More than six in ten teachers think that parents are seeking special educational needs and disabilities (Send) diagnoses for their children to give them an advantage in exams, a survey has found.
Incentives matter after all.
More than 100 years ago, a Māori woman packed up her life as a tour guide and entertainer in New Zealand and set off for England, where she would soon make history by enrolling at Oxford university.
In a tragic turn, Mākereti Papakura – believed to be the first woman from an Indigenous community to study at the university – died just weeks before completing her thesis, and in the decades since, her family has fought to have her degree recognised.
I’m wholly certain that women from Midlands England studied at Oxford before this lady. You know, indigenes as far as Oxford is concerned?
Anyway, on to the more important questions. What is that special little trick that moves one from indigene to Indigenous?
School absences “significantly contribute” to children’s mental ill health, according to research backed by the Office for National Statistics that shows the risks increase the longer a child is absent.
“Our research shows that the more times a child is absent from school, the greater the probability that they will experience mental ill health,” the authors, from Loughborough University and the ONS, concluded.
A correlation between the two, obviously. But causality?
The study, involving more than 1 million school-age children in England, found the relationship between absence and mental health was “a two-way street”, with lengthy absences increasing the likelihood of later hospital treatment. It also found children with existing mental health problems took more time off school.
Quite so, quite so.
After all, the idea that attendance at a British school is a necessary component of child mental health is a bit odd, no?
Across this work, I’ve seen echoes of the same tactics once used by big tobacco (on health): manufacture doubt to delay regulation and market uncertainty as progress. Parents often feel a quiet unease watching their children absorbed by screens, yet worry that pushing back might leave them behind. That self-doubt is no accident. It mirrors the marketing logic that kept people smoking for decades – big tobacco sowed doubt and turned public concern into private guilt by funding skewed research insisting that there is “not enough evidence” of harm, shifting responsibility on to individuals and pouring vast sums into lobbying to delay regulation.
We must, therefore, fight back against BigEd or something.
Dr May van Schalkwyk, a research fellow at the University of Edinburgh and expert in corporate tactics, said: “The evidence is clear. Industries whose products are undermining the health and wellbeing of children and young people fund harmful youth education programmes as part of their corporate strategies. Urgent action is needed to prevent this form of influence and conflicts of interest”.
How much of an expert is she? Enough that you’d take a class with her to work out how to do it?
Or not that much of an expert?
Ministers are poised to scrap the system which ensures pupils with special needs such as autism and ADHD get personalised support at school.
The Government is considering ditching bespoke-education plans for children with special educational needs and disabilities (Send) under a wholesale review of the current model.
On Sunday, Bridget Phillipson, the Education Secretary, repeatedly refused to rule out scrapping education, health and care plans (EHCPs) – legally binding documents that spell out Send children’s individual teaching requirements.
A record 639,000 children in England currently hold an EHCP following an 11 per cent rise in the year to January, with the figure almost doubling over the past six years.
,,,,
The recent increase in ECHPs has largely been driven by three types of need: autistic spectrum disorder; speech, language and communication needs; and social, emotional and mental health needs, which include ADHD.That trio now accounts for almost three-quarters of all EHCPs, while severe learning difficulties and physical disabilities make up just four per cent respectively.
And there’s the mile being taken, isn’t it.
A SEND diagnosis brings benefits these days. So, a SEND diagnosis is something sought. And, often enough, gained.
Shrug, who would expect different?
One staff member said: “It takes me 15 minutes on the train, but 45 minutes walking to get to campus. Now I’m hybrid working, I have to carry a backpack with all my work gear which can weigh up to 10kg due to laptop, headphones, lunch and anything else required for a day away from home.
“By the time I’ve finished two days on campus, I am so tired physically and mentally that I’m good for nothing the following day.”
Therefore on strike at the demand to work 3 days a week on campus.
Get another job. Move. Take the bus. Buy a car. But stop this wingeing shit.
Official figures which claim to show that graduates out-earn non-graduates by more than £10,000 a year are flawed, the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) has warned.
…
The OSR says that as the data set used to compile graduate premium statistics does not take into account prior attainment (A-level results and their equivalents), they are of limited use.
The bright kids (AAA) will earn lots. The dimmoes (CCC) will not. Having been to university does not change this.
The original mistake was to think that if going to uni increased wages therefore is more went to uni then more people would gain higher wages. But the income distribution is the income distribution. Higher wages will only come if the uni degrees improve the quality of the workforce – increase productivity that is. And who really does think that grievance studies will do that?
Well, other than those employed to teach grievance studies….
The Trump administration has said it is halting Harvard University’s ability to enroll international students and has ordered existing international students at the university to transfer or lose their legal status.
As with much here in the UK, foreign students are near the only ones who pay full freight.
So, all very fun. It’s also more than a bit controlling, no?
a href=”https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2025/05/16/children-to-be-taught-to-show-some-grit/”>Children will be taught the value of “grit” to tackle a growing mental health crisis in schools, The Telegraph can reveal.
Always fun when the old becomes new again, eh?
Being shouted at by parents can alter child’s brain, experts tell UK MPs
25 years of work to turn the vile little snot machine into a vaguely functional adult?
How about this as an education system:
He left Prince Henry’s Grammar School in Otley at 14 to train as an accountant
So, grammar school, passed 11 plus (or whatever it was in the 1930s). War service:
He returned to Leeds and resumed his accountancy training, qualifying in 1949.
And:
Glover’s first job was with an accountancy firm in Windsor before joining Price Waterhouse, where he audited several City livery companies including the Watermen and the Fishmongers, of which he was a freeman. He then moved to Deloitte, which posted him to Recife in Brazil.
Etc etc.
So a – reasonably at least – distinguished professional career after leaving school at 14.
Rather than another decade of grievance studies and then…..
And the reason we don’t return to such a system is?
Believing in meritocracy can be a “racist” microaggression, polar scientists have been told.
The British Antarctic Survey (BAS), which oversees Britain’s research stations in Antarctica, claimed that believing “the most qualified person should get the job” can be a form of “racial harassment”.
In an inclusivity guide issued to employees, the organisation says the “myth of meritocracy” asserts “that race does not play a role in life successes”.
Abject tossery though it is this is what academia is like often enough.
Climate change can be used to teach children about race, a national curriculum review has been told.
Global warming should be used to allow teachers and pupils to “explore conversations about race”, according to the Runnymede Trust.
The race equality think tank told a review into the curriculum commissioned by Bridget Phillipson, the Education Secretary, that such discussions would allow pupils to discuss more openly the impact of race on them and its relationship to “wider society”.
We’ll introduce such propagandising grift to the curriculum once we’ve returned to a system that gets every 12 year old up to functional literacy and numeracy, shall we? Even, have this shit as a little add on once that is done rather than the core function of the education sector?
The University of Sussex has today (27 February) launched the UK’s first ever undergraduate level climate justice degree in the social sciences.
The BA in Climate Justice, Sustainability and Development, which will begin in 2026, will equip students with a unique blend of expertise in climate politics, activism, and environmental human rights. This will be combined with the practical green skills – the know-how and abilities needed to work in ways that help protect the environment – needed to drive real-world change.
A degree in how to join Greenpeace now…..
Sir Peter, whose charity is credited with transforming the lives of thousands of young people, writes: “I don’t pretend the school we went to was a state school, Starmer does. But he is fudging the facts.
“I am helping young people to benefit from an education that made all the difference to me, Starmer is destroying the opportunities to have the same chances he had.”
A senior academic at the University of Cambridge plagiarised the work of her PhD student, evidence presented to an employment tribunal has said.
The Telegraph revealed last September that Dr Magdalen Connolly, an alumna of Cambridge’s Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, had taken her alma mater to an employment tribunal over its handling of plagiarism allegations.
Dr Connolly claimed an argument she first put forward as part of her postgraduate degree was plagiarised by Dr Esther-Miriam Wagner, a Cambridge academic who was appointed to advise her.
You don’t plagiarise your students. You just persuade them to co-publish with you.
Poor maths skills are to blame for Britain’s ballooning benefits bill, according to the UK boss of Santander.
William Vereker, the bank’s UK chairman who served as business envoy to former prime minister Theresa May, said the worklessness crisis stems from a lack of understanding about money.
He said: “One of the challenges of worklessness is that people look at benefits and they look at the job they can get, and they think to themselves ‘well, I’m only making £5 or £10 a week extra having a job, so why would I bother to do that?’
“But of course the reason to bother is that the following year you’ll make more, and the following you’re going to make more – and you’ll create an opportunity for yourself.
That’s delayed gratification – or the absence of it. Even, a lack of that drive to invest.
As it’s a different problem the solution will be different too. Not teaching kids more maths, instead lower benefit levels.
North Korea is a world leader in one very dubious field. It’s the most accomplished forger of foreign currency in the world. To the despair of the US Treasury, the hermit kingdom can produce $100 bills that are indistinguishable from the real thing.
Counterfeiting money is not a new crime, of course. “Clipping” coins is as old as money itself, and the authorities take it very seriously: it devalues the currency and risks catastrophic economic fallout. Which begs a question.
Why would any firm or institution that produces a very valuable currency of its own then want to debase it?
I’m talking about education, where the currency is the academic credentials it produces. The sector has begun to clip its own coinage, by allowing artificial intelligence (AI) into classrooms.
Well done there Mr Orlowski, well done there. Not just correct but very good indeed.
We can even take it further. Gresham’s Law – bad money drives out good. And further once again. The individual incentive is always to clip the money – devalue the degree – in order to gain that value while the overall effect is the ruination of the currency itself.
This sort of cascade can only be dealt with by fierce means. We used to hang people for “uttering” – passing on counterfeit money. We used to hang more people for that in a year – some years at least – than we did for murder. This sort of counterfeiting is, of course, concentrated in the more progressive ends of the humanities departments. Therefore we should hang the more progressive ends of the humanities departments.
There are indeed problems in this world that stem from a divergence between hte individual incentive and the general result. That’s the very reason that fierceness in the changing of the individual incentive is spo important. Sadly, it’s not always true that the necessary action is as objectively enjoyable as this one.
The government has expressed alarm at “deeply distressing” allegations of emotional harm at one of the country’s leading academy trusts after an Observer investigation.
Almost 140 parents, students and teachers have now spoken out about “systemic” and “lasting” emotional harm to children stretching back two decades at two schools in Hackney run by the Mossbourne Federation.
In response to the Observer story a fortnight ago into the treatment of children at Mossbourne Victoria Park academy (MVPA) in Hackney – based on testimonials from 30 parents – a further 70 parents, more than 30 former students and eight former teachers have now come forward with new evidence.
The testimonials centre on MVPA and the acclaimed Mossbourne community academy (MCA), also in Hackney, originally run by Sir Michael Wilshaw, the former chief inspector of schools for England who led Ofsted from 2012 to 2016. Both academies have been rated outstanding by Ofsted and are known for high examination grades and rigid discipline.
Me, realist that I am, might suggest – ever so gently – that the operative word here is “academy”. A school largely independent from the local authority. Whihc, under a Labour government, is one of those freedoms from the bureaucracy that cannot be allowed to stand.
We’ll see, obviously, but that’s a useful starting point.