Experts have warned of a wave of bad behaviour set to hit UK secondary schools as a result of the Covid pandemic.

School leaders and child behaviour researchers believe teachers returning to work after the summer holidays will confront a worrying "behaviour bubble" as "younger children who were most severely affected by the pandemic reach the teenage years renowned for peak classroom disruption", said The Guardian.

Who are those most affected?
Official data shows that pupils aged between 11 and 13, in years seven and eight, formed part of a "bubble" of behavioural problems in 2022-23. The figures, the latest available from the Department for Education, "reveal that this cohort of children has seen the largest spike in exclusions and suspensions", said The Telegraph. The same set of children begin years nine and 10 in September, and this is the age at which children are traditionally more likely to misbehave, experts said.

Tom Bennett, a DfE adviser on behaviour management, told The Guardian that home schooling during lockdown "may well be responsible for the deterioration of some social skills, which, like truancy, will be disproportionately concentrated in sub-groups who were already most at risk of misbehaving".

Is behaviour really getting worse?
"Recent survey data supports the idea" that behaviour in schools has got worse since the pandemic, said TES. The TES Wellbeing Report 2024, based on survey data, found an increase in the number of schools turning to behaviour management software to reduce the workload caused by a rise in behaviour incidents in schools.

Meanwhile, in a Teacher Tapp survey commissioned by the BBC earlier this year, a third of UK teachers reported that they had witnessed a student fight that week.

What can be done to prepare?
A lot "may depend on whether schools have successfully addressed the behaviour of those pupils in the years they have already been at secondary school", said Andrew Old, a secondary school teacher and blogger. To improve behaviour system-wide, Barry Smith, a behavioural expert, told TES that educators, parents and leaders would need to be more honest about the size of the challenges schools are facing. "I think we delude ourselves on lots of levels," Smith said. "We say it's post-Covid. I think that's a convenient excuse."

A rise in drunken disorder on flights and at airports has led Ryanair chief Michael O'Leary to call for a two-drinks-per-passenger limit at airport bars.

Photos of the "airport pint" have long been an Instagram staple but "booze-fuelled violence" has "surged this summer", said The Telegraph, leading to a conversation about the wisdom and safety of airport boozing.

'Powder and tablets'
"We don't want to begrudge people having a drink," said O'Leary, "but we don't allow people to drink-drive", yet "we keep putting them up in aircraft at 33,000 feet".

In the past, most drunk passengers fell asleep on the plane, he said, but now, thanks to "powder and tablets", they stay awake, leading to an increase in assaults on cabin crew and confrontations between passengers.

It's "certainly a growing problem", former British Airways pilot Nick Eades, the world's longest-serving Boeing 747 captain, told the paper. A new YouGov poll of 6,771 British adults found that 62% said they strongly, or tend to, support a limit of two alcoholic drinks per passenger at airport bars, said Business Traveller, but some have responded to O'Leary's campaign with cynicism.

'Lairy minority'
Wetherspoons founder Sir Tim Martin told The Times that he's "had no complaints about our pubs from the airport authorities or airlines that I'm aware of in recent years".

Suggesting hypocrisy on the part of the Ryanair boss, Martin pointed out that "years ago" his chain "stopped selling 'shooters' at airports, as well as 'double-up' offers", while O'Leary's airline still "offers a discount on Irish whiskey if a double is ordered".

No one "would ever be so cynical as to note that a limit on consumption in the airport might drive up sales elsewhere", said corporate communications adviser Gavin Devine on X, but O'Leary's campaign "would be so much more compelling if it was combined with halting sales of booze on board his planes".

"At its best", said Sean Thomas in The Telegraph, drinking in airports is "one of the great pleasures of travel". A "lairy minority" might exist, but airports shouldn't "ruin the fun of the many because of the sins of the few".

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Another worldwide alert – mpox is spreading. Here are three steps we can take to head it off
Gordon Brown in The Guardian
The World Health Organization (WHO) has warned of "another crisis" as cases of "yet another new strain of the mpox virus" spreads, writes former PM Gordon Brown, but countries "with the resources and power" to assist have been "slow to offer help". Thousands of vaccines "could be released now", the "burden can be shared" and "we must ramp up our manufacturing capacity to ensure more supply". If the WHO "did not exist, it would have to be created to deal with the challenges ahead".

Starmer's illiberal smoking restrictions are just the start
Joseph Dinnage in City A.M.
"Imagine you and your colleagues have just finished a day of graft," writes Joseph Dinnage, and you go to the pub to "enjoy a fag with your pint", but "then you remember that to do so would be a criminal offence". Keir Starmer's plan "has been met with glee by the joyless public health lobby", but publicans across the country are "terrified". People "do not exist to pursue a risk-free life, certainly not if they want to have a good time".

I'm a food critic and I can't get enough of tinned carbonara
Josh Barrie on the i news site
News outlets "have got into a frenzy" after Heinz launched its first pasta in a can in more than a decade: spaghetti carbonara. But "they miss that carbonara in a can is not going to be carbonara". So "relax" because it's "just a £2 dinner", something "to get home to and empty and not think about". There is "nothing whatsoever wrong with canned food" and "anyone who takes a punt at saying otherwise has never been alone and hungry".