The Times: Chinese drive record in international students

More than 12,000 students from China are due to arrive this autumn — a 23 per cent increase from 9,860 last year.

Surging applications from China are driving a record number of international students heading for UK universities this autumn.

Ucas figures show that the growth in overseas student numbers has more than compensated for a drop in EU students. However, experts warned that, amid coronavirus-related uncertainty, some students might not take up their places and the next few weeks would be crucial in determining how many enrol.

Overall, a record 71,370 overseas students secured places at UK universities — 1,200 more than last year. Their tuition fees will contribute millions of pounds to the UK economy.

Independent: Ofqual suggests online exams could be option next summer in wake of this year’s grading chaos

‘Some form of examination’ needed for students to feel system is fair, Roger Taylor says.

Roger Taylor has said it was a "fundamental mistake" to believe the public would get behind this year's grading system.

The Times: Sometimes I wish I was more autistic

I 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.

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 Times: Young mentor secures 60 Oxbridge offers for deprived pupils

An Oxford student who set up a mentoring scheme using £200 saved from his maintenance loan has just helped to secure 60 offers from Oxbridge for pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds.

Joe Seddon set up Access Oxbridge at his parents’ kitchen table in Morley, West Yorkshire, in 2018 shortly after graduating.

He believed that he could boost the number of under-privileged youngsters at the two universities if only they got the right advice on navigating the “scary” admissions system.

The Times: Maths prodigy Wang Pok Lo is equal to a PhD

A boy of 15 is well on his way to becoming the youngest British male to hold the title

He started reciting poetry at the age of one, studied with the Open University when he was nine and passed an A-level equivalent maths exam at the tender age of twelve.

Now Wang Pok Lo, a prodigy whose family moved to Scotland from Hong Kong, is poised to become the youngest British male to hold a PhD.

The Sunday Times: Primary & Secondary School Tables

For anyone with children in an independent or state school, the Sunday Times Parent Power is now online and in the shops tomorrow.

Very pleased to see St Paul's Girls’ School retain their number 1 slot for independent schools, with Queen Elizabeth's School, Barnet topping the state schools list.

2018/19 Exam Results, Education, Higher Education, Media ArticleSarah NorrisNovember 23, 2019Lando EducationExam ResultsComment

The Telegraph: Girls should be taught that sexism in the workplace is an 'attractive challenge', former top head says

Girls should be taught that sexism in the workplace is an “attractive challenge” rather than developing a “hostile attitude” towards men, the former head of one of the country's top schools has said.

Female students should learn about the challenges of the future in a positive light rather than teachers “throwing a pool of gloom” over it, according to Clarissa Farr, who was High Mistress at St Paul’s Girls’ School from 2006-17.

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 Times: Poorer pupils learn to benefit from Classics

Latin and the works of Sophocles are no longer the preserve of public schools thanks to a project that links professors with underprivileged teenagers.

An initiative between King’s College London (KCL) and Newham Sixth Form College in east London offering lessons in Classics to bright sixth-form pupils is now in its second year.

The Times: Tough alternative to A levels ditched

Pre-Us, the alternative to A levels created and used by many English public schools, are to be scrapped.

The last Pre-U qualifications will be taken in 2023, with resits in June 2024, Cambridge Assessment International Education said. The small number of pupils taking the qualification had made it unsustainable, the exam board added.

Los Angeles Times: Opinion: Modern high school math should be about data science — not Algebra 2

Thanks to the information revolution, a stunning 90% of the data created by humanity has been generated in just the past two years.

Yet the math taught in U.S. schools hasn’t materially changed since Sputnik was sent into orbit in the late 1950s. Our high school students are taught algebra, geometry, a second year of algebra, and calculus (for the most advanced students) because Eisenhower-era policymakers believed this curriculum would produce the best rocket scientists to work on projects during the Cold War.

The Times: Want to be a success? Fail 15% of the time

Ever tried? Ever failed? No matter. Try again. Fail again. But try to succeed 85 per cent of the time.

Scientists have discovered that there is a perfect amount of failure, suggesting that those who get the answers wrong 15 per cent of the time while studying have found the optimum difficulty level to stimulate fast learning.

Researchers said that a success rate of 85 per cent, or getting about six of every seven questions or challenges right, was the “sweet spot” for fast learning, explaining that anything above this is too easy and anything below is too difficult.

the Times: China tries to gag UK universities

The Chinese government has attempted to curb criticism on British campuses of its regime by pressuring universities into limiting academic freedom, MPs have said.

“Alarming” evidence of Chinese interference has been found by the Commons foreign affairs committee, which says that it appears to be coming from the embassy in London.

The Times: School woos 26 ex pupils to teach

Many youngsters cannot wait to leave their schooldays behind — but one head teacher is so inspiring she has convinced 26 of her former pupils to return as teachers or other staff at their old school.

Rhian Morgan Ellis has formed her very own old boys’ and girls’ club at a secondary school in the Welsh valleys. It includes a former head boy and head girl in her senior management team, as well as a former pupil who started as a dinner lady and is now a support teacher for vulnerable pupils after Morgan Ellis spotted her gift for working with children. All 26 are on the 77-strong staff simultaneously.

Education, Higher Education, Media ArticleSarah NorrisNovember 5, 2019Lando EducationThe Times, school, teachers, secondary school, Welsh, WalesComment

Evening Standard: Inspiring Girls International: New video hub launched to inspire the next generation of global female leaders

A charity working to give girls around the world access to female role models, has launched a landmark new online platform.

Inspiring Girls Video Hub will showcase stories from inspirational women of all nationalities in a bid to raise the aspirations of girls worldwide.

Influential figures from broadcaster Mishal Husain to Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg joined Inspiring Girls founder Miriam Gonzalez Durantez to mark the event at a global summit in London on Wednesday.

Hosted by Google, Thursday’s launch saw local schoolgirls participate in interviews, networking sessions and workshops, and gain advice from women who have excelled in their chosen fields.

The Times: The other Brexit effect: more pupils see a future in politics

It can sometimes feel as though Brexit has triggered only frustration and fury in a country that barely used to think about the mechanics of the EU.

But analysis of the subjects chosen by children for their GCSEs, A-levels and degrees shows that the 2016 referendum result has had one unexpected effect — a huge increase in the number of young people studying politics.

The number of teenagers sitting the subject at A-level has jumped from 14,195 in 2016 to 18,240 this year.

Higher Education, Education, Media ArticleSarah NorrisOctober 16, 2019Lando EducationThe Times, MPs, training, teenagers, a'levels, Brexit, EUComment

BBC: How women students put a rocket up Cambridge

Women's long struggle to gain fair access to university is commemorated in an exhibition opening next week at the University of Cambridge library.

What's most shocking, perhaps, is that it's all so relatively recent - with women not allowed to graduate from Cambridge on equal terms until 1948.

For teenagers currently filling in their university applications, it would be hard to imagine that within living memory at Cambridge there was such blunt discrimination.

The "Rising Tide" exhibition shows the level of resistance, including violence, against women wanting to study at Cambridge with equal rights to men.

This includes the remnants of a firework thrown by protesters in 1897 as they rioted against the revolutionary idea of women getting degrees.

But in the end it was the women who put a rocket up Cambridge, rather than the other way round.

Education, Higher Education, Media ArticleSarah NorrisOctober 16, 2019Lando EducationBBC, women students, Cambridge, Cambridge University, womenComment

The Guardian: Why mathematicians just can’t quit their blackboards

Another year, another wave of students trampling across autumn leaves, making their way to their first lectures heady with a cocktail of excitement, apprehension and a nasty hangover. But while every year brings new faces, one feature of the academic landscape remains ever-present: the huge, imposing blackboards.

Now photographer Jessica Wynne, a professor at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York, has thrown a spotlight on this workhorse of academic endeavour, travelling across the US and beyond to capture the blackboards of mathematicians.

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