Does music really help you concentrate?

August 19, 2016, 11:30 pm

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

‘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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What's the point of school uniform?

October 3, 2013, 1:50 am

≫ Next: Bring back joy to the classroom | Letters

≪ Previous: Does music really help you concentrate?

You might hate your school uniform, but I think it's there for good reason, says 15-year-old Chloe Spencer

A shirt, tie and blazer may not be the ingredients for my favourite outfit, but if I were given the choice, I wouldn’t throw away the idea of school uniform. Wearing a uniform is a badge of pride, creates an identity for a school and is an important part of being a school student.

“Uniforms show that you are part of an organisation. Wearing it says we’re all in this together,” Jason Wing, head teacher at the Neale-Wade academy in Cambridgeshire, says.

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Bring back joy to the classroom | Letters

May 19, 2018, 4:05 pm

≫ Next: If risk is such a good thing, why is it all heaped on to the young and struggling? | Sonia Sodha

≪ Previous: What's the point of school uniform?

A teacher from Canada finds British education in freefall. Her solution? Remove stress and reinstate the love of learning

What is going on with the British education system? Last week’s Observer had three articles that reveal the symptoms of a system in freefall: £50m for grammar schools (“This zombie grammar school policy will only harm crisis-hit schools”, Focus); corruption in academy trusts (“Academy trust in spotlight again over spending”, News); and the teacher shortage (“Burnout”, special report).

In the 15 years since I last lived and taught here, billions have been spent remaking education and this is where you have landed:

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If risk is such a good thing, why is it all heaped on to the young and struggling? | Sonia Sodha

May 19, 2018, 10:00 pm

≫ Next: Advice to revise 7 hours a day for GCSEs over Easter 'unbelievable'

≪ Previous: Bring back joy to the classroom | Letters

To forge a creative life, a measure of security and stability can be a tremendous boon

The Tories have got a youth problem and they’re going to fix it with peri-peri chicken. Not how they’d put it, but you hardly need to be a marketing whiz to work out that their latest big idea to tempt in new members – a Nando’s discount card – isn’t aimed at octogenarians in the home counties.

It comes hot on the tracks of the government’s new millennial railcard, which offers a third off rail fares, presumably to distract 26- to 30-year-olds from the fact they’ll never be able to afford a house.

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Advice to revise 7 hours a day for GCSEs over Easter 'unbelievable'

March 30, 2018, 2:50 am

≫ Next: Words you can write on a calculator

≪ Previous: If risk is such a good thing, why is it all heaped on to the young and struggling? | Sonia Sodha

Ex-Harrow head Barnaby Lenon says 100 hours over fortnight ideal for GCSE and A-levels

An expert recommendation that GCSE and A-level students should study for seven hours a day throughout the Easter holidays has been greeted with a variety of scepticism, concern and mild horror by psychologists, teachers and pupils.

Barnaby Lenon, a former headteacher of Harrow, the prestigious independent boarding school that educated the likes of Winston Churchill, Benedict Cumberbatch, the singer James Blunt and the rugby player Billy Vunipola, suggests in a much discussed list of revision tips, a total of 100 hours study over the fortnight long holiday.

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Words you can write on a calculator

January 10, 2014, 3:48 am

≫ Next: Exams rewritten after van containing papers stolen

≪ Previous: Advice to revise 7 hours a day for GCSEs over Easter 'unbelievable'

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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Exams rewritten after van containing papers stolen

June 11, 2015, 3:53 pm

≫ Next: Averil Mansfield, UK's first female professor of surgery

≪ Previous: Words you can write on a calculator

Theft of Parcelforce van earlier this month forces AQA to write brand-new set of GCSE and A-level questions

An exam board has been forced to rewrite a group of A-level and GCSE exam papers at the last minute after a van delivering the papers to schools was stolen earlier this month. AQA, the exam board, confirmed the theft of a Parcelforce van containing exam papers for a number of different subjects, leading it to produce replacement papers to guard against the possibility of fraud.

“There’s nothing to indicate that [the van] was targeted for the papers or that any of them have come to light. However, we don’t leave anything to chance, so as soon as we knew about it, we contacted our senior examiners and asked them to write some brand-new papers,” an AQA spokesman said.

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Averil Mansfield, UK's first female professor of surgery

July 30, 2002, 8:24 am

≫ Next: GCSEs are failing stress test as students suffer | Letters

≪ Previous: Exams rewritten after van containing papers stolen

Averil Mansfield was the UK's first female professor of surgery. As she bows out, she tells Michele Hanson why, macho image apart, it's an ideal career for a woman

Averil Mansfield, MBE, retiring professor of vascular surgery at St Mary's hospital in London, gives all the answers you don't expect. Was her career one long struggle in a male-dominated profession? "No." Has she encountered hostility from male colleagues? "No." Does she feel that she has been discriminated against? "No."

"I set out to do a job. A few people raised their eyebrows but nobody said, 'You can't do it.' If I've been the best person applying for a job I can say, hand on heart, that I've been the one who's got it. If I haven't been the best, then I haven't got it. I don't feel at any stage that I met discrimination. I'm sorry to disappoint you."

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GCSEs are failing stress test as students suffer | Letters

May 21, 2018, 10:43 am

≫ Next: Clean-air campaigners call for ban on school run to cut pollution

≪ Previous: Averil Mansfield, UK's first female professor of surgery

A year 11 pupil describes the strain on her non-academic peers, while other readers decry the effects of relentless exams on young people

I am a year 11 student who is currently sitting their GCSE examinations. Sally Weale’s article (‘My lunchtimes are filled with crying children’, 17 May) sheds some light on what people my age go through. Many people I know suffer from depression and anxiety, we lose sleep, we don’t want to wake up in the mornings and we are afraid to walk into the exam rooms.

We are told over and over again that if we do not achieve level 7 or above we will not be able to progress in the future. I am not very academic and my skills are in the creative arts. However, my passion for those things is taken away when I have to sit a written drama exam for 40% of my grade.

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Clean-air campaigners call for ban on school run to cut pollution

May 20, 2018, 10:01 pm

≫ Next: Can you solve it? The birthday birthday problem

≪ Previous: GCSEs are failing stress test as students suffer | Letters

Government urged to take steps to reduce the impact of toxic air on vulnerable children

Clean-air campaigners have written to the government calling for a ban on parents driving their children to school in an attempt to cut down on toxic levels of air pollution.

Environmental groups and medics warn that pollution from the school run is having a serious impact on young people’s health.

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Can you solve it? The birthday birthday problem

May 20, 2018, 11:10 pm

≫ Next: Scientists should be solving problems, not struggling to access journals | Benjamin Kaube

≪ Previous: Clean-air campaigners call for ban on school run to cut pollution

Join in the celebrations

UPDATE: Read the solution here

Hi guzzlers,

My Monday Puzzle column celebrates its third birthday this week. What better way to mark the occasion than a puzzle about a birthday!

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Scientists should be solving problems, not struggling to access journals | Benjamin Kaube

May 20, 2018, 11:30 pm

≫ Next: Black students are right to want to see black therapists | Micha Frazer-Carroll

≪ Previous: Can you solve it? The birthday birthday problem

It takes an average of 15 clicks for a researcher to find and access a journal article. This time could be much better spent

At any given moment, 10 million academic researchers around the world are working to push the boundaries of human knowledge. You would think they have access to the best available tools to help them in their quest for knowledge. In reality the opposite is often true: the research tools at our disposal are so substandard that we are forced to use unofficial and often illegal alternatives.

Most research journeys begin with a literature review, consulting hundreds of journal articles, analysing the data within, and formulating a hypothesis to test in the lab. The reality for many researchers is that finding and accessing articles can be extremely tedious. My research suggests it takes 15 clicks on average, multiple logins into different repositories, dead links, and waiting on endless redirects.

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Black students are right to want to see black therapists | Micha Frazer-Carroll

May 21, 2018, 12:00 am

≫ Next: Why we should bulldoze the business school – podcast

≪ Previous: Scientists should be solving problems, not struggling to access journals | Benjamin Kaube

Cambridge University’s minority ethnic students can now request to see a BME counsellor. This should happen elsewhere

Imagine you’re at university and are subject to a racist attack by white students. If you decided it would be useful to go to counselling to talk about it, how much would the therapist’s race matter?

For Cambridge students, it’s emerged that the answer is “a lot”. Last month, while on-campus racism continued to grab headlines, Cambridge University’s counselling service made a vital shift in response to student demand: for the first time, black and minority ethnic (BME) students can now specifically request to see BME counsellors. As the welfare and rights officer, I pushed for the change; but the process raised a host of questions and challenges about the nature of counselling, and the way institutionalised support caters to students’ social and political identities.

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Why we should bulldoze the business school – podcast

May 21, 2018, 4:00 am

≫ Next: Did you solve it? The birthday birthday problem

≪ Previous: Black students are right to want to see black therapists | Micha Frazer-Carroll

There are 13,000 business schools on Earth. That’s 13,000 too many. And I should know – I’ve taught in them for 20 years

• Read the text version here

Subscribe via Audioboom, iTunes, Soundcloud, Mixcloud, Acast& Sticherand join the discussion on Facebook and Twitter

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Did you solve it? The birthday birthday problem

May 21, 2018, 9:00 am

≫ Next: Sex education given LGBT-inclusive overhaul in Wales

≪ Previous: Why we should bulldoze the business school – podcast

The solution to today’s puzzle

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

Ariel, Balthazar and Chastity are great mates, genius logicians and they always tell the truth. Neither Ariel nor Balthazar know the day or the month of Chastity’s birthday, so she decides to tell them in the following way:

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Sex education given LGBT-inclusive overhaul in Wales

May 21, 2018, 4:01 pm

≫ Next: Six times as many new medical students from London as from north-east

≪ Previous: Did you solve it? The birthday birthday problem

Supporters of planned changes say country can be a global leader in teaching the subject

Wales could soon be “leading the way” in relationship and sex education (SRE) in schools after announcing an overhaul of its curriculum.

The changes, which include the subject being renamed relationships and sexuality education, were announced by Wales’s education secretary, Kirsty Williams, who said the days of traditional sex education were “long gone”.

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Six times as many new medical students from London as from north-east

May 21, 2018, 4:01 pm

≫ Next: How physical exercise makes your brain work better

≪ Previous: Sex education given LGBT-inclusive overhaul in Wales

Only 245 students from north-east England started medicine and dentistry degrees last year

There were more than six times as many students from London taking up places to study medicine and dentistry last year as there were from north-east England, analysis shows.

The figures come as the government and the profession push to expand the workforce, through measures such as opening new medical schools.

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How physical exercise makes your brain work better

June 18, 2016, 1:00 am

≫ Next: 10 things teachers want to say to parents, but can't

≪ Previous: Six times as many new medical students from London as from north-east

Research shows different activities have quite specific mental effects – here’s how moving your body could sharpen your ideas

The brain is often described as being “like a muscle”. It’s a comparison that props up the brain training industry and keeps school children hunched over desks. We judge literacy and numeracy exercises as more beneficial for your brain than running, playing and learning on the move.

But the brain-as-muscle analogy doesn’t quite work. To build up your biceps you can’t avoid flexing them. When it comes to your brain, an oblique approach can be surprisingly effective. In particular, working your body’s muscles can actually benefit your grey matter.

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10 things teachers want to say to parents, but can't

June 9, 2014, 11:20 pm

≫ Next: Schools: how to raise £1m a year

≪ Previous: How physical exercise makes your brain work better

The long school year is coming to an end and one primary teacher has a few things to share

• 10 things parents want to say to teachers

1 Your kids are not your mates

Something I'm starting to hear with worrying frequency within the primary school setting is "my daughter's my best friend". Often, this rings alarm bells. Your kids aren't your mates. You're their parent, and your responsibility is to provide them with guidance and boundaries, not to drag them into your own disputes. Your nine-year-old doesn't need to know about your bitter feud with his friend's mother, or which dad you've got the hots for at the school gate. In the years to come he or she may realise that some of their own problems (social alienation, in its various forms, being a prime example) might have something to do with exposure to that sort of talk at an early age. Continue at your own risk.

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Schools: how to raise £1m a year

May 21, 2018, 10:45 pm

≫ Next: Dear Damian Hinds, your academy policy is whim and dogma | Michael Rosen

≪ Previous: 10 things teachers want to say to parents, but can't

A London academy is recruiting a fundraiser to boost its budget by at least £500,000. Is it a model that could keep others afloat?

Last week the website Education Uncovered revealed that the Harris Westminster Sixth Form, part of the Harris Federation of schools, had advertised for a “major gifts fundraiser” to bring in between £500,000 to £1m a year. Should other cash-strapped schools take fundraising this seriously now that many find their budgets in deficit?

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