The Independent Education News

Parents will "go through hell" this week as they wait to find out if their child has secured a place at the secondary school of their choice, campaigners warned yesterday.

University Challenge's losing finalists have demanded a rematch, after it emerged that a member of Gail Trimble's victorious Corpus Christi side was no longer a student at the Oxford college.

Gordon Brown will today announce ambitious targets to increase the numbers of pupils studying sciences and maths in state schools, as part of a drive to ensure Britain produces "the great scientists of tomorrow".

Tens of thousands of home-educating parents are in a fury about a government decision to set up an inquiry into home schooling because of fears it could hide child abuse. They say there is no hard evidence, and the investigation smears them all with suspicion. Two thousand parents and organisations have written to the Government in protest at what pressure group Action for Home Education call "vile and unsubstantiated" allegations.

This past week, I've had to submit two essays and perform in two shows as well as write this bloody column, and it's almost killed me. It's my fault – at the beginning of term, a lot of my friends resolved to get more involved in university life, and I decided to join them. Now that my academic workload has been unexpectedly doubled by the powers that be, I'm forced to get up earlier than the science students and limit my social interaction to meal times just to stay afloat. It's not a fun life.

Once a hot-bed of far-left politicking, the National Union of Students is getting real. Under the presidency of Wes Streeting, 26, a Labour Party supporter and veteran student activist, the NUS has reformed its structures, eradicated its debt and even embraced the principle that students should pay tuition fees.

Nearly £400m of public money designed to get students from poor backgrounds into Britain's best universities has been wasted, a committee of MPs will say today.

It is not often that a newspaper article annoys me to the point of wanting to set the record straight. But Conor Ryan's defence of the Government's testing regime (Comment, 12 February) was a masterclass in the selective use of evidence to make dubious points. No one who has witnessed the workings of the test system at close quarters for several years, considering the evidence in the round, could look at it objectively and believe his central argument is right.

It is good news for students that the National Union of Students is rejoining the real world. For 20 years, the NUS has been more of a talking shop than an effective campaigning organisation for students, consumed with internal debates and dominated by the hard left. But now that its president, Wes Streeting, has secured reform of its constitution and democratic processes (see story on opposite page), it should represent undergraduates and postgraduates better and be more in touch with local student unions.

Increasing numbers of people are signing up to train as maths and science teachers, figures showed today.

Tens of thousands of teenagers are leaving school before starting to study for GCSEs, a Government adviser said yesterday.

Ballroom dancing is set to become the latest craze in classrooms across Britain, as part of an effort to harness the success of the television show Strictly Come Dancing to combat childhood obesity.

Tarun Kapur has the kind of problem that few head teachers face each morning. When he drives to work, he has to think which way to go. Mr Kapur is not absent-minded – it’s just that he is in charge of three schools.

A generation of schoolchildren have had their lives "impoverished" by rigid testing and an over-emphasis on the "three Rs", the most authoritative investigation into primary education for more than 40 years has concluded.

A new teaching pack for schools asks pupils to look at the terror attacks on London in July 2005 from the point of view of the bombers.

This is Eton. We are on a course beyond school syllabuses: the Eton College Universities Summer School. On one highly frequented student forum, a girl summed up her experience: “Do it, do it, do it.” I was searching for literature summer courses, and decided to apply. The rest is history.

The Girls’ School Association (GSA) is capitalising on its long experience by launching a new website aimed at parents who are bringing up daughters.

One in three adults lies on their CV when applying for a job, according to research published today. The figure emerges from a survey of about 1,300 adults carried out by the the Chartered Institute of Educational Assessors (CIEA), which represents exam markers and assessors. The most common exaggeration is thought to be lying about degree classifications, for example turning a 2:1 into a first.

Will Young, the singer who hit the headlines in 2002 by winning the inaugural ‘Pop Idol’ TV talent show attended Horris Hill prep school, Wellington College and d’Overbroeck’s tutorial college. He went on to read politics at the University of Exeter, graduating with a 2:2 Honours.

When parents of pupils at Bolitho School in Penzance received a letter home in January, they were in for a shock. Expecting nothing more innocuous than notification of a parents’ evening, the letter instead came from the school’s chairman of governors, and gave the parents a stark message – the next victim of the credit crunch might be their children’s education.

Beautifully situated on a 150-acre estate in north Scotland, Gordonstoun School has educated three generations of British royalty. Eight in 10 pupils are boarders and more than a third come from overseas.

In terms of the entry and exit routes available, teaching is an unusually generous and open-minded profession. There are currently more than 30 different ways of becoming a qualified teacher, including the traditional Bachelor of Education path, the postgraduate PGCE route or one of many employment-based training schemes, each of which reflect the individual’s starting point.

The Public Sector: the place to be or a place to hide? With applications to the Civil Service up 22 per cent, those to the NHS Management Training scheme up by 83 per cent and Teach First seeing a 90 per cent increase, things are definitely happening in the public sector.

February is the cruellest month for teachers of the tougher option subjects – such as physics, Latin or even, now that they’re no longer compulsory, a modern language. Across the country Year Nines (old money Third Year) are choosing their GCSE options for Years 10 and 11. As a classics teacher trying to extol the rigours of Latin as a virtue, I can easily get gloomy as I look at the opposition, where every year it seems some sexy new subject gets added to the list as we broaden the net ever wider to catch hearts and minds. First the English department branched out into media studies, then along came sociology, a blossoming of drama, in skipped GCSE physical education. Latterly came dance, photography and film studies.