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How to say goodbye when your child leaves home

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When a child heads off to university the sense of loss can feel unbearable, but planning ahead can help you cope with this new stage of parenthood

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"I have had worse partings, but none that so / Gnaws at my mind still."

So writes Cecil Day-Lewis in his poem "Walking Away", written while watching his eldest son head off to school. If a child's first day at school is significant, when they leave home for university can feel like an irrevocable life change for you. Knowing how to say goodbye, and dealing with the sense of loss that can follow, is part of being a parent.

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Teacher’s end-of-term report to parents: your behaviour is getting worse

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From casual racism to arriving at school in a onesie, this term parents get a ‘could do better’

It’s July and I’ve spent dozens of evening hours this term writing your child’s end-of-year report. I confess some of these will have been cut and pasted from previous children’s, but at least this has given me the time to write a few comments that I would like you to note, as they detail some worrying new trends in parental behaviour.

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Student holiday jobs: it’s pay tax now and reclaim later, after rules change

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Special tax-free status has ended - now temporary staff will be taxed like any other worker

Students taking short-term holiday jobs this summer face paying income tax and national insurance after a little-known change in the tax rules a few years ago, accountants have warned.

Those starting temporary jobs as waiters, bar staff, cleaners and fruit pickers in the coming days face being taxed as any other worker if they earn more than £987 in a single month, tax advisers Blick Rothenberg said this week.

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Richard Ovenden, Bodley’s librarian: ‘I feel a huge responsibility. I don’t want to screw it up’

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The author and Oxford fellow on the joys of the city’s Covered Market, the importance of tea and debating with his daughter

I go to sleep quickly. I need a minimum of six hours and I like to be in bed by 11pm. I often wake up in the night, so I’ll go downstairs to get a book – anything from Zadie Smith to John le Carré – to read. I’m awake when the alarm goes off at 6.25am. My wife is an artist, so she has a different routine; in the morning, we converse amicably, but briefly!

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Richard Ovenden, Bodley’s librarian: ‘I don’t want to screw it up. That's on my mind’

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The author and Oxford fellow on the joys of the city’s Covered Market, the importance of tea and debating with his daughter

I go to sleep quickly. I need a minimum of six hours and I like to be in bed by 11pm. I often wake up in the night, so I’ll go downstairs to get a book – anything from Zadie Smith to John le Carré – to read. I’m awake when the alarm goes off at 6.25am. My wife is an artist, so she has a different routine; in the morning, we converse amicably, but briefly!

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Is the internet killing our brains?

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The web gives us access to endless information. What impact does this have on our memory, and our attention spans?

Throughout history, people have always worried about new technologies. The fear that the human brain cannot cope with the onslaught of information made possible by the latest development was first voiced in response to the printing press, back in the sixteenth century. Swap “printing press” for “internet” and you have the exact same concerns today, regularly voiced in the mainstream media, and usually focused on children.

But is there any legitimacy to these claims? Or are they just needless scaremongering? There are several things to bear in mind when considering how our brains deal with the internet.

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Am I too old to learn a new language?

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The brain's neuroplasticity decreases with age, but this shouldn't put off older learners – they do have some advantages

• From J-Lo to Strictly: why more students are learning Spanish

When Adrian Black met his Italian partner 10 years ago, he was determined to learn her home language. Having successively picked up French a decade earlier when he lived in France, he felt the challenge was attainable.

"I was blown away by how hard it was to learn French, but I came back speaking it pretty well," says Black, who is now 50. But getting to grips with Italian has been a much tougher process, he explains: "I feel like French is deep down in my head somewhere, but with Italian it will take a lot more effort for me to get to that level. "I've noticed that my brain isn't as good as it was, and I'm pretty sure I don't retain stuff as well as I used to. It just doesn't all click as easily as it used to."

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Top 10 podcasts to help you learn a language

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

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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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70 million children get no education, says report

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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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Children 'need 100 key words' to read

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Children need to learn just 100 words and 61 phonic skills to read the English language - not the 150 and 108 respectively suggested by the national literacy strategy, researchers from Warwick University said today.

Their study, seeking a theoretical basis for teaching reading, found that words beyond the key 100 are used so rarely that the benefits of learning them are minimal. The research is currently being submitted for publication.

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Even Rudyard Kipling felt iffy about If | Letters

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Thoughts from John Anzani, Richard Maidment and Mike Wright following the decision to erase Rudyard Kipling’s poem, If, from a display at the University of Manchester

I feel that some correspondents are missing a key point regarding the replacement of a poem by Kipling with one by Maya Angelou in the students’ union building at the University of Manchester (Letters, 21 July). This took place as part of the extensive and continuing refurbishment programme of the building being undertaken this summer. It is not the removal of some long-standing artwork on a university building. 

It is entirely appropriate that the executive of the students’ union should decide whether or not the proposed text is suitable for display in the union building, and to take note of protests by the membership. I note that the executive accept that they were not as familiar with all the details of the proposed decorative aspects of the project as they should have been. In due course they will be held accountable both for that and the decision itself by the membership through the democratic structures, as they will be for all other aspects of the refurbishment. As a life member of the union I support their decision to install the text by Maya Angelou.
John Anzani
Musselburgh, East Lothian

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A quick note to say… thank you to my tough old schoolmaster

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Gordon Fermer, a retired accountant, 79, says his old teacher pushed him and made him study

Gabby Lower was infamous at my secondary school: he had a bamboo cane, and he certainly used it. I remember him once asking everyone to hold out their hands and those with dirty fingernails got their hands caned. Another time he asked us to put the words ‘their’ and ‘there’ in the right context, and those who didn’t get it right were caned. He was very strict: he’d say to us, you’re going to do what I want you to do.

But as well as being strict, he was fair. Of course, his methods would be heavily and rightly criticised today, but here’s the point: Gabby Lower was the first person who really made me work. I’d never got down to studying before. I was very into sport, but had never done much in the classroom – and having him as my form teacher changed everything.

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A breakfast club is make or break for too many working parents | Barbara Ellen

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Pictures of parents queuing from 3am for a scarce place brought back worrying memories of my own struggles

Has adequate childcare become an unaffordable luxury in Britain?

More than 100 parents queued outside the Ysgol Y Berllan Deg primary school in Cardiff from 3am last week to secure a free breakfast club place for their children. Places were limited, and allocated on a first come, first served basis. So the parents queued outside, sitting on camping chairs from the early hours. It was reminiscent of when people used to queue outside department stores for big sales items – the massive telly or the leatherette three-piece suite.

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Posh Boys: How the English Public Schools Ruin Britain – review

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Robert Verkaik comprehensively illustrates thestranglehold the public school system still has on Britain

Robert Verkaik could hardly have picked a better time to publish this. One notorious posh boy (Eton, Oxford) exits Her Majesty’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office, another (Charterhouse, Oxford) arrives to take over. No surprise there, but the nation, or the 93% of it that did not go to private school, is left wondering again how this crony class of bought privilege and vicious self-interest has managed to hold on to the reins for so long. Not least when – from Balaclava to Brexit – they haven’t run things very well.

Of course, it may be that the grockles and plebs are not very bothered. In his fascinating, enraging polemic, Verkaik touches on one of the strangest aspects of the elite schools and their product’s domination of public life for two and a half centuries: the acquiescence of everyone else. “Public schools have a mesmerising influence over British people,” Verkaik says, echoing George Orwell (Eton) 85 years ago. Verkaik says we are all seduced, not least by the innocent question: “Who doesn’t want the best for their children?” As a parent and a troubled posh boy myself, I understand him.

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The great academy schools scandal

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They were hailed as education’s great leap forward. But across England, the trusts that run them are failing

Kinsley Academy may officially be less than three years old, but its redbrick buildings stand as a reminder that there has been a primary school here, serving this rural, former mining community in West Yorkshire, for well over 100 years. Jade Garfitt didn’t hesitate to send her son, aged five, to the school: Kinsley born and bred, she felt she’d got an excellent education there herself.

But since he started she has become increasingly concerned. “He’s received one piece of homework this academic year,” she tells me over a cup of tea in the community cafe across the road. “He’s only done PE once since November. At one point, his class went two weeks without having their reading books changed. If you tried to say, ‘Look, there’s issues here’, you’d be shooed away.”

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The Guardian view on school funding: cash is needed but so is a change of direction | Editorial

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Education secretary Damian Hinds is right that teachers need a pay rise, but wrong to proceed with grammar school expansion

Since 2009, school spending per pupil in England has fallen by about 8% in real terms, with a smaller fall in Wales of about 5%. While total school spending has risen in England by about 1% in real terms over this period, a 10% rise in pupil numbers means that slightly increased resources are now more thinly spread. In Wales, spending has fallen by around 5% but because pupil numbers there have remained constant, it is English schools that have experienced the more severe cuts. Since spending per pupil in Wales was lower before 2009, the cuts have evened things out.

These are the facts about the current position. That they are not more widely known is partly because the amount of money going to schools for pupils under 16 was protected until 2015. Only by taking into account large reductions in spending on sixth forms, and by local authorities, was the independent Institute of Fiscal Studies able to present a more complete picture of the budget pressures faced by schools, in a report this month.

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How to appeal if you fail at university

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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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Don’t even think about starting university in a relationship

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Avoid making the same mistake we did: ditch your partner before freshers’ week and make the most of the university experience

This September, hordes of hopelessly devoted students will head off to university in a new city and misspend the best years of their lives with some undesirable from school.

For a precious few, it works out, but for the majority, going to uni with a first love from home is like forever eating salad with no dressing or getting into Hogwarts and opting for your local grammar school instead. Don’t do it. Don’t even think about doing it. If you’re still thinking about doing it, read on.

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How to get published in an academic journal: top tips from editors

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Journal editors share their advice on how to structure a paper, write a cover letter - and deal with awkward feedback from reviewers

Writing for academic journals is highly competitive. Even if you overcome the first hurdle and generate a valuable idea or piece of research - how do you then sum it up in a way that will capture the interest of reviewers?

There’s no simple formula for getting published - editors’ expectations can vary both between and within subject areas. But there are some challenges that will confront all academic writers regardless of their discipline. How should you respond to reviewer feedback? Is there a correct way to structure a paper? And should you always bother revising and resubmitting? We asked journal editors from a range of backgrounds for their tips on getting published.

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