Continuing your education is already a decision that entails financial planning. Now, with the Trump administration’s updated limits on federal student loans for professional and graduate students, there are some new considerations to factor into the equation.

Beginning for loans disbursed on or after July 1, 2026, “graduate and professional students will see new limits of up to $20,500 per year ($100,000 total) for graduate studies and $50,000 a year ($200,000 total) for professional programs,” said CNBC Make It. Further complicating these limits is what types of programs are and are not considered professional — not to mention the elimination of graduate PLUS loans, which used to let students borrow up to the full cost of attendance.

How will the new student loan limits work?

The newly imposed limits apply specifically to unsubsidized student loans for graduate borrowers (as mentioned, PLUS loans will no longer be available to graduate students). The limits vary depending on what category a student pursuing an advanced degree falls into: “‘non-professional’ graduate students, who include those in nursing, engineering and social work, among others,” or “‘professional’ students, like those in medicine and law,” said Investopedia.

“Non-professional” graduate students can take out up to $20,500 per year, and up to $100,000 in total.

“Professional” students can borrow double this amount, with limits of up to $50,000 per year and up to $200,000 in total.

Which fields are eligible for higher loan limits?

While the loan limits may seem clear-cut enough, the reality of what programs fall into what category is less intuitive. “According to the proposed regulation, a professional degree ‘signifies both completion of the academic requirements for beginning practice in a given profession and a level of professional skill beyond that normally required for a bachelor’s degree,’” said CNBC Make It. The Department of Education, however, has explicitly stated that the “term does not determine the importance of a program and ‘has no bearing on whether a program is professional in nature or not,’” said NBC News.

As of November, there are 11 degree fields eligible for the higher “professional” student loan limits, said CNBC Make It:

• Chiropractic (D.C. or D.C.M.)
• Clinical psychology (Psy.D. or Ph.D.)
• Dentistry doctorate (D.D.S. or D.M.S.)
• Law (L.L.B. or J.D.)
• Medicine (M.D.)
• Clinical psychology (Psy.D. or Ph.D.)
• Pharmacy (Pharm. D.)
• Podiatry (D.P.M., D.P., or Pod.D.)
• Clinical psychology (Psy.D. or Ph.D.)
• Theology (M.Div., or M.H.L.)
• Veterinary medicine (D.V.M.)

Are there any notable exclusions under the new requirements?

One omission from the list of “professional” programs that has drawn attention is nursing. Some have “argued that health care workers, such as nurses, might choose to leave the industry because they lack sufficient funding for their programs,” said Business Insider. Other professions not on the list include “architects, accountants, educators and social workers,” and reportedly “engineering, a business master's, counseling or therapy and speech pathology,” said Newsweek.

However, it is worth noting that the “loan limit regulation is not final.” The Department of Education is poised to “publish the regulation in its current form in the federal register in the coming months, where the public will have the opportunity to give feedback before it becomes final,” said NBC News.

The Department of Education’s decision to exclude several professions from being considered professional degree programs, most notably nursing, has drawn outcry from nurses and nursing groups. The declassification, which restricts funding for students seeking graduate education, is a part of the department’s implementation of various student loan-related measures. Experts and nurse advocacy groups note that the industry is already suffering from a nursing shortage.

Why will nursing be excluded?

As part of the Trump administration’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” the Grad PLUS program, which helped graduate and professional students secure funding for educational costs, is being eliminated. The bill also creates a new Repayment Assistance Plan, under which new annual loans for new borrowers are capped at $20,500 annually for graduate-level students and $50,000 a year for professional students. Once the new measures are implemented on July 1, 2026, students enrolled in professional degree programs will be restricted to a $200,000 lifetime cap, while non-professional students will be subject to a lifetime limit of $100,000.

To clarify who had access to that money, the Department of Education determined the following programs as professional: medicine, pharmacy, dentistry, optometry, law, veterinary medicine, osteopathic medicine, podiatry, chiropractic, theology and clinical psychology. Nurse practitioners, along with physician assistants, audiologists and physical therapists, were omitted from that list. The goal of the changes is to ensure that borrowers will not face “insurmountable debt to finance degrees that do not pay off,” said Under Secretary of Education Nicholas Kent in a statement.

What could this mean for the future of nursing?

The changes have prompted pushback from nursing professionals and organizations, who say the funding cut will negatively impact an already strained industry. The proposed cap on federal student loans is “undermining efforts to grow and sustain the nursing workforce,” the American Nurses Association (ANA) said in a press release.

Nurses are the “largest segment of the health care workforce and the backbone of our nation’s health system,” said Jennifer Mensik Kennedy, the president of the ANA. At a time when the country “faces a historic nurse shortage and rising demands,” limiting access to funding for graduate education “threatens the very foundation of patient care.” For many underserved communities across the country, “advanced practice registered nurses ensure access to essential, high-quality care that would otherwise be unavailable.”

This is a “gut punch for nursing,” said Patricia Pittman, a professor of health policy and management and director of the Fitzhugh Mullan Institute for Health Workforce Equity at George Washington University, to Newsweek. Education is the “single best way to retain nurses, especially in rural and underserved communities.” Symbolically, the move is also “deeply insulting to nurses who have fought so hard to be recognized for their critical contributions to health care.”

The reaction to the declassification is “fake news at its finest,” said Department of Education Press Secretary for Higher Education Ellen Keast to Newsweek. The department has had a “consistent definition of what constitutes a professional degree for decades,” and the “consensus-based language aligns with this historical precedent.” It is not surprising that “some institutions are crying wolf over regulations that never existed because their unlimited tuition ride on the taxpayer dime is over.”

As the Trump administration sets its plans in motion to reallocate the responsibilities of the Education Department, the initial steps are illuminating how President Donald Trump could fulfill his campaign pledge to bulldoze the department entirely. Education Secretary Linda McMahon has launched a public campaign to argue that states and other federal agencies could better handle the department’s work.

How does the administration plan to break up the department?

American schools are funded mainly by state and local money. Still, the Education Department “serves as a conduit for billions of dollars of federal aid going to state and local education agencies,” said The Associated Press. Agency officials said the money will continue to be distributed as outlined by Congress, but under the newly signed agreements, much of it will come from a different agency.

The Department of Labor will take over some of the largest federal funding sources for schools and colleges, including Title I money for schools serving low-income communities. Adult education programs were already moved to Labor in June. Another agreement puts the Health and Human Services in charge of a grant program for parents attending college. The State Department will oversee foreign language programs, and the Interior will take on programs supporting Native American education.

Some of the department's roles remain unchanged, such as managing the $1.6 trillion federal student loan portfolio. While student aid is unaffected, both McMahon and Trump have suggested a different federal department could better handle it. Pell Grants and federal loans will continue to be disbursed, and student loan borrowers will continue making payments. The Department of Education will also continue to oversee the accreditation process, which allows colleges to accept federal financial aid.

Money for providing educational support for students with disabilities will continue to come from the department as well. However, McMahon has suggested it could be transferred to the Department of Health and Human Services. Investigations into schools and universities that have violated disability rights law and civil rights violations will also remain untouched, though McMahon has pointed out that the Department of Justice could take those over.

Is this the end of the Department of Education?​​

Not necessarily. McMahon has acknowledged that “only Congress can eliminate the department,” but she has “vowed to work to dismantle it from within,” said The Washington Post. The Trump administration is “taking bold action to break up the federal education bureaucracy and return education to the states,” McMahon said in a statement. “Cutting through layers of red tape in Washington is one essential piece of our final mission.”

Shifting the responsibilities of the department to other agencies “will not by itself remove red tape or alter the power that Washington exerts over states and school districts,” said the Post. States and school boards already control most decisions related to education, but the department “enforces rules embedded in federal programs, such as grant requirements.”

The proposed disbanding of the department has elicited pushback from education experts and politicians. It is “difficult to see how transferring cornerstone programs” out of the department will “result in streamlined operations, especially for the nation’s small, rural and low-capacity districts,” said David Schuler, executive director of AASA, the School Superintendents Association, in a statement.

The administration is acting as if the constitutional separation of powers is a “mere suggestion,” said Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) in a statement. This is an “outright illegal effort to continue dismantling the Department of Education.” Students and families will “suffer the consequences as key programs that help students learn to read or that strengthen ties between schools and families are spun off to agencies with little to no relevant expertise.”

Others praised the administration’s decision to move forward with its plans to try to shut down the department. The shutdown of the federal government “made one thing clear: Students and teachers can go to class without heavy-handed federal intervention,” said House Education and Workforce Chair Tim Walberg (R-Mich.) in a statement, per Politico. The administration is “making good on its promise to fix the nation’s broken system by right-sizing the Department of Education to improve student outcomes.”

V levels will become the “only pathway” for young people aged 16-19 to gain vocational qualifications equivalent to an A level, the government announced yesterday.

The new level 3 qualifications “simplify” students’ decisions, and “streamline” the 900 existing vocational qualifications, allowing them to mix and match education options more easily.

They will sit alongside A levels, which have an “academic” focus, and T levels, suitable for those who are “confident about working in a certain occupational area”. V levels will offer those less sure of their career pathway more flexibility, the government’s “Post-16 education and skills” white paper said.

How would they work?

V levels will replace BTecs, which have been around since the mid-1980s. While A levels are geared towards university entrance, and a T level (a two-year course equivalent to three A levels) offers training for a specific career, V levels are designed for young people to keep their options open, said FE Week. They are tied to “rigorous and real-world job standards” and mix theoretical learning with developing practical skills.

As an example, after finishing their GCSEs, a student could study a V level in finance and accounting in conjunction with A levels in environmental science and geography. This student might then go on to an apprenticeship in the renewables sector.

Why are they needed?

V levels represent one of the first steps towards Keir Starmer’s target for two-thirds of young people to go to university, or pursue a “gold-standard apprenticeship” or equivalent qualification.

Last year “roughly one in seven” people aged between 16 and 24 were not in education, employment or training, said the Financial Times. Worryingly, the trend appears to be on the rise, with the 2024 figures representing a 1.5 percentage point increase on 2023.

Will they work?

“If you’re feeling a bit confused by it all, you’re not alone,” said HuffPost. “We’ve all heard of A levels” but they may have to “budge up” with the government’s addition of V levels. Aimed at reducing uncertainty over students’ futures, this flexible hybrid approach may inadvertently fail to direct them towards a clear end goal.

While the announcement is a “big step forwards” for level 3 education, it is “not everything we would want, of course”, said David Hughes, chief executive of the Association of Colleges. Though the plans are “ambitious and exciting”, the white paper highlights the “lack of support and funding” within post-16 education, which is plagued by “low pay in colleges” and an “absence of collaboration”.

“It is not yet clear when V levels will be introduced, how they will be rolled out, or which subjects will be on offer,” said the BBC. The government will now launch a consultation to “support the introduction of V levels”, said HuffPost.

The care system for children in England doesn’t represent value for money, according to a new report, with a record number of those in residential care living in challenging conditions and often moved miles away from where they grew up.

The cost of children’s homes has doubled in the last five years but the current standards of care nowhere near reflect that. A report by the National Audit Office (NAO) has described the system as “dysfunctional”.

It’s another damning indictment of a sector that has been dogged by staff shortages and higher expenses, leaving vulnerable children unsupported.

The state of affairs

Protecting children in care has become a problem right across the country. “It is a moral failure” that thousands of children are abandoned at critical times in their lives, said a Commons Education Committee report in July, with “urgent action” required to “fix this broken system”.

On a local level, councils are struggling to find enough placements of a high standard for children. Many bounce from home to home, with no consistency or stability to speak of. A history of abuse and neglect affects two-thirds of children in care in England, said Sky News.

The challenges don’t stop there, with the problems they face continuing into adulthood. Due to “systemic failings” of the care system as a whole, those who emerge from care are “three times more likely not to be in education, training, or employment than their peers”.

Better information about the “supply and the availability” of places in care, but more importantly of specific “children’s needs”, should be the top priority for the Department for Education, said the lead author of the NAO report, Emma Willson.

Crunching the numbers

Like many concerns at the moment, a central obstacle for care providers is funding and allocating resources effectively. Care facilities do not come cheap but the situation is beginning to spiral out of control.

Overall, the total cost of residential care in England last year was £3.1 billion, rising from £1.6 billion 2019/20, said the Financial Times. The average cost to local authorities of placements in children’s homes rose by a third to nearly £320,000 in 2023/24, meaning an average cost of around £6,100 per child a week.

In the most extreme circumstances, children with complex needs require “24-hour supervision by multiple staff” and councils had been charged up to £3.3 million a year for a single placement, said The Guardian.

Profit-run sector

Companies that are privately owned, often funded by private equity, lie at the heart of the sector. They look to take advantage of the broken system, said The Guardian, with the fees they charge far surpassing the rate of inflation, with some of the biggest providers “enjoying average annual profit rates of 22.6% a year”.

Private firms were “racking up huge profits” due to market failure, and can load the children’s homes with “high levels of debt”, which often leads to “heightening the risk of market instability”.

Their presence in the sector has grown. Now, 84% of children’s homes are run for profit, said the BBC. Because they are independent, many private care providers can “cherry pick the children they take” from councils “based on how much support they need and how much profit this allows”.

Fresh from embarrassing climbdowns on winter fuel payments and welfare reform, the government is bracing itself for another battle over plans to overhaul special needs education in England.

"If they thought taking money away from disabled adults was bad, watch what happens when they try the same with disabled kids," one Labour backbencher told The Times, summing up the mood in the party and among many parents.

What is special needs education?

Special educational needs and disabilities (Send) covers children and young people with physical, emotional and behavioural difficulties including dyslexia, autism, ADHD, communication and mobility issues.

Services are provided by councils, with roughly 630,000 of those with the highest needs supported by specialised education, health and care plans (EHCPs). Offering dedicated one-to-one assistance, specialist equipment, speech and language therapy, and even subsidised travel to and from school, these "provide some statutory certainty in a system that is overstretched and underfunded", said The Guardian.

Why does it need reforming?

There is widespread agreement among parents, councils and politicians that the current Send system is no longer fit for purpose. Complaints to the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman have nearly tripled over the past five years, said Schools Week. Endemic assessment delays and funding and access issues are "symptomatic of a system that is in complete crisis", said Sharon Chappell, the assistant ombudsman.

Send support covers nearly two million young people, costing the Department for Education £10.7 billion a year, according to the National Audit Office. Critics point to a sharp rise in the number of young people diagnosed with ADHD and autism over the past decade, which has put an unsustainable strain on local education support services.

The strain on Send services has, counterintuitively, worked in favour of certain pupils who would ordinarily have been "barred" from mainstream education, but have instead been "folded into mainstream schools with success", said Cristina Odone in The Spectator.

What is the government proposing?

With a full reform package not expected to be made public until the autumn, "we don't yet have any firm details, and that is part of the problem", said The Guardian. Among MPs there is concern that talk of overhauling the system may, in reality, be just another cost-cutting exercise aimed at balancing the budget.

Ministers hope that by increasing the "number of places in Send units at mainstream schools", they can "eventually phase out the need for individual EHCPs over time" for all but "those with the most complex needs", said The i Paper. This has sounded alarm bells for parents and advocacy groups, who fear the withdrawal of vital support. Save Our Children’s Rights said "the idea that 'units' could somehow replace or supersede EHCPs and the rights they embody is worrying and wrong".

In an open letter to The Guardian signed by more than 100 special needs charities and campaigners, Save Our Children's Rights warned that without the statutory support provided by EHCPs, it is "extremely unlikely that ministers will achieve their aim of more children with Send thriving, or even surviving, in mainstream education".

And parents of children with Send "represent a not insignificant protest vote", said The Spectator. "The government angers them at its peril."

What happened

The Supreme Court Monday paved the way for President Donald Trump's administration to conduct mass layoffs across the Department of Education without approval from Congress. The decision lifts a May injunction blocking Trump's executive order aimed at carrying out his campaign promise of closing the department. All three liberal justices dissented.

Who said what

Trump celebrated the decision on his Truth Social platform, calling it a "major victory" for students and parents. The ruling "lifts the handcuffs off" the administration so it can "get education back to the states," Education Secretary Linda McMahon told Fox News. But Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in a 19-page dissent that the court was expediting the administration's "intent to break the law" and that "the threat to our Constitution's separation of powers is grave."

The DOE's staff of 4,000 has already been "greatly diminished" — by about half — since January, said The New York Times. Eliminating it entirely would require an act of Congress, and "most Americans want to preserve the department," The Wall Street Journal said, citing polling. Still, the ruling "continues a winning streak for the president's efforts to trim the federal government and assert his authority over the executive branch," said The Washington Post.

What next?

Legal challenges to the executive order will continue in lower courts, but some employees received notice of their termination almost immediately following the SCOTUS decision.

Student loans are coming due, but they are not necessarily getting paid. Missed and late payments are surging to record levels right as the Trump administration attempts to dismantle the agency that oversees the loans.

A "record share" of student loan debt is delinquent, said Axios. Nearly a quarter of borrowers — roughly 9 million Americans — are behind on their payments, a development that threatens to hurt the credit scores of young borrowers. The growing number of delinquencies is a sign there is "more stress on American consumers than previously known." The eventual result could be "reduced credit limits, higher interest rates for new loans and overall lower credit access" for a generation of college graduates, said New York Fed research economists Daniel Mangrum and Crystal Wang.

The rise in delinquencies comes as the Trump administration tries to move oversight of student loans from the Education Department to the Small Business Administration. The Small Business Administration is "slated to lose 43% of its staff," said Politico, raising concerns even among the president's GOP allies. "Many Republicans are worried" about whether the agency can handle "the complex system of servicers, borrowers and loan applications."

What did the commentators say?

The student loan program "is in critical condition" Bloomberg said. A Covid-era freeze on loan payments, coupled with an "ill-advised" Biden administration effort to forgive loans, exacerbated an existing problem: "Too many students have loans they can't repay." The Trump administration "isn't helping." Its plans to dismantle the Education Department might be smart in the "long run," but at the moment "it's making matters worse." For Congress and the White House, "fixing the current student loan mess should be job No. 1."

Republicans should "kill loan forgiveness for government and nonprofit workers," said The Wall Street Journal. President Donald Trump in March moved to limit a federal program that forgives student loans in "public service" after they have made 10 years of payments. The program "rewards a politically favored group of workers" and diverts talent away from private business. Congress should eliminate the "subsidy" for public service and use the money to "pay for an extension of the 2017 tax cuts that benefit all workers" instead.

What next?

It is "not clear Trump can move student loans" to the Small Business Adminstration, said CNBC. Only Congress can demolish the Education Department, and the law says the department's Federal Student Aid is responsible for the loans. "Borrowers don't know what to do" for now, said Persis Yu at the Student Borrower Protection Center.

Young workers are meanwhile increasingly faced with a choice, said Marketplace: "Pay the student loan debt, the credit card debt or the rent?" Missing student loan payments "could lead to lifetime consequences," said University of Cambridge professor Constantine Yannelis. People with lower credit scores will find it more difficult to buy a home, which in turn could mean they have "have less money in retirement, and we could be seeing the echoes of this problem for decades to come."

What happened

President Donald Trump Thursday signed an executive order to shut down the Education Department "to the maximum extent appropriate and permitted by law." He said he was "going to eliminate" the department, a longstanding goal of many conservatives but one that would require an act of Congress.

Who said what

Killing the department would return education "back to the states where it belongs," Trump said at the signing ceremony. But his order "laid out more aspirations than directives," The Washington Post said. He did not say "which functions or funding would move from federal to state control" nor "acknowledge that states and local school boards already pay for about 90% of K-12 education" and "make the vast majority of decisions about how public schools run."

Trump's order also directed Education Secretary Linda McMahon to ensure "effective and uninterrupted delivery of services, programs and benefits on which Americans rely." Along with administering student loans and Pell Grants, the department gives states billions of dollars to support high-poverty K-12 schools and students with disabilities. "Each of these programs have large constituencies, and various education groups have mobilized in opposition to closing the department," The Wall Street Journal said.

Trump has already laid off about half the Education Department's workforce. Most Americans "do not support closing the department," Reuters said, with recent polls registering opposition at "roughly 2-to-1."

What next?

Trump and McMahon have proposed shifting Education Department functions to other departments, but "even those moves would require congressional action," the Post said. It's "unclear" whether Trump would "ignore" the relevant statutes and "try to move offices anyway." Opponents have already vowed to sue.

What happened

President Donald Trump Tuesday held an elaborate Tesla showcase on the White House lawn to support CEO Elon Musk, who he said was being "treated very unfairly" for "being a patriot" and working to slash the size of the federal government as the head of DOGE Services.

Hours later, the Education Department laid off 1,315 employees, effectively cutting its workforce in half ahead of an expected Trump executive order to shutter the department. NOAA also began laying off another 10% of its workforce, or 1,029 weather and storm forecasters, marine scientists and other workers, The Associated Press said.

Who said what

With Tuesday's Education Department cuts, Trump is "effectively gutting the agency that manages federal loans for college, tracks student achievement and enforces civil rights laws in schools," The New York Times said. Eliminating it entirely would take an act of Congress, and Trump is "unlikely" to "find enough support to do so," particularly as recent polls have "consistently shown roughly two-thirds of Americans oppose closing the department."

Senior Education Department officials said the layoffs, and closure of offices around the country, "wouldn't affect department functions," The Wall Street Journal said. But "critics said it was impossible to reduce staff so dramatically without affecting the services that states, school districts and students have come to rely on," The Washington Post said.

What next?

Agencies across the government "need to submit plans for large-scale layoffs" by Thursday, as stipulated in Trump's Feb. 11 executive order and a subsequent directive from the Office of Personnel Management, USA Today said. DOGE and other part of the administration have already laid off more than 100,000 probationary workers, gutted USAID and scheduled at least 76,000 cuts at the Veterans Affairs Department.

'Is there a right to die? Don't look to liberals for an answer.'

Shadi Hamid at The Washington Post

The "assumption is that more individual autonomy is automatically better," but the "desire to extend and expand the scope of euthanasia doesn't seem to be based on any coherent moral framework," says Shadi Hamid. Liberals are "great at maximizing individual autonomy but terrible at explaining why some choices should remain off-limits." Most "liberal democracies, in their current form, lack the philosophical resources to ensure meaningful boundaries around such practices." The "stakes here go far beyond any individual country."

Read more

'Gen Z doesn't believe in government. The solution is closer to home than you think.'

David Millman at USA Today

American democracy "is at risk, but not because of actions by whoever occupies the White House," says David Millman. Only "27% of Americans ages 18-25 'agree strongly' that democracy is the best system of government," and this "directly endangers our most essential societal institutions." Gen Zers "need to get involved and change local government," and "we can only build back trust in democracy by actually using it to address the issues we care about."

Read more

'I fled Assad's brutal regime in Syria. Will his replacement be any better?'

Lina Chawaf at The Boston Globe

Syrians "cling to a thin thread of hope amid the whirlwinds of chaos," but "now find ourselves caught on the anvil of a little-known Islamist group with ties to extremist factions," says Lina Chawaf. The "victorious rebels with their fiercely Islamist fighters make us confident that life in Syria will soon be free and stable." There has been "understandable joy in the streets of Syrian cities," but "are we just replacing one authoritarian government with another?"

Read more

'Whither the Department of Education?'

Peter van Buren at The American Conservative

Project 2025 "wants to reduce the federal level of involvement in education to zero, especially administratively, and leave the states — if not the parents — responsible for funding and controlling education locally," says Peter van Buren. If the "federal government lends money to individuals for a post-secondary education, taxpayers should expect those borrowers to repay." It is "important to see what effect it has on the education of our children and the future of our country."

Read more

Donald Trump comes into office having pledged the elimination of the U.S. Department of Education. His administration will send "all education and education work and needs back to the states," he said in 2023. What does the Department of Education specifically do?

The Education Department was created by President Jimmy Carter in 1980 with a mission to "advise and assist" the nation's schools, said CBS News. The department has a budget of around $228 billion, but it's not the primary funder of your neighborhood schools: Only about 8% of local school budgets come from federal dollars, with the rest coming from state and local taxes. The department also undergirds federal student aid programs for colleges and universities. That money gives the feds leverage over education policy across the country. "It may have influence," said Nicola Alexander, an associate dean at the University of Minnesota. "I wouldn't say it has control."

K-12: Supporting low-income students

Federal funding might make up a small portion of K-12 school budgets, but it's a critical part. The department backs local schools "primarily through programs supporting economically disadvantaged school systems," said USAFacts. The department disperses $18 billion a year for Title I programs for children from low-income families. It also spends $15 billion a year on special education funding, as well as $6 billion on other school improvement programs. The department additionally oversees the National Center for Education Statistics to "better analyze enrollment, finances, and performance metrics" at schools across the country, said USAFacts.

The department enforces laws that "protect civil rights and disability rights in public schools," said Education Week. That includes making sure that the needs of students with disabilities are being met — and being on guard against racial and sexual discrimination within schools. The department's supporters say it "plays an important role in ensuring students are treated fairly," the outlet added.

Higher ed: Financial aid and Title IX

The Department of Education's K-12 efforts get the most public attention, but its "biggest expenditure is on higher education," said The New York Times. More than 70% of its budget goes to the federal student loan program — $90 billion a year in student loans, and another $39 billion for Pell Grants to low-income students. Some education advocates worry about what Trump's pledges to eliminate the department mean for that financial aid, said Inside Higher Ed: His first administration proposed "large cuts to financial aid" — including a proposed $5.6 billion cut in 2020.

The department also enforces Title IX, the 1972 law that prohibits colleges and universities from discriminating against students on the basis of sex. That law has been used to "provide equal opportunities to women's sports athletes," said Front Office Sports. But that enforcement has been spotty at times, and one investigation found that 87% of major universities were out of compliance. The Biden administration has interpreted the law to apply to transgender people, though the Trump administration will probably reverse course. "Trump would not need Congressional authority to make changes on Title IX's guidance," said Time.

Congress, of course, would have to approve eliminating the Department of Education. Which means the department continues to exist for now. After the election, NPR said, Trump said he would appoint Linda McMahon — best known from the world of professional wrestling — as his Secretary of Education.

On Nov. 19, President-elect Donald Trump named former wrestling executive Linda McMahon, who led the Small Business Administration from 2017 to 2019, to head the Department of Education. McMahon served for a year on the Connecticut Board of Education from 2009 to 2010 and spent extended time on the Board of Trustees of Sacred Heart University between 2004 and 2017, but overall has a comparatively limited education background. That alone is likely to make her nomination controversial, although with a 53-seat majority in the Senate, Republicans may be able to steward all but the most problematic nominees through the confirmation process.

From wrestling power couple to politics

A native of New Bern, North Carolina, the 76 year-old married her high school sweetheart Vince McMahon in 1966. The McMahons founded Titan Sports, Inc. in 1980 and expanded it into a multi-billion dollar global empire, now called World Wrestling Entertainment. She and Vince McMahon, from whom she is now estranged, have been the subject of multiple sexual assault and sexual trafficking allegations. One suit, filed by former "ring boys," alleged that the couple was aware that one of their employees was sexually assaulting them and did nothing to stop it. That lawsuit "is filled with scurrilous lies, exaggerations and misrepresentations," said Linda McMahon's attorney Laura Brevetti at CNN.

Before her appointment to the Small Business Administration in 2017, McMahon twice tried unsuccessfully to win a Senate seat in Connecticut, first in 2010. She subsequently outran 2012 Republican presidentIal nominee Mitt Romney by 6 points in her second race but could not overcome the state's heavy Democratic lean. And in both campaigns, scandals and accusations regarding the McMahons' wrestling empire were a major line of attack. "It was her greatest strength and weakness at the same time," said Murphy advisor Scott Bates at The Connecticut Post.

McMahon spent almost $100 million of her own fortune on the Senate runs. Wealthy self-funded candidates like McMahon "typically fade from popular memory" after a defeat, said Michelle Hackman at the Yale Daily News, but instead she continued to wield her fundraising prowess and influence. After her second loss, she was "a failed candidate still engaged in the GOP," said Simone Pathé at Roll Call.

The rise of a Trump ally

McMahon was one of Trump's earliest backers in 2016 and has served on the 2024 Trump transition effort since August, helping to vet other potential cabinet picks. She will step into an unusual situation for a cabinet secretary, since Trump repeatedly promised to abolish the Department of Education. McMahon has been "assigned the fraught task of carrying out what is widely expected to be a thorough and determined dismantling of the department's core functions," said Zach Montague and Ana Swanson at The New York Times. However, the president would need Congress to pass the bill, a move that would be very difficult to accomplish given the GOP's narrow majorities.

Trump's Agenda 47 platform called for a broad variety of new education policies, many of them involving controversial culture war issues like trans rights. As president, Trump would "turn back the tide of left-wing indoctrination and once again respect the fundamental right of parents to control the education, healthcare, and moral formation of their children," said the campaign in its Agenda 47 education page. The campaign called for funding to go to districts that eliminate tenure for teachers and give parents the right to elect school principals. The campaign also said it would try to force colleges and universities to eliminate their DEI programs and may threaten to ban federal loans to those that won't comply.

McMahon has not said which aspects of the Trump campaign education agenda she would prioritize and did not address education in her speech at the 2024 Republican National Convention. She has long been a supporter of school choice and vouchers dating back to her brief stint on the Connecticut Board of Education. McMahon's "chief goal for education is to promote vouchers, which drain resources from public schools," said Amanda Litvinov at NEA Today.

President-elect Donald Trump plans to significantly restructure the federal government and downsize several federal agencies, and there's one department he wants to completely eliminate: the Department of Education. But if this tall order is fulfilled, it could end up being more symbolic than functional.

What did the commentators say?

Trump "cannot eliminate the agency on his own," said The Washington Post. It would require congressional approval and a supermajority of 60 votes in the Senate. "Politically, this would be difficult, if not impossible," with potential opposition from both parties.

But if he successfully shuttered the department, it would "surely have symbolic impact." Without it, a Cabinet member would no longer be "focused solely on education issues and empowered to speak to Americans about the challenges schools face."

That would make it harder for the federal government to "elevate education issues or press for change in schools." Beyond that, the impact would largely depend on "how Congress restructured the work of the department."

If Trump were genuinely concerned about K-12 education, he would "make a bold move right now to help public schools," Jessica Grose said at The New York Times. While a small portion of public school funding comes from the federal government, the "problems we face are so large that they are crying out for a federal response that includes continued funding for things like high-dosage tutoring to ameliorate Covid learning loss."

His first term offers "scant evidence that he has the desire to do much more than wage painful culture-war battles." What Trump will likely do is "pick splashy fights that he can win through executive orders," said Grose. For instance, he will "reverse the transgender student protections put in place by an executive order from Biden this year." Though it's "pretty unclear how that would play out in practice," it' s "certainly chilling."

Trump also promised to "cut federal funding for any school or program pushing critical race theory, gender ideology or other inappropriate racial, sexual or political content on our children" to "keep men out of women's sports" and "find and remove the radicals who have infiltrated the federal Department of Education."

But eliminating the agency is not the same as "eliminating the myriad programs that it runs, billions that it sends out, and multitudinous regulations that it enforces (mostly pursuant to laws enacted by Congress)," Chester Finn Jr., the president emeritus of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, said to the Washington Examiner.

The department is responsible for administering federal grant programs such as Title I, which provides supplemental funding to high-poverty K-12 schools, and the program that helps cover the cost of education for students with disabilities. It also oversees the federal student loan program and enforces civil rights laws that bar discrimination at school.

"Undoing those functions, programs, activities means dealing separately with the laws that created them — dozens and dozens," said Finn. If the agency is disbanded but its functions are not, it would be a "mostly symbolic act" akin to simply "taking the name off the door."

What next?

Trump has been swiftly tapping people for his Cabinet picks since his election, and with Trump's plans for eliminating the department looming, the "next education secretary could also be the last," said The Hill. Several names were floated as potential candidates, including Ryan Walters and Cade Brumley, the state superintendents of Oklahoma and Louisiana, respectively, and Tiffany Justice, the co-founder of Moms for Liberty.

Ultimately, Trump selected Linda McMahon to head the Department of Education. She's best known for building the professional wrestling company WWE alongside her husband. During Trump's first term, he tapped her to run the Small Business Administration.

Like many of his choices, McMahon's nomination was not well received by critics. Selecting her shows that Trump "could not care less about our students' futures," Becky Pringle, the president of the National Education Association, said in a statement. "Our students and our nation deserve so much better than Betsy DeVos 2.0."

If you are hoping to secure federal financial aid — through student loans, scholarships, grants or work-study funds — to help cover the cost of undergrad or grad school, you probably know that filling out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) is essential. But after the fiasco surrounding last year's rollout of a supposedly revamped FAFSA, students and parents alike may (understandably) be worried about how this year will go.

In early October, U.S. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona "assured college leaders in a letter that the department had 'all hands on deck' to meet its new timeline this year, saying the government is working to release the 2025-26 form following software-industry best practices," said Money. Already, however, the FAFSA application process is not running the way it did before last year's big shakeup. Here is what to know.

When does the 2025-2026 FAFSA come out?

A major difference in this year's FAFSA form is when it rolls out. The start of October "typically signifies the beginning of the college financial aid application process," said Money, but this year, the FAFSA "will instead formally launch by Dec. 1."

Usually access to the form opens to everyone at once, but this year will implement a "phased rollout," which is intended to "allow the U.S. Education Department to run a testing period before it opens the form to the wider public," said Money.

As such, "some families will be invited to fill out the form beginning on Oct. 1, 2024, as part of a testing group to ensure the electronic form and accompanying processes are fully functional by Dec. 1," said CNBC Make It.

What changes are being made after last year's FAFSA issues?

Last year, "everyone who submitted a FAFSA for the 2024-2025 school year faced delays because the department was late in sending colleges student data needed to create aid packages," and some students therefore "started the semester without a final accounting of how much financial help they would receive," said The Washington Post. This year, the department is "trying to turn that disaster around."

As mentioned, the 2025-2026 FAFSA is rolling out in phases, so the Department of Education can troubleshoot along the way. "We're testing a complete FAFSA system. That means that students will begin submitting FAFSA forms with hands-on advice and support of experts," Under Secretary of Education James Kvaal said to the Post. "The department will process those FAFSA, give students an opportunity to make corrections if needed and send the records to colleges and state agencies."

Additionally, the Education Department has made a number of improvements for this year, including better "online resources to help students and parents while they’re filling out the form and 700 new call center agents to handle call volume," said Money. It also plans to "provide more transparency and clearer communication this year."

Perhaps most importantly, "once the form opens to all on Dec. 1 and applications are complete, ED says families' information should start being sent to colleges immediately," said CNBC Make It.

How can you prepare for the FAFSA application process?

Unless you are part of the beta testing launch, there is not much you can do before the FAFSA becomes widely available at the start of December. That said, there are a couple things you can keep in mind ahead of this year's application process:

Sign up for a FAFSA ID. You don't have to wait until the FAFSA rolls out to get a FAFSA ID, which is an "electronic signature used to sign the FAFSA online," said Saving for College. It is smart to do this sooner than later, as "students and parents have reported problems with getting or using an FSA ID."

Take note of schools' deadlines. "Colleges set their own deadlines for financial aid applications, and students should pay close attention to those as the season approaches," said CNBC Make It. Also note that "your college may require its own financial aid application," as after last year's botched FAFSA rollout, "some schools went ahead and created their own institutional applications." Make sure you are familiar with what the schools you are applying to require, and by when.

May 1 is usually a big day for college admissions. This year it was "marred by the federal government's botched rollout" of its new financial aid application," said The Associated Press. The Free Application for Federal Student Aid — known as FAFSA — was overhauled to make it "simpler and shorter." But a "series of blunders" at the U.S. Department of Education made the online form all but unusable for many families. The result? With the start of classes just a few months away, many hopeful students "don't know where they're going to college, or how they're going to pay for it."

"Everything is wrong," one college and career counselor told Inside Higher Ed. The problems with FAFSA "disproportionately affected low-income students who rely on federal aid" and who couldn't make informed college decisions without knowing how much money would be available to them. Some students "will delay attending, and some will forgo it entirely," Daniel Currell said at The New York Times. That will have "lasting implications" for those young people — and, eventually, "for the economy as a whole."

What did the commentators say?

"God help you if you have a high school senior applying to colleges this year," Jim Geraghty said at National Review. The number of low-income students who have completed the FAFSA process is — at last check — down by 34.4% from last year. Unrealistic deadlines and lax oversight by Education Department officials complicated the new FAFSA rollout. It's a disaster. "It's one of the biggest and most far-reaching Biden administration screw-ups."

"In America, the hardest thing about getting into college tends to be figuring out how to pay for it," David M. Perry said at CNN. Families must "fight their way through endless bureaucracy" to determine the cost of college and get the aid to pay. That's a problem whether FAFSA works or not. A better path wouldn't make hopeful families jump through so many hoops. "Public higher education could, and should, offer a high quality and low or no cost pathway to a college degree." 

The FAFSA frustrations "are worth enduring," The Yakima Herald-Republic said in an editorial. Updating the online form was intended to "increase the availability of aid and streamline applications," and eventually it will improve. "Students should have more aid options" and colleges should see their admissions strengthened. It's hard to see that right now, though: The government "didn't get it right on the first try." The long-term benefits are worth it, though. "It's in everybody's best interest for this to work."

What next?

The disaster has claimed one casualty: Richard Cordray, the Biden administration's top student loan official, is stepping down. Meanwhile, some institutions are scrambling to help students: In West Virginia, Gov. Jim Justice (R) declared a state of emergency to suspend the FAFSA requirement for state financial aid programs.

But the damage may still be done. "Fewer high school seniors could be headed to college this fall," said Forbes. And there will be fallout. One college president told the Times that fewer FAFSA applications probably will mean fewer new workers in high-demand occupations — "registered nurses, manufacturing engineers, those kinds of jobs." This year's college disaster could affect the workforce for years to come.

The country's largest Christian college, Phoenix-based Grand Canyon University, has had its fair share of controversies and scandals, and is continuing to fight a record financial penalty from the federal government as a result. But while the school was fined $37.7 million by the U.S. Department of Education last year, it recently received some good news out of court on another front.

GCU was accused of misrepresenting the costs of its doctoral programs over several years. The college allegedly advertised "a lower cost than what 98% of students ended up paying to complete certain doctoral programs," the Education Department said in a press release. "We are holding GCU accountable for its actions, protecting students and taxpayers, and upholding the integrity of the federal student aid programs."

GCU's 100,000 enrolled students — the majority of whom attend online — make it the largest Christian college in the United States, according to NBC News. Officials at the university have pushed back against the federal government's allegations, but the fine could have major ramifications across the school regardless.

What was Grand Canyon University accused of? 

The Education Department said GCU advertised its doctoral programs as costing anywhere from $40,000 to $49,000, but based on the university's own data, "less than 2% of graduates completed within the cost that GCU advertised." As a result of "continuation courses" required to complete their degrees, at least 98% of doctoral students at GCU ended up paying many times the amount advertised, the Education Department alleged. The investigation involved about 7,500 students enrolled at GCU between 2017 and 2022.

Of the 98% of students whose degrees ended up costing extra, more than three-quarters of them "had to pay $10,000 to $12,000 more in tuition costs — roughly a 25% increase, depending on the program — than GCU explicitly advertised," the Education Department said. While GCU does offer a series of fine-print disclosures about the cost of their doctoral programs, they "fail to address or correct the significant misrepresentations about the cost of the program," the feds argued, adding that the disclosures "do not cure the 'net impression' that the program will be less expensive than it actually is."

How has the school responded?

GCU has denied any wrongdoing and made a number of attempts to push back against the government's characterization of its doctoral programs. The Education Department noted, though, that the college didn't dispute the government's determination that "98% of students enrolled in certain doctoral programs had to pay more than GCU's advertised cost."

Weeks before it was slapped with its record fine, GCU released a statement claiming that the government was "coordinating efforts to unjustly target GCU." The university alleged that the investigation into its tuition was in retaliation for a 2021 lawsuit filed against the Education Department for categorizing it as a for-profit university, which GCU has pushed back against. While the IRS does consider GCU to be nonprofit for tax purposes, the Education Department still classifies it as a for-profit school in relation to financial aid. Federal officials maintain that these issues are "entirely unrelated" and that GCU's loss of its nonprofit status had nothing to do with the fine.

The school did gain a major victory in this nonprofit fight, as a federal circuit appeals court recently determined that the Education Department "acted unlawfully by applying the incorrect legal standard in determining GCU's nonprofit status," the school said in a press release. This does not absolve the school of the $37.7 million fine, but it does mean that the Education Department could end up reclassifying GCU's profit status.

The IRS "clearly has the authority to grant us nonprofit status. There's an objective set of criteria that they use to do that, and they did it. The ED has never not honored what the IRS has determined," GCU President Brian Mueller said to Fox News.

What happens next? 

It is unclear whether the Education Department will appeal the appeals court ruling on GCU's profit status.

In addition to the fine, the Education Department imposed five new conditions on GCU to ensure it abides by these federal rules. First, the college shall not make "substantial misrepresentations related to the cost of obtaining a degree in its doctoral programs." And if GCU does inform someone about the cost of its doctoral programs, it must also tell them "the average total tuition and fees paid by graduates."

Officials at GCU have said they intend to fight the Education Department's fine for as long as it takes. Officials are also "continuing to encourage staff and other affiliates to contact federal lawmakers in the university's defense," The Arizona Republic said. The Education Department may additionally be forced to end its bid entirely when President-elect Donald Trump takes office, given his prior statements about gutting the federal agency.

A heated discussion over the issue of self-identity, between pupils and a teacher at a school in East Sussex, has reignited the debate over how the topic is treated in schools.

The conversation, secretly recorded and posted on TikTok, appears to show a teacher defending a pupil’s right to self-identify as a cat, while two other pupils vehemently disagree with her.

During the conversation, which took place in a Year 8 class on “life education” at Rye College in East Sussex last Friday, students were told to “be who you want to be – and how you identify is up to you” by their teacher. In response, a pupil is heard to say “If they want to identify as a cat or something then they are genuinely unwell – crazy.”

When the pupils insist there are only two genders, the teacher says their views are “really despicable”. She adds that there are three biological sexes and lots of genders.

Education Secretary Gillian Keegan has reportedly asked the Department for Education’s regional director for the South East to visit Rye College and investigate the matter, according to The Telegraph.

‘Let kids be kids’

“Damaging nonsense” is how Nadhim Zahawi, the former education secretary, branded the discussion, joining a chorus of Tory backbenchers who have urged the prime minister Rishi Sunak to stand up to schools and “let kids be kids”. A spokesman for the PM said children should not be taught “contested opinions as fact”.

Nor has the right-wing press hesitated in joining the conversation. Piers Morgan described the “woke teacher” in the recording as peddling “brain-warped thinking” on Sky News Australia. “Ironically, as I read this, I began to hiss and bare my feline fangs in fury,” he wrote. GB News host Michelle Dewberry went one step further, appearing on her show dressed as a cat.

Rye College said it was “committed to offering our pupils an inclusive education”, but would be reviewing its processes and “working with the relevant individuals to ensure such events do not take place in the future”.

‘Not a genuine phenomenon’

Other schools are “allowing kids to identify as cats, horses and dinosaurs”, claimed the Daily Mail, but not everyone was convinced.

Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said he had not heard about children identifying as animals as an issue in schools, but added: “There are nine million children in England’s schools so it is not surprising that all sorts of things crop up in discussions in classrooms.”

Similar claims were made in the US, but Reuters Fact Check said experts dismissed it as not a “genuine phenomenon”, and that children were possibly identfying as “furries”. These are “people with an interest in anthropomorphism, who may create their own alternative animal personality known as a ‘fursona’”, the website explained.

Michael Bronski, professor of women, gender and sexuality at Harvard, told the website: “People who identify as ‘furries’ do so for fun; it is not a primary identification.”

Reuters added that it had “fact-checked claims around ‘furries’ in US schools in the past and found no evidence of them disrupting classrooms, or schools developing a policy of including them as a formal identity”.

Schools must provide single-sex toilets and are legally allowed to “ignore requests” from children wishing to be addressed by a different pronoun, the government’s chief legal adviser has said.

In a speech to the Policy Exchange think tank last week, Attorney General Suella Braverman said that institutions had the right to exclude transgender people from single-sex spaces, reserving “particular criticism for schools”, said The Times.

Braverman said that new guidance to be issued by the Department for Education (DfE) would “make this point explicit”, the newspaper continued, and that Ofsted would be responsible for holding schools to account for the new regulations’ implementation.

Maggie Baska at Pink News called it a “chilling” speech that used the “anti-trans dog-whistle that supportive adults are ‘grooming’ children by affirming their identity”.

What are the legal requirements for schools?

Schools “have little official guidance to assist them” when it comes to navigating their way through trans issues, said Good Law Project. A leading expert in education and discrimination law, Dan Squires QC, provided the non-profit organisation with legal advice on the current state of play which, under the Equality Act 2010, prevents schools from discriminating against children on various grounds.

In her speech, Braverman said that under-18s are unable to obtain a gender recognition certificate and therefore schools will “generally be dealing with children whose sex for the purposes of the Equality Act is that registered at birth”.

She claimed it would “not constitute unlawful direct discrimination” to refuse to admit a trans girl or boy to a single-sex school if their registered sex did not match. Squires said it would, however, be unlawful to exclude a pupil from a single-sex school because they identified with the opposite gender.

Braverman said it was also “wrong for schools to suggest that they have legal obligations which mean that they must address children by their preferred pronouns, names, or admit them to opposite sex toilets, sport teams, or dormitories”.

Though a school isn’t legally obligated to treat a child as being the gender with which they identify, educators “cannot prevent trans students from benefiting from the same policies as other pupils just because they are trans”, said Squires. For instance, if teachers allowed for students to be referred to by a name other than the one with which they were registered but refused to do the same for a trans child, that would be “direct discrimination”.

What are the rules around school uniforms?

Policies can indirectly prove to be unlawful if they “disproportionately disadvantage” trans children, said Squires. For instance, if a school has a uniform policy that requires them to wear clothes that correspond to the sex they are registered with at the school, the institution would need to identify a “legitimate aim and be able to demonstrate why it was proportionate to prevent trans children from wearing clothes in line with their gender identity”.

Braverman claimed that the “inherent risks” of social transition could present an “ample legitimate aim” in itself.

But Laura Berman, a partner at law firm Stone King, told Schools Week that schools being told they are allowed to refuse a trans child the right not to wear the uniform of the gender that they are registered with was “not my reading of the Equality Act”.

Must schools out pupils to their parents?

Stonewall advises that schools and colleges only disclose a student’s desired gender identity if they have the individual’s permission.

However, Braverman said schools that “socially transition a child without the knowledge or consent of parents or without medical advice increase their exposure to a negligence claim for breach of their duty of care to that child”.

What else have legal experts said?

Transgender rights in schools “is a tricky maze to navigate”, said Esther Maxwell, legal director and employment and education specialist, for Schools Week, and Braverman’s comments in the past have “stoked this already controversial area”.

Writing in June, Maxwell said the minister has taken a “simplistic view” of the Equality Act 2010, the Human Rights Act 1998 and the Gender Recognition Act 2004.

Lawyers and educators “at the chalkface of dealing with these issues know the legal position is actually far from simple”. A student needs only to “be taking some practical steps to live in the opposite gender or proposing to do so” to be protected under the Equality Act, she argued. “In short, pupils should not be treated less favourably or experience a detriment as a result of being transgender.”

Maxwell admitted that schools might, however, have to “grapple with a ‘clash of rights’ situation, where the rights of a transgender pupil are pitched against an individual’s personal beliefs that sex is immutable” – so “it is far from straightforward”.

The new DfE guidance is expected to clarify the rules. Until the guidance – which has been in the pipeline since April and is thought to be due out in the autumn – is issued, “schools will continue to set their own policies on transgender pupils”, said The Telegraph’s education editor Louisa Clarence-Smith.

1. Teaching my pupils the ‘positives’ of the British Empire would entrench white supremacy

Nadeine Asbali at the i news site

on teaching colonialism

Education secretary Nadhim Zahawi has said schools should teach “all aspects” of the British Empire – “including the purported positives”, writes teacher Nadeine Asbali at the i news site. “What does it say of our country if the politicians in charge of education, justice and equality feel that the genocide, pillaging and invasion of half the world is an issue up for debate?” asks Asbali. “Some things are simply not two-sided.” Teachers “don’t attempt to expound any positives of Nazism because there are none”. Anyone who claims colonialism should be taught “in a balanced way” suggests that the “supposed ‘positive’ outcomes” must be “offered up on a shiny platter to whitewash the colonial machine as somehow altruistic”. This means “the dead bodies get brushed under the carpet”. And “what message does it to send to schoolchildren of colour if we present the subjugation, torture and murder of their ancestors as justified because some train tracks were built?”

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2. Government should restore £20 Universal Credit uplift and help struggling families

Gordon Brown at The Mirror

on the welfare state

“For most of our lives the British welfare state has been there for us when we require it,” writes Gordon Brown at The Mirror. It’s there “to lift us up when we are down, to provide a safety net for the most vulnerable and to take the shame out of need. But on Friday, as a result of Rishi Sunak’s betrayal of the poor, it passes a point of no return,” says the former prime minister. Families are facing rising bills, but instead of “doing more to help people in need, our welfare state is doing much less”. A family with three children on Universal Credit, “hit by Sunak’s quadruple whammy of tax rises, benefit cuts” and soaring food and heating bills – and who’ve “already seen the value of their benefits go down seven times in the last ten years” – will now receive “just £289 a week, net of council tax”. Food banks and charities are “being forced to stand in for the welfare state” and “are being asked to do the impossible”. Brown is “in awe” of the voluntary help people offer, but it “cannot replace the money lost”.

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3. Forget Will Smith and the slap, why do we politicise black women’s hair?

Ateh Jewel at The New Statesman

on hair loss

“The whole world has been analysing the scuffle” between Will Smith and Chris Rock at the Oscars, writes Ateh Jewel at The New Statesman. “Among all the noise, there is a neglect” of Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, “her feelings, and the politics of black hair and hair loss”. The slap “makes it clear that hair is culture, identity and status, and that in our society women are still judged and objectified by their hair or lack of it.” Black people “are still being discriminated against because of the natural way hair grows out of their head”, to the point that the US Congress has passed legislation called the Crown Act “to protect against hair discrimination”. Pinkett Smith’s treatment “makes it clear that you can’t win either when you have or don’t have hair”.

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4. The Ockenden Review must urgently deliver real change in the NHS

Jeremy Hunt at The Telegraph

on healthcare failings

“No parent should ever have to bury their own child,” writes Jeremy Hunt at The Telegraph. “To do so because a hospital refused again and again to learn from the same mistakes is the worst kind of agony”. It’s a “horrible realisation” that “thousands of families across Shropshire will wake up to today” when the Ockenden Review into Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital’s maternity unit is released. The former health secretary says the report “has taken several years longer than expected” because it emerged that the “23 cases of poor maternity care” that he initially called to be investigated “were just the tip of an iceberg”. This “shocking saga” poses “deeply uncomfortable questions for the NHS and regulatory system”. The MP says “there was a chilling and unforgivable failure to learn from mistakes that we now know is far from unique” to this maternity unit. Health ministers “owe it” to the campaigners and families affected by the scandal to “deliver a wake-up call on maternity safety that heralds real change”.

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5. We are all Teletubbies now

Mary Harrington at Unherd

on becoming cyborgs

Teletubbies celebrates its 25th anniversary this week, “and it was wildly successful from the moment it landed”, writes Mary Harrington. “It’s one of the most lucrative shows in BBC history, merchandising sales raking in billions.” But the show has “also spurred a subculture of perverse readings, including that the Sun Baby is a demon”. Harrington thinks “this secondary success is also richly deserved”. Teletubbies is “a brutally frank sketch of a hypermodern era that began gathering speed around the time the show launched, and has now consumed us all”. These “humanoid-but-infantile Teletubby cyborgs, media devices painlessly grafted into their flesh, are fitting avatars for a uniquely modern conflation of technology and nurturing”. This show wasn’t necessarily created for “ravers”, but it offers comfort of sorts to those in that “delicate post-rave condition of self-inflicted chemical imbalance”. Look – says Harrington – “bunnies and Tubby Toast. Eh-oh!”

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Pupils in England who fail their maths and English GCSEs will be banned from taking out student loans under new government proposals.

The Department for Education (DfE) has launched a consultation on minimum grades for loan qualification as part of the biggest shake-up of higher-education funding in a decade, in response to the 2018 Augar review of post-18 education.

Under the plans, students who fail to gain a Grade 4 or above – equivalent to a C under the old grading system – or at least two Es at A-level will be “barred from accessing” student loans, reported The Telegraph. Mature students could be an exception to the rule, said the paper.

1. Pro: push for high quality degrees

Government ministers argue that the new proposals for minimum grade requirements will ensure that pupils “aren’t being pushed into higher education before they are ready”, said The Telegraph. They are proposing to impose controls on student numbers “so that poor-quality, low-cost courses aren’t incentivised to grow uncontrollably”, said the paper.

The government will define “low-quality degrees” as “those with a high number of students dropping out and a low proportion getting a graduate job or entering further study once they have completed their degrees”, said the paper.

Data from the University and Colleges Admissions Service shows 320,000 sixth-formers have applied for university places so far, compared with 306,000 in 2021. But while student numbers are increasing, the DfE has said it is concerned that “not all students receive the same high quality of teaching” and that many students are becoming saddled with large amounts of debt and few job prospects. According to the department, “less than half of students” at 25 British universities who begin a degree “can expect to finish it and find professional employment or further study within 15 months of graduation”, said The Times.

2. Con: less access for disadvantaged

University leaders have warned that the proposed minimum entry requirements to access student loans was “too high” and would “effectively end the hopes” of school leavers from disadvantaged backgrounds who could not afford the £9,250 annual undergraduate tuition fee or living expenses without student loans, said The Guardian.

The paper said that a “key determinant” could be whether the threshold is set at Grade 4 or 5, with the percentage of pupils in England achieving a grade 4 in GCSE English and maths falling from 71% to 52% for those from disadvantaged households.

One education consultant warned that setting minimum entry requirements could “prevent levelling up” and harm social mobility. “Minimum entry requirements are a potential culture war minefield,” consultant Johnny Rich told The Independent. “If we want to level up, to generate social mobility and to meet skills needs, then blanket minimum entry requirements will do nothing more than close doors.”

3. Pro: opens door to alternatives

Ministers argue that the reforms “should encourage more young people to consider apprenticeships and other higher qualifications”, said the BBC. This indicates that the government is keen to “shift away” from the idea that university is “the best choice for all students”, said The Guardian’s education correspondent Sally Weale.

If introduced, the new policy “rows back on policies pioneered by New Labour and the coalition government”, said The Telegraph, which sought to encourage 50% of young people to attend university and which, in 1997, saw student numbers rise by 400,000 a year to over 1.5m.

4. Con: risk of discrimination

Some experts warn that the proposals could become a legal minefield for the government if people are denied the opportunity to access student loans due to learning difficulties or other disabilities.

Sarah Woosey, an education lawyer at Simpson Millar, said the proposed changes were “potentially discriminatory”, and could violate equality laws. “Although it is probably sensible to ensure that students are only funded to study courses which they are able to succeed at, this decision should be determined by the entrance criteria for the individual universities, which also must comply with the Equality Act,” she told FE Week.

She added: “To say that a university would be happy to offer a place to an applicant on the basis of their admissions criteria but then for that student to be unable to access funding to do this because of their disability has got to be wrong.”

A hoax plan for Islamic hardliners to take over schools across the country is back in the headlines almost a decade after it first triggered panic and fury in the UK.

Dubbed the Trojan Horse affair, the scandal centred around claims that extremists were attempting to wrest control of Birmingham schools in an effort to introduce an “Islamist” or “Salafist” ethos into their teaching.

The scandal, which has long been recognised to have been overblown, has been re-examined by The New York Times in a podcast probing the origins of a letter that sparked the events.

What is the Trojan Horse affair?

The scandal began in November 2013, when “Birmingham city council received a strange document in the post”, said The Guardian. The document was “a photocopy of a letter, which seemed to be part of a correspondence between Muslims conspiring to take over local schools and run them according to strict Islamic principles”.

It was accompanied by a note from an anonymous person claiming the letter had been found “in their boss’s office”, the paper added.

The letter purported to outline a five-stage strategy named “Operation Trojan Horse”, claiming that it had already achieved success and was responsible for “leadership changes at four schools”, the BBC reported at the time.

The strategy was to “identify vulnerable schools where most of the pupils are Muslim” before identifying “a group of sympathetic parents to agitate for an Islamic agenda”, The Guardian said.

After this, the instigators of the plan would “put in place governors who adhere to the same conservative Islamic beliefs” and “identify staff to disrupt the school from within by changing rules and undermining unsympathetic colleagues”.

The plan would then be completed by running “anonymous letter and PR campaigns with the aim of forcing the headteacher to resign”, the paper reported. The letter claimed the strategy had been “tried and tested within Birmingham”.

The Times splashed on the contents of the letter before it was then passed to the Department for Education (DfE) in December 2013. The DfE said it was looking into the claim that the alleged plot had targeted 12 schools.

Government alarm bells

In 2014, Michael Gove, who at the time was education secretary in David Cameron’s government, ordered an inquiry and appointed a former national counter-terrorism chief, Peter Clarke, to look into the allegations.

The decision marked “an important shift” in the scandal, said Chris Allen, an associate professor of criminology at the University of Leicester, on The Conversation. “By bringing in a counter-terrorism chief, Gove was making it clear that this was not just seen as an educational issue – it was an investigation into potential extremism.”

The choice of Clarke was branded “desperately unfortunate” by West Midlands Police Chief Constable Chris Sims, according to the BBC. “Peter Clarke has many qualities but people will inevitably draw unwarranted conclusions from his former role as National Co-ordinator for Counter-Terrorism,” Sims warned.

Ofsted carried out 21 emergency investigations into primary and secondary schools in Birmingham. Five schools were placed in special measures, including Park View, a secondary school that was rated as “outstanding” two years earlier under Gove’s toughened inspection framework. The school’s management teams were subsequently replaced.

Clarke’s investigation found “no evidence of ‘terrorism, radicalisation or violent extremism’ in the schools”, The Times said. But his report said there was “‘clear evidence’ of people in positions of influence who espouse, sympathise with or fail to challenge extremist views”.

It warned that there had been “co-ordinated, deliberate and sustained action to introduce an intolerant and aggressive Islamist ethos into some schools in the city”, the Daily Mail reported.

All a hoax?

By the time Clarke’s investigation had been completed and the report published, questions about the authenticity of the letter had been raised.

The Times said that the letter “contains errors that suggest it is a fake”. One such example, the paper said, was that the document “appears to show that the conspirators were working to remove a primary school headmistress who was actually dismissed 20 years ago”.

The Independent also warned that the letter was “widely regarded as a fake”. But Clarke said that his investigation was not tasked with exploring whether the letter was “genuine”, but whether “the events and behaviours described have actually happened”, the BBC reported.

“It quickly became apparent to me that although there are some factual inaccuracies in the letter, there is also a great deal that is true, some of which had not previously been in the public domain,” said Clarke’s report.

Professional misconduct charges were brought against 15 teachers and senior staff members who were accused of “attempting to apply undue religious influence within a small group of schools in Birmingham”, said The Guardian.

But in every case bar one the charges were later “dismissed, overturned or dropped”.

What was the impact?

Critics have said that the Trojan Horse scandal “had a disastrous impact on community relations in the UK” and “helped stoke Islamophobic sentiment to new heights”, according to Middle East Eye.

A study by researchers at Birmingham City University in 2014 found that 90% of Birmingham’s Muslims felt that “community cohesion” was “damaged by the way the affair was handled”, reported Channel 4 News.

The fallout from the scandal also contributed to the demotion of Michael Gove from education secretary to chief whip in July 2014, said the broadcaster.

At the time, the chair of Park View Educational Trust, Tahir Alam, said that Gove’s demotion provided “some reassurance that the Prime Minister has finally acknowledged the profound damage that has been caused by his divisive approach”, said Sky News.

1. Britain’s record on drugs is stuck on a loop. ‘Crackdowns’ simply don’t work

Simon Jenkins for The Guardian

on Johnson’s war

“The Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 must be the worst law ever passed by a modern parliament,” writes Simon Jenkins in The Guardian. “Fifty years on, the act is variously credited with a soaring prison population, the devastation of working-class communities and creating hundreds of thousands of hardened addicts,” says Jenkins. The most obvious conclusion to reach from such a view “is that ever fiercer punishment is no deterrent and no solution. Yet no politician, certainly no prime minister, dares open their mouth on the subject without pledging tougher penalties,” he writes. A prime minister “aching for a headline” has proposed yet another war on drugs “in which a modest increase in ‘treatment and rehabilitation’ for those who ‘repent’ is accompanied by a blood-curdling crackdown,” argues Jenkins. “Drugs produce an irrational reaction in Britain’s political community,” he concludes. “After 50 years of costly failure, a reasonable politician might advocate at least an open mind. In most democracies that is happening. Not in Britain.”

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2. Punishing the unvaccinated would be both immoral and unjustified

Sherelle Jacobs for The Telegraph

on compulsory jabs

“Sometimes, the most ostensibly compelling arguments are also the most flawed,” writes Sherelle Jacobs in The Telegraph. “Such is the case with the growing calls in the UK for punitive measures against the unvaccinated, as part of one last heave to escape the pandemic,” she continues. “That doesn’t mean, however, that it would be either morally right or clinically efficacious to follow the path that large parts of Europe are heading down,” argues Jacobs. “Above all, there is the question of what introducing draconian restrictions against the unjabbed would say about us,” she writes. “Is our attitude to human rights morally consistent? After all, freedom from torture cannot be overriden even in, say a terrorist emergency, reflecting our commitment to human dignity,” she continues. “Yet rights like freedom from medical coercion should have become contingent on the circumstances, in spite of our supposed belief in human autonomy.”

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3. Facebook has failed to tackle the ethnic hatred in Myanmar

Jawad Iqbal for The Times

on combating hatred

“It is easy enough to identify the forces of evil in Myanmar. Step forward the generals who have strangled a fledgling democracy and deposed Aung San Suu Kyi, once lauded as a human rights icon,” writes Jawad Iqbal for The Times. “Even so, Myanmar’s hall of shame stretches beyond the military junta and includes other guilty parties – none more so than Facebook, which has allowed its platforms to be used to fuel the descent into hatred and violence,” he writes. “Facebook’s failure to combat the disinformation and lies on its platforms, much of it in violation of its community guidelines, is a case study in corporate evasiveness and wilful blindness,” Iqbal continues. “Facebook’s failings in Myanmar demonstrate once again that the tech giants are too cavalier to be allowed to regulate themselves. These companies pose a real danger to fundamental rights – not just in Myanmar, but everywhere.”

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4. What a lost decade of education spending means for the economy

Sarah O’Connor for the Financial Times

on failures to invest

“Boris Johnson is fond of blaming businesses for the economy’s problems,” writes Sarah O’Connor in the Financial Times. “He says they have failed to invest in their staff and insists Brexit will jolt the country out of its ‘broken model with low growth, low skills, and low productivity, all of it enabled and assisted by uncontrolled immigration’.” O’Connor wants to know about the “homegrown workers who will be expected to power this transformation into a ‘high-wage, high-skill, high-productivity economy?” That is an area in which “his own government has also failed to invest”, she argues, pointing to an Institute for Fiscal Studies report released last week that said the most deprived fifth of secondary schools experienced a 14% real-terms fall in spending per pupil compared with a 9% drop for the least deprived schools. “As with other policy areas,” writes O’Connor, “the government has big ambitions but is only halfheartedly matching them with its wallet. A lost decade and a half for education spending is not the ideal launch point for a bold new economic strategy based on lower immigration, higher skills and ‘levelling up’ inequalities.”

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5. What voters actually want levelling up to achieve is pretty simple

Ed Dorrell for The Independent

on nicer, cleaner places

“Just what is ‘levelling up’?” asks Ed Dorrell, director at Public First, a policy consultancy based in London. “Surely answering the ‘what’ question before the ‘how’ would be sensible for Gove et al,” Dorrell argues. “And the answer, according to a landmark poll carried out last month by Public First, isn’t, in fact, that complicated: the people of the ‘red wall’ want to live in nicer, cleaner, more peaceful places,” he writes. Red wall voters are “desperate to be proud of the places in which they live and for them to be less shabby and less run down”, Dorrell writes. “Surely a clean, bustling high street free of graffiti – with the threat of petit crime minimised – and a refurbished civic building or two is not too much to ask.”

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Millions of school pupils are due to head back to classrooms in England and Wales as early as next week after two years of disruption due to the Covid pandemic.

While the government’s “back to school” campaign, which launched on Thursday, promises a “more normal year”, it has been branded as “naive” by teaching unions, who warn that “further disruption is inevitable”.

Delays and scepticism

It is not even September yet and The Times has reported that the reopening of secondary schools in England could be delayed “by at least a week” as millions of pupils are tested for Covid on-site before classes can officially begin.

The Department for Education has said schools will be allowed to stagger starting dates so that pupils can be tested twice for the virus, meaning lessons in many secondary schools are “not expected to start until the second week of the new term”, said the paper.

Education Secretary Gavin Williamson told schools in July they could remove measures taken to prevent the spread of Covid – such as face masks – thanks to the UK’s vaccination efforts. However, a Times survey of 1,200 senior teaching staff has found that many schools plan to keep some measures in place, including plans by one in five schools to stagger the start and end of the school day throughout the coming term.

Ministers have said that they “no longer recommend that it is necessary to keep children in consistent groups (‘bubbles’)”. The guidance also says that pupils aged 18 or under who are named as a close contact of someone who has tested positive for Covid-19 will no longer need to self-isolate for ten days.

In the last academic year, the government's policy of automatic isolation after contact with Covid-19 meant hundreds of thousands of pupils missed school due to Covid-19 – in June, a quarter of a million children missed school in a single week because of coronavirus infections, self-isolation or school closures.

The government’s latest “back to school” campaign has also faced scepticism from school union leaders, reported The Guardian. The campaign encourages school pupils to continue twice-weekly testing at home and features 18-year-old Olympic gold medallist Matt Richards telling school students that regular testing will allow them to “get back to the things you love, like competitive sports and school matches”.

But Nick Brook, the deputy general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, told the paper: “It would be naive to assume that things will be completely back to normal in September. Scientists are already predicting that Covid cases are likely to increase further when schools reopen and sadly we know that further disruption is inevitable.”

A taste of things to come

Scotland, where pupils have already returned to school, may “offer a foretaste of potential developments in England and other parts of the UK”, says the Financial Times. Cases of Covid-19 have more than doubled over the past week since schools went back, with a reported 4,323 cases on Tuesday – the highest daily number recorded during the pandemic so far, said the paper.

First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said in a Covid briefing that she could not “completely rule out having to reimpose some restrictions” if cases continued to rise.

Indeed, Linda Bauld, professor of public health at Edinburgh University and a recently appointed government adviser, has warned that schools are “at risk of being forced to close again” if numbers continue to rise, said The Times, with teaching unions expressing concern about the spread of the virus among school staff and pupils.

“I’m concerned there will be pressure again to close schools and everybody wants to completely avoid that,” said Bauld. “But if we do have really, really large numbers in schools, then I think that’s really tricky for the government.”

In Scotland, some restrictions remain in place, with children over 12 in schools asked to wear face coverings and remain at least one metre away from staff.

And in England, there are fears that coronavirus cases are still “too high” ahead of the return to school, said the i newspaper.

More than 35,000 people a day are testing positive for the virus, according to government data, with one health official warning that the UK had “lost its lead” on vaccinations by not approving jabs for younger teenagers quickly enough.

Professor Dominic Harrison, director of public health at Blackburn with Darwen Council in Lancashire, told the i that he expected to see “a significant spike in cases as school-aged children will be required to regularly test again”.

While the Joint Council on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) advised earlier this month that all 16- and 17-year-olds should be given a first vaccine dose, the Department of Health confirmed today that no decision had been made for 12- to 15-year-olds. The BBC said “NHS organisations in England have been told to prepare for a possible extension of the Covid vaccination programme” for the younger age group, but the JCVI is yet to decide.

Professor Harrison has warned: “The UK has lost its lead in population vaccination coverage due to ‘cautious’ decision-making by JCVI on vaccination for all school-aged children 12-plus.

“The reality for that age group between now and next March is likely to be vaccination or Covid-19 – few are likely to escape exposure to the virus over the winter.”

Disadvantaged white pupils are being left behind as a result of the government’s “muddled thinking” about how to close the attainment gap, according to a damning new report by MPs.

The Department of Education (DfE) has “shown little interest” in exploring why white working-class pupils are underperforming “relative to similarly deprived peers”, says the Education Select Committee.

In a statement summarising the findings, Robert Halfon, the Tory chair of the committee, claims that these white pupils have been “let down and neglected” by a system that “condemns them to falling behind their peers every step of the way”.

But the inquiry report has been “disowned” by fellow committee member Kim Johnson. The Labour MP told The Guardian that the inquiry “cherrypicked data” in an apparent bid to “create a bit of a culture war”.

‘Far from privileged’

“If the government is serious about closing the overall attainment gap then the problems faced by the biggest group of disadvantaged pupils can no longer be swept under the carpet,” argues Halfon.

“Never again should we lazily put the gap down to poverty alone, given that we know free school meal-eligible pupils from other ethnic groups consistently outperform their white British peers.”

His committee’s report claims that terms such as “white privilege” are “alienating to disadvantaged white communities” and may have contributed towards a “systemic neglect” of pupils in need of additional support.

“Our inquiry has shown that poor white pupils are far from ‘privileged’ in education,” the report states.

The inquiry found that in 2018-19, just 53% of white British pupils on free school meals met the expected standard of development at the end of the early years foundation stage - which as The Telegraph notes, is “one of the lowest percentages for any disadvantaged ethnic group”.

And less than 18% of white British pupils on free meals achieved grade four in English and Maths, compared with 22.5% of their peers in the same income bracket.

Halfron has accused the DfE of being “reluctant” to recognise the specific challenges faced by the white working-class, “let alone do anything to tackle this chronic social injustice”.

The inquiry found that only 16% of these disadvantaged pupils went on to study at university after finishing school, “the lowest of any ethnic group other than traveller of Irish heritage and Gypsy/Roma”, the report says.

The MPs argue that disadvantaged white pupils are being held back by a variety of “economic and cultural factors”, including living in families with “multi-generational poverty”; having disengaged parents with a poor experience of education; a lack of community social organisations; and poor local services and transport.

Suggested measures to help lessen the learning gap include finding “a better way to talk about racial disparity”; using pupil premium funding to provide children with additional support; and the creation of “family hubs” to get parents more involved in the education process.

‘Well-known challenge’

“The content of this latest report will come as no surprise to some,” writes Nazia Parveen, The Guardian’s community affairs correspondent. Parveen notes that the MPs refer repeatedly to the findings of the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities, which published a government-commissioned report in March that critics described “as stark, contentious and a means of igniting a culture war”.

The “provocative” tone of both reports in relation to terms such as “white privilege” chimes with previous claims by Equalities Minister Kemi Badenoch that schools which present the theory as an uncontested fact could be breaking the law, Parveen adds.

During a Commons debate last October on Black History Month, Badenoch said that the government did not want white children being taught about “white privilege and their inherited racial guilt”.

The report from Halfron’s committee states that schools “should consider whether the promotion of politically controversial terminology, including white privilege, is consistent with their duties under the Equality Act 2010”, and that the DfE should “take steps to ensure that young people are not inadvertently being inducted into political movements”.

The recommendation has met with a mixed response from other commentators.

GB News reporter Inaya Folarin Iman is also “critical” of the idea of white privilege, but rejects the idea that those promoting the concept are “contributing to the neglect of working-class boys”. Pointing the blame at “successive governments systematically choosing policies” that have failed to address the problem, she says: “There is a danger in thinking the reasons why people have been neglected, entrenched social and economic disadvantage, is to do with the culture wars, rather than that they have genuinely been ignored.”

Labour MP Diane Abbott tweeted that the report was “shameful” for suggesting that “white working class children underachieve because of their colour rather than a general lack of investment in education”.

Meanwhile, DfE policy advisor Sam Freedman argues that Halfon is unfair to blame his department for what is “well-known challenge in predominantly white low-income communities”.

“The idea the education sector ignores it out of some misplaced ‘wokeness’ is absolute nonsense,” tweets Freedman. It is “perfectly possible” to focus on white working-class underachievement “while also working against the impact of structural racism which causes a whole load of other educational and social problems”, he concludes.

The government is facing a backlash from some of the country’s most prominent artists and writers after revealing plans to slash funding for higher education arts courses by 50%.

The budget cuts follow a six-week consultation by Education Secretary Gavin Williamson and the Office for Students, the independent regulator for higher education in England, that found arts education subjects were not “strategic priorities”.

The deadline for consultation on the budget cuts, which may come into effect during the 2021-22 academic year, is today. Other proposals include increased funding for courses “identified as supporting the NHS”, including science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) subjects.

The reduction in funding, which would affect performing and creative arts, media studies and archaeology courses, has been described by the Public Campaign for the Arts as “catastrophic” and “an attack on the future of UK arts”.

A petition opposing the cuts, launched on 5 May by the arts lobbying group, describes the reduction in funding as “a targeted attack on arts subjects” and has received more than 56,000 signatures.

“Artists and curators” are also “urging the government to reconsider”, The Art Newspaper adds, with the artist Bob and Roberta Smith telling the paper that the “truly appalling cuts to arts subjects will further divide society”. Artist Sarah Kogan wrote on Instagram that “a 50% cut to arts education is unthinkable. We believe the arts should absolutely be a strategic priority for the government.”

And Booker prize-winning Girl, Woman, Other author Bernardine Evaristo wrote on Twitter that “this tin-pot chumocratic government has its priorities all wrong”, adding: “An absurd £37bn on the failed Test & Trace, unlawfully awarded, now this awful assault on the arts in universities.”

A Department for Education (DfE) spokesperson told The Guardian that the proposal would “only affect the additional funding allocated towards some creative subjects” and would direct funding towards subjects that “support the skills this country needs to build back better”.

The government faced similar criticism in October last year when its Cyber First campaign, which encouraged people working in the arts to pursue a career in cybersecurity, resurfaced on social media. The advert showed a young ballerina with the caption “Fatima’s next job could be in tech”.

Secretary of State for Culture Oliver Dowden distanced himself from what he described as a “crass” advert. “I want to save jobs in the arts which is why we are investing £1.57bn,” he tweeted at the time.

A government minister has waded into a row between a Yorkshire school and angry parents after pupils were shown a cartoon of the Prophet Mohammed.

Pupils from Batley Grammar School in West Yorkshire were shown images of the Prophet Mohammed reportedly taken from the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo during a religious studies lesson.

Protests led by unhappy parents took place outside the school yesterday, with some parents shouting “get the head teacher”, The Times reports. No arrests were made or fines issued during the protests, which were attended by West Yorkshire Police.

The teacher behind the lesson, who is believed to be in his late twenties, has been suspended from the school pending further investigation and is “believed to be in hiding” after he was identified online, the Evening Standard reports.

Displaying the image angered some parents as a common interpretation of the Koran’s teachings states that the prophet should not be depicted by human hands.

The Department for Education (DfE) intervened in the row last night, issuing a statement condemning the “intimidation” of teachers.

“It is never acceptable to threaten or intimidate teachers,” the statement said. “We encourage dialogue between parents and schools when issues emerge. However, the nature of protest we have seen, including issuing threats and in violation of coronavirus restrictions, is completely unacceptable and must be brought to an end.”

Communities Secretary Robert Jenrick also said that he was “disturbed to see scenes of people protesting outside the school”, telling Sky News that the teacher being forced into hiding is “very disturbing” and “not a road we want to go down in this country”.

Critics condemned the DfE’s statement as “alarming” and called for a “calmer” response, The Guardian reports. Mohammed Shafiq, chief executive of the Ramadhan Foundation, told the paper that the DfE had “chosen to amplify… divisions by attacking the parents and pupils”, adding “we can come together to have a respectful discussion and seek an end to this issue.

“There is still time for calmer heads amongst the department and we urge them to seek language that brings us together and address the issue without deflecting”, he added.

Yunus Lunat, from the Indian Muslim Welfare Society in Batley, told Sky News that showing pupils the image “wasn’t part of the approved curriculum”, adding that he was “absolutely shocked that we’ve arrived where we are today”.

Head teacher, Gary Kibble, said the non-selective co-educational school apologised “unequivocally” for the “totally inappropriate resource” used in the religious studies lesson.

“The member of staff has also given their most sincere apologies,” he added. “We have immediately withdrawn teaching on this part of the course and we are reviewing how we go forward with the support of all the communities represented in our school.”

However, Baroness Warsi, the former Conservative Party chair and the first Muslim woman to serve in the Cabinet, claimed that “extremists on both sides” have “hijacked” the protests.

Speaking to the BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Warsi said that the dispute is “about child safeguarding and making sure the school looks again, as should every school, to ensure that every pupil in their school is being taught in a way which creates a positive, unifying learning environment.

“Unfortunately, this matter has been hijacked by extremists on both sides to kind of create this culture war,” she added. “What we’re forgetting in all of this is the most important party in all of this, which is the kids and their learning.”

The Times adds that in 2015 the offices of the French magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris were attacked by Islamists who killed 12 people.

And in October 2020, the paper continues, a French schoolteacher, Samuel Paty, was beheaded by an Islamist after he was accused of showing students a cartoon of Mohammed.

A monk accused of running a "sex club" for young boys was allowed to remain at the country's top Roman Catholic school after numerous allegations were made against him from students, reports The Times.

Father Jeremy Sierla lived and worked at Ampleforth College in North Yorkshire until as late as 2012, despite a criminal inquiry being launched in 2004 into claims he had summoned pupils to his study at night, "where they were given alcohol and told to perform sex acts".

According to the Times, police spoke to more than a dozen of former students at the school, some of whom "recalled that Father Jeremy often whipped boys' bottoms with a loose part of his monk's habit, pinched their bottoms in the swimming pool, encouraged pupils to tie him up with dressing-gown cords and shoelaces, put his hands under their duvets and sometimes showered naked with them".

The report also says police discovered he had posed as a girl in internet chatrooms, using the alter egos Easygirl19 and Cyberbitch in order to speak to young boys.

No charges were officially brought, but police advised the Department for Education in 2005 that Sierla should not be allowed "anywhere near a school".

However, he remained at Ampleforth until 2012, working in the abbey shop, before the Department for Education advised he should no longer be allowed on school grounds.

An Ampleforth College spokesman told the paper that Sierla's continued presence at the school "was approved at a meeting of safeguarding professionals in 2004" and that the case was reviewed again by an independent safeguarding commission in 2007.

However, the Times alleges that following the inquiry, Ampleforth officials told care inspectors it was "preferable for [Sierla] to be under the supervision of the abbey, rather than unsupervised elsewhere in the diocese".

Sierla, who now lives in a closed religious order, has always denied any wrongdoing, adds the report.

Ampleforth has a history dotted with similar accusations.

Since 1996, three monks and a lay teacher at the school have been convicted of historical sex crimes against more than 30 boys.

Last week, Dara de Cogan, a music teacher who began working for the school in 2004, was jailed for 28 months for sexually abusing a female pupil during lessons.

Blue chip construction firm Carillion has notched up another major government contract win after sealing a deal to build eight new hospitals for the Department for Education.

The Times reports the agreements, "the largest contract in the Department for Education’s £700m priority school building programme", will see the FTSE-250 firm start work on the secondary schools in the Midlands and maintain them in an outsourcing arrangement that will last 25 years.

A consortium of investors including the European Investment Bank and Aviva, the insurer, will fund £138m in construction costs, while the maintenance deal is worth an additional £49m. Carillion, along with infrastructure investor Equifax, will put £11m in equity into the project with a further £2m coming from the Treasury’s Infrastructure UK arm, which will hold a 15 per cent stake.

The deal comes hot on the heels of Carillion being named as one of three firms that will provide services to various government departments and non-departmental public bodies in a "facilities management services agreement", which will run until 2019. City AM says the outsourcing contract that could be worth up to £4.1bn.

The company was also recently selected as preferred bidder for a £430m contract to build a new hospital for the West Birmingham Hospitals NHS Trust, the Birmingham Post reports. Again, the contract will involve a long-running maintenance agreement that the company expects to yield £130m in revenue over 30 years.

Carillion shares were up slightly in trading on Tuesday to 354p. As a result of its strong pipeline of deals it is currently labelled as a buy by the Investors Chronicle as well as seven equity ratings analysts.