The Times: Brighton girl, 7, climbs the Alps on her holidays

As the youngest person to climb Kilimanjaro, seven-year-old Ashleen Mandrick may have earned a break but during the summer holidays she just carried on climbing, this time up the Alps.

Last month the British schoolgirl ascended 4,400 metres to the Colle del Parrot on Monte Rosa, located on Italy’s border with Switzerland, becoming what is thought to be the youngest person to climb the Alps’ second-highest mountain. She was joined on the adventure by her brother Nicolas, 12, and her mother Victoria, 46, a doctor.

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 Times Archive: Child shell-shock victims from France - 10th September 1920

From The Times: September 10, 1920

The Southampton boat-train left Waterloo Station last night with 200 bright-eyed, healthy French youngsters, of nine to 12 years old. These little passengers were journeying with rather mixed feelings, for they were on their way back to their homes in the war-devastated areas, after a wonderful recuperative holiday of six weeks in the North of England.

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.

The Times: Fears grow as teachers die weeks into new school year

United 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.

The Times: Statistics teach us to be sceptical about ‘Operation Moonshot’

Covid 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”.

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.

Guardian: Greta Thunberg: don't dump climate crisis on children to fix

World political leaders must step up on the environment, activist tells Venice film festival showing of documentary about her.

Guardian: ‘I do not see a single student wash their hands': teacher’s diary of the first week back at school

My 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.

Guardian: Houston, we have a parent: what draws sci-fi to motherhood?

As I live with a screenwriter husband, we watch films as a family a lot, and I do mean A LOT!

We’ve watched our fair share of space movies and although our daughter is intrigued by all things space, the thought of travelling there is a big no no. It frightens her. However she is interested in working for NASA, when she’s an adult.

Family, Media Article, Science, STEAM, STEM, Technology, SpaceSarah NorrisSeptember 5, 2020Lando EducationSpace, Hilary Swank, Netflix, TV, TV drama, Guardian, media article, NASAComment

Guardian: Covid symptoms: diarrhoea and vomiting may be key sign of coronavirus in children – study

Interestingly, 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.

The Guardian to stream Unicorn theatre's new Saturday morning family shows

Trio of stories about Anansi, the spider from West African and Caribbean folklore, will be available free and with accompanying activities

The Guardian has partnered with the Unicorn theatre to present a free digital theatre series inspired by its acclaimed 2019 production Anansi the Spider.

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.

Evening Standard: Prince George and Princess Charlotte's £19k-a-year prep school to take pupils up to 18 after surge in applications

I’ve actually known about this for well over a year. I have friends and students at Thomas’s Kensington. I had also suggested that they could possibly buy the current Royal Academy of Dance building. My daughter started her ballet lessons at RAD, so I know the layout well.

EXCLUSIVE: New building planned as popularity soars following Cambridges choosing school

The £19,000-a-year prep school where Prince George and Princess Charlotte are pupils is to start offering places up to age 18 after a huge surge in applications, the Evening Standard can reveal.

Thomas’s Battersea has bought the home of the Royal Academy of Dance next door and will turn the building into a new independent senior school accepting students from September 2021.

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.

Edutopia: Dragons and Fairy Tales in Science Class

“Did you know that a long, long time ago, long before there was even pizza in Chicago, we were known for something else—dragons?”

The students laugh, knowing it’s not true, but they lean forward to hear more.

“See, here in Chicago we had the most beautiful dragons that anyone had ever seen. Dragons that had colors that people couldn’t even imagine. If you were stealthy enough and watched over by the lake, you could have seen dragons of the deepest blues, whose scales changed colors with the seasons. Over in Grant Park, you might spot dragons with scales in jewel-toned greens hiding in the trees, and white winter dragons that shimmered in the coldest weather. But then everything changed.”

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.

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