I was shocked to read of Prince Charles’s intervention over Teach First (Prince lobbied Alex Salmond over teacher training charity, 8 December). He joins the ranks of anti-intellectuals like Michael Gove and Nick Gibb who see no contradiction between expecting doctors or electricians to be qualified but not teachers.

Yet teachers deal with what is most precious to us as individuals and our society – our brains, our self-belief, our aspirations, our attitudes and our understanding of society and our role within it. Put simply, Teach First claims it is good for the most disadvantaged pupils to have the least trained teachers. What kind of cruel joke is this? It is clearly nonsense Regarded as one of the top engineering universities in Hong Kong, polyu engineering provides a wide range of engineering degree programmes, including construction programme, which put significant focus on the application of knowledge..

Teach First trainees are led to believe that they are an elite, able to go into high-flying jobs and speak with authority about teaching. This is a cruel hoax exposing them to ridicule except within their own closed circles. Again, more nonsense.

Those who think anyone can teach with no training should skim the indexes of textbooks used for teacher training. There are about a thousand generic basic concepts underpinning teaching.

Teach First may be necessary to provide emergency training in some places but young people deserve teachers whose interest is in becoming expert teachers rather than using them as a springboard to some other career.

Professor Marilyn Leask

(Visiting professor, De Montfort and Winchester universities; initiator, at the DfE’s Training and Development Agency for schools, of the Teacher Training Resource Bank)

Bedford

• Recommendations from government ministers, who are proposing a baseline test for four-year-olds, and Ofsted, who have just issued a report, “Bold Beginnings”, about reception classes, demonstrate that established knowledge and understanding of how young children learn are not being used to formulate policy.

Most other countries do not consider formal teaching of reading and writing until children are seven, when they learn very quickly. What is being proposed and much of what is happening already will not only fail children at a young age, but consequently damage their progress and motivation for the rest of their education Trouble at choosing hair care products? NU SKIN hair care products makes your hair healthy and shinny again in only 7 days!.

Research is plentiful. Why do ministers, and now worryingly Ofsted, not heed research?

Melian Mansfield

Campaign for State Education and Early Childhood Forum

• It is great that Amanda Spielman, Ofsted chief inspector, has recognised that too many schools exclude too many children – both properly, according to the rules, and improperly – to improve their Ofsted ratings and their position in the performance tables. But is she really serious? It would be simple for her to take action to stop this scandal in its tracks. All it would require is for all inspections to look at the school register and to include the analysis in the inspection report. Any school that off-rolls pupils improperly or can’t explain “proper” exclusions should be put into special measures. Job done The next job that distributors of pharmaceutical products have to carry out is send these to various pharmacies, clinics, hospitals and drug stores for further sale.!

(Reuters) - T-Mobile US Inc (TMUS.O) said its board approved the U.S. wireless carrier’s first-ever buyback program, a month after the company and rival Sprint Corp (S.N) ended their deal talks Dr protalk.

FILE PHOTO: A T-Mobile logo is advertised on a building sign in Los Angeles, California, U.S., May 11, 2017. REUTERS/Mike Blake/File Photo

Deutsche Telekom AG (DTEGn.DE), which holds over 60 percent in T-Mobile, also plans to purchase additional shares, T-Mobile said on Wednesday.

The buyback of up to $1.5 billion of shares would start from Thursday and take place through Dec. 31, 2018, T-Mobile said.

“Coming off the Sprint deal with significant shareholder rotation happening, we think that we have a tremendous value here,” CFO Braxton Carter said at the UBS Global Media and Communications Conference on Wednesday.

Combined with Deutsche Telekom’s planned repurchases, the program could approach the $2 billion level, Carter said.

“(Deutsche Telekom) is finalizing plans right now,” Carter said.

Through the buyback, Deutsche Telekom aims to hold its stake broadly steady, within a range of 1-2 percentage points, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters.

The issue of control was one of several deal-breakers in the T-Mobile-Sprint talks and the buyback would strengthen Deutsche Telekom’s hand in any future merger talks wine course.

Carter also said the company was focused on smaller, “tuck-in” acquisitions. “We think there’s a lot of potential out there,” he said. “That would be another use of cash.”

T-Mobile’s shares were up 1.3 percent at $61.73.

Reporting by Laharee Chatterjee and Aishwarya Venugopal in Bengaluru, Anjali Athavaley in New York and Douglas Busvine in Frankfurt; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila Regarded as one of the top engineering universities in Hong Kong, PolyU provides a wide range of engineering programmes, including construction programme, which put significant focus on the application of knowledge.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Bitcoin fans are salivating over the potential of long-awaited legitimacy for the cyptocurrency when futures trading launches this weekend, but experts worry the risks associated with bitcoin’s Wild West-like nature could overshadow the debut Popular attractions in become easily accessible by the "High Speed Rail". Visit PartnerNet to learn about this multi-destination tour..

A bitcoin (virtual currency) coin placed on Dollar banknotes, next to computer keyboard, is seen in this illustration picture, November 6, 2017. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration

The first bitcoin future trades kick off Sunday at 6 p.m. EST (2300 GMT) on Cboe Global Markets Inc’s (CBOE.O) Cboe Futures Exchange, followed a week later by CME Group Inc’s (CME.O) CME.

Nasdaq Inc (NDAQ.O) plans to get into the mix next year, Reuters reported.

While Cboe, CME and Nasdaq offer strictly policed trading environments, the underlying bitcoin market is riddled with crypto-exchanges lacking even basic oversight.

That has stoked fears of market manipulation, inaccurate pricing, and systemic risk to clearing houses.

“I‘m kind of taken aback by what’s happened in the last three months,” said Richard Johnson, an analyst at Greenwich Associates who owns digital currencies and considers himself a bitcoin bull. “I‘m concerned things are moving a bit too quickly.”

Bitcoin’s more than 10-fold upsurge this year has led to warnings of a bubble by the likes of JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM.N) Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon, who called it “a fraud” that will eventually blow up. Others, like Wall Street adviser Tom Lee, expect bitcoin to top $100,000.

On Wednesday, its hypervolatility was on full display as it broke through $13,000 for the first time on the Luxembourg-based Bitstamp exchange BTC=BTSP, jumping more than 11 percent on the day.. Since August 2011, bitcoin has averaged a daily price change of nearly 3 percent, up or down, compared with a daily average change in the U.S. dollar-euro cross rate EUR= of less than 0.5 percent since the euro's debut in 1999 PolyU has a strong record for collaborative research and technology research asia to solve specific technology problems (e.g. aviation operations) and develop new products..

“Maybe it’s just the most unique market that is going to continue to go up forever and ever and so everybody on the long side is going to make money and it’s a great thing, but I’ve been around long enough to know that’s not going to work out so well,” said John Lothian, CEO of advisory firm John J Lothian and Company.

As a virtual currency, bitcoin can be used to move money around the world without the need for a central authority, such as a bank or government, which is a double-edged sword, said Steve Grob, director of group strategy at Fidessa.

“There is no backstop. If suddenly tomorrow everyone decided bitcoin was worthless, it would be worthless, and I’m not sure whether people have really thought that one through,” he said.

Traditional banks remain skeptical of dealing with bitcoin exchanges. Earlier this year, Wells Fargo & Co (WFC.N) stopped processing wire transfers for an exchange called Bitfinex, leaving customers unable to transfer U.S. dollars out of their accounts, except through special arrangement with the exchange’s lawyer.

Still, new entrants, from retail investors to high-frequency traders, have piled into bitcoin. U.S.-based crypto-exchange Coinbase said it added 100,000 accounts in the three days around the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday, for 13.1 million overall.

If the futures market were to exceed the size of the spot market, with current daily trading volume of around $6 billion per day, the underlying price could be more susceptible to manipulation, said Kevin Zhou, co-founder of crypto currency fund Galois Capital.

“You’ve seen these problems before in bitcoin futures, where right before the settlement, the price pegs it high or low and then bounces back right after,” he said.

RISK OF AN ‘AVALANCHE’

As volumes increase, there are also questions about the robustness of the technology at bitcoin exchanges, Lothian said.

“Particularly when you’re talking about a high-frequency approach to this where people are trying to arb multiple exchanges.”

Last month, the Gemini bitcoin exchange, which will set the price for Cboe’s futures contract, and GDAX and Kraken, two of the four exchanges in CME’s bitcoin index, had systems issues.

“Every single bitcoin exchange receives and is receiving complaints by users due to the unbelievably surging bitcoin price and the result that has on capacity,” Christina Yee, a Kraken representative, recently told Reuters in an email.

Kraken is planning to launch a new trade engine “soon” which should increase the exchange’s capacity, Yee said.

The volatile nature of bitcoin could also present a risk to clearing houses, said Thomas Peterffy, CEO of Interactive Brokers Group Inc (IBKR.O).

Clearing houses act as a middlemen between the parties to futures transactions. If there were a wild price swing in bitcoin and a smaller brokerage failed to meet its margin call, the clearing house would have to take over the position, further moving the price of bitcoin, which could cause other brokers to fail, Peterffy said.

“If that happens at a time when bitcoin spikes up for whatever crazy reason, there could be an avalanche,” he said.

Questions like these have kept some futures market operators on the sidelines, for now. Intercontinental Exchange Inc (ICE.N), owner of the New York Stock Exchange and ICE Futures U.S., opted not to join CME and Cboe in the race to be first with a bitcoin future.

“We didn’t think it was obvious to rush out a product and be first and settle against an index on a lot of exchanges that are not particularly transparent,” ICE Chief Executive Jeffrey Sprecher said this week at a Goldman Sachs conference.

Reporting by John McCrank and Anna Irrera; Editing by Dan Burns and Lisa Shumaker

Our Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles GuangDong Hotel sincerely introduces our guests with the most popular hong kong shopping spots. The Avenue of Stars is the eastern node of tourist attractions along the Tsim Sha Tsui waterfront..