By China Mills and Jenny Slater. As two university lecturers, we are concerned about the new psychology A-Level, which has been taught to teenagers since September 2015. Our concern is that the new syllabus is narrow and out of step with much psychological research and practice. More...

By Nicola Whitton. Almost as soon as they begin school, children start getting tested. With the introduction of tests for four-year-olds and the explicit link between test results and school performance, education policies of successive governments have led to an increased emphasis on results at all levels of schooling. More...

By David Honeywell. David Cameron’s prison reform speech came one day shy of the 18th anniversary of my release from prison. I can still remember the buzz of excitement I felt walking through the gates for what would be the last time. The very same gates I entered 15 years before to begin my first prison sentence after being sentenced for robbery. More...

By Abigail Harrison Moore. The government is pulling simultaneously in two different directions when it comes to how seriously it takes the creative industries. At a speech at the first birthday of the Creative Industries Federation in January, chancellor George Osborne argued that public investment in creative industries was “an investment in who we are as a nation”. He also recognised the importance of “art for art’s sake”. More...

By Deborah Sutton. . . On the night of February 12, Kanhaiya Kumar, president of the students union of Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi, one of India’s foremost universities, was arrested on charges of sedition. In the words of cabinet minister Smriti Irani, he had insulted the divine “Mother India”. More...

By John Jerrim. The world’s most important examination is moving online. Since the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development launched the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) in 2000, it has provided an influential and timely update every three years of how 15-year-old school children’s mathematics, science and reading skills compare across the globe. More...

By Dominic Glynn. French speakers have been scratching their heads in recent weeks over the alleged death of the circumflex. The news went viral that the accent, used in words such as goût (taste) or île (island), was no longer necessary in many French spellings. It even sparked a new sister hashtag to last year’s #jesuischarlie on Twitter: #jesuiscirconflexe.
Politicians, particularly those on the right and far-right, voiced their opposition and bemoaned the death of a diacritic – the name given to accents such as the circumflex – that they believe is integral to the French language and France’s identity.
But far from the language being watered down in a conscious effort to dumb down the school system, the changes are not new and probably won’t make much difference anyway. Indeed, the way the words are pronounced won’t even be affected. More...

By Catherine Wormald. Mention the terms “intellectual giftedness” and “learning disability” and there is a general understanding of what each term means. However, most people are unaware that in many circumstances the two can go hand in hand. More...