Category Archives: Education

‘Let children play’: the educational message from across Europe

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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”.

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Nine and looking after the family: the children working to survive in Malawi

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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.

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Cutting Asian language courses at Australian universities hurting students’ job prospects, experts say

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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.

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‘Terrible days ahead’: Afghan women fear the return of the Taliban

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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.

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Macron to close elite school that hothouses French leaders

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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.

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‘Very intimidating’: teachers on sexual harassment by pupils

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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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‘An escape from dark times’: how ancient history podcasts bring comfort and clarity

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I started listening to tales of yore in 2019, when long drives with my infant son became essential. They soothed him to sleep – and transported me to a different world

Fans of Paul Cooper’s podcast Fall of Civilizations will know that it usually begins in a particular way. A traveller, often far from home, encounters a ruin that hints at a vast and forgotten story of the past.

Hiding from bandits in the desert, the Italian nobleman Pietro della Valle takes shelter in the shadow of the crumbling Ziggurat of Ur. Clambering through the rubble of a once magnificent site of Roman Britain, an unknown poet of the eighth or ninth century writes an elegy to the broken “work of giants”.

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‘I miss school’: 800m children still not fully back in classes

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Rights groups warn that children across the world are being pushed into abusive situations, from early marriage to child labour

Across the world 800 million children are still not fully back in school, Unicef is warning, with many at risk of never returning to the classroom the longer closures go on. There are at least 90 countries where schools are either closed or offering a mix of remote and in-person learning.

The UN agency’s chief of education, Robert Jenkins, told the Guardian that the closures are part of “unimaginable” disruption to children’s education.

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Historian David Olusoga joins academic criticism of No 10’s race report

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Broadcaster says report seems to want to brush history under the carpet, as others attack ‘distorted’ use of research

One of Britain’s foremost historians of slavery has accused the authors of a controversial racial disparities report commissioned by Downing Street of giving the impression they would prefer “history to be swept under the carpet”.

Broadcaster David Olusoga, professor of public history at Manchester University, made the comments in an article for the Guardian, as hundreds of experts on race, education, health and economics joined the criticism of the report for brazenly misrepresenting evidence of racism.

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UK steps in with 11th-hour extra £250m to stay in EU research scheme

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Government commitment to Horizon Europe fund averts immediate threat to science, say universities

The government has stepped in at the 11th hour with an additional £250m in funding to help pay for the UK’s association with Horizon Europe, the European Union’s funding programme for research and innovation.

Universities welcomed the move as “a significant affirmation of the government’s belief in research” which would avert the immediate threat to UK science.

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Is pornography to blame for rise in ‘rape culture’?

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Analysis: experts split on whether easy access to porn has fuelled sexual harassment, abuse and assault among young people

The harrowing reports of sexism and assaults in schools detailed on the everyonesinvited.uk website has fuelled concerns of a “rape culture” in educational settings.

The disclosures have raised concerns that easy access to pornography is part of the problem.

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Dublin hospital told to stop giving Covid jabs after sharing surplus with private school

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Beacon hospital chief is believed to have sent his children to St Gerard’s school, where staff received jabs

The Irish health minister has moved to suspend coronavirus vaccines from being given at a private hospital in Dublin after it used spare doses to vaccinate teachers at a fee-paying school.

Stephen Donnelly said it was “completely unacceptable” and has asked the Health Service Executive (HSE) to suspend vaccinations at the Beacon hospital, with the exception of already scheduled appointments.

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Covid ‘may leave 12 million children unable to read’

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UN finds pandemic is widening education inequality with millions of girls unlikely to return to school

More than half of all children who turn 10 this year will reach their milestone birthday without being able to read a simple sentence, according to a new analysis of UN data.

Of those 70 million 10-year-olds, 11.5 million of them could be unable to read as a direct result of the impact on education of the Covid pandemic.

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Pandemic forcing girls in south-east Asia and Pacific out of school and into marriage – study

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Female children are seen as an economic burden, and tough times are setting back progress by a generation, gender equality charity says

Thousands of adolescent girls across south-east Asia and the Pacific are being forced to leave school and get married instead as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, a charity has warned, saying “a generation of girls could be lost”.

A new report by Plan International Australia highlighted the importance of secondary education for girls, and detailed the increased risk and long-term impacts of child, early and forced marriage in the region.

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French senior citizens link up with language students in lockdown

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ShareAmi scheme aims to combat the isolation felt by many older people during the pandemic

After spending a third of his placement in France stuck in lockdown, modern languages student Elliot Bellman was worried that his conversation skills might suffer. But his weekly chats with Mme Tolu, a Parisian care home resident in her 80s, have helped keep his fluency up to scratch.

“During the pandemic it’s difficult to travel and have those normal experiences, going out and talking to new people,” said Bellman, 20, a third year student at the University of Warwick. “So this allows me to keep talking to someone in French. And Mme Tolu doesn’t have any family around her any more, so I feel like I am helping somewhat with the loneliness. It’s mutually beneficial.”

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Three Alabama professors on leave over racially insensitive Halloween pictures

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  • Students demand terminations over photos from 2014
  • USA president announces independent investigation

Three professors at the University of South Alabama have been placed on leave over racially insensitive Halloween photos, the university said.

Related: Rochester police officer off streets after pepper-spraying woman with toddler

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MI5 involvement in drone project revealed in paperwork slip-up

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Exclusive: Document produced by university cited agency as secret funder of research

For an agency devoted to secrecy and surveillance, it is an embarrassing slip-up. An inadvertent disclosure on a university document has revealed that MI5 is partly behind what was meant to be a covert bug and drone research project.

Ostensibly, Imperial College’s research was to create a quadcopter system for charging remote agricultural sensors – but MI5’s participation has emerged because somebody involved stated it was the secret second funder of the programme.

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Doctors fear new child mental health crisis in UK, made worse by Covid

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Surge in cases expected as schools reopen and charities report 70% rise in demand for services

A surge in child mental health cases is expected to emerge as schools reopen next week, amid warnings of a “crisis on top of a crisis” hitting vulnerable children during the pandemic.

Paediatricians, psychologists and charitable groups providing mental health support all told the Observer they were seeing increasing demand and warned of another surge as lockdown is lifted. Several reported longer waiting lists for young people in need of help.

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Pakistan passes ‘historic’ bill banning corporal punishment of children

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Ban on violence against children will only apply in Islamabad, but campaigners hope rest of the country will follow suit

Pakistan has passed a bill banning corporal punishment for children in a move described as “historic” by rights activists.

It comes amid a number of high-profile cases of schoolchildren being badly beaten and even killed in schools, religious institutions and workplaces.

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