Michael Moran obituary

May 7, 2018, 6:47 am

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My father, Michael Moran, who has died aged 71, was a professor of government at Manchester University and a leading authority on British politics and public policy.

He made his reputation with a series of books on industrial relations, financial services and health care. The British Regulatory State (2003) deploys a historical and philosophical range all too rare in academic political science. His final work, The End of British Politics? (2017), has a timely message about the potential breakup of the UK.

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I know the real source of our classroom rot

April 7, 2018, 10:05 pm

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Education funding will be a big issue at the May local elections. But here, one teacher writing anonymously says the problems in our schools go much deeper than money

Schools have been chronically underfunded under Conservative-led governments, which dole out starvation rations to all public sector institutions. And it’s quite right for the National Education Union, my union, to campaign for higher funding as an election issue. But both Conservative and Labour governments have endlessly meddled with education policy, to disastrous effect.

I loved teaching, believed it was my vocation, and taught English to secondary school pupils for 30 years. I saw it as my mission to foster in students a love of literature which would stay with them all their lives. Staff appraisals labelled me “inspirational”, “outstanding”, “excellent”. One year ago, my health finally shot, I left teaching for good.

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Course and curriculum design: award winner and runners up

April 24, 2018, 1:30 pm

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An intensive two-week programme helps new students settle in at the University of Huddersfield

Winner: University of Huddersfield
Project: The flying start initiative

Flying Start is an introduction to undergraduate study that helps raise aspirations and encourages new students to build connections with friends and tutors. The first programme ran in September 2017, when 900 students attended an intensive 9-5 fortnight-long timetable.

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Free-speech warriors mistake student protest for censorship | Adam Tickell

May 6, 2018, 10:00 pm

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Young people today should be free to stake out their politics the same way my peers did 35 years ago

• Adam Tickell is vice-chancellor of the University of Sussex

Free speech on campus has once again become a point of contention. The universities minister, Sam Gyimah, has called for tough new guidelines to protect freedom of expression. His remarks come amid claims that books are being removed from libraries, and speakers banned from campuses – all because “generation snowflake” is too timid to hear discordant opinions.

The reality is, of course, quite different. Universities continue to be places where free speech thrives. Arguments about who should, and shouldn’t, be given a platform are hardly new. I studied at the University of Manchester during the 1980s miners’ strike. The then home secretary, Leon Brittan, was invited to speak at the students’ union – prompting a major demonstration. Brittan came in through the front entrance and spoke to a small group inside the hall. While by no means sympathetic to the speaker, I shared the view of the students’ union executive, which supported his right to speak.

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Can you solve it? I'm a mathematician, get me out of here!

May 6, 2018, 11:10 pm

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Keep calm and follow the arrows

UPDATE: Read the solution here

Hi guzzlers

Today’s puzzle is for escapologists.

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Many revenge porn victims consider suicide – why aren’t schools doing more to stop it?

May 7, 2018, 7:58 am

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Adolescent sexual experimentation now takes place in a world where naked images can easily be shared without consent, with devastating consequences. It’s time for the educational establishment to take this on

Sarah Richards was 15 when naked pictures of her were shared around her school. Months earlier, her then-boyfriend had suggested they have a Skype video call. “I was super excited to be dating this person,” she says. “He was part of a group of boys that I really wanted to be friends with because I thought they were so cool. I had my first sexual experience with him, so I trusted him.”

Feeling confident and safe in the comfort of her own bedroom, she recalls how she got undressed for him on camera, making sure not to expose anything below her waist. “I just thought this was fun and innocent. It wasn’t pictures, so it seemed less permanent.” It wasn’t until months later, after breaking up with him, that Richards found out that screenshots had been taken without her consent.

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Did you solve it? I'm a mathematician, get me out of here!

May 7, 2018, 9:00 am

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The solution to today’s escapology problem

In my puzzle blog earlier today I set you the following puzzle:

Imagine you are in a grid 100 squares long and 100 squares wide. (The grid is fixed to the compass directions: up/down is N/S, and left/right is W/E.) On each square of the grid, there’s an arrow. Each arrow is pointing either N, S, W or E.

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Derek Fry obituary

May 7, 2018, 9:59 am

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Few teachers have had quite the impact on so many young lives as my former colleague and friend Derek Fry, a teacher of physics and astronomy at the Grammar School at Leeds, who has died aged 77.

His legacy includes inspiring several pupils to pursue a career in science. More than a dozen former students have dedicated their doctoral theses to him. Derek taught for more than 50 years, the last 18 of which he continued on a voluntary basis following his “official” retirement in 2000.

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Fears of university closures after removal of safety net

January 29, 2018, 11:15 pm

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Some universities in England could be at risk as figures show drop in student numbers – but the Office for Students has no remit to help

Some English universities may be in danger of collapse, experts warn, as numbers of young students enrolling at several institutions have dropped alarmingly in the new competitive education “market”.

Figures released by Ucas, the universities admissions service, last week reveal that the number of 18-year-olds enrolling at London Metropolitan University, the University of Cumbria, Kingston University and the University of Wolverhampton have shrunk every year, with major losses over the past five years.

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Suicide is a sector-wide issue, says Bristol university vice-chancellor

February 21, 2018, 11:50 am

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Speaking for first time since seven student suicides in 18 months, Hugh Brady says social media is part of the problem

The vice-chancellor of Bristol University, where seven students have killed themselves in less than 18 months, has blamed social media and the cult of perfectionism for contributing to a global crisis in mental health among young people.

Speaking for the first time since the cluster of student suicides, Hugh Brady said Bristol was no different from any other institution in the higher education sector, which is grappling across the board with record referral rates to student counselling services.

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Grace is 25. Her student debt: £69,000

July 10, 2017, 11:14 pm

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With graduates facing a lifetime of debt – at 6.1% interest – pressure is growing for a rethink on tuition fees and maintenance loans. But what should replace them?
• Opinion: Penalising this generation is morally whiffy

When Grace Parkins opened her first statement from the Student Loans Company she wasn’t prepared for what she saw. After four years studying she discovered she was now more than £69,000 in debt.

Parkins was one of the first generation of students to sign up to £9,000 a year tuition fees. Like many recent graduates, she had no idea she was also racking up £8,000 of interest on her student loan while still at university. Students currently pay interest of 4.6% while they study, and this will rise to 6.1% in September. “That should have been made much clearer,” she says. “I didn’t expect that at all. All I really knew was that I wouldn’t be repaying until I earned £21,000 and my outstanding debt would be written off after 30 years.”

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Seventh Bristol university student takes his own life

January 22, 2018, 2:27 am

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Death of Justin Cheng, third-year law student, adds to toll over past 18 months

A third-year student at Bristol university is believed to have killed himself – the seventh to have taken his own life in less than 18 months.

Justin Cheng, a law student from Canada, was found dead on the evening of 12 January, the university confirmed.

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‘It’s a hidden nasty’: Parents in dark over need to top up student loans

May 7, 2018, 10:50 pm

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Experts attack government for failing to tell families they must pay up to £5,000 in living costs

How many parents realise that if their child goes to university, the government expects them to stump up thousands of pounds a year on top of the debt their offspring will incur from loans?

According to the latest submissions to the current review of HE finance, the government is keeping parents in the dark about this. The review will decide whether and how the current fees and loans system should be changed.

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After 30 years of ‘go compare’, English education is a wild west | Fiona Millar

May 7, 2018, 11:00 pm

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The 1988 reform act led to league tables and the schools market – plus back-door selection and even corruption

School market supporters argue the case for the defence

When Gary Phillips started his career as a young teacher, the education world was a radically different place. There were no league tables, no Ofsted, no academies or free schools. Parent choice and competition had barely registered on the national consciousness.

All that changed 30 years ago this summer with the introduction of the 1988 Education Reform Act, a huge piece of legislation that introduced the national curriculum and the idea of diversity and a “schools market” in which parents would vote with their feet, in theory encouraging the best schools to expand and the worst to improve or close.

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‘I worked in a London borough. It wasn’t any kind of education nirvana’

May 7, 2018, 11:00 pm

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Three school market supporters explain why, 30 years on, the 1988 Education Reform Act has been a success
Fiona Millar How ‘choice’ gave us the wild west

In 1988 the Education Reform Act introduced the idea of choice for parents and competition among schools in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. In her new book, Guardian columnist Fiona Millar argues that the choice has never really happened and that we are left with unintended consequences: a “wild west” of competing schools and back-door selection of pupils. However, others disagree, arguing that the act has transformed education for the better:

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Artists condemn exclusion of arts subjects from English baccalaureate

May 8, 2018, 9:28 am

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More than 100 leading artists say the decline of creative subjects in schools will ‘seriously damage the future of many young people’

British artists: Ebacc will damage creativity and self-expression

More than 100 of the UK’s leading artists have joined forces to condemn the exclusion of arts subjects from the new English baccalaureate, warning it will “seriously damage the future of many young people”.

Artists including Tracey Emin, Rachel Whiteread, Phyllida Barlow, Anish Kapoor, Jeremy Deller and Antony Gormley have signed a letter, published by the Guardian, calling on the government to rethink a key secondary school policy introduced by the former education secretary Michael Gove.

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So you want to learn...Zen Buddhism

March 11, 2002, 4:33 pm

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A weekly guide for those who fancy a bit of adult education for its own sake

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Yes.

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No more music, Spanish or engineering: parents angry at cuts to GCSEs

August 7, 2017, 11:30 pm

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Schools’ funding crisis and pressure to raise their Ebacc scores have forced heads to cut subject options

Come through the main doors at Gateacre school in Liverpool, into an atrium with furniture in bright colours; on your right there’s a drama studio. On the door someone has put up a notice: “More than 9,994 students studying at Russell Group universities since 2012 have an A-level in drama and theatre.”

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Rhodes scholarships opened up to students from UK and rest of world

February 18, 2018, 10:01 pm

≫ Next: Latin lessons dying out in state schools | Letter

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Trust founded by colonial tycoon aims to bring prestigious graduate scheme into 21st century

The Rhodes scholarship – the oldest and most prestigious international graduate award – is to be opened to applicants from Britain and the rest of the world for the first time, the Rhodes Trust is to announce.

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Latin lessons dying out in state schools | Letter

January 25, 2018, 9:59 am

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Gina Johnson, head of classics at High Storrs school, Sheffield, on financial and curriculum pressures killing her subjects off

As the head of classics at High Storrs school, the last remaining state comprehensive in Sheffield to offer Latin (and classical civilisation) on its curriculum, it was with great sadness but little surprise that I read of Richmond school’s decision to cease teaching Latin from next September (Yorkshire school to stop teaching Latin after 600 years, 22 January). Funding for state schools is now at such a low level that we are seeing a wholesale narrowing of the curriculum, exacerbated by the prescriptive nature of the English baccalaureate “qualification” (discussed so eloquently by Rufus Norris in his 17 January article “Why are we squeezing creativity out of our schools?”), which excludes classical civilisation GCSE from its suite of subjects. While we do not have quite such an illustrious history as our fellow Yorkshire school, classical subjects have flourished here for many years, but we too are struggling and have recently had to launch a campaign to raise funds with which to subsidise smaller teaching groups until such time as our school can once again afford to teach them. We are now, it seems, a country in danger of losing touch with the hugely influential cultures and languages of the classical world in all but London and the south-east.
Gina Johnson
High Storrs school, Sheffield

• Join the debate – email guardian.letters@theguardian.com

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