Survey of students in England reveals huge disparities in effects of lockdown and school closures.
Children studying for exams and those from disadvantaged families are the most likely to have suffered severe disruption to their learning and motivation during the pandemic, according to the largest published study of its impact on pupils in England.
Read MoreBorn with a rare genetic condition affecting her bones and heart, Daniella Reynard feared that she would never be able to fulfil her dream of having a child.
Now, thanks to genetic screening technology, she is the delighted mother of a healthy baby boy.
Read MoreExclusive: 75% of children worst affected by paediatric inflammatory multi-system syndrome are BAME.
Read MoreCompass apologises for poor quality of some UK food delivery parcels criticised by Marcus Rashford
Read MoreCovid-19 crisis has allowed for a radical rethink of education system, says One Nation group.
The disruption caused by the coronavirus allows for a “radical” rethink of England’s school system, according to a group of Conservative MPs who advocate scrapping GCSEs, delaying the start of formal education and introducing longer school days.
A paper from the One Nation caucus of centrist Conservative MPs is the latest assault on GCSEs, arguing that England is unusual in making teenagers sit two sets of high-stakes exams within the space of three years, and that this is partly responsible for high levels of stress and unhappiness among pupils.
Read MoreHaving had a miscarriage myself and also having family members, including my mother, who have also suffered miscarriages, or in one case - double figure miscarriages, I feel that Chrissy Teigen showing the reality of miscarriage is incredibly important.
My now ex best friend, told me that as my miscarriage had been at 9 weeks, it hadn’t even been a real baby. To add further pain, she refused to see me in the following few days, unless I went across London to meet her, as she was too busy to fit me into her schedule. When I offered to meet her half way, she told me I was obviously too “sick” to leave my home. Her schedule that day - to meet a friend who had to put her horse to sleep that week. My miscarriage meant nothing to her. She’s now a mother herself and I hope has a less icy heart.
Read MoreExclusive: if discovery is confirmed it will have global implications as 90% of people breathe dirty air.
Tiny air pollution particles have been revealed in the brain stems of young people and are intimately associated with molecular damage linked to Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease.
If the groundbreaking discovery is confirmed by future research, it would have worldwide implications because 90% of the global population live with unsafe air. Medical experts are cautious about the findings and said that while the nanoparticles are a likely cause of the damage, whether this leads to disease later in life remains to be seen.
Read MoreDress codes are nothing new to students going out in Manchester – no trainers, no football shirts and, increasingly, no man bags. But one student party this weekend had a special entry requirement: Covid.
According to one fresher at the University of Manchester, the “Covid Positive” party in the university’s Fallowfield campus halls of residence was broken up by security on Saturday. It is just one of the increasing instances of students’ risky behaviour during lockdown restrictions.
“There was a flat party a few days ago which had a policy that you could only get in if you were positive. It was like their health-and-safety measure,” the 18-year-old physics student said.
Read MoreThe ban aims to protect young people’s mental health and body image.
Cosmetic surgery clinics will be banned from promoting breast enlargement, nose jobs and liposuction to children, under plans announced by the advertising watchdog today.
The rules will stop adverts for cosmetic surgery during or around TV programmes and online content, either aimed at under-18s or likely to appeal to young audiences. It will mean that viewers of Love Island, the ITV reality show, will no longer see adverts for breast enlargement procedures.
Read MoreUnited States
Teachers in at least three states have died after contracting coronavirus since the start of the new school year, with teachers’ unions concerned that the return to in-person classes will have a deadly effect across the country if proper precautions are not taken.
AshLee DeMarinis, 34, who taught social skills at a school in Missouri, died on Sunday after three weeks in hospital. A third-grade teacher died on Monday in South Carolina, and two other teachers died in Mississippi. It is not clear how many teachers have become ill with Covid-19 since the school year began but Mississippi has reported 604 cases among school teachers and staff.
Read MoreCovid maths/statistics.
Did you get the all clear in your daily cancer check this week? Of course you did not have one. Even after decades of trying it has proved extremely difficult to find regular tests that do not do more harm than good by wrongly telling healthy people they are ill. These basic statistics explain why scientists are very sceptical about Boris Johnson’s “Operation Moonshot”.
Read MoreMy 12 year old is back on the tube school. We have to trust that she will be sensible and do the right thing. Her school have very detailed instructions and have created year bubbles. They spend the last 5mins of each lesson cleaning their desks etc.
Read MoreInterestingly, a few days before I started to suffer from Covid symptoms (19th March), my 12 year old daughter complained that she felt nauseous. We assumed she might be suffering from a little anxiety, caused by the virus’s spread and her potentially being over tired. I took her into school late on the Tuesday (11am), school closed 4pm on the Wednesday, to start remote lessons on the following Monday and I started to get sick on the Thursday.
Did she catch Covid and pass on to me? We still don’t quite know. I donated blood plasma and now know that I have antibodies, although sadly not high enough to donate again. My husband and daughter have not yet been tested.
Read MoreI read about Gui on Monday and was very impressed. I can roller skate and ice skate, but am absolutely useless on a skate board.
Gui Khury lands holy grail of skating while in lockdown
Brazilian surpasses previous record first set by Tony Hawk
The closure of schools in Brazil due to the coronavirus pandemic gave 11-year-old prodigy Gui Khury plenty of time to perfect his skateboarding skills as he became the first person to land a 1080-degree turn on a vertical ramp.
Read MoreI found this extremely interesting. I know a few adults and children with high functioning autism.
The scientist Dr Camilla Pang considers autism to be her superpower. What sets her apart from ‘neuro-typical’ people also helps her to explain their emotions
Dr Camilla Pang tells an instructive story about how her brain works. One day, when she was a child, she answered the phone at home. The conversation went as follows: “Hi Millie, is your mum there?”
“Yes,” she replied, and hung up.
Read MoreYour average American 14-year-old just started his or her freshman year in high school. They might be trying out for their school basketball team for winter sports or they could be auditioning for the school play.
But Kara Fan is not your run-of-the-mill 14-year-old. She is America’s Top Young Scientist.
Read MoreMyopia rates among under-16s have tripled since the 1960s. Opticians urge parents to send their children outside
An epidemic of short-sightedness is linked to youngsters staring at screens, reading books and doing homework, say scientists — who recommend removing their gadgets and sending them outside for at least two hours a day.
Researchers have found a direct relationship between the time youngsters spend on “nearwork” and myopia. They also predict a surge in the numbers of people who become blind or visually impaired, as people who develop short-sightedness early in life are at far higher risk of serious eye problems when older.
Read MoreAs someone who was badly bullied as a teenager and again in my adult life, at work, I found this article very interesting. I now realise that my interactions with others were closely linked to my relationship with my own mother. We had an extremely toxic and dysfunctional relationship. I was incredibly shy and found making friends hard, something I've worked extra hard at as an adult to change. I still find the thought of being in a room with people I don't know, terrifying. Will they find me boring, what will we talk about, how awkward I feel about air kisses, yet I'm very happy to hug someone. Aged 45, following my father’s disappearance and subsequent suicide, I finally had the courage to walk away from her permanently.
Guardian Article
Gestures, facial expressions, posture – they are all crucial to what we’re communicating, though many of us don’t realise it
My interest in human behaviour and psychology started in primary school. In my attempts to socialise with other children, I had a constant, nagging feeling that everybody else had received a manual entitled How to Interact with Others. I was socially awkward, to put it mildly, and this meant I was picked on a lot, which in turn meant I started to ask myself some questions: how did my behaviour differ from others? Why did my antagonists act as they did?
Read MoreSchools are under fire for penalising pupils who suffer from a rare blood condition that mainly affects people from African and Caribbean backgrounds.
Campaigners say schools and workplaces are failing to support people with sickle-cell disease, an invisible condition that affects 15,000 people in the UK.
Sickle-cell anaemia is a hereditary disease in which the body produces unusually shaped red blood cells that clump together, blocking blood vessels. This results in painful episodes called sickle-cell crises, which can last for months, as well as organ failure and, in some cases, death.
Read MoreReading fairy tales and solving puzzles with your children could reduce their risk of developing dementia in later life, it has been claimed.
The suggestion came after research found that eight-year-olds with strong problem-solving skills retained them in old age.
Scientists studied 502 Britons born in the same week in March 1946 who took thinking and memory tests at eight and again between the ages of 69 and 71. They found that “childhood cognitive ability was strongly associated with cognitive scores . . . more than 60 years later”.
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