Experiments show we quickly adjust to seeing everything upside-down

November 12, 2012, 8:30 am

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A researcher wearing goggles that inverted everything stumbled about wildly at first, but soon enough he was able to ride a bicycle

In the middle of the 20th century, an Austrian professor turned a man's eyesight exactly upside-down. After a short time, the man took this completely in his stride.

Professor Theodor Erismann, of the University of Innsbruck, devised the experiment, performing it upon his assistant and student, Ivo Kohler. Kohler later wrote about it. The two of them made a documentary film.

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How anxiety scrambles your brain and makes it hard to learn

November 21, 2015, 1:00 am

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Levels of stress and anxiety are on the rise among students. Juliet Rix has tips to control the panic and thrive academically

Olivia admits she’s always been a worrier – but when she started university, her anxiety steadily began to build. One day she was simply too frightened to leave the house. For two weeks she was stuck indoors, before she was diagnosed with generalised anxiety disorder and began to get the help she needed.

With support from her GP and university wellbeing service, and courses of cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), she was able to stick with her university course and to start enjoying life again.

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How to appeal if you fail at university

January 8, 2013, 2:18 am

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Many students are preparing for January exams right now. But what will they do if their results aren't what they'd hoped for?

What do you do if you fail a university exam, or worse still, get thrown off your course completely? Usually you accept the verdict and admit that the work you produced wasn't up to scratch. But what if you are convinced you have a really good reason why you shouldn't have failed?

Here are my top tips, gleaned from first-hand experience as a barrister, for students who want to appeal without getting professional assistance.

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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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Women in tech: the IT firms tackling the gender imbalance

July 9, 2018, 1:00 am

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Some of the biggest names in industry have set up graduate programmes to boost the shrinking number of women in technology roles

Hannah Ellis, 26, joined KPMG’s technology consulting graduate scheme in 2015 after completing a degree in history. She found herself drawn to the accountancy firm’s approach to new graduates: “They were very accepting of people from different backgrounds as long as you were bright and willing to learn, and that was what really appealed to me.”

Along with other graduates, Ellis received intensive training in consulting and in technical subjects, such as data analytics. Since then, her skills have been put to a wide range of uses at the company, including managing a project for a government client and working on data visualisation and reporting for a pharmaceutical company. She has also recently completed a secondment to explore ways in which KPMG could transform its digital strategy.

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We need more investigations into research misconduct

July 11, 2018, 2:00 am

≫ Next: Meet the people bringing Japanese video games to life in English

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Why I’m calling for watchdog to help rid research of malpractice and fraud

MPs want new watchdog to monitor misconduct by researchers

Last year the Guardian reported on the case of Paulo Macchiarini, an Italian surgeon working in Sweden, who was “hailed for turning the dream of regenerative medicine into a reality – until he was exposed as a con artist and false prophet”. The Swedish Central Ethics Review Board concluded recently that six papers should be retracted as they falsely claimed that the artificial windpipe transplants he gave them were much more effective than they actually were. In fact, at least three of his patients died.

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Meet the people bringing Japanese video games to life in English

July 11, 2018, 2:30 am

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Tokyo-based translation firm 8-4’s mission is to reduce cultural gaps between countries, and infuse games with local personality

On the second floor of an unassuming office building in Shibuya, Tokyo, a process of transformation is happening.

“We don’t want to stand out,” says Hiroko Minamoto, president and co-founder of video game translation firm 8-4. The company, named after the final level of Super Mario Bros, specialises in repackaging Japanese video games for English-speaking audiences, or vice versa. “When localisation is bad, that’s when it stands out, and that’s when people yell at us. We want it to be natural.”

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How Minecraft is helping kids fall in love with books

July 11, 2018, 5:07 am

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Ever wanted to explore Treasure Island or pretend to be Robinson Crusoe? Minecraft is now being used to create an ‘immersive experience’ to engage reluctant readers – we see how it plays out

Robert Louis Stevenson’s 1881 classic Treasure Island tells of Jim Hawkins’s adventures on board the Hispaniola, as he and his crew – along with double-crossing pirate Long John Silver – set out to find Captain Flint’s missing treasure on Skeleton Island. Now, more than a century later, children can try and find it themselves, with the bays and mountains of Stevenson’s fictional island given a blocky remodelling in Minecraft, as part of a new project aimed at bringing reluctant readers to literary classics.

From Spyglass Hill to Ben Gunn’s cave, children can explore every nook and cranny of Skeleton Island as part of Litcraft, a new partnership between Lancaster University and Microsoft, which bought the game for $2.5bn (£1.9bn) in 2015 and which is now played by 74 million people each month. The Litcraft platform uses Minecraft to create accurate scale models of fictional islands: Treasure Island is the first, with Michael Morpurgo’s Kensuke’s Kingdom just completed and many others planned.

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The Guardian view on schools: boost children, not results | Editorial

July 11, 2018, 10:18 am

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In revealing the appalling treatment of children forced out by a top grammar school, a new report has highlighted the broader problem of ‘off-rolling’

An independent inquiry has laid bare both the callousness of policies which forced pupils out of a highly selective state school, and their downright illegality. St Olave’s, a grammar school in Orpington, south-east London, treated its students as “collateral damage”, the scathing report commissioned by Bromley council has found. The lengths to which it went to uphold and burnish its reputation for academic excellence are extraordinary and would be absurd if not so damaging to the children affected. But the case is not an anomaly; instead, it lies at the extreme end of a much more widespread problem.

The scandal emerged when the Guardian revealed that teenagers had been pushed out of the school halfway through the sixth form after failing to get top grades in end-of-year exams, leaving them distraught and struggling to find places to finish their A-levels. It was illegal to withdraw these places on academic grounds at this stage. Faced with legal action by parents and embarrassing publicity, the school reversed the policy. The headteacher was suspended and then resigned.

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Parents rebuke Ofsted for failing to inspect St Olave's pupil welfare

July 11, 2018, 12:13 pm

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Families say inspectors did not intervene over grammar school’s sixth-form exclusions despite multiple complaints

Parents of sixth-form pupils still suffering mental distress after being illegally kicked out of St Olave’s grammar school, have turned their anger on Ofsted, accusing school inspectors of failing to intervene despite multiple complaints for being dazzled by the school’s academic record.

The selective boys’ school in Orpington, south-east London, which achieves some of the highest A-level results in the country, was judged outstanding when Ofsted inspectors visited in 2014.

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English schools funding has fallen faster than in Wales, says IFS

July 11, 2018, 4:00 pm

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Pupil funding in the two countries is now almost the same in real terms, according to new figures

School funding in England has fallen by 8% in real terms since 2010, at a faster rate than in Wales, meaning that per pupil funding in the two countries is almost the same for the first time in many years, according to figures produced by the Institute for Fiscal Studies.

The IFS said that the cuts in England are driven by a combination of a greater fall in spending by local authorities and school sixth form spending plus faster growth in pupil numbers. “As a result, the gap in school spending per pupil between England and Wales has been virtually eliminated,” it said in research to be published on Thursday.

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Discipline in schools speech

December 12, 2002, 8:47 am

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Full text of Charles Clarke's Discipline in Schools speech

Why discipline matters
Every day around 50,000 pupils miss school without permission. Bad behaviour disrupts education at one in twelve secondary schools, according to Ofsted. And four out of five secondary pupils say some of their classmates regularly try to disrupt lessons.

The mission of this government is to raise educational standards. But you can't raise standards if pupils miss school and behave badly when they are there. Attendance and good behaviour are preconditions for effective learning. Tackling poor behaviour is as much part of improving pupil performance as good teaching. There are two other reasons why we must tackle the behaviour problem.

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Top ten nursery rhymes

October 6, 2009, 3:35 am

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Booktrust asked 2,500 poeple to name their favourite nursery rhyme. All together now ... here are the top 10 Continue reading...

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

June 9, 2014, 11:20 pm

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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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Focus: ecstasy after-effects that could last a lifetime

January 20, 2002, 2:54 am

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

Britain's half-million pill-poppers could face after-effects that last a lifetime. Anthony Browne reports

Staring intently in the dim light, the music rocking his body, James snapped the little white tablet in two. Pressed against the wall, his back sheltering them from the dancing crowds, he took half for himself and gave half to his girlfriend. They swallowed, and the weekend's clubbing started.

'It makes you feel so positive about everyone and everything. You feel so open - you can talk to strangers like they are your closest friends. You feel so sensual, so tactile. I want to touch people's skin, stroke their clothes. And I want to dance, dance, dance,' gushed James. 'It's the best, the most positive experience in my life. It's life-enhancing.'

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Teacher jailed for indecent assaults on schoolboys

January 5, 2004, 6:43 am

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≪ Previous: Focus: ecstasy after-effects that could last a lifetime

A secondary school teacher who "groomed" two vulnerable schoolboys by sending the pair up to 1,500 lewd text messages before indecently assaulting both of them was jailed for four years today.

History teacher Wasim Majid was convicted last month of two charges of indecency with a child and two counts of indecent assault relating to two incidents - one between January and March 2002 and one between April and June 2002.

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Massachusetts allows school to continue with electric shocks

July 12, 2018, 1:25 pm

≫ Next: Sex, taboos and #MeToo - in the country with no word for 'vagina'

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The only US facility using shocks on children with learning disabilities has fought off another legal challenge

In 2012, video of electric shock conditioning used inside the Judge Rotenberg Educational Center was released to the public for the first time. It showed 18-year-old Andre McCollins being restrained face down, shouting for help from the people around him. His calls go unanswered, and he is given repeated shocks which cause him to scream in pain.

The footage appears to show McCollins being tortured. The Judge Rotenberg Center (JRC) is not a rogue interrogation facility in a failed state, however, but a facility for children and adults with learning disabilities in Massachusetts.

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Sex, taboos and #MeToo - in the country with no word for 'vagina'

July 11, 2018, 10:00 pm

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Burmese doctor is changing attitudes to women’s rights and sexual health

“There’s a hpou (a child’s toy), tayat ywa (mango leaf) and mout paung (sweets).” Pausing in her list of euphemisms, Dr Thet Su Htwe leans in to the microphone. “And even samosa,” she adds. At this, the rapt audience of young women gathered at her workshop shrieks and bursts into chatter.

“Why are we still afraid to say the word ‘vagina’?” the doctor asks finally.

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UCL row over email stating immigration-check fine of £20,000

July 12, 2018, 12:09 am

≫ Next: St Olave’s is not alone. Schools with dodgy practices are everywhere | Fiona Millar

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Punishment for not reporting immigration breaches by students called draconian and discriminatory

A row has broken out over University College London’s enforcement of immigration controls for international students, with staff and students accusing the senior management of pursuing draconian and discriminatory policies.

The dispute comes after UCL advised lecturers to carry out random spot checks on students’ identity documents, and one of the university’s leading faculties warned that staff who fail to report those in breach of the terms of their visa and immigration requirements “may be liable to a £20,000 personal fine per case”.

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St Olave’s is not alone. Schools with dodgy practices are everywhere | Fiona Millar

July 12, 2018, 1:30 am

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The marketisation of schools has unleashed a dark side where performance tables are more important than pupils’ welfare

I suppose we should feel outraged at the damning report into shameful practices at St Olave’s super-selective grammar school, where high-flying pupils, who couldn’t quite fly high enough, were systematically forced out the door halfway through their A-levels. An independent inquiry has now accused the school of treating its students as “collateral damage”, preferring to focus on its institutional reputation rather than the wellbeing of its young people, some of whom were reported to be suicidal at the prospect of rejection and public humiliation.

However, my overwhelming response was one of dull resignation. Here we go again: yet another example of how the market approach to schooling has spiralled out of control, exposing the dark side of high-stakes competition within which all schools must jostle for position. It isn’t just the “top end” of the schools market in which pupils are “collateral damage”, though harnessing the outrage of the most powerfully motivated parents in a school like St Olave’s certainly helps to guarantee headlines.

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