We were told that the 2012 changes to England’s student funding system would boost the number of part-time students at university. But new data released by the Higher Education Statistics Agency confirm…
The equalities minister, Jo Swinson, has suggested that boys should be encouraged to play with dolls to make them more “nurturing and caring”. This is apparently in the hope that they will become more…
China’s Ministry of Education has announced a major reform of the National College Entrance Examination, known as Gaokao. Under the proposed changes, the entry of new students to higher education will…
With the shock from the Paris terrorist attacks barely diminished, attention in a number of Western capitals is understandably fixated on counter-terrorism. Politicians are focused on the question of how…
In his anthemic Let me entertain you, Robbie Williams urges his audience to “come and sing a different song”. University lecturers could take a lesson or two from Stoke-on-Trent’s favourite singer-songwriter…
As politicians get out of their starting blocks early this year now campaigning for the general election has begun, it’s hard not to be sceptical about new education policy announcements. Politicians on…
Penny Roy, City, University of London and Shula Chiat, City, University of London
All children with early language problems are at increased risk of struggling at school, and having reduced employment opportunities and life chances, but the risk of early language problems is disproportionately…
Demonstrating again he is no lame-duck president, Barack Obama has proposed a new higher education initiative celebrated on social media as #FreeCommunityCollege. Obama’s plan to provide free community…
New technology has the habit of making certain professions redundant. Power looms put cotton workers out of job, leading to the rise of the Luddites. Word processors put an end to the typing pool. Now…
There is increasing evidence that bilingualism can affect how the brain works. Older, lifelong bilinguals have demonstrated better cognitive skills in tasks that require increased cognitive control. These…
Many years ago, I asked an MBA student from far beyond these shores if people in his country understood that he was studying at a post-1992 university rather than the much older and more prestigious one…
It’s a lovely word: apprenticeship. It conjures up images of halcyon days gone by, when young men learned their skills from a master craftsman or technician over a lengthy period of time. Apprenticeships…
The huge salaries of school “super-heads” and some university vice-chancellors has once again come under fire, this time by MPs on the Public Accounts Committee. UK headteachers are among the highest paid…
Everyone knows that in the sentence “Jane is washing her”, the pronoun “her” cannot refer back to Jane. Over the last four decades, researchers have established that adults reject the interpretation of…
When McDonald’s came under sustained criticism from campaigners in the 1980s, the company responded by constructing a carefully crafted image of corporate social responsibility. It insisted that it cared…
Children’s character and well-being looks set to be a central education issue going into the 2015 general election. Getting out of the starting blocks in mid-December, Nicky Morgan, the secretary of state…
Teenagers’ opinions about when violence is acceptable or not can be influenced by the way they perceive men and women and the relationships between them. Simply telling young people that violence is wrong…
Any review of 2014 in education must examine a Trojan Horse bearing “British values”. The scandal that broke in April centred on the investigation of 21 Birmingham schools suspected of being involved in…
Revising for exams is a necessary evil. Ever since written university exams were first set in England by the Cambridge chemist William Farrish in about 1792, students have struggled to revise. And with…
Christmas is a time for nostalgia, a time where even the most hardened cynics among us might reflect on our Christmases past with a certain warmth. And there’s no better way to set aside the slings and…
The expansion of higher education in the UK has been driven by a political desire to increase economic growth and to promote social mobility at the same time by drawing more graduates from a larger pool…
Academics love games. We can’t resist playing them – but the Research Excellence Framework (REF) is our favourite. As the results of the UK’s 2014 assessment of university research are digested, academics…
For more than 200 years the histories of India and Britain have been closely intertwined. Forged in the age of the empire, the bond between our two nations is nonetheless one that has become mutually enriching…
Research assessment is only partly reliable as an indicator of the real quality of the work going on in higher education. It has a dual character. On one hand it is rooted in material facts and objective…
With Christmas not far off, universities will be hoping for some early presents in the form of good results in the UK’s long-awaited assessment of the quality of university research. Although the funding…