A quarter of teenagers have never received any careers advice, according to new research. Tell us your experiences

A quarter of teenagers have never received any careers advice, according to research carried out by a vocational qualification exam board. The poll, which surveyed over 1,600 15- to 19-year-olds, also found that those on vocational courses were less likely to receive careers advice than those studying for A-levels and university courses, and that teenagers who have had a parent at university are more likely to ask for their advice than those with parents who have never been.

Did you receive careers advice at school, college or university? Did it make a significant impact on your career choice? What was the best piece of advice you received, and where did it come from?

Michael Gove's adviser belongs to a breed of political animal that's often reviled – but livens up Whitehall's corridors

Spare a thought, if you can, for cabinet ministers' special advisers. The title is sonorous enough though its abbreviation into "spad" sounds like an unappetising cooked meat. Spads operate in that bumpy terrain extending between civil service officialdom where public business is minuted to within an inch of its life, and the more private domain of the ministerial circle where information is assessed, gossip exchanged, and decisions made. Spads are ministers' personal appointees, and they are therefore courtiers who must please their patrons. But they are bound by the civil service's risk-averse codes of conduct. A spad's position is often happy but the role's ambiguities can make for a rough ride.

The latest spad to come under fire is Michael Gove's at the Department for Education. Dominic Cummings's use of his private email account, rather than his official one at the DoE, has come under scrutiny while the information commissioner is investigating the departmental grant of £500,000 to the New Schools Network. Dexterity though, in negotiating Whitehall paths, is surely part of what a spad is for.

Spads have few friends. Permanent civil servants know that special advisers are here today but may be gone quite soon. MPs view them with suspicion: cocky spads will happily drop hints about what they've read in cabinet documents in order to make parliamentarians feel more than usually excluded. Spads make few House of Commons appearances. Many may wish to be fast-tracked into a seat, but that acquisition is just a tedious detour before, they hope, the moment arrives when they can have their own spads to play with.

It's a standard hypocrisy of our public life that all parties, when in power, need spads, and that all parties, when in opposition, excoriate them. Contemporary spadocracy starts with Jack Straw, who was Barbara Castle's special adviser at Social Security from 1974 to 1976. But there were plenty of proto-spads. Lloyd George brought Thomas Jones in from university life in 1916 to be the cabinet's deputy secretary, Winston Churchill made Frederick Lindemann – "The Prof" – his special scientific adviser in 1940, and Ted Heath appointed the zoologist Victor Rothschild to be head of his Central Policy Review Staff in 1971. All three premiers were unusually strong-minded executives who were impatient with the self-protective neutrality of the civil service – an empire with a habit of hitting back discreetly. Gordon Brown's prime ministerial pledge to reduce Whitehall civil servant numbers was abandoned almost as soon as it was made.

Spads you may like or not. But they will always be around. British government remains cumbersome, rather gentlemanly and amateurish in its conventions, and resistant to the policy initiative. Spads exist to liven it up – and they will often get into trouble since it's practically impossible to separate the political from the purely administrative. There are now more than 35 years' worth of post-Straw advisers. Some have blazed trails. The policy-enriched brothers Miliband were the uber-spads of their epoch. David Cameron did wonders in cooling down Michael Howard at the Home Office. Alastair Campbell was technically a spad although his ways with dossiers made life difficult for the breed as a whole. Spads should cast light on governmental obscurity and avoid personal publicity if at all possible. But when dragged blinking into the light of an accusatory day they should co-operate with Sir Humphrey. That's what I did when I was a spad at the Welsh Office, and Dominic Cummings will be doing the same. He should also remember that spads are the Gloria Gaynors of British politics; they tend – one way or another – to survive.

Aleks Krotoski and Charles Arthur joined in the Tech Weekly studio by salesforce.com's chief scientist JP Ragaswami, a technologist who's been working in and thinking about the industry for more than 30 years. The trio tackle the latest news: Microsoft's announcement of its next-generation operating system, Windows 8; Rim's declining figures; and the "Beyond the Screen" scheme spearheaded by schools and universities minister David Willetts, hoping to inspire the next generation of people with programming skills.

JP talks about the social shifts in the workplace, and what we can expect from a post-scarcity world.

All this and more on Tech Weekly from the Guardian.

Minister's ally put wall of secrecy around charity as MPs' questions were rebuffed

Civil servants attempting to answer parliamentary questions about the Tories' free schools programme had their requests blocked by a key adviser to education secretary Michael Gove, leaked emails reveal.

Civil servants feared they would be "seen as … obstructing parliament" if they failed to respond to the MP's inquiry, the emails show.

The questions related to the New Schools Network, a charity set up to provide advice and guidance to the schools.

Labour MP Caroline Flint had asked Gove how many "expressions of interest" in setting up free schools the New Schools Network had received in her constituency, Don Valley, and in Doncaster. She also asked how many private schools had made either expressions of interest or formal proposals to become a free school.

Dominic Cummings, a confidant of Gove who was freelancing for the charity at the time, told a senior civil servant: "NSN is not giving out to you, the media or anybody else any figure on 'expressions of interest' for PQs, FOIs or anything else. Further, NSN has not, is not, and will never answer a single FOI request made to us concerning anything at all."

Cummings is now at the centre of a row over the use of private emails by Gove's closest advisers when conducting government business.

The Information Commissioner's office is investigating claims that civil servants were unable to find these emails when asked to retrieve them under the Freedom of Information act. Emails seen by the Guardian show that Cummings directed civil servants not to comply with the parliamentary question.

An official at the department replied to this by saying, in an email: "Our advice is clear: we need to respond as fully as possible to parliament."

The purpose of parliamentary questions is to hold ministers accountable, obliging them to explain and defend government policy to MPs.

In response to Flint's questions, schools minister Nick Gibb said: "New Schools Network does not receive expressions of interest." Gibb also told parliament that there had been one free school proposal in Doncaster and 45 private schools seeking to convert.

At the time of the email exchange, in July last year, Cummings was freelancing at the New Schools Network. He was appointed as one of Gove's special advisers in February this year. Prior to that appointment, he was closely involved in government work.

In response to an FOI request, the Department for Education has disclosed that "prior to his appointment, Mr Cummings attended a range of meetings at the department to allow him to become familiar with the portfolio of a special adviser".

Charities are not subject to the FOI act, which applies only to public authorities.

However, critics say the email raises fresh questions about Gove's advisers and their "secretive" attitude to official business.

Andy Burnham, the shadow education secretary, said: "These extraordinary exchanges shed further light on the murky dealings around Michael Gove. We already know that Dominic Cummings lobbied for cash to be given to the New Schools Network 'without delay', an organisation he went on to work for. We now learn that on arrival he sought to implement a restrictive and secretive approach to dealing with parliamentary enquiries.

"It would seem that Dominic Cummings holds an arrogant disregard for government processes and accountability to parliament. I have asked the cabinet secretary to investigate the actions of Dominic Cummings and other advisers to Michael Gove."

Shortly after the election, David Cameron declared that the government must "set new standards" for transparency. In a letter to government departments, he wrote: "Greater transparency across government is at the heart of our shared commitment to enable the public to hold politicians and public bodies to account."

Critics say the free schools programme has been characterised by a lack of transparency. The government has refused to disclose details of applications to set up free schools next September.

The department has declined an FOI request by the Association of Colleges, which represents further education and sixth form colleges, to see the list of applications to open free schools for 16-19-year-olds.

Martin Doel, chief executive of the Association of Colleges, said: "It is the Secretary of State's statutory duty to consider the impact of new schools on other local providers.

"New schools need to start with the support of the local community, other local schools and Colleges. If this information is not made public, we could see the unnecessary duplication of some good College provision for 16-19-year olds. Some Colleges may have to close particular courses if class sizes became unsustainable."

The Financial Times has reported that Gove and his advisers conducted government business on private emails. Civil servants were then unable to find these emails, which included discussions of replacing DfE personnel, when asked to retrieve them under the FOI Act.

In response, a spokesman for the DfE said: "The Cabinet Office is clear that private email accounts do not fall within the FOI Act and are not searchable by civil servants. Neither the secretary of state nor special advisers have been asked to disclose emails sent from private accounts."

Maurice Frankel, director of the pressure group Campaign for Freedom of Information, said: "If [Gove] or his special advisers used their private email accounts to carry out government business, those emails are subject to the FOI Act."

The DfE spokesman added that Sir David Bell, the permanent secretary, is looking into the FT allegations, and added: "The permanent secretary is satisfied that ministers and special advisers act within the law."

• The headline of this piece was corrected on 21 September from 'Emails blocked by Gove adviser', and the introductory paragraph amended to avoid repetition

Senior scientists write to David Cameron about the future of mathematical sciences after funding cuts

In a letter to the prime minister, senior mathematicians say work in key maths fields needed in a modern economy will suffer

Read the letter to David Cameron

Senior mathematicians have written to the prime minister to protest about cuts in funding for their research at the hands of a government funding agency. They claim the agency did not adequately consult the mathematics community before making its decisions.

The academics, including Oxford University mathematician and TV presenter, Marcus du Sautoy, and a former president of the Royal Society, Sir Michael Atiyah, said that the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) has engaged in "central planning and micro-managing" of research priorities and this could have devastating results for British science.

As part of the EPSRC's budget cuts for forthcoming years, the agency announced that only researchers working in statistics and applied probabilty can apply for fellowships, which allow young researchers to carry on their work after completing their PhDs. According to Burt Totaro, a professor of astronomy and geometry at the University of Cambridge who organised the letter to David Cameron, the decision means that researchers in subjects including geometry, fluid dynamics, number theory and computational mathematics may now be unable to continue their research in the UK.

The letter is signed by 25 senior mathematicians, including four winners of the Fields Medal, a former chief scientific adviser to the UK government and academics from Imperial College London, Princeton University and the Universities of Oxford and Bristol.

It says that "mathematics is a bedrock on which reside science, engineering and technology, finance and economics, the study of weather and the environment, and much of the modern economy. As any subject becomes better understood, it becomes more quantitative, so that the role of mathematics becomes more important. Businesses in the fastest growing sectors, from Google to medical imaging to financial services, are desperate to employ mathematicians. As technology advances, mathematics will become yet more important to our economy."

The academics claimed that the cut in fellowships was decided without any meaningful consultation of the UK mathematics community. They added that it was "foolhardy to claim that one part of mathematics is the only useful one".

Business applications of mathematics, they said, often come from the most surprising and unpredictable sources. Internet security and bank transactions, for example, depend on a wide range of mathematics including number theory, and mobile phones rely on mathematical analysis, combinatorial algorithms and statistics.

"Unfortunately, this is a trend that the bureaucrats at EPSRC have not spotted, partly because they refuse to consult mathematicians," they wrote. "The damage to the UK in running down what is now a superb mathematics community (containing for instance six winners of the Fields medal – the maths Nobel prize) will be heavy."

They added that the decision to scrap fellowships was "little more than a bureaucratic fiat" that would mean that this year's best young mathematicians would be lost to the UK.

Attila Emecz, director of communications, information and strategy at the EPSRC, said that the statement in the letter that the research council would be stopping support for fellowships in all areas of mathematical sciences other than statistics and applied probability was incorrect.

"EPSRC has been clear that the scope of the areas that will be eligible for fellowship support in mathematical sciences will expand as our strategy of shaping capability to ensure the UK remains internationally competitive develops. We plan to announce these further areas before the end of the year," said Emecz.

"We have changed our fellowship process so that we now accept applications throughout the year rather than just once a year. This will provide increased flexibility for those wishing to apply. The current focus on statistics and applied probability has been chosen because of a national need to build capacity in this area and we look forward to receiving applications in the other identified areas in future."

Earlier this year, the EPSRC announced a project called "Shaping capability" aimed at prioritising its annual budget of more than £760m of public funds to deal with expected budget cuts of up to 15% in real terms over the next few years. It plans to fund chosen research areas at the expense of others, based around the perceived national importance of those fields.

The letter from mathematicians comes a month after more than 100 academics, including six Nobel laureates, wrote to David Cameron to complain about cuts to synthetic organic chemistry, scientific research essential to industries ranging from biotechnology to agriculture.

"Synthetic organic chemistry and the new molecules that synthetic chemists produce will in the 21st century come to influence vast tracts of human endeavour from molecular archaeology to molecular zoology," that letter read. "To even think of disadvantaging and disabling such important scientific innovation beggars belief."

Serious Fraud Office prosecutes Bill Lowther for allegedly paying for son of Vietnamese bank governor to go to Durham

A British businessman has appeared in court accused of conspiring to corruptly pay for the son of a high-ranking foreign official to be educated at Durham University.

Bill Lowther, 71, is being prosecuted by the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) for allegedly helping to secure the university place for the son of the then governor of Vietnam's state-owned bank as an inducement.

The prosecution is part of an expanding investigation across three continents into multimillion pound bribes allegedly paid by a banknote printing firm to land contracts.

The investigation into the firm, Securency, is being carried out by the SFO, in collaboration with police in Australia and Asia.

Lowther is the first person to be prosecuted by the SFO during the investigation.

On Tuesday, Lowther, of Carlisle, spoke only to confirm his name and date of birth during the short hearing at City of Westminster magistrates court, London.

Senior district judge Howard Riddle sent the case to Southwark crown court where there will be a hearing on 2 December. He was released on bail.

Lowther is alleged to have helped to obtain a place at Durham University for the son of Le Duc Thuy, the former governor of the bank, and to pay for his accommodation and fees. According to the SFO, the alleged conspiracy took place in 2003.

The son, Le Duc Minh, was on a postgraduate course at the university's business school in 2003-4. He has denied that his education was funded by corrupt payments.

Investigators allege that the former bank governor was induced to give contracts to the firm, Securency.

Lowther was a former director of the firm. He was also deputy chairman of Innovia Films , a manufacturing firm in Wigton, Cumbria which owns half of Securency.

After the hearing, Lowther declined to comment.

In another part of its investigation into Securency, the SFO has been investigating suspected illicit payments to Nigerian officials.

Architect of the brutalist landmark Pimlico school in central London

Sometimes a single building becomes the focus for an architect's endeavours and reputation. For John Bancroft, who has died aged 82, that building was Pimlico school. Not only did Bancroft design and see this striking landmark of the 1960s through to completion, he also waged an unremitting and lonely struggle for more than a decade to save his cherished creation from destruction, to no ultimate avail.

Pimlico was political from the start. A monument to the comprehensive schooling policies of the Inner London Education Authority and the architectural vagaries of the Greater London council, it was imposed in 1967–70 on a razed and open urban block in the heart of Tory Westminster. A little earlier, and a school in a tower block might have faced off against the surrounding stucco terraces. But by the mid-60s the experts knew what children could do in and to lifts. So Bancroft, the GLC's inhouse job architect, opted for a walk-up building of four storeys only, linear and compact, with a stepped section to maximise daylight. The lowest storey was sunk to the levels of the former townhouse basements. Out of this pit, like a creature in a zoo, grew the concrete-and-glass school, glaring at the rectangle of streets all round. Boxy projecting classrooms with canted glazing, supposedly self-cleaning, completed the brutalist effect of provocation.

Unluckily for Bancroft, Pimlico school was out of date when it opened. Educational ideas change fast, and he had been handed an outdated brief. The bigger spaces worked well, but the classrooms were inflexibly shaped and grouped, while the double-height concourse that was the school's heart was never put to full use after the departure of the enthusiastic first headteacher, Ken Green. Worse, the heating and cooling system was rapidly vandalised, and no lasting solution to the extreme solar gain in the classrooms could be found.

Pimlico soon earned itself a reputation, especially in music and drama, but did so despite its remarkable building, not because of it. When Westminster council, casting greedy eyes upon the site, decided in 1995 to redevelop half of it with luxury flats and create a smaller school on the other half under a PFI scheme, the idea proved hard to combat. Bancroft, by then long retired but always a doughty campaigner, summoned up influential architectural allies and saw the first scheme off, maintaining that simple changes could renew the school. But he was hamstrung by his inability to get Pimlico listed, ministers taking the expedient view that inherent design faults impaired its architectural value. The last remnants of Pimlico school disappeared this year in favour of a faceless substitute.

Bancroft was born in London and brought up in Nottingham. His civil-servant father was an amateur painter and also collected books, a passion which John fully inherited. He started as a draughtsman in a brewery, where someone noticed his talent and persuaded his father to pay for his training at Nottingham University. After national service at Chatham in Kent, he worked for the local borough council there before moving in 1954 to Crawley Development Corporation, in Sussex.

His ambitions took off only when he joined the schools division of the London county council's architects' department in 1957. There, John caused amusement by wearing a smock at the drawing board, but proved his credentials with designs for Elfrida Rathbone (now Haymerle) school, in Peckham, and an extension to Philippa Fawcett college (now Dunraven school), in Streatham. After Pimlico, he was shunted into an administrative role in the housing division, and retired early in 1980.

Though loyal to the public service and collective ethic, Bancroft was at heart an individualist who regarded his calling as a high art with spiritual aims. Critical of most architecture of his day, as early as 1973 he announced, "I am a Victorian at heart." True to his word, he was active in the Victorian Society. Under his leadership a clique called the Dinosaur Five gingered up the GLC in 1979 to oppose a plan by the Natural History Museum to destroy the side galleries of their Grade I-listed building. The campaign's climax was a cake baked in the shape of the museum, from which Spike Milligan cut the threatened galleries before the attendant press. An alternative scheme devised by Bancroft helped save them.

During his retirement he was involved in the restorations of HMS Warrior, then at Hartlepool and now at Portsmouth, and of the SS Great Britain at Bristol. He also designed premises for Howes' Bookshop at Hastings, the source of many acquisitions decking his walls at Haywards Heath in Sussex.

John was a gravel-voiced character with streaks of grit and obstinacy but liberal views and a saving sense of humour. He is survived by his fourth wife, Janet, and by a daughter, Sarah, from his second marriage.

• John Bancroft, architect, born 28 October 1928; died 29 August 2011

Voluntary scheme will start next year and is aimed at 100,000 children in danger of 'falling through the cracks'

Nick Clegg will unveil a compassionate response to the riots in his keynote speech to Liberal Democrats on Wednesday by proposing that as many as 100,000 children at risk of going off the rails be offered a chance to attend two-week summer school prior to starting secondary studies. He will say the voluntary summer school can prevent children "falling through the cracks".

The £50m scheme will start next year, offering catch-up classes to help young people who he says have lost touch with their future. His response is markedly different to the punitive one offered by David Cameron in the immediate wake of the summer unrest. Rather than attacking a general collapse in morality, Clegg argues the generation that rioted appeared to have lost any stake in society. He was struck by the number of rioters who had nothing to lose. "It was about what they could get here and now, not what lies in front of them tomorrow and in the years ahead," he says. "Too many of those young people had simply fallen through the cracks, not just this summer but many summers ago when they lost touch with their own future," Clegg will say at the close of the party's Birmingham conference.

The point of transition from primary to secondary education at age 11 has often been seen by educationists as a critical moment when disadvantaged children fall behind. Clegg claims those who go off the rails in later years are those who struggled in school.

Cash for the scheme will be allocated in England on the basis of the number of pupils in receipt of free school meals, and participation will be available to anyone identified by secondary schools as likely to be benefit from the catch-up classes. Classes may be run by secondary schools or voluntary groups.

A wider dispute is raging between Clegg's party and the Conservatives on how to respond to the riots. The Lib Dem justice minister, Lord McNally, revealed that No 10 wanted the word "punishment" inserted into the legal aid and sentencing bill. He said the "little elves that work in No 10 helping the prime minister" had been at work. He warned Conservative ministers not to turn the legislation into a "Christmas tree bill" loaded with new ideas.

Student says three years of harassment 'wrecked her life' and calls for persecutor to be sent to prison

A woman harassed for more than three years by an online stalker who turned out to be her boyfriend has called for him to be sent to prison.

Ruth Jeffery became withdrawn and depressed following a campaign waged by Shane Webber, who impersonated her online and sent photos of her naked to her friends and family.

Webber, 22, of Clifton, Nottingham, will be sentenced next month after pleading guilty at Southampton magistrates' court on Monday to a charge of causing harassment, alarm or distress.

Jeffrey received such detailed messages that she believed her movements were being constantly watched by someone unknown to her and became frightened to go outside.

"I want him to be put in prison because he has wrecked the past three-and-a-half years of my life," said Jeffrey, a Loughborough University student from West Bridgford, Nottinghamshire, who reported the abuse to police in March 2010.

"I've known him for 10 years, so in a way it feels like the past 10 years have been wasted. We were really close. We did everything together. I would tell him everything. I thought he was telling me everything."

Impersonating Jeffrey, Webber contacted others online and pretended to be sexually attracted to them. He gave out her term-time university address, leading to one man turning up at her house.

"He created an account very similar to mine and was speaking to people, making out he was me," Jeffery said.

She eventually realised that some of the detail in the messages could only be known to her boyfriend, but when he was confronted by her and her parents, he denied any knowledge of the harassment and pointed the finger at one of his friends, who was arrested and had his computer seized by police.

Webber began his campaign by setting up multiple fake email addresses, which he then used to contact Jeffery on MSN Messenger, pretending to be former schoolmates, before bombarding her with sexually explicit photos and videos. He also hacked her MSN and Facebook accounts.

He was caught in June this year, when he used Jeffery's own email account to send explicit images of her to her entire contact list, including her father. The email also directed people to search for further images of her online. Webber was traced through the internet protocol address of the computer from which the email was sent.

Jeffery, who spoke out yesterday following Webber's court appearance on Monday, said he might have been motivated by jealously.

"He dropped out of school. He doesn't have any qualifications and it seemed like he wanted to stop me from getting a degree."

She first met Webber when they were at primary school.

"Throughout the whole relationship, he was a bit controlling and possessive really. If I didn't go to see him the moment I had some free time, he would start complaining.

"I want other people to realise it has not been me [sending the photos and messages], and I want it to put other people off from doing the same thing."

Stereotypes are usually wrong, as the serious-minded youth of Durham remind us again

This sounds the wrong way round, with all due respect to students (and I was once myself, long ago).

A group of them in Durham have won a battle against late-night noise from a pizzeria whose owner was after a music licence until 1.30am.

Fabio Ciampolillo has now withdrawn his application to the city council in Durham, where his outlet La Spahettata sometimes has the air of a nightclub with added pasta and cheese. Earlier this year, he put in for 2.30am seven days a week but the latest bid was scaled down to 1.30am on Fridays and Saturdays and midnight Sunday to Thursday.

His first initiative galvanised Durham students who have also been supported by local councillor David Stoker who says:

I'm pleased the application has been withdrawn. I think it was highly inappropriate for a restaurant adjacent to residential accommodation to have a music licence into the early hours.

Six student objectors sharing a house in Saddler Street appear to be models of Unbroken Britain, in their submission that an extended licence would increase anti-social behaviour and cause unacceptable noise levels.

They told licensing officers:

We are here at the university to study and we have worked hard to achieve a university place and we do not want our studies affected. We need to
be able to study.

The local student landlords Q Student objected as well, saying that several tenants were "extremely concerned".

It isn't over yet, mind. Ciampolillo's solicitor, Giles McCourt, said that building alterations would be carried out before a renewed application was put in.

I like student areas very much, to the extent that I dropped a brick a year or two back with a young woman on work experience with me from Headingley, the 'student Nirvana' in Leeds. Driving through the place and gushing about its liveliness, I realised that I wasn't getting much response.

As you get older, more and more people look young, and she proved not to be a student but a 'real person' clinging on to one of the shrinking number of houses not turned over to youthful multiple occupation. Maybe some of Durham's students would like to move to Leeds for their post-graduate studies or first jobs.

What a relief to see the Hunterian Museum displaying its Antonine Wall sculptures so simply

I really enjoyed examining the sculptures from the Roman empire's most northerly frontier last week, for a news piece published earlier this week. These remnants of the Antonine Wall have been given a beautiful new gallery in the Hunterian, Glasgow, an apse-like niche in Gilbert Scott's soaring, cathedral-like museum building, which is now open to the public again after two years' refurbishment.

And what was so great about it was that it was entirely unapologetic. There were no interactive displays imagining entirely spurious lives for the men and women (OK, woman) commemorated on these stones; no film projections depicting legionaries marching through the Scottish lowlands. Instead, the sculptures, most of which are elaborately carved "distance slabs" (recording such-and-such a number of feet of wall built by such-and-such a chunk of the army) are simply allowed to be themselves: objects of great age and gravity; things of beauty and importance. They are uplit rather handsomely and, as the lovely natural light fades, they look more and more dramatic; they are intensely evocative.

Writing a book about Roman Britain, I've seen so many museum displays where the museum designers and marketing departments have clearly taken fright at the idea of visitors being confronted with something so stark as a chunk of stone with some Latin on it, and have decided to cheer the experience up with screens and audio recordings and God knows what else. I always gripe about this and am always being told that the museum's not just for me, but must cater to different audiences, and that these cold slabs are offputting to children and indeed absolutely inaccessible to most. Maybe that's so (although I'm inclined to think that's a slightly patronising view), and of course I'm projecting my own version of the romance of antiquity on these shards of another time. Still, thank Heaven there are still one or two museums where the curators have some confidence in the power of the objects to impress or intrigue on something approaching their own terms.

I walked the line of the Antonine Wall last year and, though most of it is lost to trunk roads, the Forth-Clyde canal and suburban sprawl, there are sections of it (notably Bar Hill and Rough Castle) that are dramatic and impressive. It's absolutely worth discovering this relatively little-known patch of Britain's Roman past, and the Hunterian's new display is the best place of all to start.

Where are people losing their jobs? Which are the university hotspots for sciences? Find the latest statistics from the OECD showing how science, technology and industry trends compare by country
• Get the data

Where have people lost their jobs in Europe? And why are American universities ranking highest in the world for sciences?

The latest Science, Technology and Industry Scoreboard published by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) shows that US universities are leading the way for research worldwide.

Of the top 50 institutions for research in all areas 40 are American universities – leading heavily for chemistry, computer science and neuroscience. The UK has the second highest number of top research universities. The report highlights the strength of top UK institutions for subject areas such agricultural and biological science and environmental science.

The US also topped a reputation ranking of worldwide universities earlier this year taking nearly half of the top 100 places with the UK boasting the second highest number of reputable universities.

Research and development counted for $400bn of spending in the US in 2009, the highest of the countries compared. China and Japan spent the second and third highest amounts respectively.

The OECD scoreboard also highlight the declining quality of patent filings over the last decade. An average decline of 20% was noted between the 1990s and 2000s. The US, Germany and Japan are leading the way as innovators, recording the highest cited number of inventors patents.

With over 180 comparable indicators, the full scoreboard focuses on trends in science, technology and industry. We have compiled a selection which can be downloaded in the spreadsheet.

The graphic above by our graphic artist, Finbarr Sheehy, shows where the university hotspots are according to the OECD for research by subject. We have previously published rankings by research company Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) which looks at top universities by subject - though research is only part of the methodology for these tables. Interestingly, the US comes ranks highest on both tables.

We are also able to see where the biggest job losses were in Europe during 2009-2010 from the graphic. The mining, manufacturing and utilities industry recorded the highest number of job losses with the Czech Republic and Italy seeing the biggest changes.

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Originally published in the Guardian on 21 September 1961

The slogan on the bridge in Princess Street, Manchester, yesterday said: "Free children from the dogs of war." It is tempting to imagine that this was a picayune, middle-of-the-night gesture done in classroom chalk by a blackleg English master concerned about the public image of his profession.

But the lettering seemed too faded for that, and there was nothing overtly aggressive about the strike; no ugly scenes outside the school gates, no bomb-site meetings with men on a pile of bricks saying "Good morning, brothers, the position is this . . ."

In a gaunt Ardwick school, half a dozen teachers, who had just had the heady experience of supervising only 13 children for a school meal and who now had no pupils at all in the place, spent the afternoon in the staff-room catching up on their marking. At another school running in low gear, a woman teacher said rather testily: "I'll tell you what the strike has meant. It has meant we've had enough cups to go round in the staff-room."

The school crossing attendant in Brownley Road, Wythenshawe, who had his normal clientele of 400 sliced in half, thought it was rather a bad thing that children should learn about strikes at first hand at school. But very few of the issues involved seemed to have rubbed off on the children on the loose in the city's streets; they merely cultivated their normal leisure-time preoccupations like throwing stones at each other and lugging round three of their younger sisters in a vintage pram.

The headmaster of one school with half its classrooms operational said: "A very quiet strike, isn't it? We're all on very good terms. I can remember strikes my father used to be in, and I tell the younger teachers 'It's no use going out unless you can stick it out for six months.' But they don't listen. I could tell them how to run a protest. Working to rule. Like insisting on 30 pupils to a class. I'd go round and pick out all the rogues and villains in every class and send them home. You'd have the police round here on their knees in three days asking us to take them back.

"But it's a good thing teachers would never accept a thing like that. It's rather fine when you hear talk about refusing to do extra duties, and the teachers say at once that they'd never let their after-school drama group or football team go to pieces. They wouldn't accept anything that would affect the children. I don't think the children have any feelings about the strike at all. I don't think it's very enjoyable for them; it's come too soon after the summer holidays."

Michael Gove is on the spot again over the behaviour of his aides and the New Schools Network

Michael Gove on the spot again

• Michael Gove is in trouble over the behaviour of staff at the New Schools Network, a charity set up to provide advice on setting up free schools. Labour MP Caroline Flint asked Gove how many "expressions of interest" in setting up free schools the New Schools Network had received that related to her constituency, Don Valley, and to Doncaster. MPs question ministers in order to hold government to account, but when a senior civil servant tried to collect the information to answer Flint's question, Dominic Cummings, one of Gove's confidants, said: "NSN is not giving out to you, the media or anybody else any figure on 'expressions of interest' for PQs, FOIs or anything else. Further, NSN has not, is not, and will never answer a single FOI request made to us concerning anything at all."

Gove is also facing claims that he and his advisers used their private email accounts to conduct government business. Jeevan Vasagar reports:

The emails allegedly include a discussion of replacing personnel in the department but civil servants were unable to find those emails when asked to retrieve them under the Freedom of Information Act, the Financial Times reported ...
Dominic Cummings, Gove's chief political aide, wrote to colleagues shortly after he was appointed stating he "will not answer any further emails to my official DfE account …"
The email continued: "i will only answer things that come from gmail accounts from people who i know who they are. i suggest that you do the same in general but thats obv up to you guys – i can explain in person the reason for this …"

The whole story becomes all the more ironic given the thrust of a speech by David Willetts yesterday. The universities minister told higher education providers to get "ahead of the curve" and improve transparency before others improved it for them. "'Show students the data – or others will do it for you', Willetts warns" ran the headline in the Times Higher.

More education news from the Guardian

• Nick Clegg has announced a £50m catch-up summer school scheme to help children prepare for secondary school. Patrick Wintour reports:

The point of transition from primary to secondary education at age 11 has often been seen by educationists as a critical moment when disadvantaged children fall behind. Clegg claims those who go off the rails in later years are those who struggled in school.

But Conor Ryan, a former Labour education adviser points out that this is not extra money... it will be drawn from the £1.25bn pupil premium pot.

• A British businessman has appeared in court accused of conspiring to corruptly pay for the son of a high-ranking foreign official to be educated at Durham University. Rob Evans reports:

Bill Lowther, 71, is being prosecuted by the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) for allegedly helping to secure the university place for the son of the then governor of Vietnam's state-owned bank as an inducement.

• Mathematicians warn of damage to UK economy from maths funding cuts

Education news from around the web

• In the Telegraph the high master of the Manchester grammar school, Christopher Ray, is arguing that new academies must be able to select pupils otherwise "they will fail the most able". Under the headline: "State classrooms are stifling social mobility in Britain," he poses these questions:

"is it better for a very able boy to attend a mixed-ability academy and be given specialist support at a distance by an independent school? Or is it preferable for him to join us on a means-tested bursary so that he is in daily contact with a critical mass of boys with similar interests and capacities?"

• The Telegraph is also carrying a piece by Anthea Rowan who was dismayed to discover that the boarding school she subscribed her daughter to turned out not to have any other weekend boarders.

"The school my daughter attends describes itself as a boarding school. That's what it says on the tin. And that's what it is: when we visited, we met boarders. When we enquired, we were told there would be other boarders starting in her house, in her year and at the same time as her. So she was beyond disappointed when she discovered that she was the only full boarder in her year in her house when she started a year ago."

• The BBC is reporting "one in five universities in deficit".

• Rural schools in west China provinces are being sponsored by tobacco companies, Bloomberg reports:

One of the first things primary school kids learn is what made their education possible: tobacco.
"On the gates of these schools, you'll see slogans that say 'Genius comes from hard work - Tobacco helps you become talented,'" said Xu Guihua, secretary general of the privately funded lobby group Chinese Association on Tobacco Control. The schools are sponsored by local units of China's government-owned monopoly cigarette maker. "They are pinning their hopes on young people taking up smoking."

• The DfE is giving parents more freedom to run their own local children's centres. More on this in the Guardian at a later date, I'm sure...

Events

• The Clarity Foundation will work to improve provision for children with special educational needs. More information here, and they are holding a launch at a two-day conference in Newbury in October.

• CRASSH, The Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities, part of Cambridge University, is holding a series of six free lectures to discuss "The Idea of the University"

From the Guardian's Higher Education Network

• Don't doubt the value of blogging in academic publishing. Blogging encourages wider participation and generates instant debates. It should be wholeheartedly embraced by early career researchers, says Sarah-Louise Quinnell.

• Live chat: Should universities regard students as consumers? As marketisation intensifies, will higher education become hire education? What are the implications for academia if students become the consumers? Join us Friday, 23 September at 1pm, or post your questions now.

Teachers seminars from the Guardian Education Centre

Reading for pleasure – bringing classics to life

This half-day conference for secondary school teachers will explore the use and teaching of classic books from Dickens and beyond. Keynote speakers will be Simon Callow, actor and Dickens enthusiast and Judy Golding, daughter of William Golding, author of Lord of the Flies. 20 October, London

Insight into digital journalism

Spend a day at the Guardian and find out how an international news media organisation works. The seminar will focus on aspects of digital journalism including writing and editing for a news website, the relationship between print and web journalism, live blogging, the use of social media, podcasting and video production. 2 November, Kings Place, London

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Judy Friedberg is away until 27 September, in the meantime please send your tips and stories for Cribsheet to Frederika Whitehead.

The restorative powers of cinema enjoyed a starring role at the Wellcome Trust's celebration of 75 years of medicine on screen

Last weekend, the Wellcome Trust celebrated 75 years of medicine on screen by transforming the Truman Brewery into a 1980s hospital, complete with a therapy on film ward. Here, visitors were offered consultations with a "doctor" who prescribed a healthy dose of film to cure your malaise. I've long suspected the only effective treatment for the common cold is repeated doses of romcom to be applied on the sofa, but can film really make us feel better?

I perch on a blue plastic chair and thumb a genuine 80s copy of Smash Hits while waiting for the doctor. The walls are lined with ads expounding the dangers of smoking while pregnant (low birth rate) and of smoking before kissing (reduced likelihood of repeat kissing). Medical assessment form completed, I'm taken through to the ward.

Disappointingly, the doctor doesn't have anything to help clear up an eye infection that's bothered me recently. Instead, she offers me something to help cut down on booze. I'm settled into a hospital bed behind a green screen and given a pair of headphones. My prescription, a public health film featuring a group of twentysomethings getting pissed down the pub, begins.

First, a barmaid warns the group's ringleader that beer will make him fat. Then the girls in the group flounce off, repelled by his drunkenness. To me it looks like he's having a jolly time. And the girls seem like party poopers. Meanwhile, my friend Claire has been prescribed a clip with cartoon toes talking to each other about uncomfortable shoes intended to treat her shopaholism. Within minutes of leaving we're talking about frocks, so I think she probably needed a stronger dose.

Our treatments might have been ineffective, but can cinema more generally improve our health and wellbeing? In a roundabout way, film does affect our health. Movies like Michael Moore's Sicko and One of Them Is Named Brett (a documentary by the event's host, Roger Graef, on thalidomide children) can change attitudes and, eventually, government policy. Film can also inspire us to take better care of ourselves. What might have been "Oh, just a funny lump" could become "Oh, just a funny lump I must get checked out" after a couple of hours sobbing in front of Terms of Endearment. In the same way, film can be bad for you. Hollywood has long been like the cool kid at school your mum would prefer you didn't hang out with. It smoked, so we smoked. It starved itself to a size 0, so we developed an unhealthy body image. It didn't wear a seatbelt in high-speed car chases, so we didn't wear one when popping out for milk.

But film can act as an emotional balm. Lorenzo's Oil might help a parent come to terms with having a sick child. The Lost Weekend has helped people understand alcoholism. My Left Foot has potential to help someone overcome a disability. The Men, in which Marlon Brando played a war veteran paralysed below the waist, inspired many disabled veterans to live fuller lives. Film can show us that we are not alone in our experiences. Consider the story of Norman Cousins, a journalist who prescribed himself Groucho Marx films in order to induce the anaesthetic effect of belly-laughter. That alone makes me feel better.

In 2005, researchers at the University of Maryland school of medicine compared the effects of watching the first 15 minutes of Saving Private Ryan to watching 15 minutes of Kingpin. They concluded that comedy is brilliant for the vascular system. If you're the kind of person who gets grouchy when denied a weekly trip to the cinema, there could be a genuine medical reason. Graef points out that film is "like a kind of active meditation". Meditation has been found to lower blood pressure, aid relaxation, improve concentration and even slow down brain deterioration due to ageing. Regular practitioners report feeling irritable and depressed if forced to go without. If watching a film really is like meditating, that could be why you get prickly when denied it.

But what of my trip to therapy on film? Did it make me feel better? Well no, not really. Perhaps a public health film wasn't the best way to go. It just made me fancy a trip down the pub …

• Therapy on film was part of Just What the Doctor Ordered: 75 years of Medicine on Screen. Therapy on film's clips were drawn from the Wellcome Collection's moving image archive.

Owen Bowcott joins Professor Jim Scanlan from the University of Southampton, whose academics are developing data-gathering drones for commercial customers

University offers first masters in unmanned autonomous vehicles as military and civilian applications expand into £5bn industry

The first postgraduate course in the design of unmanned autonomous vehicles is being launched at Southampton University this month as the global market for civilian and military drones expands into a £5bn-a-year industry.

The city where the Spitfire was developed in the 1930s has now become the first to build and fly a UAV created using laser-printing technology – a drone whose elliptical wings echo those of the second world war fighter plane.

Academics at the university are working with the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) to develop swarms of micro-drones to study atmospheric and climate patterns.

The Southampton team is also in discussions with the Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca), which is interested in covert, aerial surveillance, as well as with the US navy's disruptive technologies group, with which they are exploring the possibility of producing disposable drones that could be "reprinted" every day.

The production technique, known as sintering, uses 3D printing technology to create solid objects out of cakes of powdered nylon, solidifying designs with lasers beams.

UAVs are seen by many as a threat, as "Big Brother in the sky". The rapid proliferation of robotic technology for military and surveillance purposes has prompted calls for international legal controls to be imposed on the technology.

Attempts to develop "autonomous targeting" – where unmanned planes lock automatically on to what their on-board computers assume is the enemy – have reinforced criticism of supposedly pinpoint drone strikes in Pakistan that have caused civilian deaths. This week the US announced the expansion of its drone base in the Seychelles, for use in attacks on Somalia.

But the CIA's Predators and Reapers are no longer the only drones in the skies. In the last few years the variety of uses for UAVs has multiplied, diversifying from military surveillance or remotely operated missile systems. As well as working with the BAS, Southampton University is helping game parks in Namibia to develop UAVs that track endangered species.

Southampton's MSc course, which has 12 students signed up for its first year, will not only cover the development and flying of unmanned aircraft but also the construction of underwater and land-based robotic vehicles. The course is expected to expand to 20 students in a few years' time.

The university began developing its UAV expertise in the early 1990s with the Autosub programme for the National Oceanography Centre, which is based in the city. The battery-powered submarine completed 300 dives to map the North Sea and assess herring stocks.

"We want to readjust the public's view of UAVs," said Dr Matt Bennett, managing director of Sky Circuits who will also teach on the course. "People just saw them initially as being for police surveillance or the military but there are many other uses.

"People should love them. They have smaller engines than planes. They are environmentally friendly." Bennett's firm makes autopilot systems for UAVs.

Professor Jim Scanlan, one of the course directors and a former head of manufacturing research at BAE Systems, cites the example of the Met Office, which sends weather balloons 6,000ft (1,829 metres) up into the sky with £100 worth of instruments that are "thrown away" after each flight. Working with weather forecasters, he hopes to be able to develop UAVs that return intact with their equipment.

"We are studying non-military applications and that's where the big growth will be," Scanlan said. "I believe the course is the only one in the world taking students from designing and building a UAV to flying the aircraft."

Drones are already being used in Britain for aerial photography and for surveyors' inspections of high-rise buildings. Police forces and fire brigades have deployed UAVs too.

More exotic and inventive uses are now being explored: as search and rescue aircraft for coastguards, as a means of measuring volcanic ash densities and as crop monitoring systems. "We have had an approach from a game park in Namibia that is worried about poaching and wants to keep a track of cheetahs," said Scanlan.

Most drones are driven by propellers at the rear so the nose section can be filled with a multitude of sensors such as thermal-imaging devices, infrared cameras, radiation detectors, temperature and humidity recorders or audio equipment.

Paparazzi use of drones, for remotely-snatched celebrity photos, may not be far away. In April, the Daily, a Murdoch online US news services for the iPad, hired a drone to gather aerial pictures of the devastation inflicted by a tornado on Tuscaloosa, Alabama. The Southampton team are also talking to the BBC about exploiting UAVs for camera work.

Data, books, blogs, articles and more from this site and elsewhere to support your development studies – plus tell us your study recommendations

This is our pick of resources from the Global development site and our partners that we think development studies students might find useful. Browse our list and tell us below what else you've found useful.

We suggest you bookmark these or add them to your RSS reader so you can track them automatically (here are some tips for setting up RSS)

• Guardian Global development – this link opens a feed for our whole site. Alternatively, you can specify pages you want to receive, as long as the page has an RSS symbol. For example, you may just want to receive a feed of podcasts , or on the millennium development goals, or you may want to explore our subject pages and create feeds on the future of development or aid. And take a look at our development calendar for upcoming events you might want to track

• Development blogs – explore our blogosphere, which ranges from World Bank experts to anonymous aid workers. Plus, check out other readers' development blog recommendations to begin compiling a list of your daily reads

• Guardian Global development partners – these include research centres, such as the Institute of Development Studies and the Centre for Global Development which publish the latest thinking from their experts, and the Overseas Development Institute, which now streams its panels and debates online. We also have global news and views from IPS, SciDev, IRIN and the likes of All Africa, which provide a window into the African press

• Development Twitterati – click through for a snapshot of development experts on Twitter

Data

The Guardian's Global development datastore is our gateway to some of the world's best global development data, regularly pulling in and updating datasets from sources including the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. We've also pulled in thousands of datasets from the UK Department for International Development, covering UK development projects and priorities from 1987 to the present. You can download datasets in Excel, CSV or XML formats. Take a look.

A shortlist of recommended books for first-year university students interested in development studies

Development studies is a diverse and evolving field, and many students interested in global development come at the key issues from very different angles – with some focusing more on development economics, for example, and others on the politics or anthropology of development. It is also a deeply contested field, with a complex history of its own.

What binds much of development studies together is a set of key debates about the relationships between history, culture, politics, economics and wellbeing. What kinds of public policies drive economic growth? Who benefits from growth, and in which ways? How have global economic structures – including the international aid system – impacted on local politics and key development outcomes? How have the recent food, financial and fuel crises affected developing countries? What will it take to meet the millennium development goals?

We've put together a shortlist of key reads for students interested in development studies. The titles below cover a wide range of subjects and an equally wide range of ways to approach development issues. Whether you're sitting next to a well-thumbed copy of an Amartya Sen or picking up Adam Przeworski for the first time, let us know what you think. Which book changed the way you think about a key development debate? Which ways of approaching development issues do you find most compelling? What other books would you recommend, particularly for first-year reading?

• Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson, Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy

• Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty

• Jagdish Bhagwati, In Defence of Globalisation

• Ester Boserup, Woman's Role in Economic Development

• Deborah Brautigam, The Dragon's Gift: The Real Story of China in Africa

• Ha-Joon Chang, Kicking Away the Ladder: Development Strategy in Historical Perspective

• Paul Collier, The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries Are Failing and What Can Be Done About It

• William Easterly, The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts To Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good

• Arturo Escobar, Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World

• Peter Evans, Embedded Autonomy: States and Industrial Transformation

• Paul Farmer, Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights, and the New War on the Poor

• James Ferguson, The Anti-politics Machine: "Development", Depoliticisation and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho

• Joseph Hanlon, Armando Barrientos, David Hulme, Just Give Money To the Poor: the Development Revolution from the Global South

• Jeffrey Herbst, States and Power in Africa: Comparative Lessons in Authority and Control

• Timothy Mitchell, Rule of Experts: Egypt, Techno-Politics, Modernity

• Dambisa Moyo, Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is Another Way for Africa

• Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time

• CK Prahalad, The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits

• Adam Przeworski, Michael Alvarez, Jose Antonio Cheibub, Fernando Limongi, Democracy and Development: Political Institutions and Well-Being in the World, 1950-1990

• Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa

• Jeffrey Sachs, The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time

• James Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes To Improve the human Condition Have Failed

• Amartya Sen, Development as Freedom

• Joseph Stiglitz, Globalisation and Its Discontents

Whether you're on page one or page 100, let us know what you think about these and other books tackling the key issues in development studies. We've created a list of our first-year development studies books, and would love to see any lists you create.