An update on the story of the 21st Century School: Though the story still exists as per the link in my last post, and was last updated earlier today according to that same link, it is nowhere to be found on any BBC News index page - not Oxford's news page, nor the Education news index.

There is similarly nothing on the university's own media pages. There is an article on the homepage of the James Martin Institute, but it's dated for tomorrow! Either the news has been suppressed, or a time lord is at work.

Happily, that last website gave me a link to the website of the 21st Century School itself, which can be found here. The website says the school will spend its money as follows:

- Initiating new research and encouraging members of the University to take up new areas and styles of thinking, through seminar series and conferences.

- Operating a research grant programme that will stimulate innovative Research Institutes.

- Having an influential institutional presence that starts with a high-profile Director, a small secretariat and a number of Fellows, and expands to become a pivotal part of the University.

The last one costs very little indeed, perhaps a couple of hundred thousand pounds maximum in wages and associated costs but barely that much, surely. Most members of the university who will be involved with this are already on the payroll, one assumes, and don't require a full-time wage for their services here.

It's the first two that will cost the money, and now I see what is happening here. The university has very cleverly come up with a way to assign the money from the endowment to absolutely anything they like, but all the while claiming that it is with the big issues facing humanity in mind. All manner of science and arts grants can go ahead with that broad a mandate. Presumably Martin's funds had to be used in a way somehow relevant to the very real legacy the man himself has left behind him, so the university worded its new programme to both reflect that and allow it the maximum scope in terms of where those funds go.

In summary, then, this isn't a waste of money as I might have suggested below, because then I didn't realise how this was working. It's a ploy. It's a way of unlocking money in such a fashion that everyone is happy. With cunning like this going on, the world is in safe hands.