Education: Research Guide

The answers to today’s problemsEarlier today I set you these puzzles, set by the author of Much Ado About Numbers, a new book about mathematics in Shakespeare’s day.1. Hours and hours Continue reading...

Don’t make this a comedy of errorsUPDATE: Read the answers hereToday’s puzzles come from the quill of Rob Eastaway, the bard of brainteasers, whose latest book Much Ado About Numbers is a journey into Shakespeare’s mathematical life and times.1. Hours and hours Continue reading...

The Beaks are among the families in England and Wales who have faced fines over health-related school absencesChloe Beak lives with chronic, debilitating migraines that leave her unable to attend school for days at a time. But instead of receiving support from her school, her parents have been fined by the local authority for her truancy.The family’s current fix is to send their daughter in with a migraine until she gets sent home, meaning her absences are registered as authorised. If they do not, the school will consider her a truant as it believes she has emotionally based school avoidance. Continue reading...

The long-running series in which readers answer other readers’ questions on subjects ranging from trivial flights of fancy to profound scientific and philosophical conceptsWhich individual has been treated most unfairly by history? Alex Middleton, RutlandPost your answers (and new questions) below or send them to nq@theguardian.com. A selection will be published next Sunday. Continue reading...

Fawcett Society warns sector is lacking in ambition and delivery and calls for free ‘universal’ hoursLabour in a bind over much-needed childcare reformEngland’s childcare system is failing and falling behind those of much of the rest of the world, a UK charity for gender equality and women’s rights has said.The Fawcett Society said childcare in England was failing on several fronts: affordability, quality and levels of public spending. Continue reading...

Leading barrister warns that the kit – used to support gender-questioning children – is likely to be in breach of equality laws and could violate pupils’ rightsSchools in England and Wales have been warned by one of the country’s leading equality and human rights barristers that the “toolkit” many of them use to support gender-questioning children is unlawful.The toolkit, introduced by Brighton and Hove council in 2021 and subsequently replicated by a number of other local authorities, says schools should “respect” a child’s request to change their name and pronoun as a “pivotal” part of supporting their identity, as well as other changes such as switching to wearing tr..

In a historic achievement, Benard McKinley, 39, was accepted to Northwestern Pritzker School of Law in ChicagoSince leaving prison in December 2023, Benard McKinley, 39, has been busy preparing for huge next steps.Between working and visits from friends and family, McKinley is getting ready for his first year of study at the prestigious Northwestern Pritzker School of Law in Chicago, a historic achievement. Continue reading...

Arts education is essential – yet on both sides of the Atlantic, the humanities and critical thinking are under attack. With massive redundancies announced at this London institution, is it the canary in the coalmine?It is a couple of days before Easter, and the students who have been holding a sit-in in the Professor Stuart Hall building in Goldsmiths, University of London are packing up. The large basement smells of duvets and camping mats and solidarity and liveliness, and deodorant sprayed on in a hurry under a T-shirt, and it smells like a place where people have slept, which 20 of them have done since 20 February, with crowds swelling to 100 for spontaneous lectures.This isn’t a st..

School rolls swelled because of fertility surge in 2000s but birthrate and migration patterns have brought declineSchools in England could lose up to £1bn in funding by 2030, researchers warn, with exceptional falls in pupil numbers prompting a wave of closures as some establishments cease to be financially viable.Mergers and closures are already under way in parts of London, where pupil numbers have been falling for some time. According to the Education Policy Institute (EPI), a thinktank, the north-east is projected to see the greatest decline in primary pupil numbers, down 13% by 2028/9. Continue reading...

AI to be used by researchers to scour documents for information on women omitted from chronicles written by men about menFour centuries ago Dublin had an official city “scavenger” who was tasked with running sanitation teams to clear streets of human and animal waste. In return, the scavenger earned tolls from shopkeepers and traders.It could have worked well, except the contractor decided to cut costs and maximise profits by deploying just two carts rather than six. Dung piled up and the city stank. Continue reading...

Booker-winning author says course ‘shouldn’t be seen as dispensable’ as university seeks to cut 130 academic jobsThe Booker prize-winning author Bernardine Evaristo has criticised the “amputation” of Black British literature and queer history courses at Goldsmiths University in London, as part of a cost-cutting programme in which 130 academic jobs are to go.Evaristo, along with former students and writers, issued a plea to Goldsmiths to reconsider the removal of “pioneering” postgraduate courses after plans were announced to cut the jobs in 11 departments. Continue reading...

Nancy Fraser, professor of philosophy at the New School, condemned killings in Gaza carried out by the Israeli militaryA leading Jewish American philosopher has been disinvited from taking up a prestigious professorship at the University of Cologne after signing a letter expressing solidarity with Palestinians and condemning the killings in Gaza carried out by Israeli forces.Nancy Fraser, professor of philosophy and politics at the New School for Social Research in New York, said she had been cancelled by the university, which has withdrawn its invitation to the Albertus Magnus Professorship 2024, a visiting position, which she had been awarded in 2022. The letter was written in November 202..

Protecting children from pornography is one aim of the online harms bill. But other problems have not been tackledAmong teachers and headteachers, concerns about the influence of misogynistic online content, including violent pornography, are widespread. So last week’s call by Daniel Kebede, the head of the National Education Union, for an inquiry into misogyny in schools is important – although the government is unlikely to act on it. Even during the pandemic, Conservative ministers failed to cultivate the kind of constructive relationship with teaching unions that would lead to such proposals being taken seriously.Currently, 79% of young people encounter material depicting degrading or..

People want good lives for themselves, but the UK has taken so much from the Caribbean. Better to help the islands thriveGus John is an academic and an equality and human rights campaignerDoes it matter if we in England are recruiting teachers so heavily in Jamaica that classrooms there don’t have enough of them? Ask those who run school systems in the Caribbean that desperately need their brightest and best. People will always want to be mobile. The issues are in what numbers, and why and how.When I became director of education in Hackney in 1989, the first Black person to hold such a post, there was a massive shortage of primary school teachers and secondary maths and science teachers ac..

Education secretary Gillian Keegan will also squeeze funding for programmes to widen access to higher educationMinisters will cut funding for performing and creative arts courses at English universities next year, which sector leaders say will further damage the country’s cultural industries.The cuts, outlined by the education secretary, Gillian Keegan, in guidance to the universities regulator, will also reduce funding for Uni-Connect, which runs programmes aimed at widening access to higher education for those from disadvantaged backgrounds, to £20m, a third of its 2020-21 budget. Continue reading...

Prof Des Freedman, Michael Bassey, John Sommer and Sally Bates respond to an article about the dire state of Britain’s higher education institutionsGaby Hinsliff (Britain’s universities are in freefall – and saving them will take more than funding, 29 March) says “the story [of decline] starts with the freezing of tuition fees in 2017”.However, this was the outcome, not the cause, of a crisis that began with the decision by the Conservative-Lib Dem coalition government in 2010 to treble tuition fees and to build a “market” in UK higher education. Since then, policymakers and university managers have pursued a disastrous ideological project to turn higher education into a commod..

Behind the erasure of disabled children lies the frightening belief that they don’t belong in ‘perfect’ pictures – or public spaces There is a difference between being shocked and being surprised. I thought of that as I read the news that disabled children had been “erased” from their class photo in a primary school in Aberdeenshire.A photographer is said to have taken separate pictures: one with the children with “additional needs” and one without. Parents were then given both versions to choose from. Reportedly, a set of twins was split up. The child who uses a wheelchair was excluded from one photo, while their twin, who isn’t disabled, was photographed with the rest of ..

The Guardian spent time at Oasis Academy Hadley, where more than half of pupils are in poverty but ambitions are high“It’s the biggest story, mark my words. I think it’s really worrying. There are going to be dead children.” Zoë Thompson is not a drama queen. She studied physics at King’s College London, and thought she would work for Nasa. In fact, she went into teaching and has been principal of a large academy in a tough corner of north-east London for six years. In that time she has seen it all, but the surge in the number of children being taken out of school by parents on the pretext of home education is alarming, she says.Elective home education (EHE) is just one of the iss..

The government’s extension of free nursery hours reflects a late recognition of problems the Tories’ are ill-equipped to addressBritain’s welfare state was conceived to care for citizens from cradle to grave, although changing governments have prioritised different parts of that demographic range. The Conservatives have tended to be most attentive to the older end of the electorate. Pensioners reliably vote Tory; infants have no vote at all. But their parents do, which is why Rishi Sunak’s administration belatedly woke up to the salience of unavailable or unaffordable childcare.The product of that realisation was a promise to expand subsidised nursery provision in the 2023 budget. Pr..

Amanda Spielman says agency did not get it wrong in school downgrade that contributed to headteacher’s deathOfsted’s former chief inspector, Amanda Spielman, has refused to concede that her organisation made errors in its handling of the inspection that contributed to the death of the headteacher Ruth Perry.Perry killed herself last year after Caversham primary school, which she had led for more than a decade, was downgraded from Ofsted’s highest grade of outstanding, to inadequate, its lowest. Continue reading...

Exclusive: Schools following NHS and social care in recruiting from overseas as work visas for secondary school teachers doubleSchools are following the NHS and social care providers by increasing their recruitment of teachers from overseas to fill vacancies, leaving classrooms empty in countries such as Jamaica.Immigration figures show a jump in the number of skilled worker visas issued to teachers from abroad, while the government in England is using bonuses to boost the number of teacher trainees from overseas – at a time when Rishi Sunak said legal migration to the UK was “too high” and vowed to reduce it. Continue reading...

The answers to today’s questionsEarlier today I set you the following mini-pub quiz, based on wordplay puzzles from The Cryptic Pub Quiz Book by Frank Paul. Here they are again with answers.Round 1: Synoymns Continue reading...

Gillian Keegan asks Bridget Phillipson to clarify after party refuses to commit to sticking to plan if it wins powerLabour is under pressure to clarify whether it would keep the government’s free hours childcare system, after the party refused to commit to the plan beyond the next election.A shadow cabinet minister said on Monday that Labour “will not reduce” the number of free childcare hours parents were entitled to in England if it entered government. Continue reading...

NASUWT annual conference backs plan for staff trained in mental health first aid in all schools and collegesAll school leaders should receive suicide prevention training to help tackle a “mental health emergency” among teachers, under a plan unanimously backed by a vote by union members.A workforce survey of members of the NASUWT teaching union found that some teachers had been driven to the point of suicide by the stress of the job. Continue reading...

Exclusive: Chris Skidmore says restrictions on international students risk a funding crisisAnalysis: from boom to bust on international studentsThe Conservative party’s “scorched earth” immigration policies risk UK universities becoming increasingly reliant on students from China to avoid financial crisis, a former universities minister has said.It comes as estimates suggest 25% of tuition fee income at leading British universities already comes from China. Continue reading...

Move coincides with financial difficulties for universities arising from high inflation and freezing of domestic tuition feesWarning of over-reliance on Chinese studentsRishi Sunak may not go down in history as “the man who destroyed UK higher education,” as one former university leader put it, but the prime minister’s sabre-rattling on international student visas could end up doing just that.Sunak’s willingness to clamp down on international student numbers coincides with what one expert called a funding crisis for universities that could undermine the entire sector. Continue reading...

Campaigner Marsha Martin says ‘there is a lot of stigma within black community’ that prevents issues from being discussedCultural barriers are preventing black children who are autistic or have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) from accessing the help they need, the founder of a UK campaign for better support has said.Hundreds of children with special educational needs (Send) routinely wait for more than a year to get help as local authorities across England struggle to meet unprecedented need in a dire financial climate. Continue reading...

DfE allocates £450m to 826 building projects at 733 schools, a fall of almost 60% – in terms of total projects – compared with 2020-21 A record number of schools have had bids for building repairs turned down by the government, with experts warning that buckets on desks, freezing classrooms and power cuts are all becoming commonplace.The Department for Education (DfE) announced on Tuesday that it had allocated £450m to 826 building repair projects at 733 schools through its annual condition improvement fund (CIF), which is designed to help academies and small academy trusts keep buildings “safe and in good working order”. But this is a fall of nearly 60% – in terms of total proje..

Menier Chocolate Factory, LondonPaul Grellong’s gripping dialogue makes a brisk plot and unlikable characters immensely watchable as a Harvard professor invites a white supremacist for a debate‘I’m one of the good guys,” insists a beleaguered Harvard professor facing student protests after inviting a white supremacist to be part of a university debate on extremism. The defence, for Charles Nichols (Julian Ovenden), is that illogical or offensive arguments need to be heard in order to be dismantled, though hand-wringing principal Amy Katz (Tanya Franks) suggests he is doing this as an attention-grabbing career move.Paul Grellong’s intelligent if schematic play incorporates themes of..

City’s mayor outlines ‘internationalist’ vision in manifesto as he bids for third term in MayLondon’s Labour mayor Sadiq Khan is to offer young people studying in the capital a new version of the EU’s Erasmus scheme of student exchanges as part of his bid for a third term.He will unveil plans under which students would receive grants and other help to study and undertake work experience, not just in the EU but other major world cities, with reciprocal arrangements for students from overseas to do the same in London. Continue reading...