Horror writer lets Blaenau Gwent Film Academy make version of Stationary Bike
The horror writer Stephen King has given a group of teenage fans from south Wales permission to turn one of his tales into a film at a cost of $1 for the rights.
Youngsters from Tredegar in Blaenau Gwent will spend the next couple of months working on the script before filming the story, Stationary Bike, in and around the town.
Continue reading...Magistrates reject claim that Istiqamah Centre was for home-educated children
The operators of an unlicensed school in west London have been fined after the Department for Education and Ofsted won a legal ruling leading to the first convictions of their kind.
The hearing at Westminster magistrates court imposed fines on Nacerdine Talbi and Beatrix Bernhardt for operating the Istiqamah Learning Centre in Southall as an unregistered school, after investigators found nearly 60 children aged between five and 11 being taught at the centre.
Continue reading...Case settled out of court after girl was expected to attend classes with accused pupil
A secondary school has agreed to pay tens of thousands of pounds in damages and legal costs over its handling of an allegation of rape made by one of its former pupils against her then classmate, the Guardian has learned.
The girl, who was 16 at the time and studying for her GCSEs, sued the school after she was expected to carry on attending lessons with the boy she had accused of rape.
Continue reading...More students than ever before have applied for medicine as new medical schools open to make the NHS “self-sufficient”
Medical schools have attracted record numbers of applications after the government expanded places to plug NHS doctor shortages, according to data published by Ucas, the university and colleges admissions body.
This year, 65,870 people applied to elite courses and universities with a 15 October deadline, which include all courses at Oxford and Cambridge universities and most medicine, dentistry and veterinary science schools elsewhere. This represents a 7% rise on last year, which also saw record numbers.
Continue reading...Students being tested as precaution after spokesperson from NSW Ambulance describes injuries as ‘minor’
Police have been called to a Sydney school where a number of students were pricked with a syringe.
Emergency services were called to Plumpton high school, near Mount Druitt in Sydney’s west, at 11.50am.
Continue reading...Ed Farmer died as result of ‘toxic effects’ of drinking at an initiation ceremony
The bereaved family of a student who died after a university society initiation ceremony have attacked the institution, claiming it has failed to get to grips with the problem.
Ed Farmer’s father, Jeremy, spoke after an inquest found the Newcastle University student died as a result of the “toxic effects” of excessive drinking at the event organised by its agricultural society.
Continue reading...Analysis shows capital expenditure in England has fallen more dramatically than everyday education spending
Government spending on England’s ageing school buildings has fallen by £3.5bn, leaving thousands of children in classrooms that are “leaking and crumbling around them”, according to Labour.
Data analysis has shown that capital expenditure on schools in 2010-11 was £8.8bn, but will fall to £5.2bn in 2018-19 – a 41% real terms cut – at a time when the majority of schools are in need of repair, says Labour.
Continue reading...There was a boy in my rural primary school who we used to tease as the village idiot. He was popular though, and we fiercely defended him if anyone bullied him. Our two teachers worked hard to fit him into the school and thus the community, and in this they succeeded. I think he was a happy boy. Yet today that school would risk penalties for lowering its test score; and accommodating him would damage, not enhance, its reputation. That is the absurd situation in which our schools find themselves.
Recent revelations that pupils with special needs are being excluded to improve school performance can be put down to one thing: an obsession with testing. Since public league tables were introduced by John Patten in 1992, they have defined English education. First it was just A-levels, then GCSEs, then Sats, as the cry went out to measure everything.
Continue reading...To be successful, it seems you need to be available for short, fixed-term contracts all over the world
This summer I started a short-term postdoc after finishing my PhD. I really like my postdoc advisor, who looks out for my mental wellbeing, as well as my new department and the city I’ve moved to. It’s refreshing to be in such a happy environment after experiencing bullying from other students at my previous institution. I’ve been able to design the research plans for the postdoc, and the grant I’m on will support me comfortably for the next 10 months. It sounds like a dream – and it almost is – but the knowledge that all this is for the short term is dampening my enthusiasm.
Related: I've just finished my PhD, and now I feel lost without academia | Anonymous academic
Continue reading...For years, efforts to improve India’s failing state system focused on teachers, classrooms and curricula. Now a training scheme for headteachers is reaping dividends
Until recently, Maniram Mandiwal felt like just another cog in the wheel. The headteacher of Rajasthan’s Shaheed Col Jayprakash Janu secondary school left work as soon as he could. He didn’t know any of his pupils by name, and took no interest in his staff. Mandiwal had spent a quarter of a century in teaching without ever experiencing a “special classroom moment”.
Recently, though, all that changed. With a class nearing its end, some of the children said: “Don’t go yet, sir, we’re enjoying this.” It was the first time he had heard such a thing. He was touched.
Continue reading...While most families in the UK have spent their half-term in pumpkin patches or picking out frightening outfits for Halloween, this week has been terrifying in a completely different way for parents of children with special educational needs and disabilities (Send). Two Guardian reports have highlighted the looming Send crisis our children are facing in school. I can tell you that crisis is already here.
My seven-year-old son has autistic spectrum disorder (ASD), with the added complication that he also has a diagnosis of pathological demand avoidance (PDA) – complicated because, although it’s under the umbrella of ASD, it isn’t recognised by most health authorities, and the condition – though on the autism spectrum – requires techniques very different from classic autism to manage it. In a nutshell, while my son is very bright, he has a host of complex needs that manifest as anxiety, which in turn presents in violence and aggression, meaning that he finds mainstream school impossible.
Continue reading...A forum where readers can discuss today’s politics and share links to breaking news and to the most interesting politics stories, blogs and tweets on the web
We’re not writing our usual blog today but here, as an alternative, is the Politics Live readers’ edition. It is a place for you to discuss today’s politics, and to share links to breaking news and to the most interesting stories and blogs on the web.
Feel free to express your views robustly, but please treat others with respect and don’t resort to abuse. Guardian comment pages are supposed to be a haven from the Twitter/social media rant-orama, not an extension of it.
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Related: £3.5bn cut for school buildings leaves pupils in crumbling classrooms – Labour
Coatbridge South (North Lanarkshire) first preferences:
LAB: 42.2% (+12.6)
SNP: 41.8% (-0.9)
CON: 13.8% (+1.9)
GRN: 1.5% (+1.5)
UKIP: 0.4% (+0.4)
LDEM: 0.4% (+0.4)
Labour HOLD.
No Ind(s) (-15.9) as prev.
Wells St Thomas' (Mendip) result:
LDEM: 48.8% (+4.6)
CON: 40.5% (+5.2)
LAB: 10.8% (-9.8)
Liberal Democrat HOLD.
Belmont (Sutton) result:
CON: 46.7% (-9.6)
LDEM: 37.6% (+10.7)
LAB: 10.7% (-6.1)
GRN: 2.2% (+2.2)
UKIP: 1.8% (+1.8)
CPA: 1.1% (+1.1)
Conservative HOLD.
Linton (South Derbyshire) result:
CON: 62.5% (+23.8)
LAB: 32.7% (+2.8)
LDEM: 4.8% (+0.7)
Conservative HOLD.
No UKIP (-27.2) as prev.
Bosmere (Suffolk) result:
CON: 45.5% (-0.1)
LDEM: 44.2% (+5.1)
LAB: 10.2% (+2.4)
Conservative HOLD.
No Grn (-7.3) as prev.
Interviewers guide the way through the most dreaded part of the application process
University interviews are all too often shrouded in mystery. Example questions, such as those released by Oxford this month, are meant to shed light on the process and calm nerves. But they can sound like tricks to catch you out. One of this year’s is “tell me what a rock looks like” (and the answer is not “grey and stony”).
To help, we asked three interviewers to reveal their insights into the process, including common mistakes to avoid and how to answer unusual questions.
Continue reading...You are 15, your school building is falling apart, your teachers long ago lost faith in the power of aspiration, and you learned early on that you are considered a loser in life’s game of snakes and ladders, so how do you feel? Grim, obviously– but, as we learned last week, not as grim as your peer in Turkey. That is little cause for cheer.
In its latest social mobility report, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) said that the poorest pupils in this country were more unhappy and discouraged than in any other developed country bar Turkey. Fewer than one in six feel resilient, satisfied with their lives and integrated at school, compared with an OECD average of one in four – one in two in the Netherlands.
Continue reading...In 399BC, Socrates drank hemlock to fulfil the orders of the Athenian law court, which had sentenced him to death for impiety and corrupting the young.
His friends begged him to leave Athens instead, accompanying them into banishment. He refused and died as he had lived for 70 years, arguing the ethical superiority of his own decision. The scene was immortalised by Plato in his dialogue Phaedo and later by artists such as Jacques Louis David, whose painting hangs in New York’s Metropolitan Museum.
Continue reading...A decade of austerity has left the system much changed and in need of new ideas to meet competing demands
‘W hose welfare state?” That was the pointed question posed 60 years ago by Professor Brian Abel-Smith, LSE economist, when the initial glow of excitement about William Beveridge’s new welfare state was starting to fade. The answer that came back was that it belonged, more than people realised, to Britain’s burgeoning middle class. This was precisely the same group, it was contended, who complained most bitterly about the taxes that they had to pay to fund it.
Now the question has greater urgency than ever, though it arises in a radically different context. Ten years after the crash, amid apparent perma-austerity – which is set to continue for years to come unless this week’s budget delivers a radical shift in direction – the issue is who is most hurt or, indeed, helped by the upheaval in our welfare system.
Continue reading...The classicist Professor Mary Beard found herself the focus of a flurry of headlines this week when she spoke of her refusal to appear in television history documentaries featuring reconstructions. Or, as she put it, “B-list actors dressed up in sheets, saying, ‘Do pass the grapes, Marcus,’ and the like”. Actors, or at least some actors, were not especially thrilled.
Her substantive point, however, was nothing to do with actors – A-list, B-list or otherwise. Her remarks, part of a lecture for members of Voice of the Listener and Viewer, an organisation that campaigns for better public-service broadcasting, were part of a broader argument about the purpose of history on television. What Prof Beard was suggesting – in the lecture and in response to questions from the audience – was that TV history ought to put forward arguments. It can do more than just dazzle the viewer with enthusiasm or gorgeous visuals (though enthusiasm and beautiful filming are clearly a valuable part of what TV history has to offer).
Continue reading...Unless researchers can persuade the public of the importance of their work, academia will never be an investment priority
Today’s budget will set a clear direction for next year’s important comprehensive spending review, in which the chancellor will unveil spending plans for 2020 and beyond. Over the coming months, different sectors will be battling it out for their share of the pie. For the UK’s academic community, our push will be for increased investment in research and development.
We have a compelling case. Academic research drives prosperity and can help build a much more resilient and entrepreneurial UK economy, squarely rooted in incubating ideas which we turn into commercial success and skilled jobs.
Continue reading...30 October 1911: report concludes that a large proportion of children are half-starved, malnourished and suffering from diseased conditions of many kinds
The “Times” says: – The report for 1910 of Sir George Newman, chief medical officer of the Board of Education, contains a record of national stocktaking of the highest importance. It places before us the results of a practically complete medical inspection of the public elementary school population of England and Wales, and it goes a long way to justify apprehensions concerning the physical condition of the children, and consequently concerning the probable health and efficiency of their generation, and also to explain why it is that the results of free schooling so far have in several directions seemed to be scarcely adequate to the cost incurred in securing them. It not only discloses the fact that a very large proportion of the children concerned are suffering from diseased conditions of various kinds, all of which are calculated to interfere with the conduct of education and many with the ultimate attainment of sound physical development, but it discloses what is more important still, the fact that a considerable percentage of the children are suffering from a greater or less degree of malnutrition. In plain English, they are half-starved.
Continue reading...Jeff Kinney knows exactly why his Diary of a Wimpy Kid series appeals to reluctant readers. “If there is one lesson I’d like kids to take away from my stories, it is that reading is fun.”
He thinks it is vital for parents and teachers to strongly encourage children to read whatever they are interested in and will enjoy, no matter what it is: “One of the things I said to my own children is that I will never say no to getting them a book.”
Continue reading...
