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Comment by meigwilym | Hacker News Reader

This is a charity asking teaching establishments to follow its recommendations. They are perfectly within their rights to ignore this. Nothing very sinister going on.

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Them pressuring parents and the "if you don't do what we say you're racist" step usually comes after

I don’t think the parents of college students are super involved in college curriculums, but I could be wrong. If this “usually” happens, can you point to some actual examples?

If there's one thing academics at British universities are more scornful of than third parties trying to dictate their curriculum, it's parents of students sticking their noses in.

It’s funded through taxes. It’s a badly disguised front organisation. It’s about as independent from the government as Transport for London.

> We are funded through a number of channels:

membership fees from higher education providers

contracts and agreements with the UK funding councils and organisations to which QAA reports annually

private contracts, consultancy and business development work in the UK and internationally

statutory fees from providers for work on behalf of the regulator in England

fees and maintenance charges paid by providers of higher education seeking educational oversight for immigration purposes as required by the Home Office.

https://www.qaa.ac.uk/about-us/how-we're-run/how-we're-funde...

They hide how the various funding streams tot up, presumably to maintain the incredibly thin veneer of a pretence they’re not a government body.

> The financial statements consolidate the results of the charity and its wholly owned subsidiary on a line-by-line basis. The financial statements are prepared in sterling, which is the functional currency of the group. A separate Statement of Financial Activities (SOFA), and income and expenditure account, for the charity itself are not presented because the charity has taken advantage of the exemptions afforded by section 408 of the Companies Act 2006. As required by the Charities Accounts (Scotland) Regulations 2006 (as amended), a cash flow statement for the charity is included.

https://www.qaa.ac.uk/docs/qaa/about-us/qaa-annual-report-an...

Yes, but the Spectator is a rag than enjoys painting the failings of modern Britain as the result of "woke left", rather than far more systemic problems around our inability to plan or innovate in the long term.

Britain as the result of "woke left", rather than far more systemic problems around our inability to plan or innovate in the long term.

Have you actually read The Spectator? I don't want to defend them too much, since I'm not a huge fan, but they publish all kinds of stuff about Britains "inability to plan or innovate" and criticising the government on that.

edit: That's not to say that they haven't also published a lot of articles blaming everything on the "woke left"

If there is a group organising to reduce the quality of education, that is a concern. People probably want to sign up for their maths degree to learn about maths.

Then they begin a campaign of protesting outside of schools and pressuring donors to pull funding.

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