Homeschooling – or elective home education (EHE), as it’s officially known in the UK – has been rising steadily since the 1970s. Before universal education, many children were educated at home, which has always been legal. In the 1970s and 1980s, small numbers of parents started rejecting schools as overly rigid or exam-driven.

More recently, in the 2010s, the number of EHE children more than doubled and has continued to grow since the Covid pandemic. There were 126,000 children in EHE in England during the 2025 autumn term, according to the Department for Education – a rise of nearly 13% on the year before. They’re a tiny fraction of their total cohort (about 1.5%), but critics worry that it’s a sign of a wider crisis in the education system, and that EHE is only very loosely regulated.

Who is allowed to homeschool?

Under the Education Act 1996, all children between the ages of 5 and 16 in England and Wales have to receive a “suitable” full-time education, “either by regular attendance at school or otherwise”. But there’s no legal obligation to enrol a child in school; and all it takes to “deregister” is a letter or email. Local authorities aren’t allowed to carry out inspections or monitor the education parents provide. (Northern Ireland’s authorities have greater oversight powers; in Scotland, parents need the local authority’s consent to deregister; across the UK, parents of children with special educational needs need the school’s consent.) Parents aren’t required to teach the national curriculum, assess progress, or make children sit exams. Local authorities have a legal duty to identify children who aren’t getting an education, but they have little practical ability to do so.

Why are numbers rising?

The Institute for Public Policy Research think-tank believes rising EHE numbers are part of a more general “school engagement crisis”, with similarly rising numbers in absences, suspensions, permanent exclusions and “emotionally-based school avoidance” (also known as “school refusal”). The main reasons, one deputy headteacher told The Guardian, are “Covid, Covid, Covid”. Lockdown gave families a glimpse into the world of home education; as schools reopened, some children found the transition back to the classroom difficult. More than 170,000 children in England missed at least half their school sessions (half days) in 2023/24, which is a record high.

How about special needs provision?

It’s a big factor. “The system is broken and does not cater for a lot of children,” one EHE parent told the BBC. Special educational needs and disabilities (Send) provision is one of the biggest financial burdens on local authorities, costing more than £10 billion a year in England. Even so, it’s widely recognised that schools struggle to make good on their obligations to pupils with special needs, even if those have been officially recognised.

Why are parents doing this?

The modern EHE movement grew out of progressive education theories, and many proponents are interested in “child-centred learning”, “unschooling” and the like, although others take a more structured approach, often provided by specialised organisations. Religion is another motivator for some. There is, however, a worrying lack of data: the Department for Education didn’t start collecting figures until 2022. But, in a recent study of reasons given by parents, 21% said they homeschooled for “philosophical” or “lifestyle” reasons; 16% said they did it for the sake of their child’s mental health; 15% gave “school dissatisfaction” as their reason, including concerns over bullying and poor Send provision. But all of these were outranked by “other”, “unknown” and “no reason given”, which accounted for 40% of parents.

Why is more homeschooling a worry?

Primary schools, especially, are a key part of the social safety net: the wellbeing of EHE children is hard to assess. Sara Sharif, murdered by her father and stepmother in Woking in 2023, for example, had been deregistered. Because there are penalties for persistent absence but none for not going to school at all, there’s a parental incentive for deregistering repeat truants. Parents can avoid fines of up to £2,500, and schools – which are assessed on attendance and exclusion numbers – have been known to encourage this covertly (and illegally). It’s likely that many EHE parents do not have the intention or ability to provide an education at home – which makes it particularly alarming that some of the biggest rises have been seen in areas with high levels of deprivation.

Is it allowed in other countries?

Homeschooling is illegal in China, North Korea and Cuba, and also in less authoritarian countries such as Sweden and Germany. France has historically allowed it only in highly exceptional circumstances, and the rules were tightened still further in 2021 with legislation designed to combat “Islamist separatism”. In most countries it’s a tiny minority interest that the state either regulates or turns a blind eye to.

The main outliers are the US, Canada, New Zealand, Australia and the UK, which recognise homeschooling as a parental right, and where social movements advocate it. The US is the world leader: 3.4% of children – around four million – are homeschooled. Religion plays an important part: 53% of parents cite the need for religious instruction (typically in evangelical Protestantism) as a key motivation, and the main advocacy group, the Home School Legal Defence Association, has close ties to the Christian Right.

Right-wing scepticism about “government schools” also plays a part, but so do worries about school shootings and racial inequality. US homeschoolers are still overwhelmingly white, although there was a marked increase of its incidence in Black, Latino and Asian-American households during the Covid pandemic.

How do homeschooled children perform?

Professionals agree that EHE can work well if parents have the time, resources and ability – but not all of them do. It's “like rolling dice”, an EHE officer told The Sunday Times. Reliable studies of educational outcomes are thin on the ground, since they’re mostly produced by advocacy groups. The Department for Education doesn’t collect data on the attainment of EHE children, and so hasn’t produced an assessment. However, it notes that a 2009 inquiry found that 22% of home-educated 16- to 18-year-olds in England weren’t in education, employment or training, compared with a national average of some 5%.

What is the government doing?

Successive inquiries have called for an official register of EHE children (none currently exists). The inquiry into the Sharif case called for safeguarding checks on the homes of deregistered children. Both these measures are included in the education bill that’s currently going through Parliament, along with a requirement that parents of children already deemed “at risk” will need the local authority’s consent to switch to EHE. However, EHE advocates are lobbying intensively for the bill to be watered down, arguing that it infringes their rights as parents.

One of the very best things about this job is having a spark of an idea and turning it into something more. That is exactly what happened when I found myself idly pondering the demise of my favourite thing in the world (after my children and Jack Russell terrier): books – or, more precisely, English literature. I was an unapologetic swot at school. I swooned over Shakespeare, found profound depths in Joyce (yes, really), and became obsessed with the literature of America’s Deep South. So when the government announced its National Year of Reading 2026 campaign, it seemed the perfect springboard for exploring what schools are doing to foster a love of reading and the study of English literature. The answer, reassuringly, is quite a lot.

Katie Sanderson spoke to several prep schools about how they nurture a love of books in the early years, while Elizabeth Burrows reports on how the school library is being reimagined for the 21st century. It’s out with dusty tomes and sepulchral stacks; in with architectural spaces, robotics suites and tech-savvy librarians. We also asked a fantastic cohort of librarians and English teachers to recommend and review their favourite books about books. Do take a look – there are some real gems in our Top Reads feature.

I delved into the decline and fall of English literature and had the pleasure and privilege of speaking to some extraordinarily engaged, impassioned and articulate literary leaders. Each had an abundance to say, particularly about the place of English in their schools. This was not a conversation about simply getting kids to read. It was about students genuinely engaging with great literature – grappling with its language, its ideas – and taking on that very grown-up, knotty challenge of what it means to be human, which is what the best works have always demanded. What was most cheering was encountering such energy and belief. Even in a world increasingly dominated by screens, the fervour that literature can spark is still very much alive and kicking in our classrooms.

This issue also includes our Best of the Best Prep Schools – a competition that gets fiercer every year, not just because we received a record number of entries but because so many of prep schools are knocking it out of the park with the education they provide. Indeed, despite the doomsday scenario painted by the media about schools closing, some prep boarding schools are bursting at the seams – Dorothy Lepkowska reports on those getting it right against the odds.

I hope you enjoy this issue.

Amanda Constance is the editor of The Week’s Independent Schools Guide. Read the full publication below or click here.

Let’s make space for childhood

By Caolan Wukics, head of boarding, Holmewood House

Australia’s legislation banning social media for under-16s has reignited a conversation I have with parents almost weekly: how do we help our children grow up in a world where smartphones seem designed to capture every spare moment of their attention?

At Holmewood House, we’ve taken a clear position. Our boarders enjoy a largely phone-free environment – and I use the word ‘enjoy’ deliberately, because that’s precisely what we see happening.

Here’s how it works in practice. Boarders can access mobile phones for communication three times a week; Monday, Wednesday and Friday evenings, for around 30 minutes. Phones must not have social media apps installed. At weekends, phone access is at staff discretion and similarly limited. Laptops and computers aren’t allowed in bedrooms.

The reaction from new boarders is telling. Initially, some are uncertain and understandably so, given how embedded these devices have become in daily life. But within days, something shifts. House staff suggest a picnic, outdoor games, or arts and crafts. Children rediscover the simple pleasure of being bored and finding their own solution. It’s genuinely liberating to watch.

What does an evening look like without screens? After supervised prep, you’ll find children making the most of our 32 acres: football on the pitch, den-building in the woods, painting in our creative room (where they’re positively encouraged to leave their mark on the walls). There’s baking in the kitchen, board games in the common room, conversations that meander and deepen because there’s nowhere else to be.

We’re not anti-technology – far from it. Our pupils use computers throughout the school day, and we have thoughtful discussions about digital literacy, social media and AI. But we believe childhood benefits from boundaries, particularly around bedtime. Research shows that 45 minutes of blue-light exposure delays melatonin release, making sleep harder. Our screen-free evening routine has helped earn us recognition as a BSA Sleep Champion, though what matters more is that children wake genuinely rested.

The deeper benefit reveals itself in relationships. Without the option to retreat behind a screen, children learn to navigate the rhythms of community life: sharing space, reading social cues, building the kind of friendships that form when you’re truly present with one another. They develop imagination, independence and conversation skills – qualities that will serve them far beyond school.

When I meet prospective families, I’m straightforward about our approach. I ask parents whether their child genuinely needs social media apps, which children shouldn’t access until they’re 13 anyway. The response is overwhelmingly positive. Parents tell me they find it diffcult to enforce boundaries at home. They recognise that helping children establish healthy habits now, before the teenage years when screen battles intensify, is invaluable.

This isn’t about creating some romanticised, pre-digital childhood. Boarders can phone home using the house mobile and landline whenever they need. The common room has a television (though, like most of their generation, they rarely watch it). There’s even a Nintendo Switch for rainy afternoons. But these are moments in their week, not the gravitational centre.

What we’re really offering is something increasingly precious: time. Time to discover interests that emerge from curiosity rather than algorithms. Time to develop independence through real-world experiences. Time to build the kind of childhood memories that aren’t mediated by a screen.

I’ve noticed a growing trend across schools “Parents consistently tell us that our phone-free boarding is a significant draw” to limit screen time and extend childhood, protecting pupils from inappropriate content whilst fostering genuine inquiry and interaction. Some schools use Yondr pouches to lock phones away during the day. We’ve simply removed them from the boarding environment almost entirely.

The results speak for themselves. We see children who are present, engaged and connected to one another in meaningful ways. We’re alert to research about screens affecting attention spans and the ability to form deep relationships. Our approach isn’t about fighting technology, it’s about giving children the space to grow at their own pace.

Parents consistently tell us that our phone-free boarding is a significant draw. In a world where screens compete for our children’s attention at every turn, families appreciate a place where childhood can unfold more naturally, where children use their imagination, play games and participate in activities without constant digital distraction.

When I watch boarders at supper – laughing, chatting, fully engaged with one another – I’m reminded why this matters. We’re not preparing children for a world without technology. We’re just giving them the foundations to use it wisely. And that strikes me as an education worth having.

Banning phones is easy but not effective

By Dr Robert Harrison, director of education & integrated technology, ACS International Schools

When the education secretary writes to every head teacher in England insisting schools must be phone-free environments for the entire school day, I understand the impulse. When she says phones shouldn’t be used as calculators or for research during lessons, I recognise the frustration driving it.

But I’ve also watched this debate drift from legitimate concern into something approaching moral panic. And I worry that an outright ban – however satisfying – mistakes avoidance for protection.

The truth is that a blanket ban would simply create a phone-free bubble for seven hours, then send students home at 3.30pm with a cheery ‘good luck’. Parents would be left to manage their children’s digital world alone, often without the tools or support to do so effectively. Meanwhile, we will have spent the school day pretending that the digital world doesn’t exist.

This is the equivalent of teaching road safety without ever letting children near a street.

The evidence supporting bans is far less conclusive than the headlines suggest. The University of Pennsylvania study showing improved grades? That was in India, where smartphones represent fundamentally different patterns of access and ownership. The LSE research from 2016? Frequently cited, rarely read in full. The effects were modest and concentrated among specific groups. We don’t have robust evidence that school-hours bans improve long-term outcomes. What we may be creating instead is a generation skilled at hiding phone use rather than managing it.

At ACS International Schools, we take a different approach that’s neither permissive nor punitive. We absolutely limit phone use during the school day. But we do so through consultation with teachers, parents and students, not through inflexible campus-wide prohibition.

Our experience is that one size doesn’t fit all. Pre-teens have different needs (and capabilities) than 17-year-olds with revision apps and UCAS correspondence to deal with. Campus layouts matter. After-school activities matter. School climate and student engagement matter. Transportation matters, too, for students travelling significant distances and where parental contact is a legitimate need.

So we build consensus. At the start of each year, we engage families in an open discussion about digital boundaries and resilience. Students help shape the expectations they’ll be held to. This isn’t democracy for its own sake, but it’s recognition that rules imposed without buy-in become rules to circumvent.

In practice, this means protected spaces where phones can be secured in lockers or pouches, or checked-out by classroom teachers for legitimate academic use. Times and places for interaction not mediated by technology are the norm. We monitor individual behaviour and intervene when needed. But this isn’t done through surveillance, it’s through the ordinary attentiveness and relationship management that characterise good schools.

Does it work? Our students aren’t perfect digital citizens. But they’re practising, and they’re developing what we have labelled (in a nod toward Ethan Mollick) ‘co-intelligence’: the capacity to work ethically and productively with technology. When they leave our schools, they don’t suddenly encounter the digital world for the first time. They will have been navigating it, with adult guidance, for years.

I understand why black-and-white statutory bans appeal. But the problems smartphones create don’t stay within school hours. Students do not separate their lives into neat digital and analogue compartments. A balanced approach values both technology-free educational spaces and technology-informed social-emotional learning that reflects the real digital lives of today’s young people.

Threatening schools with Ofsted inspection for non-compliance isn’t collaboration but trying to outsource a societal problem to the classroom. We need genuine collaboration amongst schools, parents, government and the technology companies whose business models depend on capturing adolescent attention. Parents must engage with their children’s online lives and not outsource concern to school policy. Governments must hold platforms accountable and not just hand teachers another set of rules to enforce.

Schools should focus on developing responsible digital citizens, not confiscating mobile phones. Our job isn’t to create sanctuaries from the modern world. It’s to prepare young people to be ready to navigate it with wisdom, discernment, and confidence. That requires practice which is supervised, structured and intentional, not the convenience of avoidance masquerading as protection.

This article first appeared in The Week’s Independent Schools Guide Spring/Summer 2026, edited by Amanda Constance.

Educating children with special educational needs has been dubbed a ‘national crisis’ with soaring numbers being diagnosed with conditions like dyslexia, ADHD and autism.

A staggering one in five of all pupils – over 1.7 million – are estimated to have such special educational needs and disabilities, known commonly as SEND, according to the latest Department for Education figures.

Councils are increasingly being crippled by the costs of provision and meeting the legal and financial requirements of educating children with SEND under education, health and care plans (EHCPs), which more and more children are being issued with.

In mainstream independent schools, the numbers of children with SEND have also mushroomed, driven by the lack of state provision and by the same escalating rates of diagnosis.

Where once a special educational needs department might have been something of a peripheral add on, it is now central.

Rachel Mackenzie, head of learning support at Roedean School near Brighton – which is experiencing “a rising number of diagnoses, in particular of autism, ADHD and dyslexia as well as anxiety related needs” – says there had “definitely been a real cultural shift in independent schools over the past decade” with SEND “visible, openly discussed and celebrated”.

At open days, schools report SEND is a frequent and regular topic. “Parents increasingly want clear, practical information about learning support, assessment processes and how the school supports individual needs within a high-achieving environment,” she explains.

At Wellington College in Berkshire, Headmaster James Dahl says all schools were dealing with “increasing numbers of children with educational psychologist reports or children with EHCPs”.

“Of course, it is challenging for all schools whenever you have more stuff to deal with and the same human resource or financial resource, and you have to meet that demand,” he says.

At the co-ed boarding and day school, Dahl says “more people were working in our academic support department than ever before, and people with more specialisms including an ADHD specialist and an autism specialist”.

“You go back 25 years and you maybe had one person who had done a course on dyslexia and that was your academic support department.

“The burden is heavy and unfortunately most schools in this country – state and independent – don’t have the financial or human resources to be able to deal effectively with the wave of diagnoses that are coming through the system,” he warns.

At Hanford School in Dorset, Headmistress Hilary Phillips says one reason diagnosis had increased was because we are “a lot better at diagnosing now”, although she urged real caution in diagnosing children too early when other factors might be involved. “More pupils are getting such a diagnosis as they are going through the system when it could just be a developmental stage. It could be the experiences they had at home or it could be how they have been brought up.”

Hand in hand with this, she believes it is very welcome that the past stigma some parents felt about having their child labelled has dissipated, partly because “younger parents are much more comfortable and open and aware that this is a thing”.

And Phillips says that while small schools like Hanford, an all-girls prep, benefited from small class sizes, meaning SEND children could be helped more, schools with classes of 28-30 “had no chance of addressing their needs”.

However, schools also warn that while provision and resources in independent schools tend to be far better, both sectors are hampered by the sharp rise in diagnosis because of the need for external help.

“We all want to respond as quickly as we can but the state and the independent sector have the same issues – there are a certain amount of professionals out there and we are all using them if we are going to an external source.

“With these increased diagnoses, we have the same number of people trying to deal with this huge volume of children,” she says.

And at Roedean, Rachel Mackenzie says the biggest pressure at the all-girls’ day and boarding senior school is “often not money but people”, pointing to a “national shortage of qualified SEND specialists”.

And she warns: “Nationally, this is leading to burnout among staff who are juggling teaching with learning, pastoral and behavioural demands.”

At Stowe School in Buckingham, special educational needs co-ordinator (SENco) Caroline Bagshaw says the co-ed senior school was seeing increased numbers of children with special educational needs – both pupils with diagnosed needs applying but also existing pupils being diagnosed after concerns were flagged by staff or parents.

Bagshaw believes that increased awareness of conditions like ADHD and autism continues to drive greater diagnosis.

“Teachers are trained to meet the needs in the classroom and, of course, the more they are trained to meet those needs, the more they are becoming upskilled and the more they notice children with undiagnosed needs.”

Stowe has “almost doubled the size of learning support in classrooms in the last 20 years”, with learning support assistants available in every lower set from third to fifth forms in English, maths, physics, biology and chemistry across every week, she explains.

Rachel Mackenzie at Roedean says that “increased levels of flexibility and individual attention for SEND pupils” marked out many independent schools but she adds: “I would argue that state and independent schools face many of the same pressures around SEND, but the challenges play out differently because their structures, funding models, and expectations diverge.

“Whilst state schools typically experience higher volumes of pupils with complex needs, tighter statutory responsibilities and chronic funding constraints, they often struggle with long waits for external assessments, limited specialist staff and large class sizes.

“Independent schools have smaller classes, strong pastoral teams and the ability to buy in specialist support quickly, but there is often a greater level of parental expectations of personalised support.”

At Wellington, over 10 per cent of the pupils have an ADHD diagnosis, although official figures just a few years ago estimated the nationwide figure at only 5 per cent.

“We have seen a rise in ADHD and autism diagnoses over the last five years. I have no doubt that the figures we see at Wellington reflect what is happening nationally,” says James Dahl. “It might be that we have a higher proportion than is the case but, talking to colleagues in the state sector, I suspect the 5 per cent figure is an under-estimation.”

Meanwhile, medical intervention for children with SEND is a strong bone of contention.

“I have seen the positive benefits of medication with neurodevelopmental conditions like ADHD, and also the judicious use of medication in and around young people with chronic anxiety or depression, being an important part of their road to recovery,” says Dahl.

At Stowe, where Caroline Bagshaw says parents “agonised” over medication for conditions like ADHD, children on medication are closely monitored by a consultant paediatrician.

She says: “I think it can be eye opening for some children for whom it helps to start to concentrate or focus, but it is not a panacea”.

Experts also agree that Covid affected the SEND picture, with Rachel Mackenzie at Roedean saying “it shifted SEND needs and the way they were discussed”.

And James Dahl says: “I don’t think we are there with understanding the nuances and complexities of what’s been happening in the last 20 years – and how we cope with this is arguably the biggest challenge facing the education sector.”

This article first appeared in The Week’s Independent Schools Guide Spring/Summer 2026, edited by Amanda Constance.

The numbers don’t make for pretty reading. Between 2011 and 2021, the number of students studying English literature at university fell by a third, and the decline has continued. Across UK universities, undergraduates studying any type of English degree dropped by 19 per cent between 2019-20 and 2023-24.

English literature A-level, the precious pipeline feeding universities, has also withered, falling out of the top-ten most popular A-levels in 2022. In the summer of 2025, 112,000 students took maths A-level, compared to just 58,000 who did English. Joanna Burton, head of policy for higher education at the Russell Group of 24 leading universities, told The Times: “A decline in the uptake of English A-level in recent years has had a knock-on effect on degree numbers.”

Blame is cast widely: our addiction to screens, the collapse of reading for pleasure and the rising cost of higher education. As journalist James Marriott writes in his Substack essay, The Death of English Literature: “£9,535 per year to acquire a finer appreciation of moon imagery in DH Lawrence is a hefty ask in the present economic climate.” Students are opting for degrees with clearer career pathways such as economics, business, maths, engineering and medicine. Ten years after graduating, engineers earn on average £20,000 more than English graduates (£54,800 versus £34,300). One English emeritus professor told The Times he felt “despair” that “a subject I considered as important as a religion is now apparently failing the marketability test”.

And there is anguish and confusion, that what Marriott calls the “prince of the humanities” has fallen so far. English literature was once the most prestigious of degrees, freighted with intellectual ambition. Yet even my own children describe their experience of the subject as “lame”. So where did it go wrong?

‘A hollowing out of content’

Elizabeth Stone, Headmaster of Winchester College, points to fragmented attention spans. “The idea that you have to sustain focus for an extended period of time to read a short story, let alone a novel, is going against all the circumstances in which our young people are now living. They are swimming in different waters,” she says. Children might spend as much as six to nine hours a day on screens, consuming mostly short-form video in formats that are typically 25 to 30 seconds long.

“In an environment where they are spending hours every day training their mind to be highly distracted, is it any wonder they struggle with the long cross-country run that reading a novel requires?” she asks. “That quick hit is just antithetical to reading.”

While this fragmentation is global, Stone is also critical of the UK’s English literature curriculum. “The way children are asked to study English can quickly become pedestrian and formulaic,” she says. Teachers tell her that teaching excerpts rather than whole texts is the most efficient way to prepare students for exams. There is “a hollowing out of content to make it teachable”.

She dismisses claims that the English literature GCSE is dominated by ‘irrelevant, dead, white men’ as “rubbish”. She vehemently believes that Shakespeare, Goethe and Voltaire are for everyone. “They have endured because they speak to deep universal truths.” To argue that anybody cannot access them due to their age, gender or skin colour is simply “patronising”, she says. She does think, however, that “some resonance is needed” and supports a mix of classic and contemporary writing, insisting students should encounter texts that reflect their own lives.

Her deeper concern is structural. We are in an environment when every course ends with “a high-stakes exam assessment”, she says. The result is a “reverse engineering – what you test for gets taught”.

Within the current system, it is easier in a subject such as maths or physics to come up with a clear and precise definition of what the answer is. If you are preparing a child for a public examination “your job is to be very definitive – that really impacts the ways these things have to be taught”.

In English, subjectivity complicates matters. Stone references a 2018 report by Ofqual which revealed marking in English literature across GCSEs, AS and A-levels showed a roughly 50 per cent agreement rate with ‘definitive’ marks.

“To my knowledge nothing has been done to address that,” she says. “Students might look at that and think, ‘you know what, if I put the same level of effort into economics, I can predictably get a decent grade but in English it’s 50⁄50’. That’s a really important factor.”

‘An economic case for the humanities’

Matthew Oliver, head of English at Bede’s in East Sussex, agrees that career utility is central to the subject’s decline. “When we are charging students for degrees, it’s quite natural that they will be making pragmatic and economic decisions.” English teachers, he says, must “make an economic case for the humanities”, but also persuade pupils of the wider benefits of studying English literature.

“If one believes that the sole purpose of education is to enable you to get a job that earns you over £100,000 a year very quickly then, possibly, English literature would be seen to be a very limiting degree – if that is your sole measure of success.”

Literature is “almost designed to be difficult”: complex, demanding, and no longer the primary way “we communicate ideas about culture and society. The reason to choose a book needs to be asserted more strongly.”

And schools have to offer a combination of the best of traditional classical literature and cutting-edge contemporary literature, says Oliver. “All English teachers would make a case for why we need to teach Shakespeare or the 19th century novel – but I also must insist that we need to teach very contemporary texts: we need to see literature as offering a response to a world that we live in now.”

To demonstrate the subject’s career relevance, Oliver invites alumni into classrooms to talk about how “communication and the handling of language is so central to many professions”. Recent guests have included a lawyer who spoke of “the absolute centrality of handling nuance, of being able to think critically”, a STEM policy advocate explaining how funding depends on persuasive writing, and a marketing professional setting real-world communication challenges. Oliver also approaches guests from all over the world who have done an English degree to talk to pupils about their careers. An amazing array of guests has joined pupils online, including a Guardian journalist, a Michelin-starred chef from Spain and a fashion writer from Shanghai.

“All our students are seeing there are many routes that English can take you,” says Oliver. He believes engaging pupils with English begins with relationships. Teachers at Bede’s are expected to recommend books personally to each pupil – gift-wrapped novels are common. “That for me is the measure of a good English teacher – do you know your pupils well enough to recommend a book to them?” says Oliver. Small class sizes are essential and at A-level, students receive Oxbridge-style one-to-one supervisions where they are expected to discuss and expand on their independent coursework assignment. And all students are encouraged to debate, perform and write creatively. “I want to look at the room and make sure I am engaging everyone in some way,” Oliver says. This term, his class is staging a 1990s acid-house version of “Henry IV Part I”, with Falstaff in an Adidas tracksuit.

Oliver thinks the complexity of literature can be a draw if taught well. The danger, he says, “is reducing the text to some information. It isn’t solely information – it’s teaching us about the complexity of being human.” Students are often “stunned”, he says, by a writer who has found “the most fitting expression possible for a complex and knotty human feeling.”

There is a gap between what we can feel and how we can express it, he says. “If we can close that gap so we become proficient and confident in expressing what we really feel, does that make us lead better lives? I think it does.”

And one of the real advantages of independent schools is having freedom to design a curriculum. “I get to choose what we study,” says Oliver.

While Oliver believes the “canon is still relevant as an idea”, he thinks some exam boards have been “quite narrow at GCSE” and wants to teach the best of literature in English – whether that’s a Nigerian novel, an American play or a text in translation.

“We must give the sense that literature is still being written about the world we live in now,” he says. So, if his pupils are studying the urban poverty of “Jane Eyre” or “David Copperfield”, Oliver might also get them to read “Shuggie Bain” by Douglas Stuart or “Only Here, Only Now” by Tom Newlands.

“What I insist upon is the freedom to combine what we believe to be the best of our canonical classical texts with something that is contemporary and brilliant. I think that combination is incredibly powerful.”

The real sweet spot, he says, is when “a canonical text strikes a particularly contemporary and timely note.”

For example, he says, “‘Henry IV Part I’ – it wouldn’t necessarily strike anyone as a text to talk about contemporary Britain, but if you are talking about masculinity, about privilege, about morality – we could do a lot worse than start with that play.”

It’s the freedom to choose a text or a play that is so vital, says Oliver. When we can “make an informed choice that suits our moment, our purpose, our cohort – that’s when it ignites that passion in pupils.”

‘The only way to live other lives’

At Highgate School in north London, there is plenty of passion for English literature. Odette Orlans, head of English, notes that children arriving in Year 7 “used to come in excited by English and stories – now their experience is learning things like fronted adverbials”.

“We should start with joy,” she says. “Every child loves being read to. Prepping for any test can take the joy out of something.”

And there is clearly immense pleasure in learning English literature at Highgate – numbers of A-level students are steadily rising every year, and students go on to read English literature at Oxbridge year after year.

Highgate achieves this by making reading “a whole school focus – it’s a consistent message pupils are getting from everywhere, not just the English department”, says Orlans.

For example, the Head always gives book recommendations in assemblies and ‘Highgreat Reads’ are prestigious school reading lists. A place on these lists is hotly fought. ‘Book Battles’ will take place between pupils and teachers who fight for their book to be included and the gathered assembly gets to vote which title gains a place on the hallowed list.

The Lyttelton Competition, a poetry declamation prize, is one of “the most prestigious in the school”. Every child in the school must enter with the 20 finalists performing at an evening finale event. “It’s a big deal,” says Orlans.

The school has also resisted individual screens for pupils – unlike so many other independent schools. “So we’ve never had that fight on our hands,” Orlans says.

“Screens have their place,” she says. She loves being able to show NT Live in class, and moments such as “listening to Virginia Woolf’s voice on YouTube” is “incredible” – but the default is pen and paper.

“I think it’s amazing. I don’t want to be teaching classes where pupils are on screens.”

But Orlans also believes that the reason so many pupils are excited about English literature at Highgate is quite simple: “We choose good texts and we teach them well.”

At GCSE, teachers can choose to teach “what they are passionate about and what will work well for their class”. There are some strictures in place. “We say they must do a play, a novel, a collection of poetry and we say that one of those set texts has to be by a woman,” says Orlans.

“We teach in a co-ed school and a co-ed world – study must reflect that.”

At A-level, “we try to mix things up”, she says. Students have to study works by women and non-white authors alongside canonical texts on the Eduqas syllabus.

Orlans is not anti the canon – far from it: “It’s cultural literacy,” she says – but thinks it’s important to broaden study, too.

A-level coursework pairs pre- and post- 2000 novels; students recently studied Chinua Achebe’s “Things Fall Apart” alongside Andrea Levy’s “Small Island”, and Orlans is currently teaching “Mrs Dalloway” by Virginia Woolf alongside Kazuo Ishiguro’s “Klara and The Sun”.

It’s clearly an engaging mix for students, aided by frequent theatre trips. “We often choose to teach a play based on what is on in London,” says Orlans.

Among the many stories Orlans relays of visiting authors, essay writing competitions and lively lunchtime literary debates, one moment captures the spirit of English study at Highgate. While studying Virginia Woolf’s “To The Lighthouse”, a Year 12 class recreated its famous big dinner party scene down to the food, characters and costuming – and not one script, but two. The first read-through was Woolf’s words; but the second? Their own script of what was meant but left unsaid in that iconic modernist scene. If that isn’t excitement about literature, it’s hard to know what is.

Winchester doesn’t even do English GCSE. “We do it in an unexamined way that really makes literature sing,” says Elizabeth Stone. All Wykehamists study ‘Div’, an unexamined inter-disciplinary humanities curriculum with literature at its core. Div is timetabled throughout a Wykehamist's school career – at A-level it is the equivalent of an additional subject. “It is a deep commitment to deep thinking,” says Stone.

Pupils all study English literature “for the love of it, with freedom to immerse themselves without being skewed by the narrow demands and pedestrian edicts of an exam board”, says Stone.

“Importantly”, she adds, students read whole novels. And there is a wider spread of content; this year’s sixth formers are studying Chaucer alongside contemporary writer, actor and comedian, Tom Basden – “developing cultural literacy and broadening intellectual awareness and connecting texts with art, religion and politics.”

When the school trialled GCSE English literature, “the only tangible effect was that the children who had done English literature GCSE chose the A-level in significantly smaller numbers”, says Stone.

“Div is so spiritually liberating,” she says. “We see it as a point of distinction; it is the mark of the Wykehamist that they are original thinkers.”

And originality is needed at a time when top grades alone no longer distinguish students. “The exam arms-race has maxed out. You have to bring something different to the table,” says Stone.

But literature should never be only about employability. “Children are more than economic units,” Stone says. “We want them to flourish and come fully alive.” In a largely unchurched generation, books offer a space to explore meaning, empathy and identity. And what better medium to do that than through the words on a printed page. “It’s like dreaming with your eyes open – the only way to live other lives,” says Stone.

If English literature is to survive, it may be by reclaiming precisely that truth.

This article first appeared in The Week’s Independent Schools Guide Spring/Summer 2026, edited by Amanda Constance.

Many graduates who took out student loans feel they got “an incomprehensibly unfair deal that they did not understand and now cannot escape”, says John Blake, formerly of the Office for Students. The problems are worst for the estimated 5.8 million people who took out “Plan 2” loans, the main scheme from late 2012 to mid 2023. While the interest rate on other loans is set at the Retail Prices Index (RPI) measure of inflation, Plan 2 loans are charged at RPI plus up to 3%.

Then at the last Budget, Rachel Reeves froze the threshold at which repayment in England starts between April 2026 and 2030; it was meant to rise with inflation. This means that more people will have to pay, while interest has snowballed, even for those with hefty monthly repayments. The result is a large cohort of angry indebted graduates.

How do Plan 2 loans work?

They were introduced for students in England and Wales in 2012, after the coalition government tripled tuition fees from £3,290 to £9,000 per year (there are no fees for students from Scotland, and they’re capped at about half the rate in Northern Ireland).

While studying, each borrower was charged interest at the RPI rate plus 3%. Afterwards, it moved to tiered rates starting at RPI, rising up to RPI+3%, depending on earnings (those making £51,245 or more currently pay the full rate). However, borrowers don’t have to pay anything until they reach the repayment threshold, now set at £28,470. Then they pay back 9% of their earnings above the threshold. After 30 years, any outstanding balance is written off.

How does this affect people in practice?

To take one example, Patrick Ba Tin, 30, borrowed some £50,000 in student loans – around average as a total – and was told he would hardly notice the repayments. Now a regulatory analyst earning a decent wage, Ba Tin has paid £5,000 towards his loans since graduating, with the current rate at £300 per month. Even so, the loan is actually growing: he now owes £75,000 in total; he will probably have to keep paying for the full 30 years. Of course this affects his finances, and his ability to buy a home. A typical graduate from the Plan 2 cohort has to earn at least £66,000 a year just to make his or her debt go down. Nadia Whittome, a Labour backbencher, has only managed to pay off £1,000 of her £49,600 debt despite six years on an MP’s salary. And repayments come on top of already high tax rates. So a Plan 2 loan holder earning £51,245 will take home only 49% of their earnings above that.

How have loans changed since?

Plan 5 student loans replaced Plan 2 for courses starting in August 2023. These don’t charge interest above the rate of inflation: the rate simply follows the RPI. But borrowers have to start paying them back sooner – the repayment threshold is only £25,000, not far off the minimum wage – and the repayment term is ten years longer: 40 years. Under this system, in contrast to Plan 2, no one will have to pay back more than they borrowed in real terms, and the Institute for Fiscal Studies estimates that 79% of initial borrowers will repay their loans in full. However, lower earners will pay more and higher earners less than they would have under the previous system. Plan 5 will also be costlier for the taxpayer in the long run.

Is the system unfair?

It is harsh for holders of Plan 2 loans. A loan holder who started a course in 2022 will pay around £8,700 more on average than someone who took one out a year later. Tinkering with the repayment threshold, by Conservative and Labour governments, has made repayments unpredictable.

The finance guru Martin Lewis has called on Reeves to reconsider her repayment threshold freeze, saying it isn’t “moral” to change the terms of a loan; polls suggest half of Plan 2 loan holders think the product was “mis-sold” to them. The National Union of Students and The Times have also called for an end to the freeze, along with cuts to the Plan 2 interest rate and a cap on the total amount of interest payable. Arguably, the RPI measure shouldn’t be used at all: the government is phasing it out – because it is deemed about 1% too high – in favour of the Consumer Prices Index (CPI).

Beyond that, there is the wider issue of inter-generational unfairness. The Plan 2 cohort were the first to be hit with substantial tuition fees, which were not charged at all until 1998. In addition, young people face high property prices, and governments that arguably protect the finances of pensioners at the expense of younger generations.

Can Plan 2 loans be defended?

They are in some respects generous, and more like a graduate tax than a bank loan. They do protect low earners; and during the ultra-high inflation period after Covid, the government intervened to cap interest rates. More broadly, the student loan system reflects important trade-offs. Britain has a mass university system – some 50% of young people in the UK go into higher education – and it has to be paid for somehow. All the main parties in England have decided that those who benefit most directly – well-paid graduates – should bear much of the burden. The costs are considerable: the total outstanding Plan 2 debt is about £200 billion.

What is likely to happen?

Reeves has insisted that the student loans system is “fair and reasonable”, and that the freeze was necessary for getting “the balance right between tax and spending”. But sources suggest discussions are taking place about possible measures to make the loans fairer, perhaps by tweaking interest rates. Kemi Badenoch has announced that the Tories would abolish the “unfair” additional interest, at the cost of some £2 billion per year, paid for by cutting funding for “low-quality degrees”. But this – unlike raising the earnings threshold – would only benefit those earning enough to clear the debt within 30 years.

Is a graduate tax the solution?

The idea of funding universities with a graduate tax has been mooted since the 1960s, when economists pointed out that a relatively small group of people were getting an expensive benefit paid for out of general taxation. The idea came up again during the expansion of higher education in the 1990s, and at one time or another it has been backed by the likes of Gordon Brown and Vince Cable. In practice, the loans function much like a tax – repayments are collected through the tax system – and proponents argue that presenting them with a future tax obligation is less stressful than being saddled with a large debt.

Implementing a tax would raise major administrative issues, though. There is no register of graduates. And might it incentivise students not to graduate? Or encourage high-earning graduates to move elsewhere? There are already problems in this area: at least 70,000 loan holders living abroad were reported not to be making repayments in 2024. No country in the world imposes a pure graduate tax, though many use income-contingent loans. The UK loans are high, though, since people here contribute more to their education: only 23% of higher education is paid for by public funding in the UK, well below the OECD average of 67%.

As most parents in England wake up to the first day of the February half-term, they may welcome the head of Ofsted saying it’s time to “have a good old look” at the “bizarre” timing and length of school holidays.

Martyn Oliver, the chief inspector of the school watchdog, told the Financial Times that current arrangements might be worsening the “stubborn” gap between advantaged and disadvantaged children.

Harvesting history

Most state schools in England have a six-week summer holiday, two weeks at Christmas and Easter, plus three one-week half-term holidays.

Oliver called for a “debate” about shortening the school holidays so children spend more time in class, because pupils are physically in school for a “ridiculously low” proportion of each year: only 190 days in total.

“It’s interesting to think that the holiday period was very much determined around harvesting fields,” he said. “Some things are pretty bizarre.” He also pointed out that it’s “pretty hot usually in May, June and July, just at the point you’re asking children to sit down and take an exam”.

“Six weeks is a long time away from learning,” said the BBC’s education editor, Branwen Jeffreys, particularly for children whose parents are working or who “can’t afford lots of costly day trips, activities or a long family holiday”.

All children “may forget a little of what they have learnt”, but better off families can “enrich their understanding by giving them other experiences”, which “widens the learning gap”.

“Holiday hunger” is another factor, with some families struggling to feed children without the support of free school meals during term time, and extending winter holidays would mean families would need to heat their homes more in the daytime.

Regional variations

The school year schedule in Scotland is causing “fatigue for both children and school staff”, said Gillian Hunt, an education consultant and former teacher, in a report for the Enlighten think tank last year. She called for a four-term year to reflect “modern society”.

Oliver said last year that “shorter breaks could be beneficial”, said Jeffreys. “He said after the long summer holiday, some children returned ‘dysregulated’ and struggling to adapt to routine.”

Like England and Wales, Scotland has a six-week summer break, but it tends to be earlier, finishing in mid-August. In Northern Ireland, schools close for all of July and August.

A report by the Nuffield Foundation in 2024 said that it was “time to consider reforms to a school calendar that has been stuck in place since Victorian times”. It argued that “spreading school holidays more evenly across the year could improve the working lives of teachers”.

Schools in countries such as Ireland, France, Spain and Italy generally have fewer half-term breaks but longer summer holidays. Some regions in Germany are more like the UK model: shorter summer breaks, sometimes only six weeks, with more frequent, shorter breaks during the year.

The summer holiday in the US and Canada lasts around 10 weeks, from mid-June to late August or early September. In India, school holidays typically include a long summer break usually 6–8 weeks, spanning mid-May to early July in the north of the country and mid-April to early June in the south.

American higher learning is considered among the best in the world, but recent rankings show the top of the food chain may be changing. While U.S. universities still dominate most lists, foreign institutions have been slowly superseding them. And with the Trump administration’s continued attacks on higher education, the trend may be here to stay.

Which universities are considered the best?

Six major rankings use a variety of factors to calculate the best universities. The Leiden Rankings at Leiden University, U.S. News Best Global University Rankings and the University Ranking by Academic Performance all focus on the “number of research publications, citations to those studies, and other measures of scholarly quality,” said Forbes. The other three, Quacquarelli Symonds’ QS World University Rankings, Times Higher Education Rankings and the Center for World University Rankings, measure the “success and employment records of graduates, the perceived quality of the faculty, the relative presence of international students, and general institutional reputation.”

In the “initial iteration of each system, an American university was ranked first in the world,” said Forbes, with Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology taking the various rankings’ top spots. But in the “most recent rankings, we see different outcomes. In four of the systems, the number of top-10 spots occupied by U.S. universities declined.” Notably, Chinese schools have been replacing many American institutions on these lists.

The most recent Leiden list ranks China’s Zhejiang University first and Harvard third, with “12 of the following 13” based in China, said The Daily Beast. In the most recent edition of the Times Higher Education list, more than 60 U.S. schools fell in the rankings, including “well-known institutions suffering significant downgrades, such as an eight- and 17-place drop for Duke University and Emory University, respectively.” The Times Higher Education list also named the U.K.’s Oxford University the world’s best college for the tenth year in a row.

Why are foreign schools gaining steam?

It is largely due to a global reordering, which comes as the Trump administration has been “slashing research funding to American schools that depend heavily on the federal government to pay for scientific endeavors,” said The New York Times. President Donald Trump’s policies “did not start the American universities’ relative decline, which began years ago, but they could accelerate it.”

The disparity between people who can afford college may also be a factor. The data shows that “access for talented students from families outside the traditional ‘elite’ is much more restricted than it ought to be,” said Time, and “students from wealthy backgrounds are heavily overrepresented: More than 15% come from families in the top 1% of the U.S. national income distribution,” which translates to over $600,000 per year.

U.S. institutions also strive to attract foreign students, but are facing challenges from “travel bans and an anti-immigration crackdown that has swept up international students and academics,” said the Times. All of these combined issues could be leading to a decline in U.S. education supremacy. There is a “big shift coming, a bit of a new world order in global dominance of higher education,” said Phil Baty, the chief global affairs officer for Times Higher Education, to the Times. “It’s not as if U.S. schools are getting demonstrably worse, it’s just the global competition: Other nations are making more rapid progress.”

It’s not “moral” to keep the student debt repayment threshold where it is, MoneySavingExpert founder Martin Lewis has told Rachel Reeves.

The chancellor has said she’s freezing the salary level at which graduates must start to repay their student loan. This, together with the crippling interest rates charged on the loan, means demoralised young Brits are caught in a “student debt trap” they have “no chance of paying off”, student finance campaigners told Times Higher Education.

What did the commentators say?

“If you wanted to design the most regressive and distortive model for funding higher education imaginable,” you’d get the Plan 2 student loan system inflicted on those “unlucky enough to embark upon a university degree between 2012 and 2023”, said Rachel Cunliffe in The New Statesman.

In 2012, the coalition government trebled tuition fees to over £9,000, which, even at the time, was “projected to leave the average graduate with close to £50,000 of debt”. And then interest terms on student loans were hiked up to RPI plus 3%, which made “that debt almost impossible to pay off”. A “bizarre additional quirk” meant the interest rate after graduation also varied by salary, so “the more graduates earned, the faster their debt would grow”. “Imagine trying to understand” that “as an 18-year-old”.

Now, graduates who have been making payments for almost a decade are “logging on to the student finance portal” to discover, to their horror, that “far from being paid down, their debt has in fact risen”. A “cohort of productive young people” are discovering they have signed up to “a lifetime of higher taxes”.

In last year’s Budget, Reeves “turned the screw even further”, said Rupert Jones in The Guardian. By freezing the repayment threshold, those young people will have to “pay even more towards their student loans as they benefit from pay rises”.

The “five million or so youngish people” who went to university between 2012 and 2023 “have it rough”, said The Economist. The “student-loans system” is working like “an age-based tax, whipping away 9% of earnings – or 15% for postgrads – above a certain income”. So, to the “acronym soup” of British politics, we must add Avocados: “the Aggrieved Victims Of Crushing Academic Debt Obligations”. Although it is fair and proper that “students should pay for degrees that benefit them”, Avocados are being “squeezed until the stone squeaks”. Their experience will “shape politics for a generation to come. Rotten fruit can make a stink.”

What next?

The threshold salary for Plan 2 loan repayments will remain at £29,385 until April 2027.

The chancellor has insisted that the system is fair. “It's not right that people who don’t go to university” should bear “the cost for others to do so”, she told LBC. If you’re a graduate and earn “a good wage, you’ll pay that money back quicker” and “if you’re never able to repay”, the loan “will eventually be written off”.

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 Covid-19 pandemic was one of the greatest disruptions to children’s education in history. Schools around the world closed at the start of the outbreak and, while some quickly reopened, many stayed closed for months. An estimated 95% of the global student population was affected, and now many countries, including Britain, are grappling with the fallout on children’s learning and wellbeing.

In the UK, “many mistakes” were made over school closures, and “the consequences for children weren’t properly taken into account”, said former education secretary Gavin Williamson yesterday. He told the Covid Inquiry, which is currently hearing evidence in its Children & Young People phase, that the then prime minister Boris Johnson “chose the NHS over children”, saying there was no “detailed plan” in place for closing schools before March 2020, despite it becoming clear in February that this would be one of the options for dealing with the pandemic.

What did the commentators say?

“New evidence emerges daily of the toll” Covid school closures took on children – from “premature ageing of adolescent brains, myopia, chronic school absenteeism”, lost learning and a dramatic rise in mental health issues, said Christina Hopkinson in The i Paper.

So did we really have to “lock the school gates to stop the spread of Covid”? Sweden, which kept most schools open, recorded fewer excess deaths than the European average.

The initial decision to close schools was justified, Mark Woolhouse, professor of epidemiology at the University of Edinburgh, told the paper, because of “uncertainties around the Covid risk to children, the risk to staff and the contribution that schools might make to the transmission of the virus”. But it was soon apparent that “there was very little evidence of those three effects from anywhere in the world”. The UK could have done as Denmark did and reopened schools in April 2020.

The effect of school closures on children’s educational attainment won’t be calculable for years, said BBC Future. Children without access to computers or reliable internet connections “inevitably suffered more” but online teaching “didn’t seem to do much to stem the tide of learning loss” anyway. A 2023 review of 42 studies across 15 countries, published in Human Nature Behaviour, estimated that pupils “lost a third of a school year’s worth of learning due to the shutdowns”. A 2023 US report on the long-term effects of this lost learning talks of “lasting economic implications” that could amount to “trillions of dollars” in future lost earnings.

Online schooling broke the social contract between schools and parents “for a lifetime”, disasters expert Lucy Easthope told The Guardian. Even now, schools are dealing with “terrifyingly high levels of school avoidance”.

“The relationship between children and screens changed irrevocably” too, said the paper. The children’s commissioner for England, former headteacher Rachel de Souza, highlighted “the online safety issues” and mental-health effects inherent in asking young people to “move their lessons and social lives online”. The worry now is that young people “do not feel those in power are listening” – evident in the recent “surge of interest online in populism”.

What next?

The picture “isn’t clear cut”, said The i Paper’s Hopkinson. Children in countries where they went to school every day during the pandemic still “had a far from typical” experience. Sweden has not “swerved the mental health crisis gripping teenagers here in Britain” and has its own issues with school absenteeism and excessive screen time.

Even if schools hadn’t closed, the uncertainty and the disruption of the pandemic still affected children’s wellbeing, said The Guardian. Those who were babies in 2020 are “struggling to meet basic developmental milestones”.

“There’s a generation of children who’ve lost faith in the predictability of life, and lost faith in normality remaining the same,” said Anne Longfield, former children's commissioner for England. “It’s an uncertainty that they now live with, and that’s enormous really, isn’t it?”

Kim Kardashian has sparked a fresh debate about homework, saying she doesn’t “believe in it” because her children are already “in school for eight hours a day”. When they’re not in class, they should “play sports, live their lives” and “spend time with their family”, she said.

The reality star’s wishes for her own children, aged 12, nine, seven and six, have resonated with many British mums and dads, reopening the long-standing homework divide.

‘Unnecessary stress’

Homework for primary school children “doesn’t have a positive effect”, said Victoria Richards in The i Paper. In fact, studies have produced “stark” findings that doing too much homework can “actually send student performance back the other way” and is a “primary source of stress”, affecting “health” and “cutting into time spent with family and friends and hobbies”.

So, why are we “making young kids do blind tests and extra equations on a Saturday when they’d be better off blowing off steam playing football or hanging out with their mates”? My kids are “exhausted” from school and “I don’t want their home” to “become another source of stress”.

Homework is “not compulsory by law”, said Georgina Fuller in The Times, but “many primary schools seem to set it for children as young as four”. In my experience, it “inevitably falls to the parents” and, judging by the queries in my school WhatsApp group about “spelling tests” and “maths equations”, this “causes lots of unnecessary stress for families”.

‘Understand the concepts’

Homework is still “an important part of schooling, if it has purpose”, Dr Emily Levy, a learning and academic skills specialist, told Newsweek. It “allows children to independently practise skills they learned at school and make sure they understand the concepts”.

And it actually has the backing of more adults than it used to. Nearly 70% of people think children should have homework, according to a study by the Policy Institute at King’s College London – a significant increase on 21% in a similar survey in 1937.

Technology has also changed the face of homework: where pupils used to get given a textbook and told to cover them with “bits of old wallpaper to preserve them”, now they’re “issued with passwords, digital logins, dashboards and any number of online resources”, said Jennifer Powers in The Independent.

“The relentless march to digitise education is frustrating parents and harming children”. I think it’s “ironic” that schools “lecture parents and pupils” about “the dangers of too much screen time” but then require the “pervasive use of screens” for homework.

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”.

The universities of Kent and Greenwich are to merge into a “super-university” that leaders hope will provide a model for other institutions in the beleaguered higher education sector to follow.

The new London and South East University Group will become one of the largest higher education institutions in the UK, with its combined total of almost 50,000 students putting it on a par with the University of Manchester. The two institutions will award separate degrees but combine their backroom services and share a single vice-chancellor. Legally, they will be one entity but two separate “brands”.

While there have been other higher education mergers in recent years, “the size and scale, along with the much-anticipated deployment of a multi-university model for the first time, mark this news as something of a watershed moment for the English sector”, said higher education news website Wonkhe.

Why is this needed?

Britain's higher education sector is facing a financial time bomb. A combination of frozen tuition fees, rising costs and falling international student admissions means more than two-fifths of universities are forecast to be in deficit for the academic year 2024/25, according to the Office for Students.

There are fundamental problems with the funding model universities have adopted over the past 25 years, said The Guardian in an editorial, “among them the questionable ethics of students from poorer countries subsidising the education of young Britons”.

“Brexit, international competition and regulations designed to cut immigration (by preventing students from bringing family members), have all harmed UK universities’ ability to attract students.”

It is time to change the “one-size-fits-all operating model”, with “more collaboration, segmentation and differentiation between institutions”, said Philip Augar in the Financial Times. “A commitment to life-long learning would restore a slump in adult education. Governance should be sharper.”

Will mergers work?

“Mergers have increasingly been posed as one potential solution to the precarious financial situation British universities find themselves in,” said Times Higher Education. A recent report commissioned by Universities UK, which represents university leaders, recommended more institutions formally collaborate or share services to ensure their survival.

The model is similar to multi-academy trust structures in schools and “is by no means limited to only two universities operating under one umbrella”, said Wonkhe. “Conversations behind the scenes over the last couple of years” have explored the idea of “groups spanning multiple universities and it’s not hard to see how others in the region might want to – or somehow be compelled to – join this group once it’s up and running”.

While the Department for Education said ministers “welcome innovative approaches” such as the one announced this week, others question the real motives and the impact formal tie-ups will have. UCU General Secretary Jo Grady told the BBC that what is being described as a merger is really “a takeover by Greenwich” as Kent was on “the brink of insolvency”.

“Both of these institutions should have been on the government’s radar, and rather than stepping in, we’re seeing that this is how a crisis is managed,” she said. “This isn’t offering stability to students, to staff or to the sector.”

We are delighted to present this issue of The Week Independent Schools Guide. There's no denying this has been an incredibly challenging period for the UK's independent schools. The imposition of VAT on school fees, rising NI costs and the loss of charitable business rates have left some schools, particularly the smaller ones that don't bag the headlines or student numbers, facing an existential threat.

There have been some heartbreaking closures in recent months, but the sector is also adapting; for a while this year, barely a week went by without news of a merger between schools or school groups. Elizabeth Ivens has written about the merger mania in this issue, why it is happening, what it could mean for the sector and what parents think about it.

Like many, I was stunned by the Netflix drama Adolescence, but also, like many, baulked at the idea that this was somehow the defining cultural touchstone on the subject of the 'manosphere'. I certainly didn't agree with the prime minister's belief that it should be mandatory viewing in all our schools. I have long felt queasy about the punitive term 'toxic masculinity', as it is a heavy yoke for young men to bear. So, I wasn't overly keen to investigate the issue of how schools are coping with the so-called 'crisis in masculinity' – but I am very pleased I did. Because there is so much enlightened, emotionally literate, life-affirming work in this sphere, being led by independent schools. And, as we go to press, the government has announced that all schools in England should teach children how to recognise and act against misogyny. The final draft of the new relationships, sex and health education (RSHE) guidance also states pupils must be taught "how to identify and learn from positive male role models", surely a positive step forwards.

But let me leave you with an anecdote, passed on by Chloe Combi, author, speaker and futurist, during an electrifying presentation on the online world at a conference at Downe House School. While in Silicon Valley, she asked a senior figure at Meta what had been the company's most successful commodity to date. Their reply? "Teenage rage and pain." Consider that for a moment; a leader of the company that owns Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and more said, off-the-record, that what this global behemoth has monetised most successfully is the pain of young people – our children. Perhaps worth thinking about on your next scroll through Insta?

There is also much to celebrate in this issue; we have focused on the amazing music that independent schools enjoy, plus the community work they pursue with music at its heart. And don't miss our much-anticipated guide to the best senior schools in the UK.

We hope you enjoy this issue.

Amanda Constance is the editor of The Week’s Independent Schools Guide. Read the full publication below or click here.

It's been over a decade since "Educating Yorkshire" first "melted the nation's hearts", as we watched English teacher Mr Burton help his stammering pupil, Musharaf Asghar, to "find his voice", said Helen Brown in The Telegraph.

Channel 4 has returned to Thornhill Community Academy where Mr Burton has been promoted to headteacher. "And, despite calls for our education system to be overhauled since Covid, high-school life seems largely unchanged since the cameras last trundled down the corridors."

Mr Burton is still "jovial and dedicated, if a little wearier", and the "sturdy" format of the show remains intact. Much like the first series, the "unheard and unseen" production team behind the camera "do a great job of coaxing moving insight" from individual pupils.

The revival is "perfectly timed", said Phil Harrison in The Guardian. Earlier this year, Netflix's "Adolescence" prompted a "national orgy of hand-wringing" about the state of education, with its portrayal of "overstretched" teachers as "little more than crowd control" for their maladjusted pupils.

It is comforting, then, that "plenty" has stayed the same at Thornhill since season one. We're introduced to Amy, a "thoroughly eccentric and entirely charming kid grappling with Tourette syndrome and the absurd (but, at 12, deadly serious) micropolitics of schoolyard friendships". And we get a snapshot of dilemmas faced by the "very clever and very disruptive" Riley, who keeps "clowning" in class.

Great care has been taken with the editing "to make these children hilarious, but never the butt of the joke; to show their vulnerability, but also their strength". Gradually a picture emerges of their "muddled impulses and motivations", and the factors that feed into their developing personalities. Many of the kids are supported with carefully tailored pastoral care. "Does it feel like a necessary blast of optimism? You bet it does."

The streamlining of footage into "simple, uplifting narratives" is part of the show's appeal, said Louis Chilton in The Independent. But its inability to "scrutinise the institution it depicts" is also what leaves it "ultimately superficial as a work of documentary filmmaking".

Still, there is something "heartening" about watching kids behave in much the same way they always have. Young people are often portrayed as "inscrutable beings, half-human, half-mobile phone – and yet, here, we can see they're just children being children".

The show isn't particularly inventive, said Emily Baker in The i Paper. However, when generational divisions are so "fraught", and "new moral panics" about the world our kids are growing up in crop up constantly, "this understated, quietly groundbreaking documentary is a tonic. Its message is clear and undeniable: the kids are all right."

The policy of making school pupils resit GCSEs until they pass is "not fit for purpose", education leaders have said.

This year, a record number of GCSE exams were compulsory resits, and calls are growing for the practice to be scrapped, not least because it undermines young people's confidence and motivation.

The compulsory resit policy was introduced by Michael Gove in 2012, and means school pupils in England who don't pass either Maths or English GCSE the first time round must keep retaking the exam until they get a grade 4 or higher, up to the age of 18.

What did the commentators say?

For almost 25% of pupils taking Maths and English GCSEs this year, "it wasn't their first rodeo", said the BBC's Ashitha Nagesh. Pupils are getting "stuck" in a "potentially demoralising" treadmill of compulsory retakes, which also puts a strain on the colleges who have to facilitate all the extra exams.

The breakdown of this year's results reveals the "broken legacy" of Gove's resit policy, said Richard Adams, education editor of The Guardian. There were 346,000 entries for English and maths GCSEs by older students (aged 17 to 19) – up by nearly 50,000 from last year – and only about one in five of those achieved a pass grade. This is a growing "cycle of failure".

There are "very few" in "any level" of the education sector who will defend the resit system, said GCSE English teacher Sean Vernell at FE Week. Gove's reforms weren't "modern or progressive" but a "throwback to the 19th century utilitarian education system". They have resulted in a a "narrow exam factory approach to English and maths which has failed young people".

Criticism of the system – and of the standards it requires – has been building for quite a time. Resits are "annual torture", said Polly Toynbee in The Guardian after last year's GCSE results. We force pupils through retakes "again and again", knowing that most will "fail again and again". In a subject like maths, "basic exams covering everyday numeracy, literacy and digital fluency" would be an improvement; to "function in society", it's really not necessary to master "quadratic equations, trigonometry or an understanding of pi".

Should the government do away with compulsory resits, though, it is "likely to face pressure to prove it is not lowering standards for underachievers", said The Telegraph.

What next?

There is an ongoing independent review of the educational curriculum and assessments, which is due to report this year. Earlier this month, Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson said the review would include "looking at how best we can support 16- to 19-year-olds who don't achieve the right level in maths and English".

Alternatives to compulsory resits could include "testing pupils in stages" or launching "driving licence-style certificates" that prove "basic ability", said The Telegraph. Whatever changes are made, said Vernell in FE Week, "compulsion cannot be a part of any new system. Students must be inspired to learn – not forced."

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."

Each generation thinks they have it harder than the one that went before. But as the latest crop of university students prepare to graduate, the class of 2025 may well be right.

"Yes, we've heard it all before", said The Telegraph's employment editor Lucy Burton, who entered the job market in the aftermath of the financial crisis, "but this time, it really could be the worst summer ever to graduate".

The impact of AI

The impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on the wider job market is already undeniable.

Last year, the International Monetary Fund said it believed AI would impact nearly 40% of all jobs, while analysis by the Tony Blair Institute found technology could displace up to 275,000 private sector roles a year in the UK alone, rising to up to three million by 2050.

A commonly held belief about the "forthcoming AI jobs-pocalypse" is that it will disproportionately affect recent graduates, said The Economist. "The explanation runs that they typically do entry-level jobs in knowledge-intensive industries – such as paralegal work or making slides in a management consultancy. It is exactly this sort of task that AI can do well".

A recent survey of executives on LinkedIn appears to bear this out. More than 60% said AI will eventually take on some of the tasks currently assigned to entry-level employees, especially more mundane and manual roles.

In all, UK-entry level jobs are down by nearly a third since the release of ChatGPT three years ago, according to research by job search site Adzuna.

Fewer jobs available

"Not only is there the rise of AI to contend with, but the list of other problems appears endless", said Burton. In the UK, specifically, these range from "higher employment costs, a workers' rights revolution and a whole cohort of older staff who just aren't budging".

Recent increases to employer national insurance contributions (NICs) and the national minimum wage have forced many employers to cut entry-level opportunities. At the same time, new workers' rights legislation will introduce the right to unfair dismissal claims from day one, reducing the risk appetite of employers to take a punt on a younger, inexperienced hire.

This comes on top of an already competitive jobs market. Citing data from the Institute of Student Employers the BBC said there were an average of 140 applications received for each available UK graduate job in 2024. This was the highest number of applications for 30 years – and a more than 50% rise from 2023.

This suggests that young people are "bearing the brunt of a protracted slowdown in the UK labour market, as employers hang on to existing staff but hold off hiring", said the Financial Times.

Devalue degrees

"The worry", said the FT, "is that a cyclical slowdown in the wider UK labour market could be masking a more lasting decline in the value of a degree."

Some graduates are even being rejected for jobs in supermarkets or warehouses, "not because they're unqualified, but because they’re seen as overqualified, too risky or surplus to requirements", said The Independent.

"In terms of the UK economy, this isn't just a problem of job shortages. It signals a deeper breakdown in the social contract – the long-held promise that education leads to opportunity. And it exposes how the connection between learning and labour is coming undone".

As the Trump administration broadens its crackdown on international students, those students and their families are looking abroad to complete their education. The world's young scholars are seeking alternatives to U.S. colleges and universities.

Foreign students are "in chaos" as the White House threatens their American education, said The Hill. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in late May that the administration had paused new student visas, would "aggressively revoke visas" for Chinese students, and suggested the U.S. could cap international student admissions at all American colleges at 15% of total enrollment. The administration believes foreign students study in America for "political purposes, not educational or scientific ones," said Jay Greene, a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation.

The 'world's gain'?

The world's "star students" are now looking instead to universities in Asia and Europe, said NBC News. There are "plenty of foreign governments and universities" eager to cultivate the talents of young people who have long come to America and "helped make the United States a global tech and scientific leader." One likely winner will be China. The country is set to become "significantly more attractive than before to students and researchers from the Global South," said Simon Marginson, a professor of higher education at the University of Oxford.

"Every ambitious Chinese parent" has longed to send their child to Harvard University, said Alex Lo at The South China Morning Post. Now they are having second thoughts. "What's the point of investing millions in your child's education" if they can suddenly be deported because of a presidential whim? That will be America's loss, but it will be the "world's gain, and not the least China's." Chinese students are likely to stay home rather than trying out their luck in an "increasingly hostile, not to say racist, America."

The U.S. is "not going to lose its appeal overnight," said Karishma Vaswani at Bloomberg. It will remain a "coveted" place for many foreign students to study because of the "potential to find lucrative employment after graduation." But Canada and the U.K. are already "poised to scoop up disillusioned applicants." So are Australia and New Zealand. Hong Kong, Tokyo and Malaysia additionally stand to benefit, as Trump makes the U.S. a "far less inviting option" for students who want to "study, grow and build their future."

'Shooting itself in the foot'

The losses will be felt not just on U.S. campuses but in "local and state economies, as well," said The Washington Post. During the 2023-24 school year, roughly 1.1 million foreign students contributed $44 billion to the American economy. Those students "pay rent, they go to restaurants, they travel," said Nicholas Barr, a professor at the London School of Economics. America is "shooting itself in the foot big time."

America is "putting its economic engine at risk," said David L. Di Maria, the vice provost for global engagement at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, at The Conversation. The irony is that Trump's crackdown will "hamper" his administration's "America First" goals for the "economy, science and technology, and national security." Pushing away foreign students who study science and engineering will "ultimately redirect talent to other countries, allies and adversaries alike."

Donald Trump has revoked Harvard University's ability to enrol international students, who currently make up over a quarter of its intake.

In a dramatic twist of his "escalating battle" with the Ivy League institution, the Trump administration has also said that thousands of current students must transfer to other universities or leave the country, said The Associated Press.

What did the commentators say?

"How can the federal government dictate which students a private university can and cannot enrol?" said The New York Times. In reality, the US government has "enormous power" over who is allowed to enter the country to study.

Colleges and universities use a "vast" database, known as SEVIS, or the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System, to "manage and track" the enrolment of international students. But this database is operated by the Department of Homeland Security; Trump is exploiting this "vulnerability" by revoking Harvard's access to it, effectively banning overseas students.

The DHS claimed that Harvard has allowed "anti-American, pro-terrorist agitators" to assault Jewish students on campus. Department officials also alleged that Harvard has collaborated with the Chinese Communist Party, hosting and training members of a Chinese paramilitary group as recently as last year.

This turn of events "drastically escalates" the dispute between the White House and the university, said CNN. Trump had frozen more than $2 billion in funds last month when Harvard said it wouldn't "concede" to his "demands", including reforming its international student programme.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said Harvard could restore its status as a host institution for foreign students if it complied with a list of demands within 72 hours. The demands include "requests for a range of records", such as disciplinary records for international students, plus "audio and video recordings of protest activity", said ABC News.

Harvard is likely to challenge the ban in court. The move will "certainly draw a very strong legal challenge", Elliot Williams, former counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee, told CNN.

Although there are "well-established" legal processes in place for revoking a school's certification, said Williams, it doesn't seem that Trump's administration has complied with them, so the university would have a "strong basis" for a legal challenge.

What next?

The government's stance could deter overseas students from studying in the US at all, Pippa Norris, a lecturer at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, told The Guardian. "Why would any further international students apply to America, not just Harvard, if they can't know that they’ve got a guaranteed place?"

The administration's actions are likely to benefit other top universities, like Oxford and Cambridge. "The best of the brightest could apply wherever they would," she said. "America, again, is going to have problems as a result."

A growing number of local councils are pledging to reduce – or even stop – school exclusions, as studies highlight a link between excluded pupils, violent offences and a "pipeline to prison".

In the most recent study, focused on 40,000 teenagers with a history of behavioural difficulties and published in the British Journal of Criminology, researchers found that those who were permanently excluded from school were twice as likely to commit serious violence within a year as those who received a suspension.

"This new research provides ­evidence of what we have long known," Lib Peck, director of London's Violence Reduction Unit, told The Observer. "There is a clear link between children being excluded from school and involvement in violence."

What did the commentators say?

A school pupil who is "acting out" may be facing "an unstable home environment, poverty, trauma, abuse" or mental health issues, educational psychologist Chris Bagley, research director of social enterprise States of Mind, said in The Bristol Cable. But instead of finding out why they are struggling, schools too often "dole out consequences" that can end in exclusion. This "ostracism" swiftly limits a student's "conception" of who they are and what they can be. They begin to believe they're "a 'bad kid' who can't learn and is destined for failure".

School exclusion also reinforces society's existing marginalisations, "disproportionately" affecting "poor children, those living in care, and children from Black Caribbean, mixed white Caribbean, and Gypsy, Roma and Irish Traveller backgrounds".

After a child is permanently excluded, they often end up in a Pupil Referral Unit, where a "tailored educational approach" is supposed to "provide them with a fresh start", special educational needs consultant Kate Grant wrote at East Anglia Bylines. But the curriculum is very "limited" and "the long-term psychological damage of rejection has already happened".

While campaigners are right to warn about the "pipeline from exclusion to prison", said Stephen Bush in the Financial Times, this issue is "more complicated than it first appears". After all, "is it really a surprise to discover" that the teenager who assaulted a fellow pupil or teacher is "the one who goes on to commit a violent criminal offence"?

And we must not forget that exclusion is "not just about the child who is made to leave school", but also about "the pupil who is not forced to attend the same institution as the teenager who physically assaulted them".

What next?

Limiting or stopping exclusions is an "extremely contentious issue," criminology professor Iain Brennan and epidemiologist Rosie Cornish, authors of the study published in The British Journal of Criminology, wrote at The Conversation. Many teachers and educationalists say "exclusions are necessary when a child's behaviour poses a threat to their classmates or teachers". But "allowing exclusion rates to keep rising risks letting down the most vulnerable and traumatised children".

The "warning signs" that can lead to a child's violence and exclusion "will have been clear in many cases". But, "too often, schools and teachers lack the time and resources to help" a child who is showing these signs. An "inclusive system" in which schools don't merely "respond to violence" but are empowered to "prevent it" would be a better solution than "disciplinary policies that may be doing more harm than good".

The United States hosts many of the best educational and academic institutions on Earth, and this has been instrumental in securing the country's status as a 21st century global superpower. These schools draw students, teachers and researchers from around the world to help perpetuate the very academic superiority that appealed to them in the first place.

Now, as the White House places various universities and research institutions in its ideological crosshairs, the nation's reputation for academic excellence is in jeopardy. Prospective students and job-seekers must contend with limited funds, the risk of deportation or worse. Suddenly, the United States' global educational appeal seems conspicuously less appealing. Meanwhile, other nations are noting the change, with some making plans to capitalize on America's waning collegiate pull.

'Fire sale on American academics'

"We are witnessing a new brain drain," said Aix Marseille University President Eric Berton in early March, after announcing a new "safe space for science" initiative to help American researchers continue their work at his school in France. So far the project has attracted more than 50 American researchers who have applied to bring their expertise overseas, a university spokesperson said. Universities worldwide have "reported seeing an uptick in applications from U.S.-based researchers" wary of the "increasingly uncertain climate" of the Trump administration, Science.org said. Many institutions see an opportunity to "attract new talent and reverse the steady migration of scientists to the U.S. in recent decades."

"There's a fire sale on American academics right now," University of Washington biology professor Carl Bergstrom said at health and biomedical focused publication STAT. Anxiety over the Trump administration's moves is "so deep" that it could ultimately "undermine the country's enduring position as the world leader in biomedicine," said STAT. The legally dubious detention of lawful U.S. resident students like Columbia University PhD candidate Mahmoud Khalil is "sure to have a chilling effect" not only on foreign-born academics already studying at American institutions but "on the desire of others to go there in the future," The Guardian said.

Concern from members of the academic community is not limited to individual domestic employment prospects but includes the "long-term viability of their research" itself, The New York Times said. The prospect of losing a "generation" of both science and scientists is "something that we cannot recover from," said Pasteur Institute president Yasmine Belkaid, a recently relocated former NIH official, to the Times. The Trump administration's moves "call into question whole swaths of research" — not simply in America, but globally, thanks to international partnerships, French Education minister Philippe Baptiste said in the same article.

'Once-in-a-century brain gain opportunity'

A number of countries are considering the situation in the United States an opportunity for their own academic and research institutions. Canadian universities can be an "entry way for a flood of talent" fleeing American academia, The Hill Times said. China too has begun welcoming "Ph.D. refugees from the U.S." by offering "new academic pathways," Hong Kong's South China Morning Post said. And America's academic upheaval is a "once-in-a-century brain gain opportunity" for Australia as well, said Danielle Cave, senior analyst for the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.

"Historically" brain drain migration has benefitted the U.S., said Jonathan Zimmerman, a professor of the history of education at the University of Pennsylvania, to the Canadian Broadcast Corporation. There is now a "real danger" that, as a result of the Trump administration's policies, the "drain is going to start going in the opposite direction."

Millions of pounds are being fraudulently claimed from Britain's university student loan system by fake students who have no intention of studying at an academic institution, according to an investigation by The Sunday Times.

Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson has announced that the Public Sector Fraud Authority will be investigating the suspected exploitation of the system. Writing for the newspaper, Phillipson said the allegations point to "one of the biggest financial scandals in the history of our universities sector".

What fraud has been uncovered?

Thousands of people have reportedly fraudulently claimed a student loan by enrolling on degree courses, despite having "absolutely no academic intent", and no intention of paying the loan back, said The Sunday Times.

The paper's investigative reporters reviewed leaked financial documents and company accounts, and interviewed sources in the Student Loans Company, the Department for Education and the Office for Students, as well as university lecturers.

Where is the fraud happening?

The majority of suspect students seem to be enrolled at so-called "franchised universities" – small colleges that provide courses for established universities. It is thought, the paper said, that there are at least six franchised providers where fraudulent claims from students have been identified.

These franchised providers often have low, or almost no, entry requirements. Some franchised colleges are reportedly enrolling international students "who cannot speak adequate English or accepting screenshots of Duolingo tests as proof of English proficiency", said the paper.

British students and foreign citizens with settled status can apply for tuition fee loans and maintenance payments. The tuition fee is paid to the course providers but the maintenance loan is paid directly to a student's bank account.

Loans are meant only to be paid out if students attend their courses, but there are concerns that some franchised providers and lead universities are not properly monitoring attendance, allowing students to enrol in courses they have no intention of attending. Loans are only repayable when a student leaves and earns more than £25,000 a year; the debt is wiped completely after 40 years.

Who is committing student loan frauds?

In 2023, the SLC's fraud unit became concerned about the rising number of Romanian students applying for its loans. Leaked figures revealed that Romanian student loan applications have increased dramatically, from 5,000 in 2015-16 to 84,000 in 2023-24, suggesting, said The Sunday Times, that "15% of the Romanian population in Britain was paid a student loan last year".

While not all these applications are thought to be fraudulent, the number of Romanian applicants is notably higher than those of other nationalities. This could be partly due to "organised recruitment" on TikTok, with Romanian influencers targeting their compatriots with advice on how to access student loans in the UK.

How much money is involved?

More than 3,500 suspicious loan applications, totalling nearly £60 million, were identified by the SLC in the 2022-23 academic year. The company spotted multiple applications "involving fake documents and address duplication", said the paper.

However, according to documents seen by The Sunday Times, there could now be "far greater levels of potential fraud, with estimates that it could run to hundreds of millions of pounds".

What next?

The Department for Education said that it would "stop at nothing to protect public money", and that any potential misuse of student loans "is an insult to hard-working students striving for better opportunities".

The government's Plan for Change, announced by Keir Starmer in December, "will restore trust" in the UK's universities, a DfE spokesperson said. "We will overhaul regulation so the Office for Students better protects taxpayers' money. In the meantime, we have asked the OfS to clamp down on franchising."

"What began in 1998 with Tony Blair standing in the Globe Theatre to announce a new celebration of books has morphed into something much bigger," said William Cash in The Spectator. World Book Day, which sees schoolchildren dress up as their favourite book character on the first Thursday in March, "aims to promote reading for pleasure", said London's The Standard. But schools are increasingly adopting a "more flexible approach", either by ditching "best dressed" awards or abandoning costumes altogether, in response to "growing pressure on parents".

'A bit like childbirth'

World Book Day – those three words are "enough to make most of us break out in a cold sweat", said Nadia Cohen in Metro. Nobody would argue with the "push to promote children's literacy", nor with the almost 15 million £1 book tokens distributed every March. But WBD has "descended into an annual horror show of competitive costume-making, and almost every parent I know hates it with a passion". And let's not pretend it isn't "mostly mums doing the heavy lifting". In that way, WBD is "a bit like childbirth".

It's not just the gender disparity, said Emma Kernahan in The Independent. What's "always overlooked" is that costumes require time or money – or both. And that "that cost is not felt equally". A decade of austerity, a pandemic and a cost-of-living crisis have put nearly a third of children below the poverty line – the very inequalities that WBD "sets out to tackle". Something about "frantically buying disposable merch" from Amazon Prime rather "goes against the spirit of the day".

'Discovering the magic of books'

Here's an idea for parents, said Jen Barton Packer in Metro: "do as little as possible." Don't buy anything; don't make anything. After all, the point of WBD is to "instil a love of reading in the next generation". That has "never been more critical", given that only 34.6% of UK kids enjoy reading for pleasure, according to the National Literacy Trust.

WBD still "inspires me to go to the library, hunt for new books to read, and to snuggle close to my kids" while they "discover new worlds". Have we become so "obsessed with costuming and consumerism" that we've forgotten that WBD is about "discovering the magic of books"?

I too loved WBD and would hate to see it die, said Esther Walker in The i Paper. But it "needs a shake-up". What if children recommended books to one other, like a Secret Santa? Not just fiction, either: the emphasis on costumes has "skewed" WBD towards imaginary worlds, leaving children who prefer non-fiction "cold".

Whatever happens though, the costumes "need to go". Children will either love fiction, or they will "read set texts under sufferance" – and "no amount of Harry Potter costumes can change that".

We are delighted to present the latest issue of The Week Independent Schools Guide.

As a head at one of our leading schools said to me a few weeks ago: "You're not short of meaty issues to cover!" An apt comment and our plate is certainly full: the imposition of VAT, escalating concerns over social-media access for children and schools rugby under the lens – there are challenges aplenty for independent schools right now.

It is very hard to cover the VAT situation adequately as a biannual print publication – events are moving so fast, but we have done our best to assess the situation as it stands. Elizabeth Ivens has poured all her know-how and used her network of contacts to answer questions about the impact of VAT so far.

I have followed coverage of Christine Rosen's new book, "The Extinction of Experience", with interest. Rosen makes the argument that we are "actively deskilling as human beings" by handing over our lives to the handheld devices that we still mistakenly call phones. With continuing widespread coverage of Jonathan Haidt's "The Anxious Generation" and the Smartphone Free Childhood movement gaining momentum, it feels like we might have reached an important tipping point when it comes to the digital access we give our children both inside and outside the home. How much – or how little – pupils should use tech at school remains up for debate. So that's exactly what we have done in this issue: asked two leading heads to discuss whether prep schools should be tech-filled or tech-free.

With rising tuitions fees in England, UK universities in financial crisis and too many students feeling they don't get value for money, it felt like a good time to explore whether university is worth it. I spoke to senior educators and experts who know far more than me and, dear reader, you will be pleased to know the answer is a definite yes. Not only is there hard data to back up the worth of an undergraduate degree in financial terms, but there is also evidence of immeasurable lifelong benefits. What is most dangerous, according to Lord David Willetts, who has written an excellent report on this subject, is growing public scepticism which might put students off from taking this step.

One of the great unsung strengths of independent schools is their ability to be truly independent with their curriculum. What and how students are taught in the independent sector is often innovative and a country mile away from the tick-box mentality of the national curriculum and public exams. Dorothy Lepkowska's talks to some who are really changing the way students learn. Finally, don't miss our much-anticipated guide to the best prep schools in the UK.

We hope you enjoy this issue.

Amanda Constance is the editor of The Week’s Independent Schools Guide. Read the full publication below or click here.

The crisis in providing for children with special educational needs and disabilities risks creating a "lost generation" of young people if it isn't tackled urgently, the parliamentary watchdog has said.

A report by the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) warns that the current system of support for those with special educational needs and disabilities (Send) is "unviable". "Almost half" of local authorities face bankruptcy trying to fulfil provisions in their area, and families face a "postcode lottery" of waiting times for services.

The government was criticised by the "damning report" for "failing to deliver better outcomes for children" as well as lacking "any potential solution" to a rise in demand and the "existential threat" facing many local authorities, said The Guardian.

What did the commentators say?

The PAC report makes "clear the dire situation" and why the government "must take immediate action", said Joey Nettleton Burrows of the National Autistic Society in Learning Disability Today. Many children "can’t get the help" they need and "miss out on years of education", while their families are "forced to spend time and energy fighting long battles to get support for their children". He urged the government to "commit to all the recommendations in the report" to end the crisis.

Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson has accepted the report findings but has asked for "a bit of patience” to address issues. But there is "no time to wait" with the "system in crisis", said The i Paper. There are "deep-rooted problems" but those inside the Send system know what it needs to be brought back "from the brink". This includes "improving mainstream school Send provision", introducing "more special schools and specialist staff", and resisting "further cuts in the Budget" to local councils.

Meanwhile, many parents face "waiting times of several years" just to get a "diagnostic assessment" of their children before even being able to try to access Send resources, said The Guardian. Those parents denied education, health and care plans are then often going on to obtain them through appeal at tribunal, leaving councils at the "mercy of tribunals demanding that needs must be met, regardless of financial deficits". For parents, however, it can take "years of 'battle'" and personal financial sacrifice to "secure adequate support".

To make real change, though, those involved in education planning need to "reframe" the thinking around the "reality of learner complexity" to start to meet the needs of Send children within mainstream schools, said Margaret Mulholland in TES magazine.

Currently, by thinking of "diverse learners" as "costly" we "risk excluding them", and though "diversity and difference" is more and more recognised, it is "often oversimplified in education policy" and tailored to "homogenous" cohorts, she said. The education secretary must ask whether "our education system removes barriers to learning or creates them".

What next?

A report by the National Audit Office in October recommended the government carries out "wholesale reform" of the system, which has become an "adversarial battle between cash-strapped councils and desperate families", said The Guardian.

The government previously said that change to Send provision "will take time", and that it was focused on "mainstream provision and more early intervention". It is planning to write off £3.2 billion in "high-needs spending" deficits for local authorities and provide them with "sustainable long-term funding".

However, "money alone will not fix the educational needs of Send children", said Stefano Hatfield in The i Paper, and the current problem is an example of "two-tier Britain in action". The answer is "more, better trained, in-school professionals, as well as parents being more honest about their own children’s needs", he said. But the "reality is that we all have to manage our expectations about what a little money can achieve, however painful that is".

'What are the emotional risks of losing a student to such an injustice?'

Larry Strauss at USA Today

As President-elect Donald Trump plans for the largest deportation operation in American history, "I am left wondering where that leaves me and my colleagues, those of us whose students are the children of — and in some cases themselves — the people the Trump administration plans to make refugees of," says Larry Strauss. Many teachers "anticipate facing difficult choices," not just about "cooperating with authorities," but also in "dealing with the aftermath of fractured families and shattered lives."

Read more

'I suggest we consider eye contact as an art form'

Michael Chad Hoeppner at Time

"Eye contact, once a cornerstone of human connection, is becoming increasingly rare in our screen-dominated lives," says Michael Chad Hoeppner. "This decline reflects a cultural shift away from face-to-face engagement, one that has profound implications for how we communicate and connect." Attempting more regular eye contact will "give you an opportunity to connect more deeply and vividly with those around you, allowing you to notice the subtleties of human interaction that enrich your day-to-day experiences."

Read more

'Why do we game?'

Stephen Bush at The Financial Times

"Why are ancient dig sites littered with backgammon sets and mancala pieces? Why do ancient urns depict Achilles and Ajax bent in concentration over some sort of dice game? I think there are two answers," says Stephen Bush. "The first is that gaming is a lot of fun," and the second is that "gaming doesn't only entertain: gaming often reveals." While "games amuse us," they also "tell us truths about our characters that are often kept hidden."

Read more

'Russia … cannot be allowed to once again escape accountability'

Max Boot at The Washington Post

After an Azerbaijan Airlines flight crashed on Christmas Day, killing 38 people, an investigation "concluded that a Russian antiaircraft missile most likely brought down the plane," says Max Boot. While "Russian spokesmen blamed a bird collision," the Kremlin, "given its history, has not earned the benefit of the doubt." If Russia is responsible, "the question now is what, if anything, the West will do about it," Boot adds. This is "another argument" for increased "support for Ukraine in resisting Russian aggression."

Read more

The government is proposing new legislation to safeguard children by ending the automatic right for parents in England and Wales to homeschool vulnerable children.

The new measure is being put forward after the case of Sara Sharif, who was killed by her father and stepmother. The ten-year-old, who suffered years of torture at the hands of her parents, was twice withdrawn from school after teachers spotted signs of abuse and raised concerns.

While the "primary responsibility" for the little girl's death rested squarely with her parents, said Mr Justice Cavanagh as he passed sentence on them both, her killing "brings into sharp relief the dangers of unsupervised homeschooling of vulnerable children", reported London's The Standard.

Can anyone homeschool their children?

Elective home education – the term used to describe homeschooling in England – is currently available to all children on a full or part-time basis, as long as they are not subject to a School Attendance Order.

"Parents do not need the consent of the school or local authority" to withdraw their child from school in England and Wales, according to Child Law Advice. There are exceptions, however: if the child has an Education, Health and Care Plan and is attending a special school by arrangement of the local authority, then permission must be sought. In Scotland, parents must seek the local authority's consent before withdrawing their child, although, in practice, consent is usually given.

The law states that homeschooling parents must provide a full-time "suitable education" for their child, although exactly what that means remains a "grey area", said Schools Week. There is no obligation for parents to follow the national curriculum, term dates or school hours.

Under Section 436A of the Education and Inspections Act 2006, local authorities "do not have any statutory duties to routinely monitor the quality of home education", said Child Law Advice. "Case law has held that local authorities cannot insist on inspecting parents and children in their home or elsewhere".

What are the proposed changes to the law?

Under the new Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill, the right to homeschooling in England and Wales "will no longer be automatic for parents of the most vulnerable children", said Sky News.

Councils will be given the power to demand children attend school if their home environment is "deemed unsuitable or unsafe". Parents will also lose the automatic right to homeschool if their child is subject to a social services protection investigation or is under a protection plan. This will also apply to children at special schools.

Every local authority in England will also be required to bring in, and maintain, new registers of children not in school, as well as giving each child unique identifier numbers. This will mean "councils know which children are not in school in their area, and can better ensure they are receiving a suitable education", said The Standard.

Why are more parents homeschooling?

For the past 100 years, the number of children being homeschooled in Britain "has been relatively low and stable", said Anthony Seldon, head of Epsom College, in The Spectator. It's been the choice, mainly, of parents who "want a particular style of religious education for their children (evangelical Christianity, for example) or where there are personal difficulties deterring the young attending school".

But, following the Covid lockdowns, there's been a sharp increase in homeschooling rates in the UK (and around the world), as "many children and families found they liked the experience of learning at home, and determined to maintain it". New figures suggest this post-pandemic surge is "at risk of becoming permanent", said The Guardian, with more than one in 100 children in England being homeschooled last summer term.

Indeed, a BBC investigation earlier this year revealed that the number of pupils moving to home education has risen by 22% in the past year, with councils receiving almost 50,000 notifications in the past academic year from families wanting to take their children out of school. Census data suggested that "while the biggest known reason for moving to home education was still philosophical beliefs, mental health was the biggest factor in the recent rise", said the broadcaster.

Despite concern from Ofsted about the "risk to safeguarding" and the number of children "whose pattern of education is disjointed", the trend for homeschooling is only going to be "continuing in the future, facilitated by AI and digital technologies which are improving by the week", said Seldon.

One in five Britons aged between 16 and 65 can only read at or below the level expected of a 10-year-old, according to a major new study of literacy rates across the developed world.

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has been assessing adult literacy and numeracy levels in over 30 countries for the past 20 years. And its latest Survey of Adult Skills report, released last week, makes for "extremely uncomfortable reading", said Robert Glick, chair of the UK's Adult Literacy Trust, writing in The Big Issue.

'Painfully stagnant' literacy skills

Millions of British adults "struggle with basic literacy", said Glick, and this costs the economy an estimated £40 billion per year. And it's not a new situation. Despite "estimable efforts" by organisations and volunteers, literacy skills in the UK have "remained painfully stagnant" since 2018.

Another report, from the The Reading Agency charity in July, found that the number of UK adults who never read regularly for pleasure had increased by 88% in the past decade, from 8% to 15% of those surveyed. Those who described themselves as "regularly" reading for pleasure had fallen from 58% to 50%, while 35% now described their reading activity as "lapsed".

This year's "What Kids Are Reading Report", a survey of 1.2 million school students across the UK and Ireland, revealed that children are also "reading fewer books for pleasure", said The Bookseller. The study found a 4.4% decrease in the number of books read by children year on year. This was the first time since 2008 – apart from the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic – that a fall had been recorded.

Scrolling, not reading

Countries with falling literacy scores "outnumber those making significant progress", said The Economist. That's despite more people in those countries finishing secondary school and getting degrees. One explanation, said the magazine, could be "increased migration", with non-native speakers naturally tending to score lower on literacy tests that involve "juggling words".

But if adults are getting less adept at coping with complex texts, "I put the blame squarely on technology", said Helen Coffey in The Independent. The "insignificant strips of dead time" that were once filled by "whipping out a fantasy novel or juicy biography" are now "firmly in the custody" of Netflix, WhatsApp and social media. Mornings spent "reading over a bowl of cereal" are now spent "scrolling in bed", and "quiet evenings spent rifling pages" have "given way to binge-watching streaming services" where "there's always something on telly".

Reversing the decline means making literacy programmes "more accessible and relevant", through a "robust, well-funded and well-promoted adult-education programme", wrote Glick. This would require significant government investment, of course, but the OECD report shows in "glaring terms" that the "time to act is now".

Universities are enrolling overseas students who lack English language skills and other "basic requirements". Some of these students are unable to understand simple questions and need to use translation apps in lectures and seminars, said professors writing for the Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI) thinktank.

There "widespread silence" about the problem, said the anonymous professors, with cash-strapped higher education institutions seemingly willing to turn a blind eye to the shortcomings of overseas students, on whom they are increasingly reliant to stay afloat.

Pulling tricks

Tuition fees for English domestic students have not kept pace with inflation, representing "a real-terms cut in university funding", said the BBC. This makes foreign students an attractive financial prospect for universities. Fees for domestic undergraduate students in England are capped at £9,250, but there is no upper limit on tuition fees for overseas students. "You can charge a foreign student as much as they're willing to pay," the HEPI's Rose Stephenson told the broadcaster.

Agents working for companies that prepare international students for English university now "target families abroad" who have plenty of money, a whistle-blower told the BBC. And there are question marks over how suitable many of these students are. Jo Grady from the University and College Union, which represents 120,000 lecturers and university staff, said it's an "open secret" that students who lack English skills still manage to join courses in the UK. "Tricks are pulled" to make sure they "pass the relevant language test", she told the BBC.

Around seven out of 10 students studying on master's courses in England are now from overseas. One postgraduate student from Iran told the broadcaster she was "shocked" to find many of her fellow students had limited English, and most students paid other people to do their coursework, or even to attend lectures for them. Many students had "bought assignments" from "essay mills" based overseas, she said, and although this practice is illegal in England, when she reported this to her tutor, he took no action.

Two anonymous professors at Russell Group institutions told the HEPI that "one-to-one supervision and feedback meetings" are "particularly excruciating" and they've both "regularly encountered students who are unable to understand simple questions" like "What have you read on this topic?".

Difficult decisions

The Home Office said it is reviewing English language assessments to ensure all international students have the necessary the skills to understand their course materials, and that those who do not "shouldn't expect a place at a UK university".

Universities UK – which represents 141 institutions – "rejects" the suggestion that overseas students are being allowed on courses with "poor English language skills" as a way of "boosting income", said the BBC. Vivienne Stern, the body's chief executive, said that universities carry out strict checks on those they enrol – including minimum language levels.

The unidentified professors said "improved regulation of English language entry standards" was "clearly required", but they also called for an "honest, open, and evidence-led discussion" of the problem in the context of policy debates about the future of higher education funding.

The fundamental issue is that it is becoming "increasingly unprofitable" for British universities to teach British students, wrote Tom Jones for The Critic. "If we are to build a more successful and sustainable future for the UK universities", this "cannot be based on recruiting ever more foreign students" to allow the government to avoid "politically difficult decisions" on higher education.

Medical students in India are missing out on a crucial rite of passage because of a lack of dead bodies, or cadavers, for them to learn from.

Logistical issues and cultural sensitivities mean the world's "most populous country" is "running low on bodies", said The Independent, forcing medical schools to adopt anatomical models or digital simulations for training instead.

A complex interplay

Cadaver dissection is "a must" for first-year medical students, Dr Kumari T K, a professor with the Department of Anatomy at Azeezia Medical College in Kollam, told the New Indian Express (NIE), because medicine and anatomy "cannot be learnt through theories".

But instead of the required rate of one cadaver for 10 medical students, India is thought only to have one cadaver for every 50 students in some colleges.

Reasons for the shortage include "cultural, religious and logistical hurdles" and a "lack of awareness", experts told The Independent. Beliefs around death and the afterlife "complicate the picture" because many families want to perform religious rites soon after death and fear that donating the body to science would delay both that and a sense of closure as they grieve.

Even when the deceased person wished to donate his or her body to medical science, the family sometimes "gives more priority to the emotional aspect", Rejeesh Rehman told NIE. He donated the body of his father for medical studies but said many other families prefer to organise their relative's funeral in line with "religious beliefs" and therefore "may not allow to donate the body".

This cadaver shortage is not limited to India. The Times reported in March that, "faced with a dwindling supply of fresh bodies to train on", British medical schools were resorting to dealing with the US, where cadavers can be "supplied for profit by anyone", regardless of training or expertise, without any federal laws being broken.

No substitute 

Medical schools the world over have, for the past 10 years, been experimenting with ways of teaching anatomy without a body, replacing real cadavers with virtual ones. And the Covid pandemic meant many schools had no choice but to use them.

Physical cadaver labs are expensive to run, radiology professor Mark Griswold of Case Western Reserve University, Ohio, told Slate. It can also be difficult to see some anatomy, such as lymph nodes, the pancreas, and some blood vessels on a physical cadaver. The use of virtual cadavers "standardises the process", added Marc J Khan, the dean of Kirk Kerkorian School of Medicine at the University of Nevada, meaning all students are working with the same type of 'body'.

But the virtual experience isn't the same, anatomist and cadaver-donation advocate Dr Vaishaly Bharambe told The Independent. Although they provide a "study in three dimensions", virtual bodies "cannot ever replace the feel of a real human being". And there is no technology “that will allow you to imagine what different organs inside a person feel like".

A 17-year-old girl hailed as a "genius" for her score in an international maths competition in China was actually a cheat, said organisers.

Jiang Ping hit the headlines in June when she became the first finalist from a "lowly vocational school", said the BBC, but "months of scepticism" over her "stellar results" led to an investigation and a shocking discovery.

'Collaborative cheating'

There was surprise and excitement when the fashion design student came 12th in the qualifiers of the annual international maths contest run by Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba because nearly all of the 800 finalists came from elite universities.

Jiang was described as a "genius", said the South China Morning Post, and was "held up as an example of someone who could overcome her modest educational background to achieve major success". She outperformed other finalists from institutions such as Peking University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Oxford University, and "quickly captured nationwide attention", said First Post.

Interviewed by the state-run People's Daily, she said that "learning maths is bumpy", but "every time I solve the problems, I feel quite happy".

But other finalists raised questions over apparent discrepancies in her performance, including an unfamiliarity with "mathematical expressions and symbols", and penned a joint letter to the organising committee.

The letter claimed there was "evidence" of potential fraud, including a theory of "collaborative cheating". The organising committee investigated and found that Jiang had violated competition rules in the preliminary round because she was helped by her teacher, Wang Runqiu, who was a contestant himself.

'Disappeared Einstein'

The organisers have apologised, admitting in a statement that the episode has "exposed issues such as inadequacies in the competition format" and "a lack of rigour in supervision".

Jiang has been roundly blasted on social media in China, but some users have insisted the blame lies with her school and teacher. Although the teenager is "not innocent", one user wrote on Weibo, the "worst parties in this" are the adults who "brought this child along to do a bad deed, and let her suffer all the consequences".

Among the "cacophony" of commentary, some suspect the "harsh public scrutiny" is "rooted in social prejudice" against vocational students, said CNN.

Zhao Yong, a distinguished professor in educational psychology at the University of Kansas, told the broadcaster that Jiang may become a "disappeared Einstein" – one of the "many buried talents in China’s education system".

As for Jiang herself, she regards maths as her "Plan B," said The Beijing News, and prefers fashion design for her future study. Her teacher, Wang, has been given a warning and disqualified from teachers' awards for the year.

A pillar of university life: Academic freedom. It's a principle that gives professors and students wide leeway to freely explore and express ideas without fear of losing their jobs or being penalized. And it may be in danger.

The year-old war between Israel and Gaza has sparked fears of a "growing assault on the ideals of academic freedom," said The New York Times. Pro-Palestinian instructors have had contracts and classes canceled, while acts of faculty discipline have been on the rise. It's part of an effort to "ensure that students feel safe on campus," the Times said. Some instructors are accused of "creating hostile environments in classrooms." But faculty are newly fearful of a "chill in the air," said Peter Lake of the Center for Excellence in Higher Education Law and Policy.

On the other side of the political spectrum, law professor Amy Wax last month received a yearlong suspension from the University of Pennsylvania, said The Associated Press. Wax has "questioned the academic performance of Black students," among other alleged offenses, leading the university to declare she had engaged in "flagrant unprofessional conduct." Academic freedom is important, said Penn's provost, but professors must practice a "willingness to assess all students fairly."

What did the commentators say?

Academic freedom "comes with special responsibilities," Assumption University's Greg Weiner said at The Wall Street Journal. But campus activists treat the concept as a "special entitlement" to pursue political goals "free from consequences." Academic freedom is supposed to encourage the "pursuit of truth," Weiner said, while political sloganeering can "reduce complicated issues to slogans." That's different. Pursuing truth "alone justifies university education."

Penn's Amy Wax has been "stunningly numb to compassion, courtesy and sometimes even to coherence," John McWhorter said at The New York Times. But her punishment is "egregious." That's because the ideals of free speech "means living with the discomfort" that offensive opinions can cause. Yes, Wax's ideas are "repellent," McWhorter said. "This does not justify punishing her for expressing them."

What next?

The battle is underway at Harvard. The university recently punished 25 faculty members who participated in a silent "study-in" in support of pro-Palestine protesters at Harvard's Widener Library, said The Harvard Crimson. The faculty were suspended from entering for two weeks — a decision that "appears to be unprecedented," said the Crimson. Members of Harvard's American Association of University Professors chapter called the suspensions "disturbing." But the university is setting boundaries on activism, said the head of Harvard's library system. The library is "not intended to be used as a venue for a group action, quiet or otherwise, to capture people's attention."

The presidential election could shape what happens next on college campuses, said Inside Higher Ed. Jeremy Young, director of PEN America's Freedom to Learn program, said his organization has tracked a "shift toward restricting universities' autonomy," including laws governing curricula and cracking down on diversity, equity and inclusion programs. The election outcome could result in a "push to nationalize some of these restrictions," Young said. A stronger case needs to be made to voters and taxpayers that they benefit from allowing universities to be a "place of intellectual freedom."

The topic of education has been mostly absent from this year's presidential campaigns. But the future of American schools and universities could hinge on the choice between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris.

There are "very sharp differences" between the two candidates when it comes to education, Amna Nawaz said on PBS NewsHour. America faces "this drop in the ability of fourth graders and eighth graders to do basic math and to read at a grade level," said her colleague William Brangham. Trump's ideas are "contradictory," Brangham added — he wants to eliminate the Department of Education, but also pay "very granular attention" to school curricula to snuff out so-called "woke" topics like critical race theory and gender issues. Harris and Democrats, meanwhile, have called for universal free preschool for American kids.

The two candidates have "distinct track records," American University's Robert Shand said at The Conversation. Trump's platform calls for "universal school choice and more parental control over schools," while Harris served in a Biden administration that tried to expand funding for "full-service community schools" that work to address non-classroom factors, "such as access to health care and healthy food," that can affect student performance. Succinctly, Shand said, Harris wants a "broader role" for the federal government, while Trump wants to push much of the issue to "states, localities and parents."

Trump: 'Chopping block' for federal ed programs?

Trump tried — and failed — to "tear down the U.S. Department of Education" during his first term in office, said Education Week. Expect a new attempt if he gets a second term. "I think he's going to come into office full steam ahead and get things done," said Ryan Walters, Oklahoma's conservative superintendent of education. But the former president has "never been specific" about the fate of programs — like Title I funding for low-income schools — the department administers. As in his first term, it's likely Trump would attempt to put federal K-12 funding on "the chopping block," Education Week said.

While K-12 programs get the most attention, "by far the Department of Education's biggest expenditure is on higher education," said The New York Times. The bulk of its $224 million budget goes to the federal student aid program. Disbanding the agency would have to go through Congress, which is a "highly unlikely proposition," said the Times. That doesn't mean a shift is impossible. Derrell Bradford — the president of 50CAN, a pro-school-choice nonprofit outfit — said both Democrats and Republicans like "the idea that local entities should be in control of education at the local level."

Harris: A focus on pre-K education

Harris and her allies have talked about pre-K federal policies "as much, if not more" than K-12 policies, said NPR. In addition to universal preschool, Democrats have also proposed expanding the Child Tax Credit to give a boost to families with young learners. For older students, Harris supported the Biden administration's student loan forgiveness efforts, as well as proposals to make community college free to students. During her first presidential bid in 2019, Harris also proposed boosting teacher pay. "God knows we don't pay you enough," she said to teachers union members.

Harris' most notable statement on education might have been her selection of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a former teacher, as her running mate. As governor he signed an anti-book-banning bill to stop school and university libraries from removing a book "based solely on its viewpoint or the messages, ideas, or opinions it conveys," said School Library Journal. "Public education," Walz said at the signing, is a force for good in this country."

Enrollment data for the first round of college students affected by the outlawing of affirmative action has been slowly disseminating over the past few weeks. As academia reckons with the impact of the Supreme Court's decision, the spotlight is exceptionally bright on elite schools like Harvard University. The college was at the center of the lawsuit that led to the landmark decision, which accused Harvard of discriminating against Asian American applicants while favoring other minority groups. The slowly emerging data should illuminate whether the decision has caused a shift in campus diversity.

Schools share data on the class of 2028

Harvard College was the latest school to release data on the racial and ethnic makeup of the class of 2028, the first class impacted by the Supreme Court "striking down the ability of colleges and universities to consider race and ethnicity as one factor among many in the admissions process," said The Harvard Gazette. Excluding students who chose not to identify their race, 14% identified as African American or Black, a decrease from 18% in the class of 2027. The number of Hispanic students went up to 16% from 14%. Asian American students comprised 37% of the class, and less than 1% identified as Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islanders, reflecting no change in either group. The school did not report the share of white students in the class, which was "consistent with past practice," the Times said. Still, it is "hard to make inferences," said The New York Times, since the share of students not disclosing their race or ethnicity doubled to 8% since last year.

The data from other schools varies. Neither Yale University nor Princeton saw any change in enrollment of Black and African American students, but the number of Asian American students dropped from 24% to 30% at Yale and from 26% to 24% at Princeton. The change at MIT was more dramatic, where the percentage of Black students dropped 8 points from the 13% average in the four years prior, and the rate of Asian American students jumped up six percentage points from 41%. There was also a 4% decline in Black and African American enrollment at Washington University in St. Louis and a 3% decline at Tufts University.

Too early to draw conclusions?

It may still be too early to jump to answers based on the available data for the class of 2028. With only a few dozen schools reporting their enrollments, "we still can't definitively speak to how racially diverse this first post-affirmative action class will be," Michaele Turnage Young of the Equal Protection Initiative at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund said to Vox. So far, "there isn't much good news in the data for students of color," Vox noted. Many schools have "yet to implement race-neutral policies aimed at fostering diversity in their classes, which would comply with the Supreme Court's decision."

Some experts were critical of the "discrepancy between what was predicted and the actual outcome of the court's ruling," suggesting some "might have not complied with the decision," said the Times. Schools like Princeton and Yale argued in court briefs that "there was no way you could get racial diversity without taking race into account," Peter Arcidiacono, an economist at Duke who testified against Harvard at the trial, said to the outlet. "So I think the burden is on them to show how they were able to do so because it sure looks like they were cheating."

With the new academic year underway, we are delighted to present the latest issue of The Week Independent Schools Guide.

Inspired by our summer of sport we have a special report on the issue of girls and sport. Earlier in March, the House of Commons Women and Equalities Committee published a report, Health barriers for girls and women in sport. It makes for sober reading; yes, women’s sport is on the up but there are many challenges in what is still a “male-shaped space”, from education around female health and sportwear designed by men, for men, to disparities in the status given to sportswomen. Encouragingly, many of our top schools are leading the charge for change and introducing innovative ways to support girls. “It’s about looking at everything from the female perspective,” says Anna Scott, the director of sport and head of female health at Highgate School. “Making sure girls feel seen and heard in terms of any barriers they may feel when it comes to sport.”

In a historic year of political upheaval, Anna Paul, the new Head of South Hampstead High School, GDST, in London takes on the issue of leadership, arguing that it’s more important than ever to encourage young people to become a positive force for future change. She says understanding ourselves is an important start when it comes to being a leader: “Knowing our strengths and weaknesses is central to our ability to lead authentically. No-one ever explained this human side of leadership to me when I was at school.”

A big change in recent years is the rise in virtual schooling. Dorothy Lepkowska has investigated why some families are opting out of traditional education and meets some of the providers in this space. As Hugh Viney, CEO of Minerva’s Virtual Academy, points out, for some people now “homeschooling is a lifestyle choice”. Food for thought, and with numbers in such schools growing exponentially, this isn’t a trend that is going to go away anytime soon.

I interviewed Sarah Jones, hockey star, who I hope has triumphed with the Team GB hockey squad at the Paris Olympics by the time you read this. Sarah has a fantastic story to tell of a road differently travelled. Unlike many of her English hockey teammates who were groomed for stardom via elite pathways from a young age, Sarah grew up football mad in Wales, discovered hockey at Howell’s School and only took the sport seriously following a Damascene conversion one cold winter’s night at Loughborough University. She is a fantastic example of the power of persistence and belief in yourself. A good lesson for all aspiring sporting girls out there.

Amanda Constance is the editor of The Week’s Independent Schools Guide. Read the full publication below or click here.

Single-word Ofsted ratings for state schools will be scrapped with immediate effect as part of "radical" changes announced by the government.

The four gradings currently awarded by Ofsted inspectors – "outstanding", "good", "requires improvement" and "inadequate" – will be replaced by "report cards". These will be "aimed at improving standards and helping parents to better understand schools' strengths and weaknesses", said The Guardian.

Education and teaching bodies have welcomed the reforms, which were promised by Labour before the election.

The changes follow the suicide of primary school headteacher Ruth Perry after an Ofsted report downgraded her Caversham Primary School in Reading from "outstanding" to "inadequate" over safeguarding concerns. Last year, a coroner's inquest found the inspection process had contributed to her death.

Perry's sister, Professor Julia Waters, who has campaigned for the elimination of these one or two-word judgments, said that her family was "delighted" with the proposed changes.

Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary, called the reforms a "landmark moment for children, parents and teachers". "Single-headline grades are low-information for parents and high-stakes for schools. Parents deserve a much clearer, much broader picture of how schools are performing – that's what our report cards will provide," she said.

What did the commentators say?

"There has been fierce debate for years about whether one overall grade can sum up the complexity of a school," said the BBC. The argument for a single-word rating is that "they give parents an overview at a glance, with more detail available in the longer report, which is usually a few pages".

Former Ofsted chief inspector Amanda Spielman said parents appreciated the "simplicity and clarity" of the overall rating, but that the system had become "more of a problem than a help". And the debate surrounding the use of single-headline grades only "intensified" after the inquest into Perry's death. Coroner Heidi Connor said the "transparency and ease" of the overall grading system was not balanced with the welfare of teachers and education staff. 

Labour has "long been in favour of reforming school inspections", said the i news site, although the current grades were introduced by Labour in 2005. Later, under Jeremy Corbyn's leadership, Labour promised to "abolish Ofsted altogether". Starmer has "rowed back from that position". But with the party's strong links to the public sector and the unions, "Labour has remained sympathetic to arguments that the 'high stakes' school accountability system is simply too punitive and contributes to other problems in the sector, most notably trouble recruiting and retaining teachers". 

But while Phillipson "clearly believes she can achieve more by having good relations with the sector and getting the government, school leaders and unions to all pull in the same direction", the danger for Labour is if the move "becomes framed as the government caving into vested interests at the expense of parents and children".

Indeed, some opposition members have already voiced concerns that eliminating the one-word grading system could reduce school accountability and lead to a decline in educational standards.

Damian Hinds, the Conservative shadow education secretary, said that while the current grading system may need improvement, "scrapping the headline inspection outcome is not in the best interest of pupils or parents".

What next?

The Department for Education (DfE) has announced that for the current academic year, schools will receive four separate grades across existing sub-categories: quality of education, behaviour and attitudes, personal development, and leadership and management.

But by September 2025, parents will be able to access a new "report card" that provides detailed descriptions of what inspectors have found at a school, according to the BBC. The changes will be funded by government plans to eliminate VAT exemption for private schools.

Labour has remained "vague" about the specifics of these report cards, said i news. The DfE stated that the design and content of the report cards will be developed over the coming months, following consultation with parents and schools.

After months of not-so-secret campaigning, the race to become the next chancellor of Oxford University is entering the home straight, with voting opening for students, staff and graduates next week.

The first ballot involves 38 candidates, ranging from political heavyweights such as Peter Mandelson and William Hague to an "anti-woke" Anglican clergyman and a Zumba teacher.

The former cricketer and Pakistani PM Imran Khan had been among the favourites to replace outgoing chancellor Lord Patten before his last-minute exclusion from the contest. A spokeswoman for the university refused to be drawn on why Khan had been barred from standing but pointed to requirements that the chancellor must be deemed "fit and proper" as the trustee of a charity, under the terms of Britain's Charities Act. Khan is currently serving time in a Pakistani prison on charges his supporters say are politically motivated.

It has added yet another twist to what is normally a low-key affair to lead one of the world's oldest and most prestigious academic institutions.

"Unpaid, onerous and irksome," said The Spectator: "no wonder many academics shrink at the prospect of the post", which former holder Roy Jenkins famously described as "impotence assuaged by magnificence".

"Yet such is its magnificence that so many others are attracted to the role, fully aware of all the politics and pressures that it brings."

Voting by a convocation

The position of chancellor of the University of Oxford has existed since 1224. A "largely ceremonial" role, according to the BBC, past officeholders include figures such as Oliver Cromwell, the Duke of Wellington, and former prime minister Harold Macmillan.

In all that time the post has never been held by a woman – but if former Tory leader Lord Hague wins, "he would be its 36th 'William'", said The Economist.

The forthcoming election features several notable firsts. One is that the incoming chancellor will be elected for 10 years, a departure from the previous convention that the post would be held for life. The second is that voting by "a convocation" of Oxford students, staff and graduates will take place online, a move which "has not only expanded the candidate pool, but also made it more international", said The New York Times. About 26,000 alumni of Oxford have registered to vote, with an additional 5,000 faculty and senior staff also eligible.

Initial voting will take place in the week commencing 28 October, using the alternative vote system, which allows voters to rank candidates in order of preference. The field of candidates will be reduced to five in a first round of voting, with a winner selected in a second round in late November.

The frontrunners

Some 38 candidates have put their name forward to replace Patten. According to The New York Times these range from an Anglican clergyman who presents himself as the "anti-woke candidate", to a left-wing activist who boasts that he has never "invaded any Middle Eastern countries" to a Zumba teacher who says her cardio training would help her face the rigours of the job.

But three peers "lead the pack", said The Spectator. New Labour architect Peter Mandelson, who studied at St Catherine's College, has sought to position himself as the candidate of the left, noting during his campaign launch that just two of the nine chancellors in the last century had not been Tories.

"I don't see why the Conservatives should have a monopoly on this position," he said, promising to use his links with the new Labour government to advocate for Oxford and the university sector more broadly.

It is perhaps fitting then that his biggest challenge is likely to come from former Tory leader William Hague. The "frontrunner", according to The Times, the former foreign secretary and now author credits his time at Oxford for "everything I've done in the last 42 years in government, the literary world and everything else". He said he'd "be more than happy to play a part in inspiring other people to have that same experience".

Jan Royall, who served in the same Labour cabinet as Mandelson, has pitched herself as the "candidate for welfare and widening access" and vowed to build on her work as principal of Somerville College, championing unconscious bias training and purging octopus from college dinners.

Other contenders include Margaret Casely-Hayford, the first Black British woman to be made a partner at a City law firm, Dominic Grieve, the former attorney-general, and former Tory universities and science minister David Willetts.

Elish Angiolini, Scotland's former lord advocate and head of St Hugh's College, is a "favoured internal choice", said The Spectator.

But "for all the whimsy of the fringe candidates, the chancellor's job is likely to go to one of a small circle of politically connected Oxonians", said The New York Times – "candidates not unlike Patten or his 158 or so predecessors".

GCSE results day has come and gone, and for many, celebrations have begun. But the nearly 40% of students who have not received a passing grade of 4 or higher in their maths or English exams will be required to resit in November.

This "soul-destroying" policy may be well-intended, but "it looks to be utterly demoralising to pupils who find difficulty" with the tests, said Alan Smithers, director of the Centre for Education and Employment Research (CEER) at the University of Buckingham.

It consigns students to "a remorseless treadmill of resits in post-16 education under rules drawn up by the last government", said Pepe Di'lasio, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders.

The data shows, too, that after the first mandatory resit, the treadmill continues: "Demoralisingly, barely one in five of those taking obligatory resits of maths and English GCSEs – a condition of funding for their post-16 education – achieved the necessary pass grade," wrote The Guardian's editorial board.

"The socioeconomic dimension to these unequal outcomes is stark. Young people from less well-off families, in poorer areas, fare comparatively worse and see their future options restricted accordingly."

What did the commentators say?

A "hyper-fixation" on the proportion of pupils achieving the top grades "means we tend to overlook something much more important", said Kristina Murkett for The Spectator: "the long tail of underachievement in England".

The pass rate for resits is historically much lower than the first-time pass rate, and it fell again this year, dipping down to 20.9%. Given that, the "chances of success" for those resitting in November "are likely to be worse than before the pandemic" said The Guardian.

The "dismal" resit pass rate is proof that "you can't just keep testing people to success" said Murkett. "Students should be given the opportunity to retake if they wish," but it is "educational madness" to force struggling pupils to repeat the exam "over and over again and expect different results".

What next?

Labour's recent rise to power has prompted renewed cries for change, especially given the party's pledge to centre working-class children in education reform. The government has put post-16 qualifications under scrutiny, and a curriculum review is underway. According to the Financial Times, Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson is considering revising the resit policy. But according to Polly Toynbee in The Guardian, in some ways "it's all about to get much worse".

Starting this September, students who have not passed their exams must spend three hours per week on English and four on maths out of a total 15 hours allotted for post-16 study or their school will lose funding for their education. A marked increase, this doesn't leave much time for other interests, and may put students off education altogether, said Association of Colleges head David Hughes.

One potential solution comes from the AQA, an education charity and exam board who have "assembled experts of all kinds to plan an entirely new approach to exams and educate everyone in essential life skills", said Toynbee.

"The big idea is that everyone should take basic exams covering everyday numeracy, literacy and digital fluency: they just need to pass, no grade, no contest, like passing a driving test."

The exams will have to change drastically, and fast, to appease some experts who say they currently don't reflect life's most important skills or learnings. Smithers, the CEER director, says he "would suggest that they do not necessarily embody the grasp of words and numbers that is necessary to cope with life as it is lived".

More than 500 nonprofit private colleges have shut down in the last decade, said The Wall Street Journal, "three times what it was in the decade prior." The rising cost of tuition plays a role in the rising rate of closures, with prospective students now "re-evaluating the overall value of a four-year degree." And there are fewer of those students: Declining birthrates have created an "enrollment cliff" that has left much of higher education "buckling under the strain of tuition losses."

The trend started in 2017, said CNN, but slowed during the COVID pandemic as colleges were boosted by a flood of federal aid. That money has now run out. The result? Some analysts worry that "fewer colleges will mean fewer college graduates." That could hinder workforce development for younger and mid-career workers. And maybe something more. "What is going to be lost is the commitment that we had to making sure that higher education was accessible to everyone," said Hodges University President Charlene Wendel. (Hodges, in Florida, closes its doors on August 25.)

What did the commentators say?

The Biden administration has an "aggressive approach to college oversight," Zachary Schermele said at USA Today. Colleges aren't supposed to close "with little or no warning" — consumer protection laws require institutions to warn regulators that they're "financially unstable." But thousands of students have been caught unaware and left in a lurch, often with debt and half-completed degrees. There needs to be a "new urgency" in tracking the "warning signs" in higher ed. Colleges will close, one professor noted, "so the challenge becomes: When do people know that their college is at risk?"

If the baby bust is hurting enrollment, the "longevity boom" could boost colleges, a trio of experts said at Inside Higher Ed. The conventional "learn, work, retire" could be upended and rethought in an aging country. And retirees are increasingly moving into "encore careers" that require new skills and education. That's why colleges could move to "age-inclusive models" that promote "intergenerational" learning with both younger and older students. "Demand will only grow."

What next?

Colleges "large and small" are cutting costs by phasing out majors and "slashing" programs, said The Associated Press. Those kinds of cuts "appear to be more commonplace" than schools closing outright, but they also affect students — particularly those in humanities programs, which are facing the deepest cuts. Will that help those institutions survive? "It's an open question to what extent colleges and universities can cut their way to sustainability," said Georgetown University senior scholar Bryan Alexander.

Most abandoned students "give up on their educations altogether," said The Hechinger Report, an education newsletter. Fewer than half transfer to new schools — and fewer than half of those students complete degrees. Why? Credits don't always transfer. That means more expense and time for do-over classes. "It's just another roadblock," said Luka Fernandes, whose first school closed after his junior year, "especially with people who are struggling with tuition in the first place."

Your FREE back-to-school wellbeing guide

Going back to school can be a worrying time for kids; they've had the long school summer holidays to switch off and unwind - and now they need to get used to the classroom again, move up a year and get to know a new teacher.  Many children will also be making the big transition from primary to secondary school. It's a lot for them to adapt to, and even the most confident children may have a wobble over the next few weeks.

That's why The Week Junior have teamed up with children's mental health charity Place2Be to create a special back-to-school wellbeing guide. It has some great techniques and tips on how to manage those fears, build resilience and embrace change. Together, we want to help children go back to school with confidence, ready to learn but also to have fun and enjoy it.

Fill in a few short details below to receive our brand new wellbeing guide by email: 

Packed with practical and emotional advice

If your child has any lurking back-to-school nerves, download our free guide today and read it together for loads of great advice and tips, split into the following sections:

• Be brave and beat your fear
• Learning from mistakes
• Build your cheerleading team
• Learn to reach for the stars
• It's good to ask for help
• River journey: moving up to secondary school

The final activity is from our back to school partner, children's mental health charity Place2Be. A creative and reflective task, it's a great way to encourage children to process the end of primary school and explore their feelings around the big transition up to secondary school ahead.

To find out more about Place2Be and what they do, please visit place2be.org.uk.

A human rights activist said that Harrow School's decision to open a new campus in China is "profoundly galling".

Several private schools have closed their Chinese operations in recent years over concerns about a "curriculum clampdown" and "tougher controls" on what is being taught in classrooms, said The Times.

'Brainwashing diktats'

Harrow School launched its first international campus in Thailand in 1998 and the new campus in Guangzhou is its 13th school in Asia. Following the institution's "ground-breaking ceremony", the school is set to open in 2027 to about 1,500 foreign nationals and residents of Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan aged between two and 18.

The British public school, which counts several former prime ministers including Sir Winston Churchill and Stanley Baldwin as alumni, licenses its name, logo, uniform and education practices to international partners for a fee.

But private schools are facing an "increasingly difficult landscape" in mainland China and several international institutions have reduced their operations in the country. Last year Venture Education, a Beijing-based consultancy, said that the "rapid growth" in the number of British-partnered schools and school brands is "now over".

Starting this year, schools have been obliged to follow laws which state that "intangible cultural heritage demonstrations" are "expected to be integrated into school programmes, so that young people can understand and appreciate more about patriotism".

Luke de Pulford, executive director of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, said it was "profoundly galling" to see "the reputation of Churchill's alma mater sold so cheaply". Harrow's China campus will be "unable to criticise" the "totalitarian" President Xi, "unable to call out the Uighur genocide", and unable to teach "whole swathes of history" because of the "brainwashing diktats of the party-state", he said. "And for what?" 

'Mothership copies?'

Marlborough opened an overseas campus in the Malaysian city of Iskandar Puteri in 2012. It boasts features not usually found in local schools, including an organic farm, a golf range, and a lake for watersports. In Singapore, Dulwich College has several sports fields, three swimming pools, and a performing arts centre with three theatres.

These and other branded schools "largely cater to Western families", said the BBC, but they "also admit locals". Well-off parents in countries such as Cambodia, see these schools as a "passport" to a place at a British or Western university, said Which School Advisor. But while "on the surface" they may look the same as their British counterparts, "dig just a little deeper and in some ways they could not be more different".

Kimkong Heng, a visiting senior research fellow at the Cambodia Development Center, told the BBC that attending a South East Asian branch of a top British school does not entirely match up to the experience of the original historic institutions.

Asians "dream" of visiting "world-famous cities" like London to study in "world-renowned universities", he said. The standard of education is "one thing", but "the experience of the culture and language is another".

While schools in the UK "may work closely with their sister schools abroad", said Spears, it "would be wrong to suggest that these are all carbon copies of their motherships".

These educational outposts are "proving" that there is "strong demand for what they are selling – as long as it's good value for money", it added.

But the branded schools model is "not for everyone", Daniel Lewis, managing director of Repton International Schools Ltd, told the outlet. Some schools such as Eton will "never do it" because they don't need the money, he said. They "don't want to be bothered with it", which is a "perfectly reasonable position to take".

More than three-quarters of English 18-year-old applicants have been accepted into their first-choice university as more young people achieved top A level grades than last year.

According to government figures, 32.1% of all English 18-year-olds have been accepted into university, with 75.7% securing a spot at their preferred institution, up from 71.6% in 2023 and 74.5% in 2019.

"University hopefuls trepidatiously opening their official A level emails this morning will on the whole be happier than last year," said Andrew Tettenborn in The Spectator. This year, students are more likely to secure a university place, especially at their first-choice institution, due to two "serendipitous" factors: the fading of the Covid-induced enrolment bubble that left universities overfilled, and a decline in foreign applications. 

While this "will certainly please a good many UK teenagers", the question remains, says Tettenborn: "Is it good news for the country and for higher education?"

What did the commentators say?

A sharp drop in international student numbers, coupled with stagnant domestic tuition fees, has left universities facing an "existential crisis", said the i news site. Institutions such as the University of East Anglia (UEA), Kent, York and Sheffield Hallam are among those who have reported experiencing "serious financial challenges". 

It means that even students who missed their grades may find clearing to be a "buyer's market" this year, with universities eager to fill available spots. Nick Hillman, director of the Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI), told i news that "universities are falling over themselves to lock down students into places".

There are notable "downsides" to these efforts to keep university lecture halls full. "Unless you believe the somewhat unconvincing notion that UK school students have been getting steadily smarter, more sophisticated, and better educated each year, quality will decline, and entry standards will fall," said Tettenborn in The Spectator. "This in turn will feed into more demands for remedial teaching and for already demoralised university teachers to spend yet more time instilling the basics into large and sometimes not very interested classes rather than encouraging students to think for themselves." 

Today's A level results could also "encourage complacency about the way we approach higher education". Many already argue that the UK's tertiary education system is "too skewed towards universities". Simply put, "this suggests that we have too many university students with skills people don't need, too few apprentices and on-the-job trainees, and (whisper it quietly) possibly too many universities".

"If school leavers had more appealing options, they might take them," said City A.M. "There is something disingenuous about the school-to-university pipeline as it is presented to pupils, and something distinctly un-university-like about many university experiences," where "smoking weed and clubbing" define "too much of many degree-takers' lived experience". While there "may be nothing wrong with either", it "shouldn’t be necessary to pay £9,000 a year to party".

"A radical experiment expanding post-sixth form options could help find a new equilibrium," said the news site. "A skilled workforce is necessary, but a media degree is not." For many students, "a course in coding could be far more useful and cost-effective." What young people need is "more choice outside the university bracket, more guidance in making decisions at 18, and greater honesty about what is required to undertake a bachelor's degree".

Although universities are often praised as "engines of social mobility", said Paul Wiltshire in Times Higher Education, a university education shouldn't be "the de facto method for identifying and rewarding hard-working and academically able young adults from poor backgrounds". On-the-job training and apprenticeships should be recognised as equally effective preparation for employment, as they once were, "before the glut of graduates made employers see non-graduates as the 'dregs'". 

But, of course, going to university can be about much more than employability and future earnings. "It is a chance to broaden your horizons, gain independence, meet a range of new people with different backgrounds and views (some of whom may become lifelong friends), throw yourself into a subject you love and immerse yourself in different experiences", said Nicola Woolcock, education editor at The Times.

What next?

With many UK universities facing severe financial challenges, where students choose to go to university could be a "make-or-break point" for several institutions, said The Guardian. David Maguire, vice-chancellor of the University of East Anglia, told the paper last week that "an awful lot of institutions are placing extremely large bets on this recruitment round". But, he added: "I don’t think there are enough students to go around."

Universities UK reported that one in four of its 130 members have recorded a budget deficit for at least two consecutive years, including several Russell Group universities. "That makes this clearing season crucial as institutions under strain chase students," said Sky News.

"Education, education, education" was at the heart of Tony Blair's pitch to the British public in the run-up to the 1997 general election.

Now, 27 years on, the issue is still a central plank of Labour's manifesto, with Blair's eventual successor Keir Starmer promising to recruit 6,500 teachers and create 3,300 new nurseries within existing primary schools.

But his plan to scrap the VAT exemption on independent school fees has provoked opposition, a reflection of how Labour's approach to education has evolved and divided over the years.

'Free at all stages'

The Labour Party was founded in 1900 and its first leader, Keir Hardie, said he believed that all working people should receive a full education that was "free at all stages" and "open to everyone without any tests of prior attainment at any age".

Implementing this did not prove as simple as hoped. As prime minister, Clement Attlee was able to implement the 1944 Education Act, which provided universal free secondary education and raised the minimum school leaving age from 14 to 15.

Later, Harold Wilson's government expanded comprehensive education and created the Open University. Between 1966 and 1970, the proportion of children in comprehensive schools increased from about 10% to over 30%.

'Education, education, education'

By 2007, after 10 years of Blair's premiership, the government was spending almost £1.2 billion on education every week, as the core "per pupil" funding had risen by 48% in "real terms", said the BBC, amounting to £1,450 more per year per child. 

Blair could point to some successes from this spending. In primary school tests just before he took power, 63% of 11-year-olds had reached the expected levels in English, 62% in maths and 69% in science. Nine years later, the test results were all up – 79% in English, 76% in maths and 87% in science. There were 35,000 more teachers and 172,000 more teaching assistants.

But there were also "failures", said the broadcaster, as a "stark gap" remained between the achievement of pupils in "affluent and deprived communities". Blair had promised that truancy rates were going to be cut by a third, with threats of jailing parents, but they were "unchanged".

'Leftward drift'

Jeremy Corbyn was passionate about education too. In 1999 he got divorced after a disagreement with his wife over whether their son should be educated at one of the country's best grammar schools or at a nearby north London comprehensive.

Corbyn favoured the local comp and his marital break-up echoed "tensions" within the Labour Party over selection in education and the future of the country's 160 grammar schools, said The Guardian.

After Corbyn became Labour leader in 2015, the party planned to scrap university tuition fees and restore maintenance grants. He also promised to invest in a National Education Service, modelled on "what the NHS does for healthcare", said the TES.

Corbyn also wanted children to be taught about injustice and the role of the British Empire, as education policy moved more towards the left.

'Politics of envy'

In the event of a Starmer government, empty primary school classrooms will be turned into nurseries as part of his plans to create an extra 100,000 childcare places.

Labour aims to create more than 3,300 new nurseries using spare schools capacity caused by declining birth rates, and the proposal will be funded by its "VAT raid on private schools", said The Telegraph.

Starmer said childcare is "critical infrastructure", "vital for children’s opportunities" and "essential for a stable economy", but Education Secretary Gillian Keegan said Labour's approach is the "politics of envy", said the Daily Express.

"Another day closer to the general election and I'm at my daughter's prep school in Oxfordshire," said Arabella Byrne in The Spectator. Once again, "I'm having a 'VAT chat' with a fellow mother". 

We've known about Labour's plan for months – stripping the VAT exemption from private school fees. But as the election draws near, the reality is starting to sink in. It will lead to a likely 20% rise in fees, which for many parents, including me, will be unaffordable. "I will have to take my daughter out of the school that she loves." 

This is an appalling policy, motivated by "the politics of envy" and "simple spite", said Martin Stephen in The Daily Telegraph. The success of independent schools has always been "an embarrassment" to Labour. The policy will be a "hammer blow", ensuring that in future, they are only for "the super-rich".

No 'mass migration' from sector

This "niche" issue has been given an amazing amount of coverage by the right-wing press, said Catherine Bennett in The Observer. There are endless "sob stories" about this "formerly obscure minority of a minority": private school parents who now "face the brutal prospect of state education". We hear about all the sacrifices they've had to make to pay fees, driving old bangers, denying themselves West End shows, and so on. But let's not forget that Labour's policy is actually a moderate "compromise": private schools are not being abolished or stripped of charitable status, they're just having their VAT rules changed.

Most services, after all, have to charge VAT, said Daniel Freeman on CapX. And I am unconvinced that this policy will lead to a "mass migration" from the sector. Private schools have provided clear evidence that parents aren't sensitive to fee hikes. Since 1997, average fees have more than doubled in real terms. The effect? "Essentially none." Besides, there is little reason to believe that schools will pass on the full cost of VAT, at least in the short term. They're more likely to cut the lavish facilities they provide.

A 'counterproductive' plan

Bigger, richer schools will be able to take the hit, said Anne McElvoy in The i Paper. Others won't. For example, Downham Preparatory in Norfolk, which gives a third of its places to autistic children, says it will not survive the VAT hike.

Admissions to private schools have already fallen by nearly 3% in the past year, said Mike Harris in The Guardian. Labour says the policy will raise £1.6bn to pay for more state school teachers. But every child who leaves a private school, so their parents can avoid £3,000 of VAT, will cost the schools budget £8,000. So Labour's plan risks being "counterproductive".

The government's immigration crackdown could increase the financial pressure on Britain's beleaguered higher education institutions, leaders in the sector have warned.

University bosses have said that government plans for reform of the higher education sector (details will not be made public until later this summer) raised "significant financial concerns", said The Independent.

Earlier this year, Labour MP Helen Hayes, chair of the House of Commons Education Committee, warned that freezes to tuition fee levels, a decline in international students and spiralling costs have led to a "perfect storm bearing down on institutions".

How bad is the problem?

There have been warnings for years of a looming crisis in university funding.

In 2023, the Sunak-led Tory government introduced restrictions on overseas students such as a ban on bringing relatives, which, said PoliticsHome, has "resulted in many universities reporting a drop in applications from abroad".

In the last academic year, a third of the UK's 150 or so higher education institutions had only enough funds to last for 100 days, with an increasing number facing "a material risk of closure" unless they dramatically cut costs or merge over the next few years.

It was against this backdrop that Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson announced an increase in tuition fees in England for the first time in eight years – from £9,250 per year, to £9,535 – in order to "bring stability to university finances".

Meanwhile, an Immigration White Paper, published in May by the Labour government, set out plans to introduce a levy on international student income and reduce the time that graduates can remain in the UK after completing their studies before landing a skilled job from two years to 18 months.

University leaders from the Russell Group warned that these proposals could make the UK "less competitive internationally", further hitting their finances. The latest annual health check of the sector by the Office for Students (OfS) found that 43% of universities are facing budget deficits.

How are universities funded?

The total income of UK higher education providers in 2022/23 was about £50 billion. Of this, some 52% came from tuition fees (43% of which were paid by international students); 14% came from research grants (from government bodies and charities); and 12% came from direct government funding. Other sources of income include donations and endowments.

Since higher education is devolved, the UK’s different administrations have different funding models. In Scotland, home students’ tuition fees are paid directly by the government, meaning Scottish student numbers are capped, unlike in England; all Welsh undergraduates receive a minimum maintenance grant of £1,000 to help with living costs; and in Northern Ireland, fees are capped at £4,750.

Why are universities so cash-strapped?

The current financial challenges facing UK universities are broadly because of "funding reforms implemented in 2012 and the decreasing government support since then", said LSE Blogs.

Tuition fees had been frozen at £9,250 since 2017; if they had risen in line with inflation since 2012, they would have reached nearly £15,000 by now. This has caused a sharp real-terms drop in income; the last time universities’ income was this low was when tuition fees were first introduced, in 1998.

At the same time, they have had to contend with inflation-driven rises in operational costs, staff salaries and pension payments. As a result, before the tuition fee hike was announced, they were making a loss of £2,500 on each domestic student, according to analysis by the Financial Times – so the sector has become dependent on fees from international students.

Essentially, said Richard Murphy on his TaxResearch blog, international students have been "massively subsidising" university losses due to the government "not allowing student tuition fees to go up", but there are now plans to limit them.

What issues does that raise?

The number of international students enrolling at UK universities has, over the past 20 years, risen sharply: in 2003, there were about 300,000 students from outside the UK on their books; by 2022/23, there were 758,855 – 26% of the student body. They can be charged much higher fees than UK students – up to £26,000 a year in tuition fees for undergraduate courses – and contributed £11.8 billion in fees in 2022/23.

However, the issue is politically contentious. Universities argue that foreign students prop them up, and that it’s good to attract talent from around the world. Critics complain that education is used as a back door to economic migration; at least a third of foreign students settle in Britain, notably those from India, China and Nigeria. Rules designed to reduce this – banning most postgraduate students from bringing family members to live with them, for instance – have meant that student visa applications dropped by 16% last year. And this has greatly affected university finances.

What effect is all this having?

For years, universities have been asked to do more with less. And with foreign students no longer fully plugging the gap, more than 90 UK universities have announced staff redundancies, course closures and other forms of restructuring. Others may be forced into mergers, or axing some degrees. Some may go bankrupt, and either have to be bailed out financially by the government, or close down.

Among academics, morale is reportedly at an all-time low. The prospect of further job losses follows years of falling pay, heavier workloads, often precarious working conditions and pension reductions – which have led to waves of strikes. There is likely to be further industrial action as redundancies and restructurings are announced.

It is not just job losses that are a concern, said Murphy – students are "definitely suffering" too, as they will have less choice and worse staff teaching ratios "with no reduction of fees as a consequence".

Won’t the fee hike help?

Not really. The Institute for Fiscal Studies calculates that the hike will raise £390 million a year for universities; but changes to employers' National Insurance announced in last autumn's Budget will likely cost them £372 million a year, leaving a net gain of just £18 million. Besides, it will only start in the 2025/26 academic year. It will, though, add to the debt loaded onto students in England. The government has stated that "longer-term funding plans for the higher education sector will be set out in due course", but that probably means waiting until public finances are stabilised.

What will the government do?

It could increase tuition fees further or link them to inflation. It could increase grants to universities through more taxation. Inflation-linked fees and grant increases are essential, said Philip Augar in the Financial Times. Augar, who chaired a review of post-18 education for the Theresa May Tory government in 2018/19 said universities would have to be more "upfront about course employment outcomes" if students are paying more.

The government could also allow in more overseas fee-paying students or exclude international students from immigration statistics, "which is in line with the practice in the rest of Europe", said LSE. Or it could do some mixture of the above. The alternative is allowing higher education – one of Britain's world-leading sectors – to get poorer and smaller. Some would argue that we have too many universities. In 2006, 24.7% of UK 18-year-olds went to university; by 2024, that figure had risen to 36.4%. David Behan, chair of OfS, has suggested that the "golden age of higher education" is probably over, and that universities are likely to move towards far shorter courses that allow students to work and study simultaneously.

Some less illustrious universities could probably fail without serious repercussions. But many are anchor institutions in their towns and cities, often among the largest employers and contributors to the local economy. Any government, particularly a Labour one, would be keen to avoid such closures.

This means that, despite the uncertainty, it is unlikely any institution will simply be allowed to go under, said the Financial Times: "just like the banks – universities are too big to fail".

A Facebook group called The Professor Is Out, which has close to 33,000 members, aims to spirit dissatisfied college and university professors in the United States out of the profession and into other pursuits. The scale of the group might come as a surprise to most people, who assume that a combination of competitive salaries and flexible work schedules make academia close to an ideal workplace. Yet many professors are deeply unhappy with their jobs, their compensation and the general direction of higher education policy in the United States, especially in southern states where policymakers are eliminating job protections and imposing new speech restrictions on faculty.  

The Professor Is Out, founded by a former professor of anthropology, Karen Kelsky, in 2010, is both a support group and a networking opportunity. It has been so successful that Kelsky and several colleagues turned it into a thriving business that offers career coaching and other consulting and advising services. Most of what happens on the Facebook page, though, is individuals posting their horror stories, often anonymously to avoid retribution, and asking for advice and solidarity. Kelsky's group is therefore also a window into the complicated, interrelated crises afflicting virtually the entire industry.

Facing multiple crises

In an increasingly competitive environment this century, many schools made enormous investments in new buildings and facilities to attract students, a move recently dubbed "the amenities arms race" by The Chronicle of Higher Education. But the resulting debt loads have been unsustainable for many institutions. Parents worried about their own finances after the Great Recession began to doubt the basic value proposition of higher education, particularly as tuition continued to rise faster than inflation at public and private colleges. At many institutions, these harsh realities have meant budget cuts, salary freezes and program eliminations. In some rare cases, as with Southern Vermont College in 2019, it has led to the permanent closure of an institution.

Even at institutions not threatened with doom, many faculty saw an erosion in salary and benefits after the Great Recession. And then along came the one-two punch of Covid-19 and post-pandemic inflation. At many institutions, salaries are still significantly lower than before the pandemic. At the vast majority of colleges and universities, falling student numbers have led to downward pressure on salaries for both full and part-time faculty, and outside of the small circle of elite public and private universities, this has also meant less money for travel and studies for faculty whose career prospects depend on their ability to conduct research and publish. These developments have damaged "the ability of colleges and universities to attract and retain talented faculty members," said the American Association of University Professors in its 2022-2023 annual report on the profession. 

Fewer students, more competition

There's another problem. Undergraduate college enrollments in the United States peaked in 2010, and the number of students has declined significantly since then, a trend exacerbated by the pandemic. But that pales in comparison to the "steep drop in the traditional college-age population" that will affect universities and colleges "in certain parts of the country starting in 2025," said Sara Weissman for Inside Higher Ed. This looming problem is known in education circles as "the demographic cliff" and has created a general atmosphere of gloom and fear inside many colleges and universities, which are reluctant to hire new professors or invest in the ones they already have while the institutions face such an uncertain future. Many analysts believe that another wave of mergers between troubled institutions, or even outright closures, are on the horizon.

That is the bleak landscape facing many university faculty who come to The Professor is Out for help. One recent poster, a tenured professor, asked for input and said that "the monotony, politics, budget woes, blank-eyed students, continual emails and ever-shifting priorities of the university" were leading to a search for opportunities outside the industry. More than two dozen replies offered a mix of advice and commiseration, much of it heartfelt and based on personal experience. No one recommended staying in academia.

The government has claimed that children will be "protected" from "inappropriate teaching" on sex and relationships by new guidance announced today – but critics say they are alarmed by the rollback of sex education in England's schools. 

The government has published new guidelines on Relationships, Sex and Health Education (RSHE) in schools in England following, it said, "multiple reports of disturbing materials" being used in sex education lessons in schools.

Under the guidelines, children will not be taught sex education before Year 5 – about nine years old – "and at that point from a purely scientific standpoint". 

'Let children be children'

"Children must be allowed to be children", said Education Secretary Gillian Keegan writing in The Sun, announcing the new policy. While children need to be prepared for issues they will face in the future, "that doesn't mean they should be rushed into being adults or bombarded with concepts that they are not ready to grasp".

In the three and a half years since RSHE was made compulsory in schools "vocal groups have used it to push inappropriate and inaccurate teaching", said Keegan. 

As well as introducing "age limits" for the first time, the guidelines "leave no room for doubt" that teachers should not teach about "the contested issue of gender identity", she said. "Never again will young girls be led to believe they might be happier if they were a boy, or children to think that there are 72 genders", she said. 

A certain group of Conservative MPs have long pushed the idea that England's sex education is "age-inappropriate, extreme, sexualising and inaccurate", said Nimo Omer in The Guardian. Some 50 MPs urged Rishi Sunak last year to commission an independent inquiry into how sex education was being conducted in schools after evangelical Christian Conservative MP Miriam Cates claimed children were being presented with "graphic" material including "lessons on oral sex" and "how to choke your partner safely".

But most teachers "do not recognise" this characterisation of sex education; most say schools are "exceedingly cautious" about what they teach. Nevertheless, the "crusade against sex education" appears to have "won out" with the government announcing an overhaul of guidance.

'War on woke'

It's hard to view this policy as anything other than part of the Tories' "war on woke" said Liz Toner in The Independent. Since parents can already opt their children out of sex education this new guidance seems firmly aimed at "the self-proclaimed anti-'woke' brigade, who believe that kids are filtering into school aged five, handed a rainbow flag and told they're any gender they want". For Sunak, this is not "a true issue of concern or conscience" but about avoiding "a trouncing at the polls".

As an "old-fashioned common sense type" I have a "horrid suspicion" I may be the kind of parent the government is trying to appeal to, said Jemima Lewis in The Telegraph. But the new guidance is "both a drastic over-reaction, and a cowardly fudge" which seeks to "mollify two quite different cohorts of concerned parents: the middle-aged liberals like me who think sex is tremendous but the whole gender thing has gone a bit far; and the religiously devout, who don't want their children exposed to any of this filth". 

"Both cohorts are somewhat deluded", as "like it or not, our children will pick up most of their sex 'education' from the internet'", said Lewis. But if the government really is concerned about "unscientific gender notions being reinforced in schools" then it should address that issue separately.  "Lumping gender in with sex – quite apart from being a category error – is politically short-sighted" and risks  "destroying a good, and increasingly necessary, part of the education system in order to pacify two completely different groups of anxious parents, neither of whom are likely to be satisfied".

A report that children are being taught "misinformation and quackery" at an "illegal school" based in a "grimy former nightclub" in Greater Manchester has reignited the debate on whether enough is being done to regulate alternative education providers.

Ofsted told the BBC it is "urgently investigating" the claims in The Times that an alternative education provider has been promoting conspiracy theories to children.

What did the commentators say?

Teachers at the institution, which is called UniversallKidz, believe that the dinosaurs "never existed" and that the government is teaming up with the World Economic Forum (WEF) to depopulate and enslave the world – a conspiracy known as the "great reset theory" – wrote Tom Ball, who went undercover for the broadsheet.

Children are educated in foraging, self-defence and natural remedies to "survive and defy this supposed plot against humanity", he added. A teacher said the authorities are "going to force a famine on us and we will be eating each other", so the children will have to "find their own food when the s*** hits the fan".

In a history lesson children were told that the reality TV show "I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here" was commissioned to show viewers famous people eating cockroaches so it "doesn't look mad" when Bill Gates and the WEF "have their way" and force everyone to do the same. Leaflets were made available that stated that Covid vaccines, climate science and 5G were all tools the authorities use to subdue the population.

This is not the first time such an establishment has been reported. A SchoolsWeek investigation at the end of last year found "thousands of children are being educated in unregistered alternative provision where teachers require neither qualifications nor criminal record checks."

There is "very little oversight" of home-schooled children under current legislation, wrote Ball, and Ofsted inspectors do not have the power to force their way onto the premises of suspected illegal schools or seize incriminating materials.

An institution can be regarded as illegal only if it is providing "full-time education" but that term is only defined as "all or substantially all of a child's education", which is tricky for Ofsted inspectors to prove.

When Ofsted set up a task force in 2016 to investigate the issue it believed there were only 24 illegal schools but now there are thought to be hundreds. The number of home-schooled children has increased rapidly, from 60,000 in 2018 to 86,000 in 2023.

Last summer, The Times claimed that children at a school in Sussex were being taught archery, swordplay and boxing by former members of the far right who believe they are "at war" with the state. The children were told that that the US government knew in advance about the September 11 attacks.

The Centre for Social Justice (CSJ), which recently published a report into unregulated alternative education providers, was told of settings "where children were allowed to drive and take knives out", reported Schools Week. In another case, an alternative provider was "crossing the line to child labour" when pupils were "supposedly gaining work experience with a mechanic".

Ladan Ratcliffe, who runs UniversallKidz, reportedly told Ball that she encourages parents to lie to local authorities by claiming that their children are being home educated while in fact sending them to her school.

Confronted with The Times's findings, Ratcliffe denied that Universallkidz was a school, insisting that it "only operates around 11 hours a week", and describing it as "a parent-child community initiative". She said its "learning experiences" are "based on natural law of the universe and ancient knowledge that has been omitted from mainstream education".

What next?

Ofsted's chief inspector, Sir Martyn Oliver, described the findings as "highly alarming, but sadly not surprising". Ofsted said "weaknesses in the current legal system continue to hamper our efforts to deal with unregistered schools".

He added that the 2022 Schools Bill would have handed Ofsted additional powers to investigate and close down illegal schools, but that legislation was dropped.