Category Archives: Education

National tutoring scheme failing disadvantaged pupils, say MPs

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Consultancy firm Randstad’s contract ‘must end’ unless it delivers learning missed during Covid

A national tutoring programme is failing to help the children who need it most, according to MPs, who say ministers should terminate their contract with the consultancy firm running the scheme unlessit “shapes up”.

A report by the education select committee gives a scathing account of the government’s £5bn national tutoring programme (NTP), which aims to help children in England catch up on learning missed during the lockdowns of 2020 and 2021.

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Hailed as heroes – Scottish gardeners who rescued trio from Ukraine

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Joe McCarthy and Gary Taylor were held at gunpoint by Russians before successfully evacuating Irish woman and Nigerian men

Two Scottish gardeners have rescued three students – one Irish and two Nigerian – who were trapped in the wartorn city of Sumy in the north-east of Ukraine.

Along the way, the men were held at gunpoint by Russian soldiers – but were then rescued themselves by locals.

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UK universities brace for impact of sanctions against Russia

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Most academics back research boycott but ‘there is a case for maintaining ties’, says Oxford professor

Researchers at UK universities are bracing themselves for sanctions affecting science partnerships with Russia, including in climate science and space research, as the government seeks to isolate Vladimir Putin over the invasion of Ukraine.

Simon Marginson, a professor of higher education at the University of Oxford, said most academics would support a research boycott with heavy hearts and concerns for Russian colleagues.

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Revealed: money for educating excluded children funded Bolton bar owner’s social life

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Call for ‘seismic change’ in social care system after Robert McGuinness’s use of funds

The owner of a children’s home in Bolton shut down for “serious and widespread failures” spent thousands intended for educating marginalised children on drinking, foreign trips and his pub business, the Guardian can reveal.

Between 2015 and 2021, £1.5m was paid by two local authorities to a “community interest company” (CIC) run by Robert McGuinness, the main director of the children’s home. The CIC was set up to provide vocational training to children from years 9 to 11 (ages 14-16) excluded from mainstream schools.

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Covid has intensified gender inequalities, global study finds

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Researchers find women hit harder by negative social and economic impacts of the pandemic than men

The impact of the Covid-19 pandemic threatens to reverse decades of progress made towards gender equality, according to a global study that reveals women have been hit much harder socially and economically than men.

Previously, coronavirus-related gender disparity studies have focused on the direct health impacts of the crisis. It is well known, for example, that across the globe men have experienced higher rates of Covid cases, hospitalisation and death. However, until now, few studies have examined how gender inequalities have been affected by the many indirect social and economic effects of the pandemic worldwide.

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‘I last went to school in December’: a headteacher’s battle with long Covid

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Steve Bladon led his Lincolnshire school tirelessly through the pandemic and thought the worst was over – then fatigue set in

Last month, Steve Bladon, a father of four, watched with some unease as the prime minister announced the lifting of all Covid restrictions in England. After two years of the pandemic – the lockdowns, the legal requirements to self-isolate, the social distancing and mandatory masks – the message from government was that it may not be over, but it’s time to learn to live with Covid.

As the headteacher of a primary school in a small town in Lincolnshire, Bladon, 46, knows as much as anyone about living with the virus. He has led his team and school community tirelessly through the pandemic, delivering remote education and food parcels, reassuring anxious parents and keeping colleagues calm.

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Cambridge lecturers accuse university of ‘explosive workloads’

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Staff complain of low pay amid pressure to deliver institution’s famous one-on-one tutorials

Cambridge University lecturers are accusing the institution of pressuring them into taking on “explosive workloads” to deliver its famous one-on-one tutorials.

A survey of university teaching officers (UTOs) by the University and College Union branch found that a third (35%) felt they could not refuse requests from peers and superiors to take on extra weekly tutorials, or “supervisions” as they are known, even though nearly half of those surveyed said they would like to deliver fewer of them.

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Children ‘breathe out fewer aerosols’, which may reduce Covid risk – study

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Primary-aged children produce about four times fewer particles than adults, which may help explain their lower transmission risk

Primary school-aged children produce about four times fewer aerosol particles when breathing, speaking or singing compared with adults, which could help explain why they seem to be at lower risk of spreading Covid.

Various studies have suggested that young children are about half as susceptible to catching Covid as adults, and, despite carrying a similar amount of virus in their noses and throats, appear to pass it to fewer people if they do become infected.

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Lifting of Covid rules in England ‘will lead to rise in home schooling’

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Fears over ‘forced exclusion’ of vulnerable pupils whose families will be too scared to send them to school

The lifting of Covid restrictions in England will lead to a further rise in home schooling and the “forced exclusion” of immunosuppressed pupils whose families will be too scared to send them to school, an academy trust leader has warned.

Steve Chalke, the founder of the Oasis academy trust of 52 schools, said the scrapping of twice-weekly testing in school communities and the legal requirement to self-isolate after a positive test was “a huge gamble”.

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Zimbabwe’s striking teachers told to return to work or lose their jobs

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Government sets deadline for 135,000 teachers to end pay strike, ignoring court order, after year of school closures due to Covid

The classrooms of Kambuzuma high school are deserted, with no staff to be seen and Tanaka Mupasiri*, 16, and his friends are milling around the school yard. It is 9am on a Thursday, normally a time when the school, in a high-density suburb or township on the outskirts of Harare, would be a hive of studious activity but Zimbabwe’s national teachers’ strike has thrown the education system into crisis.

Teachers in state schools have not been at work since 7 February and face a government deadline of Tuesday to return or lose their jobs.

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UK university dispute escalates over plan to dock staff pay

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Bosses advised to dock 100% of pay for staff who work to rule as UCU members prepare strike action

A bitter dispute between university staff and their employers looks set to escalate after it emerged that university bosses have been advised to dock 100% of pay for staff who work to rule as part of industrial action which begins next week.

More than 1 million students at 68 UK universities are to be hit by further strike action by members of the University and College Union (UCU), with up to 10 days of campus walkouts starting on Monday as part of a long-running dispute over pensions, pay and conditions.

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Forget Wordle! Can you crack the Dickens Code? An IT worker from California just did

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The writer’s archaic shorthand has baffled experts for over a century. So they launched a deciphering competition for fans – with stunning results that cast new light on his love life and financial peril

Despite all the precision he brought to bear on his intricate plots, Charles Dickens was a notoriously messy writer. His manuscripts are full of inky splodges, with barely legible alterations crammed in between scrawled, sloping lines. Worse still was his love of a type of shorthand dating from the 1700s. To this, he added his own chaotic modifications to create what he called “the devil’s handwriting”.

Fond of puzzles and codes, the great Victorian writer used these time-saving hieroglyphics to make notes and copies of his letters and documents, reams of which he burned. Academics are still toiling to decipher 10 shorthand manuscripts that survived. Forget Wordle. This is the Dickens Code. And for a long time, it had seemed uncrackable.

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Afghan universities reopen with strict rules for female students

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Women required to attend separate classes and follow dress code at facilities in Kandahar and Helmand as they restart classes for first time since Taliban takeover

Public universities in Kandahar and Helmand provinces in Afghanistan have reopened after being closed for nearly nine months, with some female students joining classes.

Despite calls from education activists and students, universities and high schools across Afghanistan stayed shut after their usual summer break as the Taliban came to power. High schools have since reopened, but only for boys.

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‘A vortex of thinking’ – inside the LSE’s brawny, brainy new building

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A game of squash, a quick Rachmaninov concert, a brew with a view and then back to studying … the £145m Marshall Building has got the lot, says our writer, even its own Old Curiosity Shop

One minute, it’s a shish kebab. The next, it’s a washing machine. A second later, it’s a casserole. Speaking to Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara about their new building, the metaphors come tumbling out in a passionate torrent. The two Irish architects, whose practice Grafton won worldwide recognition in 2020 when it won the prestigious Pritzker prize, can’t contain their excitement about their £145m facility for the London School of Economics, partly because they haven’t had a chance to visit it yet. “The pandemic has really made us understand the meaning of longing,” says Farrell. “Site visits on FaceTime just aren’t the same.”

The longing is over for students and academics, though, who return to face-to-face teaching this term, in a place that truly brings home the benefits of meeting in the real world. The new Marshall Building, which looks out over Lincoln’s Inn Fields like a gleaming white palazzo, houses some of the finest spaces that any London university has to offer.

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Expansionist private schools need a lesson in morality | David Mitchell

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British schools with branches in the Middle East are abandoning principles for profit and it’s simply wrong

The private education system, I’m beginning to suspect, just isn’t that into me. I blame myself – I’ve been playing hard to get. Pointing out the divisions in British society that having private schools causes, mentioning how the fees have gone up hugely ahead of inflation and questioning their charitable status in light of that. But still, in my heart I was up for being seduced.

I went to private schools and was generally fond of those institutions. As a left-leaning centrist but also a conservative with a small “c” (a woolly position that makes me a massive “c” in the eyes of some), I’m uncomfortable with abolishing, or otherwise driving out of existence, non-profit-making educational institutions. I don’t like banning things in general. I can see the logic that these schools, which undoubtedly provide something good for thousands of children, might nevertheless be causing societal harm overall. But I’m squeamish about taking that logic and commissioning some politicians to turn it into a great big illiberal bunch of laws. So the truth, private education system, is that I was still fluttering my eyelashes at you.

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The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas ‘may fuel dangerous Holocaust fallacies’

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John Boyne’s story is used by more than a third of teachers in England in lessons on the Nazi genocide, a study found

The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas may “perpetuate a number of dangerous inaccuracies and fallacies” when used in teaching young people about the Holocaust, an academic report has said.

According to research by the Centre for Holocaust Education at University College London, more than a third of teachers in England use the bestselling book and film adaptation in lessons on the Nazi genocide.

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Cut the cussing: the Indian man on a mission to end sexist swearing

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Many swear words in India, as elsewhere, have one thing in common – they target and shame women. Sunil Jaglan wants to empower women and end the culture of profanities

On a cold January afternoon, women gather on the veranda of a government-run nursery in Sarmathla village in the north Indian state of Haryana. Sitting cross-legged on the floor, they are eager to hear the visiting speaker.

The men and boys of the village mill about, reluctant to join the women, until Satyaprakash, a social worker, encourages them to sit on the chairs provided. “Please, join us tauji [uncle], today’s programme is about gaali [swear words],” he says.

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UN data reveals ‘nearly insurmountable’ scale of lost schooling due to Covid

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Up to 70% of 10-year-olds in low- and middle-income countries lack basic reading skills, with learning losses seen from US to Ethiopia

The scale of the number of children who have lost out on their schooling during the pandemic is “nearly insurmountable”, according to UN data.

Up to 70% of 10-year-olds in low- and middle-income countries cannot read or understand a simple text, up from 53% pre-Covid, the research suggested.

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Increased Covid risk a ‘trade-off’ in reopening schools, Australian chief medical officer says

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PM also announces commonwealth to split school Covid surveillance testing costs with states 50-50 following national cabinet meeting

Australia’s chief medical officer has conceded that children returning to school could create an increased risk of Covid transmission to their families, saying there would be “trade-offs” to getting students back in classrooms.

It comes as the commonwealth agreed to split costs for surveillance testing in schools 50-50 with state governments, despite the prime minister, Scott Morrison, saying there was no medical advice recommending such testing was necessary.

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‘Loud’ academic awarded more than £100,000 for unfair dismissal

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University of Exeter ordered to pay compensation to physicist Dr Annette Plaut, who was sacked after 29 years

A senior academic who says she was sacked from her post in a university’s physics department because of her loud voice has been awarded more than £100,000 after winning a claim for unfair dismissal.

Dr Annette Plaut told the Guardian she had a “naturally loud voice” that came from her middle European Jewish background and claimed it was the combination of her being “female and loud” that had led to her dismissal from the University of Exeter.

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