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I’ve no idea what I want to do when I leave school

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The world is your oyster, says Sharmadean Reid – and a mix of the humanities with technology is perfect

I’m about to go into my final year at school and have no idea what I want to do. I enjoy the humanities and I love technology. Where do I start?

I’m so jealous: the world is truly your oyster. And you love the humanities? Even better – you can do anything with those subjects, trust me. Cultural studies, theology, philosophy, behavioural economics and the arts are all incredibly important for the new technology jobs you will encounter once you enter the adult working environment.

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Poorer pupils far more likely to be in failing schools, finds research

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Data shows 9% of poor English children go to an inadequate school against 1% of wealthiest

The poorest pupils in England are nine times as likely to attend an inadequate school as the wealthiest pupils, a Labour analysis has revealed.

And within some regions inequalities are even more marked, with the most deprived children in the east Midlands 18 times more likely to go to one of the worst performing schools as their most privileged counterparts.

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The inescapable weight of my $100,000 student debt

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MH Miller left university with a journal full of musings on Virginia Woolf and a vast financial burden. He is one of 44 million US graduates struggling to repay a total of $1.4tn. Were they right to believe their education was ‘priceless’?

On Halloween in 2008, about six weeks after Lehman Brothers collapsed, my mother called me from Michigan to tell me that my father had lost his job in the sales department of Visteon, an auto parts supplier for Ford. Two months later, my mother lost her job working for the city of Troy, a suburb about half an hour from Detroit. From there our lives seemed to accelerate, the terrible events compounding fast enough to elude immediate understanding. By June, my parents, unable to find any work in the state where they spent their entire lives, moved to New York, where my sister and I were both in school. A month later, the mortgage on my childhood home went into default.

After several months of unemployment, my mother got a job in New York City, fundraising for a children’s choir. In the summer of 2010, I completed my studies at New York University, where I received a BA and an MA in English literature, with more than $100,000 of debt,for which my father was a guarantor. My father was still unemployed and my mother had been diagnosed with an aggressive form of breast cancer. She continued working, though her employer was clearly perturbed that she would have to take off every Friday for chemotherapy. To compensate for the lost time, on Mondays she rode early buses into the city from the Bronx, where, after months of harrowing uncertainty, my parents had settled. She wanted to be in the office first thing.

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Should schools be judged by their exam results?

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Ofsted now says inspectors should pay less attention to exam outcomes. We ask whether it’s right

Ofsted has clashed with the Department for Education over how important exam results are as a measurement of a school’s quality. Earlier this month, an Ofsted source suggested that from next year “exam factory” schools that narrowly “teach to the test” would be marked down and the emphasis on exam results would be downgraded. In response, the DoE reiterated that exams would continue to be one of the measures used to judge a school’s performance.

The furore follows research, commissioned by Amanda Spielman, head of Ofsted, and published last October, into how schools implement the curriculum. It concluded that there is a serious risk of the curriculum being denuded by the approach some schools take to preparing pupils for exams.

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No other European country tests children at 16: let’s scrap pointless GCSEs | Sandra Leaton Gray

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It is bizarre to examine children when they still have two more years at school

We all could and should be having a relaxed summer but instead, 16-year-olds are grimly anticipating their GCSE results this Thursday. It doesn’t have to be this way.

The UK is the only European country to have high-stakes testing at 16, with others adopting a more enlightened approach. This I discovered while leading a research project in 2016 that involved watching polyglot pupils in the European schools mill around their airy buildings in jeans and T-shirts.

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Can a university rescue a city when the local authority fails?

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With Northamptonshire council bankrupt, the university is stepping in

Thanks to sour grapes and special pleading by scholars at the University of Oxford, in 1265 Northampton’s university was dissolved by King Henry III. Exactly 740 years later it was reinstated, this time in a hodgepodge of buildings on the outskirts of town. Come next month, though, the university will be reincarnated once again, this time on a 58-acre site next to the River Nene, a short walk through a tree-lined park to Northampton’s town centre.

Given that the county is reeling, with services cut to the bone after its council in effect went bankrupt earlier this year, the university’s move to its new £330m site, and the resulting influx of student talent, energy and, bluntly, cash, might be seen as the only positive for Northampton.

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Batons not barriers: The disabled musicians coming to the proms

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Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra’s Resound Ensemble explain why it’s not about the disability, it’s about the quality of music-making

James Rose is used to being underestimated. “Until the age of 11, I was in a special school, and then I asked my parents to move me into a mainstream one because I was getting bored,” he tells me. “I was being given work aimed at five- and six-year-olds.”

Rose’s speech is impaired by his condition, cerebral palsy; he is in a wheelchair; people who meet him assume he will be intellectually slow, but he is the exact opposite: bright, demanding, determined to achieve his dream. That dream is conducting. “From a very young age I was into music. I had a 15-year fantasy about conducting, but never took it seriously until 2012.” Now, incredibly, the fantasy is about to become reality. On 27 August, he will conduct at the Proms, at the head of his own six-piece ensemble made up of other musicians with disabilities. At 32, after decades of being patronised or ignored, Rose will command the biggest classical music stage of all.

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From pasta to stir-fry: foods children should learn to cook in school

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Prue Leith is right: children should learn to cook. Here are nine simple dishes they should be able to make

Prue Leith has talked about the importance of teaching children to cook at school and for packed lunches to be banned.

“The most important thing is to teach children to cook at schools,” she says. “And not only to cook but to understand about where their food comes from.”

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'Dance has done so much for me': the leader of Kenya's slum ballet school – podcast

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Mike Wamaya discusses how performing ballet helps children transcend the chaos and violence of life in Kibera

Mike Wamaya’s life was turned upside down when his father died and he had to drop out of school to earn money for the family. A chance audition for a visiting performing arts company led to an international career as a performer, but Wamaya wanted to use his skills to help children growing up in the most challenging circumstances in Nairobi. Today, children who complete the programme in Kibera often go on to artistic careers.

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Students urged to get vaccinations after measles outbreak

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Public Health England says first years should check they are up to date with MMR jabs

New university students are being urged to ensure they have been vaccinated against measles following outbreaks of the highly infectious illness.

Public Health England said students should check they are up to date with the MenACWY vaccine – which protects against meningitis – and the measles, mumps and rubella jab before the start of term. The number of European cases of measles has reached an eight-year high.

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Girls with top science GCSEs 'deterred from study at higher level'

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Low take-up of Stem subjects down to low confidence and boys’ dominance, study finds

Girls achieving top grades in science and maths at GCSE are deterred from continuing to a higher level with such subjects, including physics, because they are affected by low confidence and an absence of peers in the classroom, research has found.

As hundreds of thousands of pupils await the results of the GCSE exams on Thursday, a study, published by the Institute for Fiscal Studies, suggests that only dramatic intervention will change girls’ low take-up of physics and maths at more advanced levels.

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British universities criticised over pursuit of Egyptian links

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Academics accuse colleges of overlooking human rights abuses and student’s murder

Leading British universities have been accused of turning a blind eye to human rights abuses in Egypt in pursuit of opening campuses under the country’s authoritarian regime.

More than 200 prominent academics and others in the UK university sector have signed a letter to the Guardian opposing the collaboration against the backdrop of unanswered questions about the abduction and murder of the Cambridge PhD student Giulio Regeni.

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Pioneering free school in London to be taken over by academy trust

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Founders give up managing Greenwich free school, citing excessive burden on governors

The founders of a pioneering London free school have decided to hand it over to a larger multi-academy trust, saying the demands on governors and trustees were too onerous.

The decision by the high-profile founders to give up managing the Greenwich free school, a comprehensive secondary in south-east London, suggests the government’s vision of schools created by enthusiastic activists may be in danger of running out of steam.

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The summer scramble for students is tough on university staff | Elisa Haf

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When I moved to a German university, my colleagues were incredulous at the UK’s obsession with filling places

Clearing has become such a fixture of the university calendar and national news cycle in the UK that, when I moved abroad and started working in admissions at a German university, I didn’t realise how strange the concept would sound. But now I think about it, there was a slightly apocalyptic feel about the process. At one university I worked at, I even had a virtual dashboard with dials showing my progress in filling the courses for which I was responsible. They might have been showing the progress of meteors towards the earth for the level of management hysteria provoked when they swung the wrong way.

Related: Clearing shows how the government's university market has failed | David Morris

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Share your reaction and experiences on GCSE results day 2018

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How have you been affected by the new GCSEs? Share your photos, videos and stories with us

GCSEs have undergone another seismic change this year with qualifications with tougher standards being awarded for the first time. Concerns about attainment and student mental health amidst the more rigorous GCSEs have been raised. General secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, Geoff Barton, said: “the new exams are harder, contain more content, and involve sitting more papers.”

Related: GCSE results day 2018: students get their grades - live

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How tough are GCSEs? Try our exam questions

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Tackle these 12 examples and let Guardian commenters decide if you’re a pass or fail

It is GCSE results day, and if you have not had children in your family taking exams recently, or it is a while since you attended school yourself, you might be curious about the type and level of questions that pupils in England and Wales have to answer.

We cannot replicate GCSE exam conditions, but we have picked 12 essay questions from a range of arts and humanities subjects, and your task is simple: we would like to see your answers in the comments below.

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GCSEs: boys close gap on girls after exams overhaul

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Larger share of boys gain top marks under new system while share of pupils gaining C or 4 also rises

Boys appear to have been the major beneficiary of the new GCSE examinations taken in England for the first time this summer, as results showed across-the-board improvements in boys gaining top marks while girls saw their share of top grades dip.

Related: GCSE results day 2018: students get their grades - live

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How 'micro-grants' as small as $900 could help US college students graduate

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Grants as small as $900 could prevent thousands of US college students each semester from dropping out of school

This story was produced in collaboration with the Hechinger Report.

Every semester, thousands of students drop out of college because they are a few hundred dollars short of being able to pay their bills. Many are only a few credits shy of graduation. Most are already working one or more jobs to keep up with their college costs.

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How good are you at GCSE maths? Take our quiz

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Test your knowledge with these 20 questions taken from real exam papers

If you haven’t done a maths exam for a while, or had anyone living with you who is studying for one, you might be curious about what goes into a GCSE maths paper these days. Here’s a chance to test yourself with these 20 questions taken from last year’s real papers.

We can’t replicate exam conditions. In the real world, pupils taking GCSE maths have to sit four-and-a-half hours of exams. Ninety minutes of that is a paper for which they aren’t allowed calculators.

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Are teachers’ pitiful salaries driving many to moonlight as Airbnb hosts?

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Teachers’ salaries lag behind many other professions, and teachers need more money to make ends meet

Airbnb has grown to become not only a great alternative to staying in a hotel but, for many part- and full-time entrepreneurs, a solid source of additional income. It turns out that one group of entrepreneurs in particular is benefiting from the online hospitality service and it’s not who you may think. It’s entrepreneurial … teachers.

According to a new report issued by the company, almost 10% of the people renting out their homes and properties on Airbnb work in education. How big a deal is this? The company estimates that their 45,000 teacher hosts earned a whopping $160m in 2017, with roughly one-third of their total annual Airbnb earnings from hosting during the summer months alone. On average, teachers earned about $6,500 in supplemental income a year from their Airbnb businesses. In Utah and Wisconsin alone, more than a quarter of all Airbnb hosts that were surveyed said they worked in education. Ohio, with one in five hosts working in the industry, is a close third.

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