The Guardian: Pitch perfect: the UK children's choirs finding ways to connect in lockdown

Eight-year-old Emily Grills was looking forward to turning singing teacher this month, drilling her parents on the songs she has been singing with her children’s choir in Bristol.

“Lockdown has been lonely,” she said. “But singing makes me happy and so teaching my parents to sing means we can do it together even when it’s not my lesson time – although my mummy doesn’t sing very well yet.”

Encouraging even their youngest members, such as Emily, to become “singing ambassadors” who help plan and lead lessons, is just one of the new and positive ways that the pandemic has forced Bristol Beacon choir to innovate.

The Guardian: Coronaangst ridden? Overzoomed? Covid inspires 1,200 new German words

Linguist who compiled list of words says they help tell story of life during pandemic.

From coronamüde (tired of Covid-19) to Coronafrisur (corona hairstyle), a German project is documenting the huge number of new words coined in the last year as the language races to keep up with lives radically changed by the pandemic.

The list, compiled by the Leibniz Institute for the German Language, an organisation that documents German language in the past and present, already comprises more than 1,200 new German words – many more than the 200 seen in an average year.

The Guardian: Covid hits exam-taking and poorer pupils worst, study finds

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.

The Guardian: Firm in 'unacceptable' school meals row to pay for half-term provision

Compass apologises for poor quality of some UK food delivery parcels criticised by Marcus Rashford

The Guardian: UK cabinet ministers to be given six months' maternity leave on full pay

Move rushed through in time for attorney general Suella Braverman to keep her post after giving birth

The Guardian: Hong Kong primary teacher deregistered 'for talking about independence'

Teacher accused of violating legislation, reportedly discussing freedom of speech with pupils.

A Hong Kong primary school teacher has been deregistered after being accused of using pro-independence materials in class, reportedly to teach students about the concepts of freedom of speech and independence.

The education bureau accused the teacher of a premeditated act in violation of Hong Kong’s Basic Law, its de facto constitution, by having “spread a message about Hong Kong independence”.

The Guardian: Ban on overnight school trips threatens 15,000 UK jobs, ministers warned

Generation of children missing out on life-changing benefits, say parents, schools and industry.

A ban on residential school trips risks an “economic, social and cultural disaster” and the loss of 15,000 UK jobs unless it is lifted by spring, ministers are being warned.

The Guardian: Manchester students organising 'Covid Positive' parties

Dress 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.

The Guardian: Oxford moves to protect students from China's Hong Kong security law

Students will submit work related to China anonymously and told not to record classes.

Students at Oxford University specialising in the study of China are being asked to submit some papers anonymously to protect them from the possibility of retribution under the sweeping new security law introduced three months ago in Hong Kong.

The anonymity ruling is to be applied in classes, and group tutorials are to be replaced by one-to-ones. Students are also to be warned it will be viewed as a disciplinary offence if they tape classes or share them with outside groups.

The Guardian: Schools in England told not to use material from anti-capitalist groups

Idea categorised as ‘extreme political stance’ equivalent to endorsing illegal activity.

The government has ordered schools in England not to use resources from organisations which have expressed a desire to end capitalism.

Department for Education (DfE) guidance issued on Thursday for school leaders and teachers involved in setting the relationship, sex and health curriculum categorised anti-capitalism as an “extreme political stance” and equated it with opposition to freedom of speech, antisemitism and endorsement of illegal activity.

The Guardian: Private and state schools bid to kill off GCSEs

A coalition of private and state schools is expected to launch a campaign to end GCSEs, as growing numbers of schools look at alternatives to the exams following the summer algorithm debacle.

Eton, Bedales, St Paul’s girls’ school, Latymer upper school and several substantial academy chains have been joined by Margaret Thatcher’s education secretary, Kenneth Baker, who created GCSEs, to discuss proposals for replacing the exam system.

The group, Rethinking Assessments, is likely to launch a formal campaign in the next few weeks, forcing ministers into a battle for control of school qualifications.

The Guardian: The 'serendipity mindset': how to make your own luck

Seeing meaning in the unexpected can help turn mistakes into opportunities, says researcher Dr Christian Busch.

See something in the unexpected and connect the dots.

The Guardian: 'Kids can smell fear': the standups who took over children's TV

Is performing for young audiences easier? Far from it say the comedians who do clubs at night and CBBC shows by day.

Young audiences respond instantly: they won’t sit and think about a joke or allow it to grow

Nick Mohammed

The Guardian: Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé: the 21-year-old British student with a million-dollar book deal

Very inspiring. I have been toying with writing a novel… we’ll see if I can find some free time.

Author says she was ‘just a broke student writing to make myself some fictional friends’ in her debut Ace of Spades, about two black students navigating racism at an elite school.

The Guardian: UK mathematician wins richest prize in academia

Martin Hairer takes $3m Breakthrough prize for work a colleague said must have been done by aliens.

A mathematician who tamed a nightmarish family of equations that behave so badly they make no sense has won the most lucrative prize in academia.

Martin Hairer, an Austrian-British researcher at Imperial College London, is the winner of the 2021 Breakthrough prize for mathematics, an annual $3m (£2.3m) award that has come to rival the Nobels in terms of kudos and prestige.

The Guardian: Lockdown spurs 11-year-old skateboarder to make history with first 1080-degree turn

I 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.

The Guardian: Can you solve it? Are you smart enough for MIT?

I have a 12 year old, maths head of a daughter, who has MIT or CalTech aspirations. I will show her this article this week. I have found out recently, that if she’d like to study maths at MIT, she needs to be one of the UK’s top mathematicians! No pressure!!!

In 1966, MIT student Allan Gottlieb published his first Puzzle Corner in the MIT Technology Review.

More than half a century later, Gottlieb – who has been a computer science professor at New York University since 1980 – continues to publish Puzzle Corner in every issue.

The Guardian: Alarm at Ofsted-style plan to rank universities by graduate earnings

Government plans to introduce Ofsted-style rankings for universities, with courses that produce lower salaries labelled as failing, would punish institutions outside London and threaten arts and humanities courses, worried academics are warning.

In November the Conservative manifesto set off alarm bells in universities by promising to tackle “low-quality courses”. Now senior academics close to Westminster say the government is pressing on with this in a plan that could replicate the four Ofsted categories used for schools, flagging up university courses the government considers inadequate.

The Guardian: Teacher who helps migrant children turn pain into prize poetry

One child wrote of a suicide bomber; another of the ‘sweet honey mangoes’ of home. Kate Clanchy helps them tune into their inner voice

Kate Clanchy, tall, fast-talking and slightly intimidating, lays out more than a score of slim books on the kitchen table in her Oxfordhome. They are collections of poetry written by children she taught, published with the help of grants that she tirelessly raised.

The Guardian: Nicola Benedetti: 'Music is the art of all the things we can't see or touch. We need it in our lives'

Our sense of the world and our place in it expands by the hour. This 21st-century jungle is incomprehensible in its complexity and fullness; the Earth is saturated with people and information. Just think about how much stuff is out there, from scientific and medical discoveries, books written, works of art created, the 500 recordings of Elgar’s Cello Concerto – the inordinate documentations of our collective pasts, and the continuous stream of current inventions is overwhelming.

We also have so many things in every shape, size, colour and form conceivable, and for every purpose imaginable. And many of these things are designed not to last. Mobile phones are downgraded through a process called “upgrading” – the companies that do it have admitted it!

But what about a thing that does last and is intended to? Do we understand the weight or value of a timeless thing? “Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge, where is the knowledge we have lost in information?” wrote TS Eliot in 1934. If he felt that then, I wonder what he would be saying about us now.

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