emerging internal market(s). Incentives exist to cost-shift, and healthcare prices can easily be manipulated. In the search for a new health policy paradigm to replace traditional bureaucratic provision, cost-based pricing cannot be used to ensure a more efficient allocation of healthcare resources.

Exits, entrances and entrepreneurship : an exploration of economic theories of entrepreneurship through new independent entry and infant exit

The thesis began as a study of new firm formation. Preliminary research suggested that infant death rate was considered to be a closely related problem and the search was for a theory of new firm formation which would explain both. The thesis finds theories of exit and entry inadequate in this respect and focusses instead on theories of entrepreneurship, particularly those which concentrate on entrepreneurship as an agent of change. The role of information is found to be fundamental to economic change and an understanding of information generation and dissemination and the nature and direction of information flows is postulated to lead coterminously to an understanding of entrepreneurhsip and economic change. The economics of information is applied to theories of entrepreneurhsip and some testable hypotheses are derived. The testing relies on etablishing and measuring the information bases of the founders of new firms and then testing for certain hypothesised differences between the information bases of survivors and non-survivors. No theory of entrepreneurship is likely to be straightforwardly testable and many postulates have to be established to bring the theory to a testable stage. A questionnaire is used to gather information from a sample of firms taken from a new micro-data set established as part of the work of the thesis. Discriminant Analysis establishes the variables which best distinguish between survivors and non-survivors. The variables which emerge as important discriminators are consistent with the theory which the analysis is testing. While there are alternative interpretations of the important variables, collective consistency with the theory under test is established. The thesis concludes with an examination of the implications of the theory for policy towards stimulating new firm formation.

An appraisal of employment problems and policies at the micro-economic level

This study has concentrated on the development of an impact simulation model for use at the sub-national level. The necessity for the development of this model was demonstrated by the growth of local economic initiatives during the 1970's, and the lack of monitoring and evaluation exercise to assess their success and cost-effectiveness. The first stage of research involved the confirmation that the potential for micro-economic and spatial initiatives existed. This was done by identifying the existence of involuntary structural unemployment. The second stage examined the range of employment policy options from the macroeconomic, micro-economic and spatial perspectives, and focused on the need for evaluation of those policies. The need for spatial impact evaluation exercise in respect of other exogenous shocks, and structural changes was also recognised. The final stage involved the investigation of current techniques of evaluation and their adaptation for the purpose in hand. This led to a recognition of a gap in the armoury of techniques. The employment-dependency model has been developed to fill that gap, providing a low-budget model, capable of implementation at the small area level and generating a vast array of industrially disaggregate data, in terms of employment, employment-income, profits, value-added and gross income, related to levels of United Kingdom final demand. Thus providing scope for a variety of impact simulation exercises.

Education and racism:a study of the teachers' and the pupils' relations in the schooling of black boys

This thesis examines the teachers' and the pupils' relations in the schooling of black boys. The study using the methodology of participant observation focusses on one school (Kilby) in an area of black population in an English city. The thesis’s intentions are two fold: firstly, in order to examine these relations, two major aspects of their interaction are addressed, that of the absence of teachers from conventional 'race-relations' research, and, the identification and examination of the anti-school pupils' sub-cultures. Two substantive questions are asked: what is the response of the teachers to the schooling of black pupils? and, what is the meaning of the pupils' resistance to schooling? Secondly, in attempting to answer these questions and offer a critique of the dominant 'race-relations' culturalist explanation of black youth's response to schooling, a theoretical framework has been developed which takes account of both the 'economic' and the 'sociological' perspectives. Methodology allowed and pointed to the importance of examining the teachers' ideologies and practices as well as those of the black boys. It is argued that a class analysis of the racially structured British society is more adequate than the conventional ethnic approach in explaining the black boys' location within Kilby School. Hence, it is posited that the major problem in the schooling of black youth is not that of their culture but of racism, which pervasively structures the social reality at Kilby school. Racism is mediated both through the existing institutional framework that discriminates against working-class youth and through the operation of race specific mechanisms, such as the process of racist stereotyping. It is thus further argued that the Kilby school teachers are of central causal significance to the - problems that the boys encounter. Furthermore, it is in response to these racist ideologies and practices that both West Indian and Asian pupils develop specific forms of collective resistance, which are seen to be linked to the wider black community, as legitimate strategies of survival.