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The proportion of surveyed pupils who have ever smoked tobacco drops to a record low of 16%.

More than half a million English university graduates overpaid loans by average £600

The government is holding on to more than £28m in student loan overpayments by graduates that have been identified but not yet refunded.

More than half a million former students in England overpaid their student loans by an average of nearly £600, Student Loans Company (SLC) data shows.

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It took Iesha Small 10 years in schools before she felt she could be open about her sexuality. Here she explains why

I’d been a teacher for over 10 years before I felt comfortable enough to just be myself. I had settled into a rhythm. I wanted to be a great maths teacher – why did I have to face the burden of being a role model for LGBTQ students too?

Some colleagues knew about my sexuality. If someone asked about my “husband”, I’d casually tell them the situation. And it was working OK. Then one day the stakes suddenly got bigger.

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Opening GCSE and A-level results can mean tears or elation for students – but also for their teachers

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Compulsory Christian worship is divisive and excludes many children. Why not teach them all to think about religions and philosophies instead?

Back in the early 1990s, a lone Pakistani boy appeared in my otherwise entirely white primary school class. If that wasn’t isolating enough for him, each week, as we went into the assembly hall for hymn practice, he would be quietly ushered away. An hour later, we were reunited – the rest of us with heightened voices, him with a box of freshly sharpened pencils, which he had laboured at while we were gone. Every week, for an hour a week, over four school years. That’s 156 hours of sharpening pencils on his own. Just for being Muslim, in a school that was supposed to cater for everyone.

This bonkers situation occurred because of a rule passed in 1944 as part of the settlement that brought religious schools under the state’s jurisdiction. Every English school is legally required to have its children take part in “collective daily worship” every day. Even if the school is secular, even if the school is packed to the rafters with atheists.

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Graduates have paid millions in repayments after their loans have been cleared.

At 16, teenagers face a number of training or education choices - but how have these decisions changed over time?

Bindmans law firm are investigating the lawfulness of St Christopher’s school closure

Parents shocked by the sudden closure of a residential unit at a special needs school in Bristol, which resulted in children with severe and complex learning difficulties having to move out, have won legal aid funding to investigate a possible legal challenge to the lawfulness of the decision.

Parents were called at work and summoned to pick up their children from St Christopher’s – an independent special school and residential care home in Westbury Park, in the north of the city – after Ofsted suspended its registration due to safeguarding concerns.

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Councils' no-deal Brexit plans warn of more expensive school meals and lower nutritional standards.

Thousands sign petition to reverse decision which could cost students their college places

Students could lose out on college places next month after the UK’s largest exam board unexpectedly raised the grade boundaries for a new BTec qualification, which will result in many getting lower grades than anticipated.

Teachers have expressed outrage and thousands have signed a petition calling on Pearson, which owns the Edexcel exam board, to reverse its decision to raise the boundaries just days before students are due to pick up their results.

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Pupils and parents use the search engine’s ratings to complain about teachers, food and fellow students – and sometimes apparently to make digs at rival schools

It all started because Willow was going back to school. The 17-year-old American was complaining about the new school year, when a friend struck upon an idea. Why not check Google for reviews of their schools? “Go here if you want depression!” read the first one-star review they stumbled upon.

Willow immediately tweeted her findings, encouraging others to look up their own schools and share theirs. The replies came thick and fast. One reviewer’s school is “completely trash”, another has “terrible and inedible” food. One four-star review simply notes: “The kids are really odd here.”

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The Home Office is to allow courts to impose restrictions on people police suspect carry weapons.

La FAGE et l’UNEF demandent une importante refonte des aides sociales pour faire face à la précarisation des étudiants.

89 Prozent der bayerischen Bevölkerung befürworten deutschlandweite Abschlussprüfungen. Nur sieben Prozent sind dagegen.

Die palästinensischen Hochschulen sollten Leuchttürme eines Staates werden, den es bis heute nicht gibt. Ihre Lage wird immer schwieriger, manche Unis können ihre Professoren nicht mehr bezahlen.

Lümmel aus der letzten Bank, Schneeballartist in der Pause, Elternschreck am Telefon: Der Satiriker und EU-Abgeordnete im Fragebogen.

Die Wahl des neuen Leiters der Universität Göttingen ruft empörte Professoren auf den Plan. Doch die altehrwürdige Uni hat noch ganz andere Sorgen.

The evidence shows that the UK’s university entrance system is not only inaccurate but unfair

Along with never having got round to writing down our constitution and having a monarch who legally owns all the swans, one of the things that makes the UK a bit of an outlier is our university admissions system. In other developed nations, university places are awarded to students on the basis of the grades they achieve in their actual exams. Well, that might work for all those boring nations up at the top end of the OECD education rankings, but where’s the sport in that? In Britain, we do things differently.

Each year when the A-level results come out, thousands of students and their families settle down to deal with the implications – positive or otherwise – of the fact that their actual grades differ from those they had predicted by their schools.

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Observer investigation reveals 30% rise in overspending against backdrop of a failure to meet demand for services

The funding crisis in special needs education is deepening, with council overspends on support for children with conditions including autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder rising by 30% in just a year, the Observer can reveal.

Figures sourced under the Freedom of Information Act from 118 of the 151 local authorities in England show that councils are expecting to overspend their high needs block budgets by £288m in 2019-20 – up from £232m in 2018-19. When money raided from mainstream schools budgets is included, however, these figures rise to £315m in 2018-19 and nearly £410m this year – a rise of almost 30% in the space of 12 months.

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Too many people are held back in life – but dividing them into categories doesn’t help

Obsession with the “white working class” distorts the picture of inequality in the north of England and warps policy. So says a new Runnymede Trust report, Class, Race and Inequality in Northern Towns. The authors call for notions of the working class to be “deracialised” and say greater attention should be given to tackling racial and ethnic inequalities.

The insistence that the working class is more than just white is welcome. But we should beware that a stress on diversity can distort our perceptions, too. The report points to racial disparities in education, employment and home ownership. The reasons for this are, however, likely to be complex.

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