下半场 阅读第一篇
the Guardian
City watchdog blames bonus culture for corrupting bank services
FSA says incentive schemes are likely to drive staff to mis-sell, after finding ’serious failings’ in study of 22 financial institutions
Martin Wheatley, the FSA’s managing director, says banks have changed their view of consumers ’from someone to serve to someone to sell to’. Photograph: Simon Newman/Reuters
The City watchdog has ordered banks to put an end to their bonus culture, in a report that blames staff incentives for corrupting the services they provide and leading to millions of consumers being missold investments and insurance policies.
Many if not all of the recent mis-selling scandals over products including payment protection insurance (PPI), endowments and pensions had come about because of the way companies rewarded sales rather than service, the FSA said.
The watchdog investigated the incentive and bonus schemes at 22 financial firms, and uncovered a range of "serious failings".
It is understood that the worst were at Lloyds Banking Group, which has been referred to the FSA’s enforcement division. This could result in the group, which is 40% owned by the government, facing a fine of billions of pounds. Lloyds has already set aside more than ￡3.5bn to cover compensation payments.
Martin Wheatley, the FSA’s managing director, said banks used to be a place "where you would go in, stand in a queue and have a pleasant chat with the clerk", but some time ago financial institutions had changed their view of consumers "from someone to serve to someone to sell to".
The FSA has ordered firms to drop such sales tactics in favour of schemes that put the customer first, and said bank bosses should "take a real interest in fixing this". If firms failed to comply, the watchdog said, it was prepared to introduce new rules cracking down on bonus schemes that prioritise sales.
"What we found is not pretty," Wheatley said. "Most of the incentive schemes we looked at were likely to drive people to mis-sell in order to meet targets and receive a bonus, and these risks were not being properly managed."
He said he had ruled out getting rid of incentive schemes altogether, but banks would be expected to properly consider whether their incentive schemes increased the risk of mis-selling.
"I want to draw a line in the sand and use the report we are publishing today to set out our expectations," he said. "CEO’s are ultimately accountable for the way their staff are incentivised, so we expect them to take a real interest in fixing this."
Where a recurring problem was identified, banks would be expected to investigate, take action and pay compensation, the FSA said. In the past, incidents of misselling have often been left to the watchdog and consumer bodies to identify and act upon.
Firms have until the end of October to submit their views on the guidance, and Wheatley said he expected them to start to clean up their act immediately.
Lloyds would not confirm whether it had been referred to the FSA’s enforcement division, but said in a statement that it had made "significant changes" to its incentive schemes since the beginning of the year. It said it had been " working closely with [the FSA], keeping them updated on our progress and to ensure the changes we have made to the schemes are appropriate."
Richard Lloyd, the Which? executive director, said that the FSA’s findings supported his organisation’s view that most banks had incentive schemes that prioritised sales.
"This must change. It is clear that the light touch regulation of the past has not worked. We want to see the FSA rigorously enforcing the rules and taking tough action against those banks that continue to let their customers down," he said.
Figures released by the banks last week showed that customer complaints soared in the first half of this year, due to increasing numbers of cases relating to the mis-selling of PPI. Lloyds received around 860,000 complaints in the first six months, a 145% increase on a year ago. Complaints to NatWest doubled year-on-year, while those to Barclays rose by 80%.
下半场 阅读第二篇
The WallStreet Journal
A Right to Choose Single-Sex Education
For some children, learning in girls-only or boys-only classes pays off. Opponents of the idea are irresponsible.
Education proponents across the political spectrum were dismayed by recent attempts to eradicate the single-gender options in public schools in Virginia, West Virginia, Alabama, Mississippi, Maine and Florida. We were particularly troubled at efforts to thwart education choice for American students and their families because it is a cause we have worked hard to advance.
Studies have shown that some students learn better in a single-gender environment, particularly in math and science. But federal regulations used to prevent public schools from offering that option. So in 2001 we joined with then-Sen. Hillary Clinton and Sen. Susan Collins to author legislation that allowed public schools to offer single-sex education. It was an epic bipartisan battle against entrenched bureaucracy, but well worth the fight.
Since our amendment passed, thousands of American children have benefited. Now, though, some civil libertarians are claiming that single-sex public-school programs are discriminatory and thus illegal.
To be clear: The 2001 law did not require that children be educated in single-gender programs or schools. It simply allowed schools and districts to offer the choice of single-sex schools or classrooms, as long as opportunities were equally available to boys and girls. In the vast and growing realm of education research, one central tenet has been confirmed repeatedly: Children learn in different ways. For some, single-sex classrooms make all the difference.
Critics argue that these programs promote harmful gender stereotypes. Ironically, it is exactly these stereotypes that the single-sex programs seek to eradicate.
As studies have confirmed—and as any parent can tell you—negative gender roles are often sharpened in coeducational environments. Boys are more likely, for instance, to buy into the notion that reading isn’t masculine when they’re surrounded by (and showing off for) girls.
Girls, meanwhile, have made so much progress in educational achievement that women are overrepresented in postgraduate education. But they still lag in the acquisition of bachelor’s and graduate degrees in math and the sciences. It has been demonstrated time and again that young girls are more willing to ask and answer questions in classrooms without boys.
A 2008 Department of Education study found that "both principals and teachers believed that the main benefits of single-sex schooling are decreasing distractions to learning and improving student achievement." The gender slant—the math-is-for-boys, home-EC-is-for-girls trope—is eliminated.
In a three-year study in the mid-2000s, researchers at Florida’s Stetson University compared the performance of single-gender and mixed-gender classes at an elementary school, controlling for the likes of class sizes, demographics and teacher training. When the children took the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (which measures achievement in math and literacy, for instance), the results were striking: Only 59% of girls in mixed classes were scored as proficient, while 75% of girls in single-sex ones achieved proficiency. Similarly, 37% of boys in coeducational classes scored proficient, compared with 86% of boys in the all-boys classes.
Booker T. Washington High School in Memphis, Tenn., the winner of the 2011 Race to the Top High School Commencement Challenge, went to a 81.6% graduation rate in 2010 from a graduation rate of 55% in 2007. Among the changes at the school? Implementing all-girls and all-boys freshman academies.
In Dallas, the all-boys Barack Obama Leadership Academy opened its doors last year. There is every reason to believe it will follow the success of the first all-girls public school, Irma Rangel Young Women’s Leadership School, which started in 2004. Irma Rangel, which has been a Texas Education Agency Exemplary School since 2006, also took sixth place at the Dallas Independent School District’s 30th Annual Mathematics Olympiad that year.
No one is arguing that single-sex education is the best option for every student. But it is preferable for some students and families, and no one has the right to deny them an option that may work best for a particular child. Attempts to eliminate single-sex education are equivalent to taking away students’ and parents’ choice about one of the most fundamentally important aspects of childhood and future indicators of success—a child’s education.
America once dominated educational attainment among developed countries, but we have fallen disastrously in international rankings. As we seek ways to offer the best education for all our children, in ways that are better tailored to their needs, it seems not just counterproductive but damaging to reduce the options. single-sex education in public schools will continue to be a voluntary choice for students and their families. To limit or eliminate single-sex education is irresponsible. To take single-sex education away from students who stand to benefit is unforgivable.
