Why are many academics on short-term contracts for years?

February 4, 2013, 11:30 am

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More than a third of academics are on temporary contracts as universities casualise their workforces

When Vicky Blake embarked on her PhD at Durham University eight years ago, she believed it was the beginning of an exciting research career. Now, as part of the silently growing army of teaching staff paid by the hour in British universities, she is beginning to wonder at what stage she should walk away.

"I feel I owe it to myself to try, because I've invested so much in this. But I am 30 years old and I can't keep existing on a month-to-month basis," she says. "I have to put a time limit on how long I can hold out for a proper research job, and I think that's really sad."

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The teachers' strikes prove it: the media is finally seeing America's new labor landscape

April 28, 2018, 3:00 am

≫ Next: Parents: not happy about something at school? Here’s how to complain

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Auto workers, the Fight for $15 campaign and teachers’ activism are proving organized labor can still make a difference

Fifty thousand teachers dressed in red closed down Phoenix, Arizona, on Friday – the latest in a series of strikes by educators across America.

The media is abuzz with the strikes, finally waking up to the giant forces that seem to be reshaping the labor landscape in America.

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Parents: not happy about something at school? Here’s how to complain

February 23, 2015, 11:30 pm

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Your daughter’s homework isn’t being marked. Your son’s been put in detention for no real reason. What’s the best course of action? A teacher writes …

One of the best pieces of advice I was ever given was from a friend in the restaurant business. If I were planning to complain about any part of my meal or service, he said, I should wait until I had eaten all I was going to eat that night. He illustrated this warning with examples of what can happen to food prepared for awkward customers, and so I’ve followed this advice ever since. It’s a good principle: don’t complain to people on whom you’re relying – unless there’s no way they can wipe your steak on their bum or drop a bogey in your soup.

As with restaurants, so with schools. The difference with schools is that you’re likely to be stuck with them for a lot longer than one meal. So think carefully before putting on your Mr Angry face and marching into the school for a spot of ranting.

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Depression and self-harm soar among private school pupils, poll suggests

October 4, 2015, 5:34 am

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Survey of headteachers finds problems including eating disorders are now at unprecedented levels, with social media and exam stress blamed

Teenage pupils at British private schools are experiencing unprecedented levels of depression, eating disorders and self-harm, according to headteachers, who say longstanding stresses have been amplified by increased pressure over exams and the ever-present anxieties of social media.

The warning comes from the Headmasters’ and Headmistresses’ Conference (HMC), representing 175 leading private schools, which surveyed 65 headteachers on the subject.

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Universities must do more to tackle use of smart drugs, say experts

May 10, 2017, 8:03 am

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Academics call on institutions to consider measures such as drug testing to stem UK rise of drugs used to cope with exam stress

Universities must do more to tackle the growing number of students turning to “smart drugs” to cope with exam stress, leading academics have said.

UK institutions are being called on to consider measures such as drug testing to stem the rise of cognitive enhancement drugs being used by young people to improve their academic performance.

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University of Sussex to pay student protester £20,000 in damages

October 15, 2015, 8:21 am

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The university admits there was no truth in its claims of ‘criminal behaviour’ at campus protests in 2013

The University of Sussex has apologised to a former student, admitting there was “no truth” in its claim that he’d led an unlawful occupation of the university and carried out acts of criminal behaviour.

The university agreed to pay 22-year-old Michael Segalov £20,000 in damages plus his legal fees for two articles published on its website in 2013, and apologised “unreservedly” to him in a statement issued on Thursday.

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Nervous universities await clearing as student applications fall

August 13, 2017, 11:00 pm

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Decline in number of UK school-leavers and less interest from EU undergraduates mean HE sector is enduring its ‘toughest season’

While hundreds of thousands of sixth-formers across Britain anxiously await their A-level results on Thursday, university leaders across the country are waiting just as nervously in what is thought to be the toughest ever student recruitment season.

Britain’s 160 higher education institutions have enjoyed a rising tide of applications from prospective undergraduates, barring a dip in 2012 when tuition fees first rose to £9,000. But this year the tide has gone out – and some vice-chancellors fear they will be left stranded.

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Sussex University students stand up against privatisation

March 10, 2013, 11:39 am

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Students take over sections of the campus in protest at outsourcing of services such as catering to private providers

It is a dispute that has radicalised dozens of students, shut down sections of Sussex University for more than a month and won admiration and support from the likes of Noam Chomsky, Tariq Ali and the actor Peter Capaldi.

At issue are two clashing visions of the university experience – one that sees students as consumers and another that rejects the commercialisation of learning and everything that goes with it.

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Cheating at UK's top universities soars by 30%

April 29, 2018, 7:42 am

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Institutions including Oxford and Cambridge under scrutiny as number of academic misconduct cases surges

The number of students caught cheating at the UK’s top universities has shot up by a third in three years, with experts warning that institutions are ignoring the problem.

Figures compiled by the Guardian from freedom of information requests to Russell Group universities – a group of 24 leading institutions that includes Oxford and Cambridge – shows the number of academic misconduct cases surged by 30%, from 2,640 to 3,721, between the academic years 2014-15 and 2016-17.

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JS Mill scribbles reveal he was far from a chilly Victorian intellectual

April 30, 2018, 1:00 am

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

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Project to digitise and publish his marginalia online will allow scholars to see his cutting remarks on Ralph Waldo Emerson

Despite writing a shelf-full of books, including his own autobiography, the great Victorian intellectual John Stuart Mill remains a man of mystery to scholars. However, a new side of Mill has now come to light, hidden in the margins of his library.

It turns out that Mill was an inveterate annotator, scribbling comments, observations and in some cases graffiti throughout his library. More than 140 years after his death, those notes are being collected and published for the first time.

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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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Top 10 podcasts to help you learn a language

February 9, 2015, 4:45 am

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From videos in Japanese to news in German, language blogger Lindsay Dow recommends her favourite podcasts to keep you motivated and inspired while improving your skills

I became a language addict way back in the early noughties thanks to Shakira. Since then I’ve gone on to pursue a degree in French and Spanish with the Open University, and I’ve also studied Mandarin, Italian, German and various other languages along the way. With formal studying never quite being enough, I’m always looking for other methods to engage my language learning brain, podcasts being one of them. Here’s a few of my favourites:

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Schools that ban mobile phones see better academic results

May 16, 2015, 1:20 pm

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Effect of ban on phones adds up to equivalent of extra week of classes over a pupil’s school year

It is a question that keeps some parents awake at night. Should children be allowed to take mobile phones to school? Now economists claim to have an answer. For parents who want to boost their children’s academic prospects, it is no.

The effect of banning mobile phones from school premises adds up to the equivalent of an extra week’s schooling over a pupil’s academic year, according to research by Louis-Philippe Beland and Richard Murphy, published by the Centre for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics.

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70 million children get no education, says report

September 20, 2010, 2:52 am

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Those living in north-eastern Africa are least likely to go to school, according to new world rankings

Almost 70 million children across the world are prevented from going to school each day, a study published today reveals.

Those living in north-eastern Africa are the least likely to receive a good education – or any education at all, an umbrella body of charities and teaching unions known as the Global Campaign for Education has found.

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How to get into university without any A-levels

August 19, 2013, 1:53 am

≫ Next: The way you're revising may let you down in exams – and here's why

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Reached the end of school with no qualifications? You can still go to university if you play your cards right

This September, Robbie Wojciechowski will be starting at Goldmsiths University as an undergraduate, despite having no A-level qualifications. Sound unlikely? Well it's not as uncommon as you'd think.

Universities are changing the way they think about candidates with alternative qualifications. Not only are they beginning to accept applications from them, they're offering courses specifically tailored towards non-traditional students.

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The way you're revising may let you down in exams – and here's why

May 7, 2016, 1:00 am

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Most people practise the wrong tasks, reveals a psychologist. Take your head out of those textbooks for a few minutes and read his advice

Even the most dedicated study plan can be undone by a failure to understand how human memory works. Only when you’re aware of the trap set for us by overconfidence, can you most effectively deploy the study skills you already know about.

As a psychologist who studies learning and memory, I know quite a few scientifically informed revision tips: space your practice out rather than cram it all together, practise retrieving information rather than recognising it, reorganise what you’re trying to learn. Probably you’ve heard these before, maybe even from me.

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Words you can write on a calculator

January 10, 2014, 3:48 am

≫ Next: Latest in law: how to stay on top of legal news

≪ Previous: The way you're revising may let you down in exams – and here's why

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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Latest in law: how to stay on top of legal news

April 30, 2018, 8:46 am

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Resources to help law students keep abreast of the industry

The legal industry is constantly shifting. From firm mergers, to court cases, to the fluctuation as laws are broken and made, not a single day goes by without a legal issue hitting the press. It’s therefore vital for legal professionals to stay on top of these developments.

The ability to not only be aware of these changes but to analyse them, form an opinion and pitch that opinion against top legal minds in interviews is invaluable for law students. Figuring out where you stand on various issues is the easy part; the difficulty is keeping on top of the changes as and when they happen. The trick is knowing where to start:

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Cambridge University lays bare the secrets of its library tower

April 30, 2018, 9:28 am

≫ Next: ClassDojo: do we really need an app that could make classrooms overly competitive?

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Exhibition to reveal truth about books hidden in 17-storey tower said to include pornography

To avoid disappointment, an exhibition opening this week at the Cambridge University library should carry the warning sign: “These books contain no pornography”.

Despite undergraduate folklore there is no secret stash of pornography among the 200,000 books in the 17 floors of the tower, which rises 157 feet above the library. The building, designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, was completed in 1934 to mixed reviews, with the former prime minister Neville Chamberlain calling it “a magnificent erection”.

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ClassDojo: do we really need an app that could make classrooms overly competitive?

April 30, 2018, 9:39 am

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The app aims to encourage good behaviour and to communicate with parents, with children awarded points for working hard and perseverance

For many parents, opening the ClassDojo app and looking at photographs of their child’s latest work or sending a message to the teacher will be a regular part of the school week. According to the San Francisco-based company, it has been used by 70% of schools in the UK. But the classroom app came under scrutiny this weekend – the Times raised privacy concerns, highlighting how its data was stored in the US “and, under its terms, some may be shared with the 22 third-party service providers it works with, including Facebook and Google”.

The app is used to encourage good behaviour and to communicate with parents – children are awarded points for skills such as “working hard” and “perseverance”, and deducted points for “disrespect”. The teacher can also upload photographs and videos to the service. It is used, according to the company, by 90% of US elementary and middle schools, and last year Forbes estimated it was worth $100m.

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