Category Archives: Education

Children should get one healthy school meal a day, say EU experts

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Nutritious lunches should be seen as an effective way to address obesity, chronic illness and poverty, says coalition

Children across Europe must receive at least one nutritious school meal a day if governments want to tackle rising obesity rates, prevent chronic illnesses and reduce social inequalities, according to a coalition of experts.

Nearly a third of primary school-age children in Europe are either overweight or obese, while almost a quarter of children in the EU are at risk of poverty or social exclusion.

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Europe’s oldest student newspaper saved from closure

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More than £3,000 raised to keep the Student – founded in 1886 by Robert Louis Stevenson at Edinburgh University – going

The oldest student newspaper in Europe has been saved from closure after its volunteer staff raised more than £3,000 in emergency crowdfunding.

A free newspaper, the Student was founded at the University of Edinburgh in 1887 by the novelist Robert Louis Stevenson, the author of Treasure Island and Kidnapped, who served as its first arts editor.

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Worries over confidence and periods hitting UK girls’ enjoyment of PE

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Survey finds less than two-thirds say they enjoy PE in schools, down from 74% in 2016

Girls’ enjoyment of physical education in school has declined over the past six years, with a lack of confidence, concern about periods and anxiety about their appearance holding them back, according to research.

Less than two-thirds of girls and young women (64%) who took part in a survey this year by the UK charity the Youth Sport Trust (YST), said they enjoyed PE, down from 74% when the poll began in 2016.

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England’s university free speech tsar says role is not to conduct ‘culture wars’

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Arif Ahmed pledges to remain politically neutral in his role and to ensure academic freedoms are maintained

England’s newly appointed university free speech tsar says his role is not to conduct “culture wars” and has pledged to be politically neutral in his efforts to combat threats to academic freedom.

Arif Ahmed, a former philosophy professor at Cambridge University, said he would measure his success or failure by surveys of students and by the number of complaints made under procedures being created by the Office for Students (OfS), England’s higher education regulator.

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Teachers deride Starmer’s plan for supervised toothbrushing in schools

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Labour leader’s pledge for English primaries as part of a wider dental plan labelled ‘window dressing’ by union chief

School leaders have accused Labour of “window dressing” after Keir Starmer pledged to introduce supervised toothbrushing for young children in England’s primary schools.

While the policy has long been supported by the dentistry profession as a way of curbing decay, headteachers said it was not appropriate for their staff to check whether pupils had cleaned their teeth.

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Nine rapes at Harrogate military college reported to civilian police in 13 months

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Figures raise questions about safeguarding at college given ‘outstanding’ for welfare by Ofsted

Nine rapes at the Harrogate military college, which trains 16- and 17-year-olds for careers in the British army, were reported to civilian police over a 13-month period to the middle of August, figures show.

Disclosed under freedom of information legislation, the figures raise questions about safeguarding at Harrogate, and why its welfare arrangements are rated as “outstanding” by Ofsted.

In the UK, Rape Crisis offers support for rape and sexual abuse on 0808 802 9999 in England and Wales, 0808 801 0302 in Scotland, or 0800 0246 991 in Northern Ireland. In the US, Rainn offers support on 800-656-4673. In Australia, support is available at 1800Respect (1800 737 732). Other international helplines can be found at ibiblio.org/rcip/internl.html

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Sunak’s plan to ditch A-levels is out of touch with reality, says union

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Head of National Education Union says new qualification would need 5,300 additional teachers in England

Rishi Sunak wants to scrap A-levels and replace them with a single qualification that includes compulsory English and maths, bringing upheaval to sixth-form education in England that would last a decade.

The new baccalaureate-style Advanced British Standard, which Sunak announced in his speech to the Conservative party conference in Manchester, would also kill off the T-level vocational qualification the government launched just three years ago.

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Sunak scraps Manchester HS2 leg, plans to stop children today ever legally smoking and says A-levels to be replaced – UK politics live

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Prime minister says HS2 move will release £36bn, that he will raise smoking age by one year, every year and announces five-subject qualification

Andy Burnham, the Labour mayor of Greater Manchester, has been giving interviews about HS2 this morning. He told BBC Breakfast that cancelling the link to Manchester would show that the north of England did not get the same priority as the south. He said:

It just proves there’s still so many people in politics, many of them in the Tory party, that think they can treat the north of England differently to the way they treat other parts of the country. It’s just so wrong.

I’ve been in politics 30 years, I’ve never seen a party come to a conference and leave an axe hanging over the place they’re in for the whole week. And then actually drop it on that place.

I’ve had so many contacts over the past few hours from people who are concerned as I am that we are using this culture war battleground to no good effect at all and we’re actually hurting people.

And we shouldn’t be doing that as Conservatives. That’s not the Conservative party I joined and I think we’re better than that.

Luckily that’s not going to happen … because I believe in the ultimate common sense of the party. Also, I very much hope that Suella Braverman learns about the power of her words and moderates her tone.

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World needs 44m more teachers in order to educate every child, report finds

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Unesco analysis shows that sub-Saharan Africa accounts for a third of the shortfall, but that Europe and North America are lacking too

The world needs 44 million more teachers if education is to be provided to every child, according to new figures from Unesco.

The education and culture agency said 9% of primary school teachers quit the profession in 2022, almost double the rate of 4.6% in 2015.

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Former pupils demand apology from Irish school over Nazi teacher’s bullying

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Louis Feutren joined a nationalist group in occupied France and went on to teach at a prestigious Dublin school

There was never any mystery about the fact that Louis Feutren, a French teacher at St Conleth’s school in south Dublin, was a Nazi collaborator.

He had a taste for violent punishments and bizarre humiliations that terrorised pupils. He liked to reminisce about the second world war, when he had joined a Breton nationalist group that fought on the side of Germany. And he showed pictures of himself in uniform.

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Mobile phone ban in English schools ‘smokescreen’ to mask real issues, say critics

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Most schools had policies before government’s plan, and there are concerns about safety and implications for carers of outright ban

Glyn Potts, head teacher at Newman Roman Catholic College in Oldham, could not hide his irritation at the morning headlines announcing a government ban on mobile phones in state schools in England.

His school, like the vast majority, already has a mobile phone policy. “All banned and have been for 10 years,” he said, dismissing the announcement by the education secretary, Gillian Keegan, as a “smokescreen” to distract from the real challenges facing schools, such as underfunding, teacher recruitment and providing for pupils with special educational needs.

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Catholic and C of E primary schools in England ‘take fewer Send pupils’

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LSE research suggests faith-based admissions requirements deter disadvantaged children

Church of England and Roman Catholic primary schools take fewer pupils with disabilities or special needs than other local schools in England, according to research that suggests faith-based admissions requirements deter pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds.

The findings led the author, Dr Tammy Campbell of the London School of Economics, to conclude that faith schools “serve as hubs of relative advantage” for children from more affluent families who were less likely to have special needs.

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Why are university degrees in Australia getting more expensive, and how much will they cost?

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The consequences of the Coalition’s job ready graduate scheme mean the costs of some courses have ballooned up to 140% over the last five years

Pressure is mounting on the federal government to prevent ballooning course costs as figures reveal some humanities courses have become more than 140% more expensive in the past five years.

The costs are a hangover from the previous federal government’s controversial job ready graduates (JRG) scheme, which brought wide condemnation from the sector.

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Rishi Sunak refuses to endorse Suella Braverman’s claim multiculturalism has failed – UK politics live

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The PM instead praised the UK’s ‘fantastic multicultural democracy’, saying the nation has done an ‘incredible job of integrating people’

The former SNP minister Fergus Ewing has claimed his party no longer stands up for Scotland as he was suspended for a week after a disciplinary vote by fellow MSPs.

The sanction, which was backed by 48 votes to nine with four abstentions, came about after Ewing voted against the SNP-Green government in a no-confidence motion against the Scottish Green minister Lorna Slater.

The SNP I joined would never have asked me, or indeed any other elected politician, to choose between loyalty to party and loyalty to constituents …

It was never an ordinary political party because it was one which put Scotland first.

Fergus is a long standing MSP, he has been a minister, he understands the procedures here and what the outcome is of voting in the way that he did.

No, you are and you’re her direct line boss. So why didn’t you deal with that situation, as her boss?

The way it works for MPs is slightly different, in the sense that they themselves are elected by their constituents and we have a separate process for them stopping the job that they’re in. It is not my ability to do that, actually. Ultimately people elect their MPs regardless of who the prime minister is.

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Loose language leaves Labour accused of flip-flop on private schools

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Shadow ministers used ‘charitable status’ as shorthand for main goal of introducing tax changes

Has Labour flip-flopped on stripping private schools in England of their charitable status? Senior party figures from Keir Starmer down have certainly been guilty of using loose language, conflating such a move with their plan to apply VAT to private school fees and other tax breaks.

Starmer said in July last year: “When I say we are going to pay for kids to catch up at school, I also say it’ll be funded by removing private schools’ charitable status.”

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Family of Black high school student files federal lawsuit over hair discrimination

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Darryl George, 17, of Texas has been serving an in-school suspension since 31 August for refusing to cut his dreadlocks

The family of a Black high school student in Texas who was suspended over his dreadlocks filed a federal civil rights lawsuit Saturday against the state’s governor and attorney general, alleging they failed to enforce a new law outlawing discrimination based on hairstyles.

Darryl George, 17, a junior at Barbers Hill high school in Mont Belvieu, has been serving an in-school suspension since 31 August. Officials with the Houston-area school say his dreadlocks fall below his eyebrows and ear lobes and violate the district’s dress code.

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South Korea passes law to protect rights of teachers after mass protests over abuse from parents

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New laws come after weeks of protests sparked by a series of teacher suicides said to be linked to malicious complaints from parents

South Korea has passed a set of legal revisions aimed at improving the rights of teachers in schools, following weeks of protests sparked by a series of teacher suicides said to be linked to malicious complaints from parents.

The four bills, collectively known as the “teacher rights restoration bills” and passed at the national assembly on Thursday, represent a significant step towards enhancing the working conditions and protections for educators in the country.

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Rishi Sunak’s planned A-levels reforms could include baccalaureate

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PM wants pupils in England to study a wider range of subjects including maths and English until they are 18

The A-level system in England could be reformed with a new style of British baccalaureate in which children would study more subjects after the age of 16, according to reports.

The proposals include English and maths becoming compulsory up until the age of 18, the Times said. Students would also be required to study a wider range of subjects in post-16 education.

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Fathers have ‘unique effect’ on children’s educational outcomes, study finds

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Research claims children whose fathers read and play with them see a ‘small but significant’ increase in their educational attainment

Children whose fathers read, play, sing and draw with them show a “small but significant” increase in their educational attainment at primary school, according to research that suggests just 10 minutes a day could make a difference.

While it has long been recognised that parental engagement is critical for a child’s education and development, a study led by the University of Leeds claims fathers have “a unique and important effect” on children’s educational outcomes.

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UK government launches campaign to tackle loneliness at universities

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Campaigners criticise ‘tokenistic’ initiative started after polling showed almost all students experience bouts of loneliness

Millions of teenagers across Britain will arrive at university for the first time on Monday as freshers’ week begins.

Almost all will experience bouts of loneliness with nearly half being worried they will be judged if they admit to it, according to a sample of 1,000 students, collected by YouGov for the government.

Spend time helping other people, such as volunteering with student groups or by offering a regular conversation to someone feeling isolated

Keep in touch with friends and family over the phone

Arrange something fun to do with your current friends

Join a club or society at university to connect with others who have similar interests

Do things you enjoy, such as playing sport, reading or listening to music

Be open to everyone, as university is a great place to meet people from all different backgrounds

Remember some people only share the good things happening to them on social media so try and avoid comparison

Talk to someone you trust about how you feel

Get in touch with the university’s student services about the welfare and support it can provide

Remember that others may be feeling similar, so you are not alone

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