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East London primary seeks charity’s help with pastoral care after budget cuts

A cash-strapped school has turned to BBC Children in Need for funding to support disadvantaged pupils.

Downshall primary school in Ilford, east London, which has a large proportion of children from disadvantaged backgrounds – 89% of whom have English as a second language – has put in a bid to the charity for funding to pay for pastoral care for three years.

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Downshall primary is a success in a deprived community. But cuts to vital care services are taking a toll

Ian Bennett has been headteacher of Downshall primary school in Ilford, east London, for 16 years. In that time he has seen council support and funding ebb away, as poverty and deprivation among the families his school serves has grown. The result is that the needs of his pupils have become greater, but he worries that as cuts bite he will be able to help them less.

Downshall (motto Dream, Persevere, Succeed) is a large, popular primary school serving a mixed, disadvantaged community. On Tuesday morning, the children are playing boisterously in the playground. The rain has held off, toys are scattered and sunflowers are growing apace in their pots.

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Sixteen-year-olds in England should not be restricted to A-levels or T-levels, says business bosses.

American universities enrol hundreds of thousands of Chinese students each year.

Sixteen-year-old Peter is a stateless citizen, which means he won't be able to finish his schooling.

The new curriculum for Wales does not specify a set amount of physical activity every week.

Report commissioned by Office for Students also calls for hate crimes to receive greater focus

Universities should hire specialist staff to investigate hate crimes and sexual harassment against their students, according to a report commissioned by the higher education regulator for England.

The institutions were also urged to encourage greater levels of reporting of such incidents, and hold sessions on consent for undergraduates and postgraduates, along with “bystander training” for students and staff to encourage prevention.

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Arts students are protesting their school's academic requirements. Should they have to take maths?

A group of teenagers learns about handling their finances.

Focusing on raising up a fortunate few is the easy option. Far better to improve life for all

For decades now, social mobility has been feted as the answer to society’s ills. Conservatives have always embraced the idea of grammar schools – that giving a top tier education to bright children from working class backgrounds provides them with the opportunities their middle class counterparts take for granted. And from the mid-1990s, the Labour party shifted its emphasis from equality of outcome to equality of opportunity and raising aspiration.

Social mobility has proven seductive to all sides of politics for two reasons. It is difficult to argue against: shouldn’t smart but disadvantaged kids be offered the opportunity to fulfil their potential? And the beneficiaries of schemes that pluck individuals from impoverished backgrounds and help them climb the social ladder tend to place great stall in their own backstory, and defend the system vociferously.

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An independent review of P1 assessments says they should continue if "modifications" are made.

She took the exams in hospital because she did not want to wait another year to graduate.

Having a laugh in the classroom - meet the pupils who came up with the funniest joke, say Beano readers.

Court order bars demonstrators from exclusion zone around Anderton Park primary

Protests against the teaching of LGBT equality at a Birmingham school have been temporarily halted following a high court injunction.

Birmingham city council secured the new injunction to protect Anderton Park primary school. The temporary order, which comes into force immediately, bans protesters from an exclusion zone in the streets surrounding the school in the Moseley area of Birmingham.

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Pour lutter contre la ségrégation scolaire dans la capitale, des élus PCF proposent l’instauration d’un « forfait éducatif » qui bénéficierait aux collèges les plus mixtes.

As concern mounts about ‘zero-tolerance’ in schools, teachers are lining up to learn a different approach

I felt teachers often judged me because of the way I looked. I didn’t get support for my anger management issues. I wasn’t given chances and often left in an exclusion room.” So says 16-year-old Mehdi, describing his experience in mainstream schools.

Mehdi says that his approach to education has been transformed since he arrived at London East Alternative Provision (Leap), in Tower Hamlets. While acknowledging the reasons for his exclusion from his last school, he says he felt unsupported in mainstream schools and that teachers were more concerned with the majority of less needy pupils.

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Academics say Augar proposals could damage arts degrees and lose Britain its creative edge

Academics are warning it would be “despicable” if the government went ahead with recommendations to cut funding for some arts and humanities degrees on the basis that they don’t net big salaries for graduates.

Last week the prime minister’s commission on post-18 education funding called for a cut in university tuition fees from £9,250 to £7,500 a year. The review, chaired by former equities broker Philip Augar, said the government should make up the funding gap, which vice-chancellors say will amount to around £1.8bn. In addition, it called on the government to adjust support for different subjects to reflect the economic and social “value” of degrees, and how much they cost to teach.

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A recent international conference was an opportunity to network, but I feel guilty about the waste and emissions

The other day, as I boarded a budget airline plane to attend a conference in Spain, I was overcome with a feeling I’ve come to recognise: carbon-footprint guilt. As a PhD student, this would be my first international conference, an exciting chance to meet fellow researchers in my field – feminism and gender studies – and discuss topics we care about. But as I sat chatting casually with other academics headed the same way, I couldn’t help but worry about how my short trip would harm the environment.

My booking confirmation showed the figures: the outbound flight would release 178kg of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, the return another 168kg. Short flights add up quickly, and airlines such as Ryanair are now ranked among Europe’s top polluters. Off-setting emissions is reasonable, but it’s really just a way of covering our backs.

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Americans in ‘conservative’ states are leading the fight for public education, healthcare and social services

Many Americans agree on the urgent need to defeat Trump in 2020. But what kind of candidate can do it?

Media pundits and Democratic Party insiders would have us believe that the path to the White House passes through the political center. While dismissing challenges from the party’s left wing, Democratic elites are also writing off large swathes of the country as irredeemable Republican bastions. Despite the ultimately disastrous results of this approach in 2016, Joe Biden’s currently high polling numbers imply that a number of voters buy into this logic.

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Cutting fees for arts and humanities degrees would damage Stem subjects too

After days of intensive discussion, the strengths and weaknesses of the Augar report on post-18 education policy and funding are apparent. It is a solid review, refreshingly non-ideological in tone, but undermined by a flawed vision and wistful thinking.

Some of its proposals – and its less attractive one-liners about low-value courses and too many graduates – are likely to seep into policy. But it lacks the momentum of a great reform. It gives but it takes away, handicapped by having to be fiscally neutral.

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