Category Archives: Education

More than half of UK students working long hours in paid jobs

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Lack of maintenance support is creating two-tier higher education system, say experts

More than half of full-time students are working long hours in jobs to support themselves at university, spending nearly two days a week in paid employment during term time, owing to the cost of living crisis.

A survey of 10,000 full-time UK undergraduates by the Higher Education Policy Institute (Hepi) found a record 56% had paid employment while they were studying, working an average of 14.5 hours each week.

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Media studies are popular, dynamic and have ‘profound impact’, report says

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Degrees often derided as ‘low-value’ or ‘Mickey Mouse’ subjects are praised as vital to UK’s £108bn creative industries

Media and communications studies, often derided as “soft”, “low-value” or “Mickey Mouse” subjects, are in fact popular, dynamic and have “profound impact”, according to a report.

The British Academy study says that rather than being “low value”, such courses play a vital role in the UK’s £108bn creative industries and have become increasingly relevant in a world grappling with new technologies, artificial intelligence and the dangers of disinformation.

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Labour urged to confirm how it will find staff for 100,000 new childcare places

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Party’s proposals involve about £140m to refurbish school classrooms, but nothing extra to increase staffing

Labour has been accused of leaving a gap in its childcare plans after the party confirmed its promise to offer 100,000 new childcare places would not involve extra funding to recruit more staff.

Keir Starmer, the Labour leader, appeared at a primary school in Nuneaton on Monday alongside the shadow education secretary to publicise the party’s pledge to expand childcare places through primary schools.

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Harder to own your first home under the Tories, Rishi Sunak admits – UK politics as it happened

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PM acknowledges in BBC Panorama interview to air tonight that it is a challenge for people to buy their first home

Davey sums up the Lib Dems’ plans on health and social care

And he says he wants to mention one other policy he is particularly proud of – the proposal to give proper bereavement support to parents whose partners have died.

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Eight in 10 primary teachers in England spending own money to help pupils

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Increasing numbers of children hungry and lack adequate clothing, with two-thirds of secondary teachers also supporting pupils

Eight in 10 primary schoolteachers in England are spending their own money to buy items for pupils who are increasingly arriving at school hungry and without adequate clothing, according to new research.

Almost a third (31%) of those who took part in the survey said they were seeing more hungry children in class, with 40% reporting an increase in pupils coming in without proper uniform or a warm winter coat, research by the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) found.

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General election: Starmer and Sunak clash over taxes, the NHS and immigration in head-to-head TV debate – as it happened

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Labour leader says prime minister’s claim he would raise people’s taxes by £2,000 is ‘nonsense’

The Guardian’s visuals team has produced an interactive boundary map for the UK general election which shows you if your constituency has been altered because of boundary changes. You can check it out here:

Ed Davey has been speaking about his party’s plan to provide free personal care for adults. The Liberal Democrats leader said he wants carers to have a special, higher minimum wage.

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English pupil funding at same level as when Tories took power, study finds

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Real-terms funding per pupil at 2010 levels, teacher pay at 2001 levels, and building investment 25% below mid-2000s

Spending on each schoolchild’s education in England has suffered an unprecedented 14-year-freeze since the Conservatives came to power, according to Britain’s leading economics thinktank.

Funding per pupil is now at 2010 levels in real terms, the Institute for Fiscal Studies said in its latest analysis of school spending, while teacher pay was at about the same real-terms level as in 2001.

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Nigeria takes up case of its Teesside University students ordered out of UK

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High Commission to meet leaders at university after currency crash in home country meant students couldn’t pay for tuition

Delegates from the Nigerian high commission in London are to meet bosses from Teesside University to discuss the treatment of a group of students who were ordered to leave the UK after failing to meet tuition repayments.

The Nigerian students were left distressed and in some cases suicidal after they were involuntarily withdrawn from their courses and ordered to leave, in what has been described as a “serious diplomatic issue”.

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Fewer pupils in England studying drama and media at GCSE and A-level

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Figures show statistics, computing, physics and maths have risen in popularity and languages bouncing back

Fewer pupils in England are studying drama, media and performing arts at GCSE and A-level, while the popularity of statistics, computing, physics and maths has gone up.

Provisional figures for exam entries in England this summer, published by the exams regulator Ofqual on Thursday, also reveal a growing enthusiasm for modern foreign languages, which had been in long-term decline.

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Texas curriculum overhaul would increase biblical content in elementary schools

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Two million Texas kids could see new curriculum emphasizing Bible stories to instruct them in the ‘American cultural experience’

Texas elementary school students would get a significant dose of Bible knowledge with their reading instruction under a sweeping curriculum redesign unveiled on Wednesday.

From the story of Queen Esther – who convinced her husband, the Persian king, to spare the Jews – to the depiction of Christ’s last supper, the material is designed to draw connections between classroom content and religious texts.

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Rishi Sunak promises to create 100,000 high-skilled apprenticeships a year

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Conservatives’ policy would be funded by scrapping ‘rip-off degrees’ with high drop-out rates and low job progression

Rishi Sunak has promised to create 100,000 high-skilled apprenticeships a year by scrapping “rip-off degrees” if he wins the general election.

In the latest of a flurry of announcements as the Conservatives try to narrow Labour’s 20-point poll lead, the party pledged to replace “low-quality” university degrees with apprenticeships.

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Sussex university students warned they may not graduate if fees remain unpaid

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Those struggling to pay debts include students from overseas who have seen the value of their currency crash

Hundreds of students at the University of Sussex have been warned they may be unable to graduate or re-register for the next academic year if they fail to pay outstanding debts.

Those affected include students from Nigeria and Iran who have been struggling to pay their fees after the value of their currencies crashed. Other international students, as well as UK students, are also among those in debt.

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Rishi Sunak rejects claim he plans to move to California if he loses election – as it happened

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Prime minister dismisses speculation after Tory peer Zac Goldsmith became latest to hint at planned relocation

Starmer is now running through his six first step promises.

Starmer says he is fed up with hearing Rishi Sunak says the UK has “turned the corner”.

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Toddlers ‘sold out’ to balance books of childcare bill, English nursery providers say

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Experts say government’s relaxation of rules on staff ratios for two-year-olds is putting children at undue risk

Toddlers have been “sold out” to balance the books of the government’s childcare bill, according to nursery providers, who say young children have been put at risk by changes in supervision rules.

The deaths of two babies in nurseries made headlines last week but frontline workers say they are also concerned for the safety of older toddlers after the government relaxed rules on staff ratios.

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Potentially habitable planet size of Earth discovered 40 light years away

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Queensland- and Scotland-based PhD students co-lead team celebrating ‘Eureka moment’ spotting Gliese 12b

An Australian university student has co-led the discovery of an Earth-sized, potentially habitable planet just 40 light years away.

Shishir Dholakia, a PhD candidate in astrophysics at the University of Southern Queensland, is part of an international team that published the discovery in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

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Next government must make hard university funding decisions, fast

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Labour sees no electoral gain in flagging sector’s funding crisis – but losses cannot be sustained much longer

Why are universities in such financial dire straits? According to one sector leader, it’s because they are losing money on two of their three income streams, while their third source is under attack by the government.

“We are already in a state where teaching home students operates at a loss, doing research operates at a loss, and the international student market has been diminished by the government’s rhetoric and policy. And those are the three areas where universities get their income,” said Rachel Hewitt, chief executive of the MillionPlus association of modern universities that includes Bath Spa, Wolverhampton and Sunderland.

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Ex-ministers warn UK universities will go bust without higher fees or funding

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Exclusive: Vice-chancellors suggest fee rise of £2,000 to £3,500 a year, but others say that is ‘politically impossible’

Vice-chancellors and former ministers are warning that the cash crisis facing universities is so serious that the next government will have to urgently raise tuition fees or increase funding to avoid bankruptcies within two years.

They said the state of university finances was more dire than revealed in last week’s report by the Office for Students, which forecast 40% of England’s universities would end this year in the red.

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‘Scary’: public-school textbooks the latest target as US book bans intensify

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A school district in Houston has voted to redact chapters on vaccines and climate change, and parents and educators are worried

The wave of book bans sweeping the US, typically reserved for works of fiction deemed controversial, has hit textbooks used in public schools, marking the next step in Republicans’ war on education.

The board of trustees for the Cypress Fairbanks independent school district in Houston voted 6-1 earlier this month to redact certain chapters in science textbooks, including those about vaccines, human growth, diversity, and climate change.

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Parents overestimate sons’ maths skills more than daughters’, study finds

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Gender stereotypes at home may hamper female students’ ability to progress in the classroom, research suggests

Parents are more likely to overestimate maths ability in sons than daughters, according to research that suggests that gender stereotypes at home may hinder the progress of female students.

The findings, presented in a lecture at University College London this week, found that parents tend to be overconfident about their children’s academic performance in reading and maths regardless of gender. But, in maths, parents overestimated boys’ skills to a significantly greater extent.

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Teachers in England stretched by pupils’ mental and family problems, MPs say

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Education select committee concerned that excessive workload is driving teachers out of profession

Teachers’ workloads are being increasingly stretched by their pupils’ mental health and family difficulties, according to MPs who were critical of the government’s efforts to tackle chronic staff shortages in England’s schools.

The education select committee said it was “concerned that since the pandemic teachers are spending more time on addressing issues that would typically fall outside the remit of schools, including family conflict resolution and mental health support,” and called for the government to support better provision inside and outside schools.

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