Education

It will probably not surprise many but the region who manages to get the most amount of state pupils into the elite Oxbridge universities come from the South East of the UK. I went to a bog standard comprehensive school in Newcastle-upon-Tyne and I don’t remember anyone going to either university or it even being mentioned as an option, but I’m sure some would have held their own in the Oxbridge establishments; I don’t count myself in that number though....

The Green Party has joined Labour and the Liberals to fight the government’s new plans to re-introduce the grammar school system in the UK. New PM May is assumed to be hoping to scrap the ban on establishing new grammar schools in England; she hopes it will actually help to increase social mobility. However, many other think it will actually create an even more unfair education system. At the moment there are around 163 grammar schools in England and around...

The National Union of Students has criticised the government's decision to replace grants paid to students from low-income families with loans. Starting today students from families with annual incomes of £25,000 or less will not be able to apply for the £3,387-a-year grant to cover living costs. Instead, they will be forced to apply for a maintenance loan. The NUS has criticised the "disgraceful" move, saying it will mean poor students will be saddled with a lifetime of debt. NUS vice-president Sorana...

Michaela School in Wembley has threatened to put children in 'lunch isolation' if their parents don't make payments on time. The free school in Wembley Park, established by outspoken Katharine Birbalsingh, a strong supporter of the former Education Secretary Michael Gove, sent out a letter to parents threatening to punish children if they don't pay fees on time. The Guardian's education editor Richard Adams unveiled the letter on his Twitter account today, as well as linking to page that lists...

The gender gap in the engineering sector is wider than ever, despite many other industries witnessing a significant increase in female participation. Engineering is the subject with the biggest gap in male to female ratios and these figures aren’t improving. Just 9 percent* of the engineering workforce is female. Furthermore, only 6 percent* of registered engineers and technicians (i.e. CEng, IEng, EngTech) are women. Newly released survey data has indicated that the lack of women opting for STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering and...

With the recent release of Oculus Rift, gamers are getting excited about the presence of virtual reality in their homes. But have you ever considered how different your school days might have been if this kind of technology had been available in your classroom? Well, that’s something that Hope Education has been thinking about too… Hope Education - a leading supplier of educational supplies in the UK - has developed this engaging tool, designed to show us what the Classroom...

By Joe Mellor, Deputy Editor It has been claimed that fundamentalist Christian schools in the UK are teaching children that being homosexual is unnatural and girls have to obey men. Ex-pupils have turned whistleblowers and have come forward to say that various private schools across the UK are teaching these old fashioned prejudices during lessons, reports the Independent. The people who have come forward have said that the textbooks they use told them that creationism is actually a fact, women...

By Joe Mellor, Deputy Editor Half the reason I got a degree was to throw the cap into the air afterwards, I knew my degree wasn’t going to get me a job, so the thrill of watching a oddly shaped cap fly into the sky seemed to make up for it…a bit. Well some students at the UEA (University of East Anglia) are not allowed that morsel of use from their degree. A class of law students at the Uni...

Well, that was a hoot, wasn’t it? SATs are all over bar the awkward meetings where they make up a suitably puzzling grade boundary, and teachers across the land are now able to focus on the more important things in life…or, at least, which set of assessments or report-writing is up next. We laid on snacks for the kids before the tests started, as we know many don’t have a proper breakfast – note to certain parents, sending them off...