As part of the Guardian’s 200th anniversary, we asked young people how the worst global pandemic in a century has affected their lives, hopes and dreams. Fifty from Europe’s Generation Z tell us how they see their future
Leeds headteacher forced to apologise after saying Palestinian flag was seen as ‘call to arms’
The recent Middle East conflict has prompted a wave of pro-Palestine protests in British schools and controversy over the staff response, with pupils being accused of antisemitism and one headteacher describing the Palestinian flag as a “call to arms”.
Mike Roper, the headteacher of Allerton Grange high school in Leeds, was forced to apologise after he claimed in an assembly that some people saw the flag as a “symbol of antisemitism”.
Continue reading...Academics suspect papers with grabby conclusions are waved through more easily by reviewers
Scientific research findings that are probably wrong gain far more attention than robust results, according to academics who suspect that the bar for publication may be lower for papers with grabbier conclusions.
Studies in top science, psychology and economics journals that fail to hold up when others repeat them are cited, on average, more than 100 times as often in follow-up papers than work that stands the test of time.
Continue reading...Exclusive: commission’s finding follows number of protests over colonial legacy at Oriel College
A independent commission set up to examine the future of Oxford University’s controversial statue of British imperialist Cecil Rhodes has recommended its removal.
The commission was set up last June after Oxford University’s Oriel College voted in favour of removing its statue. The commission was asked to look into the issue after a statue of the slave trader Edward Colston was torn down in Bristol at the height of last summer’s Black Lives Matter protest.
Continue reading...When Covid shut schools, fees still had to be paid even if rural pupils could not access online lessons
Iqbal Khan works as a chauffeur in Lahore. His children are in his home village in a rural area north of Peshawar. Both of these very different areas of Pakistan have the same problem for many of their young people: no means of getting access to an education.
Online learning was not an option for Khan’s children as the pandemic locked down schools across cities and countryside. Even as he worked to pay the school fees, his two sons, aged 16 and 13, were unable to access any lessons as their schools went digital.
Continue reading...Hazara community in mourning but defiant after more than 60 people killed in school bomb blasts
Latifa and Hosnia had been sharing a wooden bench in their classroom at Kabul’s Sayed Al-Shuhada school for the past three years.
When Latifa transferred to Sayed Al-Shuhada, the two girls were immediately drawn to each other and became best friends, always together in their free time, studying side by side, walking home together after school. They found comfort in each other’s presence; support in a place that has never been easy for girls and women.
Continue reading...Levelling up agenda accompanied by bills bringing in voter ID and banning conversion practices
Ministers are to unveil a legislative programme aimed at its new electoral strongholds in northern England and the Midlands, with a Queen’s speech focused on adult education and homeownership.
It also features proposals to bring in mandatory voter ID, which has been condemned by US civil rights groups as akin to Republican-style voter suppression. Another plan will pave the way to outlaw conversion practices.
Continue reading...UK surveillance agency says it has long valued neuro-diverse analysts – including Alan Turing
Apprentices on GCHQ’s scheme are four times more likely to have dyslexia than those on other organisations’ programmes, the agency has said, the result of a drive to recruit those whose brains process information differently.
GCHQ says those with dyslexia have valuable skills spotting patterns that others miss – a key area the spy agency wants to encourage as it pivots away from dead letter drops and bugging towards high-tech cybersecurity and data analysis.
Continue reading...Prof David Richardson cites systemic issues that disproportionately affect black and minority ethnic students
UK universities are institutionally racist and must do more to support students of colour, a leading vice-chancellor has said.
Prof David Richardson, chair of Universities UK’s advisory group on stamping out racial harassment on campuses and vice-chancellor of University of East Anglia, said there was evidence of systemic issues that disproportionally affect students from black and minority ethnic (BAME) backgrounds.
Continue reading...It’s good for the environment and your wallet – so it’s no surprise that repairing is all the rage. From vacuum cleaners to microwaves, here’s what to fix and what to forget
My kettle’s broken. It still boils water, but it doesn’t switch off – just boils on, converting the kitchen to a sauna, wastefully, expensively. Put another way, the Polly component still functions well, but Sukey’s lost it. Time to bin it, splash out on a new one. Or maybe not …
Could it be repaired? Could I repair it? “It depends on the kettle and how it was put together,” says Kyle Wiens, a co-founder of iFixit, which publishes free repair guides for consumer electronics and gadgets, as well as selling kits and parts. He’s speaking to me via Skype from San Luis Obispo, California, wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the slogan “Never take broken for an answer” – and he thinks it sounds as if the switch is the problem.
Continue reading...Fatima Khalil school has given some children the first taste of education – and love – in their lives
Laughter and excited chatter burst out of the colourfully painted classrooms. In a quiet garden schoolhouse amid the jam-packed Afghan capital, Kabul, pupils run around, study and play in the country’s first official school for children with disabilities.
It’s a far cry from what most of these children have previously experienced. For many, it’s the first time in their lives they feel loved and accepted.
Continue reading...Donna, 42, was a devoted and popular member of the teaching staff. Yet at the height of the second wave, working conditions left her terrified of doing the job she loved
The joke went: it was impossible to get Covid at Burnley College. The virus didn’t exist there. All through September, October, November and December 2020, as more and more people came down with Covid yet the further education (FE) college stayed open, Donna Coleman would make this gag to her sisters, Steph Coleman, 38, and Vicki Coleman, 45. She spoke to them on the phone every day. “It was a running joke,” Steph says. “‘Who’s come down with Covid now?’”
Although the sisters laughed about it, in truth they were alarmed. Donna was a member of the teaching staff at the college in Lancashire. She worked with teenagers who had been kicked out of school, as well as long-term unemployed people, helping them to continue their education or find work. (Steph and Vicki had previously worked at the college, too, although they had left by September 2020.)
Continue reading...The mobile library services are an education lifeline for students in Balochistan, where schools have closed during the pandemic
Sharatoon had wanted to continue her studies, but she had to leave school and her beloved books when she got married aged 15.
Now 27, Sharatoon is happy reading again, as every Friday a camel visits her small town, his saddle panniers full of books.
Continue reading...Exclusive: compulsive hygiene habits and fear of public places could remain for some after lockdown lifted, researchers say
Scientists have expressed concern that residual anxiety over coronavirus may have led some people to develop compulsive hygiene habits that could prevent them from reintegrating into the outside world, even though Covid hospitalisations and deaths in the UK are coming down.
The concept of “Covid anxiety syndrome” was first theorised by professors last year, when Ana Nikčević, of Kingston University, and Marcantonio Spada, at London South Bank University, noticed people were developing a particular set of traits in response to Covid.
Continue reading...While approaches may differ, the importance of free time to play is increasingly being recognised
Every morning, Arja Salonen drops her five-year-old son, Onni, off at a daycare centre in Espoo, west of Helsinki, where he will spend the next eight hours doing what Finnish educators believe all children his age should do: playing.
School, and formal learning, does not start in Finland until age seven. Before then, children’s preoccupations are not reading, writing or arithmetic, but, said Salonen, herself a secondary-school teacher in the capital, “learning more important things”.
Continue reading...As sole provider for his family, nine-year-old Gift is exhausted and, despite hopes of being a teacher, gets little chance to study
While other children play football or watch cartoons at home after school, nine-year-old Gift Phiri goes to work.
After his day at primary school in Mchengautuwa, in Malawi’s northern city of Mzuzu, the nine-year-old goes home to start work, hammering sharp-edged metal sheets, shaping them into charcoal cooking stoves. Gift, who lives with his grandmother, two younger siblings and another relative, started making the stoves after being trained by his grandfather when he was six.
Continue reading...Axing of four subjects in 2021 a ‘crisis’ that will disadvantage businesses in the future, says president of Asian Studies Association of Australia
Australian universities are failing students and leaving them unprepared for the future job market by cutting courses in Asian languages, according to teachers and experts.
Four university-level Asian language subjects have been cut in 2021 as universities cope with the ongoing economic impact of the Covid pandemic.
Continue reading...After 20 years of liberty, female education is once again threatened by hardline Islamists
Outside a college from which their mothers were banned, the women waited for friends finishing exams they fear will be some of the last they can take. “The Americans are leaving,” said Basireh Heydari, a Herat University student. “We have terrible days ahead with the Taliban. I’m worried they won’t let me leave the house, let alone what I’m doing now.”
The Biden administration’s decision to withdraw all US troops from Afghanistan by 11 September will bring an end to the US’s longest war. With Nato allies such as Germany already announcing on Wednesday that they will follow Washington’s lead and exit the country, Afghans fear an intensification of fighting between the national government and the Taliban, who were ousted by the US-led intervention two decades ago.
Continue reading...Institution has been pathway to power for country’s elite, including four French presidents
Emmanuel Macron is expected to officially announce on Thursday the closure of the École Nationale d’Administration, the elite French finishing school for the country’s leaders where he studied.
Known as ENA, the grande école has been the hothouse for France’s top civil service and a pathway to power in the public and private sectors. Four French presidents, including Macron, have passed through its doors as have dozens of ministers and business leaders.
Continue reading...Teachers highlight toxic culture of sexual harassment and abuse they face in school
“I’ve had threats of rape. I’ve had someone say: ‘I’m going to seek out your daughter and rape her.’ You’re called a slag and a slut. Sometimes it’s banter and they all think it’s funny. Sometimes it’s anger directed at you.”
Anne, who doesn’t want to give her real name, worked in a pupil referral unit with excluded pupils in south-west England until she quit her job because of post-traumatic stress disorder, and is one of many teachers to bear witness to the toxic culture of sexual harassment and abuse within schools.
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