Category Archives: Education

Chinese school under fire for buying tracking bracelets for students

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Smart devices will be used to record students’ health data and when they raise their hand

A high school in southern China has come under fire for buying “smart bracelets” to track its students.

Guangdong Guangya High school has purchased 3,500 bracelets that would record students heart rate and physical activity, as well as the number of times a pupil raised his or her hand in class, according to local media reports. The bands have a location function and can be used to pay for items as well as track attendance.

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Superyachts and private schools: Britain’s dirty money problem

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Russian money – some legitimate, some the proceeds of fraud – was channeled through a Lithuanian bank into the UK, according to a major leak of banking documents. The Guardian’s Juliette Garside has been investigating for months and describes how Prince Charles and some of England’s most exclusive schools have benefited. Plus: Ben Beaumont-Thomas on the legacy of the Prodigy’s Keith Flint

The leak of more than 1m bank transactions has shown how an estimated $4.6bn (£3.5bn) was sent to Europe and the US from a Russian-operated network of 70 offshore companies with accounts in Lithuania.

The Guardian’s Juliette Garside has been investigating the network and where the money ended up. She tells India Rakusen that money linked to major Russian fraud cases was laundered with funds from legitimate enterprise, making it impossible to trace the original source. It could then be spent on luxury goods, private school fees and property.

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French teachers give top grades in protest at baccalaureate changes

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Protesters use tactic to fight Emmanuel Macron’s proposed changes to high school exam

Teachers in Paris and western France have begun giving every pupil in their classes top marks in tests and evaluations in protest at changes to France’s baccalaureate exams.

The baccalaureate, which pupils take in their last year of high school, is based on a structure created under Napoleon in 1808. A revamp of the education system by the president, Emmanuel Macron, has been presented as key to his pro-business project to modernise the Frenc economy.

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A brief history of concrete: from 10,000BC to 3D printed houses

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The Romans used concrete in everything from bath houses to the Colosseum. Our modern concrete structures will never last as long

“Unlike the Pantheon … virtually all the concrete structures one sees today will eventually need to be replaced,” writes Robert Courland is his weighty tome Concrete Planet, “costing us trillions of dollars in the process.”

While there is some debate over when and where the first concrete was used – the Göbekli Tepe temple in modern-day Turkey was built using T-shaped pillars of carved limestone approximately 12,000 years ago, desert traders used early concrete to make underground water cisterns 8,000 years ago, and the ancient Egyptians used gypsum and lime to make mortars – there is little dispute that the first people to use concrete in the way we do today were the Romans.

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School lessons to cover sexting, FGM and mental health

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Department for Education unveils fresh guidelines for sex and health lessons in England

The Department for Education (DfE) has unveiled fresh guidelines for sex and health education across England, with relationships, cyber safety and mental health all set to be included as part of the new curriculum.

Three new subjects have been created – relationships education from primary school, relationships and sex education at secondary school, and health education for all ages in which students will learn about the importance of getting enough sleep, the dangers of sexting and how to spot anxiety in their friends.

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Children to be taught dangers of female genital mutilation

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Sex education shake-up in secondary schools means learning about grooming, forced marriage and domestic abuse

The dangers of female genital mutilation will be taught to all secondary school pupils in England from 2020 as part of a bold shake-up of relationships and sex education.

New proposals will be presented to parliament on Monday which would see the curriculum reformed to include relationship education for primary age pupils and health education for pupils of all ages in state-funded schools. Secondary school pupils will also be taught about grooming, forced marriage and domestic abuse.

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‘The beginning of great change’: Greta Thunberg hails school climate strikes

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The 16-year-old’s lone protest last summer has morphed into a powerful global movement challenging politicians to act

Greta Thunberg is hopeful the student climate strike on Friday can bring about positive change, as young people in more and more countries join the protest movement she started last summer as a lone campaigner outside the Swedish parliament.

Related: Teenage activist takes School Strikes 4 Climate Action to Davos

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Record numbers from China and Hong Kong applying to study in UK

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Chinese and Hongkonger university applicants now outnumber those from Wales

Record numbers of students from China and Hong Kong are applying for places at British universities, overtaking the number of applicants from Wales, according to official figures.

Data from the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (Ucas) shows a spike in demand for undergraduate places from mainland China and a small rise in applications from the EU, despite fears over Brexit.

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Women ‘terrified’ as students allowed to return after rape messages

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Men allowed back on campus early after University of Warwick reduces suspension

Women discussed as rape targets by a group of male students at the University of Warwick say they are terrified of seeing the men return to campus after the university reduced the length of their suspension.

Last year five men were barred or suspended by the university over their membership of a long-running group chat that discussed rape and sexual assault of women, including individual students, as well as racism, antisemitism and homophobia.

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Demolition of Bristol eyesore makes way for university campus

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Temple Quarter’s rich past includes housing squatters, Royal Mail, a factory and cattle market

Demolition work is under way at Bristol’s most famous eyesore, bringing an end to a sprawling, derelict building that became a playground for squatters, illegal ravers and graffiti artists.

The former Royal Mail sorting office, which was once reportedly likened by the former prime minister David Cameron to the “entrance to a war zone”, is to be brought down to make way for a new university campus.

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Orkney rated Britain’s best place to live in terms of quality of life

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Scotland and north of England dominate top five as measured by housing, crime and schools

Orkney is the best place to live in the UK, with cheap houses, low crime, good schools and a population who are among the happiest and healthiest in the country, according to the annual Halifax quality of life survey.

The survey found that all the top five best places to live in the UK were in Scotland or the north of England. Richmondshire in the north of the Yorkshire Dales came second, while the appropriately named Eden district in Cumbria was third.

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Egypt frustrates Giulio Regeni investigation three years on

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Italian doctoral student’s family seek truth about his torture and murder in early 2016

Three years after the disappearance, torture and murder of Italian doctoral student Giulio Regeni in Cairo, Egypt is stonewalling Italy’s efforts to investigate.

In November, Italian prosecutors officially named five members of Egypt’s security services as subject to investigation in the case of Regeni, who went missing on 25 January 2016 aged 28. But two months on, Egypt has barely acknowledged the development.

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Egyptian universities reinstate students expelled for hugging

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Mansoura and Al-Azhar universities backtrack after video of celebratory embrace goes viral

Two students expelled from university in Egypt for the “immoral act” of hugging in celebration of their engagement have been reinstated after a viral video of their embrace drew widespread public sympathy.

The universities of Al-Azhar and Mansoura initially told both students they would be thrown out after footage emerged showing the male student kneeling and proposing to the teenage woman before presenting her with a bouquet of flowers. The video, shot on the campus of Mansoura University, then showed the pair embracing, a moment greeted by cheers from their friends.

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Junior high school students caught forming swastika with their bodies

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California youths traded racist and violent messages in county called ‘hotbed for white supremacists’

A group of California junior high students were caught forming a swastika with their bodies on school grounds and exchanging racist and violent messages on a group chat, administrators said.

The scandal at Matilija junior high school, which culminated in an emotional meeting with parents and school officials Monday night, has sparked intense debate in a region that has experienced a sharp increase in reported antisemitic incidents.

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Harvard’s gatekeeper reveals SAT cutoff scores based on race

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A longtime Harvard University dean will return to the stand Wednesday in Boston federal court to defend the school's admission process against allegations that it discriminates against Asian Americans - in a case that could change affirmative action policies across the country. The Ivy League school was sued in 2014 by the group Students for Fair Admissions, which claims that Asian American applicants - who, despite top-notch academic records, had the lowest admission rate among any race.

What the Harvard Trial Is Really About

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In the days leading up to the trial accusing Harvard of discriminating against Asian American applicants, supporters of the university worried that the group behind the litigation, Students for Fair Admissions , would turn the case into a broader attack on affirmative action and race-based admissions policies. It's one thing to say the use of race in admissions is negatively affecting a minority group to the benefit of white students, but a completely different thing to say that the advantage is going to other minority groups.

Major Environmental Groups Back Steven Donziger in Battle With…

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With Canada's Supreme Court backing Ecuadorian Indigenous peoples against Chevron, four of the world's leading environmental groups have thrown their support behind leading U.S. human rights attorney Steven Donziger as the oil giant continues its unprecedented retaliation campaign targeting those who held it accountable for the dumping of billions of gallons of toxic oil waste in the Amazon.

Too Little, Too Late for Many Gubernatorial Candidates on Education Funding

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After slashing their states' education funding for years, some incumbent governors up for re-election in 2018 are trying to convince voters that they've seen the error of their ways by claiming that they will prioritize education going forward. But voters should be cautious about believing such promises.

School days: Florida candidates differ widely on education

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Florida's two main contenders for governor are making widely different promises when it comes to the state's education system. Republican Ron DeSantis on Tuesday vowed to expand the state's private school voucher program while at the same time pledging to spend more on classrooms by making cuts in other parts of the education budget.