Do US laws that punish parents for truancy keep their kids in school?

June 23, 2014, 8:59 am

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After a woman died serving time in jail for her children's truancy fines, the Guardian investigated US truancy data and how states try to enforce laws for keeping kids in class

Earlier this month, a Berks County, Pennsylvania, mother died in jail while serving a 48-hour sentence, handed down because she couldn’t pay her children’s truancy fines. She owed about $2,000 in fines and other court costs, which had piled up over more than a decade, according to the AP.

But while the woman’s story took a particularly tragic turn, many more parents across the US face fines or jail time over their children’s unexcused school absences. Just how many is hard to quantify nationally or even at state-levels, but the Berks County school district alone has imprisoned over 1,600 people – mostly women – for failing to pay truancy fines between 2000-2013, according to a local paper, The Reading Eagle.

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Words you can write on a calculator

January 10, 2014, 3:48 am

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If you were ever bored enough in a maths class to turn a number on your calculator into a word you may have only been scraping the surface. There is much more to this art than meets the eye

I own a Casio fx-85gt plus. It can perform 260 functions in less than a second, it can tell me when I've got a recurring decimal and it has a slide-on protective cover so that the buttons don't get pressed when it's in my bag. And even if the buttons do get pressed, I've got two-way power – solar and battery – so I'm sorted.

But as soon as I bought it I was disappointed. If I happened to be bored in a maths class, typed out 0.1134, turned my calculator upside down and slid it across to a friend I wouldn't get so much as a smile. The numbers look too much like normal typeface.

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Does music really help you concentrate?

August 19, 2016, 11:30 pm

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‘I won’t be able to focus if you turn that off,’ a gazillion teenagers have whined at their parents. Is it possible that they’re right?

Many people listen to music while they’re carrying out a task, whether they’re studying for an exam, driving a vehicle or even reading a book. Many of these people argue that background music helps them focus.

Why, though? When you think about it, that doesn’t make much sense. Why would having two things to concentrate on make you more focused, not less? Some people even go so far as to say that not having music on is more distracting. So what’s going on there?

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Should mobile phones be banned in schools?

November 27, 2012, 12:00 pm

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A headteacher says pupil behaviour is better and bullying is down since he barred mobiles in his school. So should others follow suit? Teachers argue for and against

"You'll have someone's eye out with that" used to be the refrain of teachers in my day. In malevolent hands, a pencil, a rubber, even a piece of paper could become a lethal weapon in class, and that's before we got on to compasses and Bunsen burners.

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Cambridge University urged again to end fossil fuel investments

April 22, 2018, 10:00 pm

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Hundreds of academics, authors and scientists sign open letter as divisive issues comes to head

Hundreds of academics, scientists and authors have signed an open letter calling on Cambridge University to stop investing in fossil fuel companies, marking an escalation in an increasing bitter divestment campaign at the institution.

The move, by signatories including Sir David King, until recently the UK’s permanent special representative for climate change, Thomas Blundell, the former president of the UK Science Council and the author Robert Macfarlane, comes as the university council is set to consider the issue at a meeting on Monday.

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University costs working-class students more, says NUS report

April 22, 2018, 10:00 pm

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‘Poverty premium’ in higher education leads to poorer people feeling isolated, says union

Working-class students are penalised by a “poverty premium”, often paying higher costs to continue studying in a university environment in which they may feel isolated and as though they do not belong, according to a report.

Research for the National Union of Students finds that student expenditure routinely outstrips income from loans, leaving many whose parents cannot afford to subsidise them without the means to pay for basics such as food and heating.

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Labour bid to block regulatory powers for Office for Students

April 22, 2018, 10:15 pm

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Party plans Commons tactic to thwart a key plank of the government’s higher education policy

Labour is launching a last-ditch bid to stop MPs rubber-stamping the transfer of higher education regulatory powers to the controversial Office for Students.

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Research funding emphasis on 'impact' spawns a new industry

November 11, 2013, 11:31 pm

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In their bid to secure funding under the terms of the Research Excellence Framework, academics are drafting in writers and consultants to make them and their work more accessible

Mrs Peabody was never expected to play such a key role in Swansea University's languages department, especially as she is imaginary.

Invented by Katharina Hall, associate professor of German at the university, as an alter ego to explore crime fiction through blogging, she has helped garner her author more than 200,000 hits on the blog and two appearances on Radio 4 with broadcaster Mark Lawson, as well as giving her a platform to discuss primary texts used in her research and allowing wider access to her findings.

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Activism in the art world: meet the next generation of radical curators

April 11, 2018, 2:18 am

≫ Next: Brexit brain drain: elite universities say they are losing future research stars

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Curation offers an opportunity to confront the lack of diversity in the arts by addressing issues of gender, race and sexuality

Activism is having a renaissance. We live in the age of zeitgeist movements like #OscarsSoWhite and #Metoo, of millions thrumming the streets in support of the Women’s March, Black Lives Matter and March for Our Lives.

Curatorial activism is the art world’s equivalent. “It’s the practice of organising art exhibitions with the principal aim of ensuring that large constituencies of people are no longer ghettoised or excluded from the master narratives of art,” says curator Maura Reilly. Its mission is to get the art world to understand that issues of gender, race and sexuality require urgent attention.

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Brexit brain drain: elite universities say they are losing future research stars

March 5, 2018, 10:45 pm

≫ Next: Everything must be measured: how mimicking business taints universities | Jonathan Wolff

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Russell Group reports worrying drop in applications for PhDs from Europe

Belgian law professor Geert van Calster is used to approaches from European students who have abandoned plans to do a PhD in Britain with Brexit looming. But a few weeks ago, he got a surprise: a PhD student enrolled at a British university contacted him to say she wanted to jump ship.

Calster, a professor in Leuven University’s Institute of European Law, explains: “She had already started her PhD but was concerned her qualification might not be recognised in Europe after Brexit.” She was also worried because many PhD supervisors were leaving to go abroad, he says.

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Everything must be measured: how mimicking business taints universities | Jonathan Wolff

August 7, 2017, 11:15 pm

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Research and teaching are suffering as a result of target-setting, casualisation and sharp practices

Often, what begins as a pet-hate fades into the background irritation of life. But sometimes it gnaws away, gets under your skin and into your bones, then flares up, causing toxic shock. The term “neoliberalism” has this effect on me. It is a lazy gobbet of pent-up, inarticulate hostility. And when someone decides that we have entered the era of the “neoliberal” university, ruthlessly seeking profit to the neglect of teaching and research, my boiling blood runneth over.

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Teachers in elite universities not feeling benefit of £9k tuition fees

August 21, 2017, 11:15 pm

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University teaching staff complain they are paid less than researchers and have inferior contracts, report shows

It took Susanna 10 years before she was promoted to senior teaching fellow, and she says she was one of the lucky ones. Many new teaching-only contracts awarded in her department at a leading research university are “non progressable” – there is no expectation that teaching staff will go any further within the institution.

“It’s demoralising. You feel, ‘why should I do the extra mile if my mile isn’t being recognised?’” she says. “It doesn’t give promotion, and it doesn’t even give praise.”

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Students take court action over hours lost during strike

April 23, 2018, 4:01 pm

≫ Next: The UK has turned the right to education into a charitable cause. How 19th century | Louise Tickle

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Fourteen days of teaching were lost during dispute over plans to overhaul pensions provision

More than 1,000 students have signed up to a lawsuit seeking compensation for lost teaching hours during recent strike action by university staff, which could cost universities millions of pounds.

Students from institutions including Oxford, Cambridge, Bristol and Manchester have joined the case, which could become the largest of its kind in the UK.

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The UK has turned the right to education into a charitable cause. How 19th century | Louise Tickle

April 23, 2018, 10:45 pm

≫ Next: In UK universities there is a daily erosion of integrity | Stefan Collini

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Cake sale, plant sale, quiz … austerity is causing school fundraising to get out of hand

My nine-year-old son looks at me anxiously. “Mum, you definitely, definitely have my sponsor money plus an extra pound, which I need for the fundraising games. We have to bring it in today.”

I search through my wallet for a quid each for him and his brother. I’ve got no cash on me. “We have to,” he repeats, his voice going wobbly. I stick an IOU in his piggy bank and the day is saved. Yet again. And yet again I feel infuriated and indignant at being put in this position. Then I feel even more cross that I now feel mean.

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In UK universities there is a daily erosion of integrity | Stefan Collini

April 23, 2018, 11:00 pm

≫ Next: Vice-chancellors urge action to stop predicted 60% fall in EU students

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The Bologna statement, which defines the very purpose of universities, doesn’t seem to apply to the UK any more

In 1988, to mark the 900th anniversary of the founding of the University of Bologna, Europe’s oldest university, 388 rectors and heads of universities drew up the Magna Charta Universitatum. This was a brief general declaration of the nature of universities and their purpose.

The first principle was: “The university is an autonomous institution at the heart of societies differently organised because of geography and historical heritage”. The second fundamental principle was: “Freedom in research and training is the fundamental principle of university life, and governments and universities … must ensure respect for this fundamental requirement.”

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Vice-chancellors urge action to stop predicted 60% fall in EU students

April 23, 2018, 11:15 pm

≫ Next: Slaver! Invader! The tour guide who tells the ugly truth about museum portraits

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UK university leaders demand government rethink post-Brexit fees of up to £20,000 for those from Europe

Universities, including the world-renowned London School of Economics, are drawing up lists of courses that could face closure after Brexit and lobbying the government to save them by changing its policy on student fees.

The number of European students studying in the UK has remained buoyant since the referendum, but is expected to crash when Britain leaves the EU next year.

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Slaver! Invader! The tour guide who tells the ugly truth about museum portraits

April 24, 2018, 3:46 am

≫ Next: Want to stop teachers leaving? Help them develop their careers

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Was Lord Nelson a white supremacist? Was Queen Victoria a thief? Alice Procter take us on one of her Uncomfortable Art Tours, which aim to show how the empire still exerts a grip on British galleries

Last June, Alice Procter started running free gallery tours. She had answered a call-out from Antiuniversity, a project that helps organise radical educational events, and wanted to try out an idea. Her plan was to take people through museums, looking at the ways colonialism continues to influence their displays and the aesthetics of art, and examine the role of empire in funding the spaces themselves. She didn’t think they’d be popular – but they sold out.

The MA student now does Uncomfortable Art tours at the National Gallery, the National Portrait Gallery, the British Museum, the V&A, the National Maritime Museum and Tate Britain. “My parents took me to museums when I was a kid,” says the 23-year-old, “so I’ve always been very comfortable in art galleries. I have experience as a tour guide, I fit the profile of the typical young white girl who’s an art history student doing a guided tour. And I can use that.”

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Want to stop teachers leaving? Help them develop their careers

April 24, 2018, 6:06 am

≫ Next: BP chief urges Cambridge University to keep fossil fuel investments

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Access to professional development for teachers varies hugely from school to school – but the issue isn’t funding

The teaching recruitment and retention crisis shows no signs of abating, with unions warning that losses will soon be unsustainable. Yet when it comes to investing in and developing our teachers, we’re not doing nearly enough.

There are 300,000 pupils studying in schools where their teachers have no or very little budget for continuing professional development (CPD), according to a recent analysis of figures by the Teacher Development Trust. There is huge variation in investment from region to region, with spending per teacher three times higher in Newham, east London, and Hampshire than it is in Solihull in the West Midlands.

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BP chief urges Cambridge University to keep fossil fuel investments

April 24, 2018, 7:53 am

≫ Next: Women not getting a fair say at academic conferences, research reveals

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Bob Dudley faces criticism for calling for university to ‘come to its senses’ over divestment

BP’s chief executive has come under fire from campaigners after he urged Cambridge University not to drop its fossil fuel investments.

Bob Dudley was greeted with laughter when he told an industry conference on Tuesday: “We donate and do lots of research at Cambridge so I hope they come to their senses on this.”

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Women not getting a fair say at academic conferences, research reveals

April 24, 2018, 8:18 am

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Male conference organisers disproportionately choose men over women when assigning speaking slots

Women get fewer chances than men to speak about their work at scientific conferences, largely because those in the upper echelons of academia are male, research has revealed.

While speaking at conferences is a key part of academic life, not only raising the profile of researchers but helping them to share ideas and find job and funding opportunities, the latest study confirms what many scientists have long suspected to be true: men give more talks than women.

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