Parent Pages information for families

More than 2,000 students left in limbo after a university was stripped of its right to admit foreigners will get three months to find an alternative course, officials have said. Genuine students have 60 days to make a new application or to arrange to leave the UK, but the countdown starts only when the UK [...]

Read the full story

Clare Balding has revealed how she deliberately threw up food as she struggled to keep her weight down during her earlier career as a jockey. The broadcaster, who has won plaudits as the star presenter of London 2012, admitted that she made herself sick after meals as well as abusing laxatives while a young rider. [...]

Read the full story

Some 125 Harvard University students are being investigated for cheating after school officials discovered they may have shared answers or plagiarized on a final exam. Harvard officials are not releasing the class subject, the students’ names or the exact number being investigated. They said on Thursday that the undergraduate class had a minimum of 250 [...]

Read the full story

As any science teacher worth listening to can explain, humans are primates. In the end, despite our reliance on language, we’re still apes. Building any kind of relationship means meeting up, shaking hands, laughing over coffee and arguing while consuming a plate of biscuits. We form and reinforce social bonds by sharing food, making eye [...]

Read the full story

The mother of a man who died saving a girl’s life said today that she hoped one day to meet her and her parents. Plamen Petkov drowned after swimming out to save the five-year-old who had drifted from the shore in an inflatable ring at West Wittering beach in West Sussex in May. Speaking for [...]

Read the full story

But this week they watched him pull off the most extraordinary of all the performances in the Paralympic opening ceremony as he danced on his hands and soared above the stadium to perform an aerial ballet in a wire harness. “It was magical,” said his mother, Jean Lendill. “We were just blown away by it.” [...]

Read the full story

Two teenage boys planning to change their identities that fled to an unknown destination in a Mercedes Benz after leaving notes for their parents saying they are ‘sorry’ and ‘starting new lives’ have been found safe in Colorado. The parents of Jordan Webb, 16, and Levi ‘David’ Briggs, 15, had launched a frantic search for [...]

Read the full story

A large number of independent schools have pledged to open their doors to talented pupils from non-privileged backgrounds if the Government agrees to pay part of their fees. The high-performing institutions said they wanted to admit bright children regardless of family income, arguing the move would be the “single biggest policy step” towards boosting social [...]

Read the full story

Speaking for the first time since announcing her pregnancy, TV presenter Fearne Cotton revealed to Company magazine that she loves it and is looking forward to letting mother nature take its course. “I haven’t had any weird cravings as I’m still at the sicky stage. I am eating a lot of cheese and bagels but [...]

Read the full story

Harald Stock, chief executive of Gruenenthal, said he was “very sorry”, 50 years after the pharmaceutical company pulled the drug from the market. In a speech that has caused outrage amongst thalidomide victims, Mr Stock explained: “We ask that you regard our long silence as a sign of the shock that your fate caused in [...]

Read the full story

Headmasters warned that pupils’ attempts to get into the most selective universities could be put at risk following a sudden fall in the proportion of top marks. Figures show that children in independent schools are still significantly more likely to secure the best grades at the age of 16. But it emerged that the proportion [...]

Read the full story

A catalogue of failures by a range of professional bodies were recorded in the months before Jayden Lee Green died in his drug addict parents’ squalid flat in August last year, the damning report found. The toddler, who died a month short of his second birthday, lived with his crack cocaine and heroin-addicted parents Jamie [...]

Read the full story

Poverty in Britain is ‘tearing familes apart’, according to Save The Children. For the first time in its 93-year history, the charity which traditionally focuses on helping young people in the developing world, is asking the British public to help poor children at home. The charity is aiming to raise £500,000 to target aid to [...]

Read the full story

With the nation’s children safely back at school, one might imagine we could stop worrying about the little blighters for a while. But, lo, a new controversy has erupted – over gendered Lego. The Danish brand, formerly feted for its wholesome, liberal appeal, has generated consternation with Lego Friends: predominantly pink, simple to construct and [...]

Read the full story

A senior citizen is giving the carnival game circuit a run for their money. Peter Drakos, who hails from Detroit, Michigan, is arguably the world champion of carnival games like the bottle throw, the ring toss and free-throw basketball and has amassed hundreds of thousands of stuffed animals to prove it. But now the 64-year-old [...]

Read the full story

It is called the ‘school run’, and it seems many mothers are dressing accordingly. More and more are turning up in trendy sports gear at the school gates – but with no intention of actually setting foot in a gym. The popularity of the ‘sporty look’ is behind an increase in demand for sportswear, with [...]

Read the full story

Children in the UK are almost twice as likely to own a mobile phone at the age of 10 compared to those in other countries, according to a new international study. Three-quarters (73 per cent) of 10-year-olds here have a personal mobile compared to a global average of only 45 per cent. In the US [...]

Read the full story

Soaring numbers of grandparents are acting as free nannies because the recession has forced their adult children back to work, a report reveals. A third of grandparents say the amount of childcare they provide has risen due to the economic squeeze. They put the increase down to the children’s parents no longer being able to [...]

Read the full story

Almost half of young women are delaying starting a family because they don’t want to give up their freedom, a new survey has revealed. Many are putting off having children because they would rather have more money, be able to focus on their careers and enjoy spending more time with the partners. The 2012 Modern [...]

Read the full story

One of the world’s rarest species of turtle has hatched at a British zoo for the first time. The tiny seven-week-old Vietnamese box turtle is so precious that it is being kept in a climate-controlled room at Bristol Zoo Gardens and is hand-fed chopped worms to give it the best possible start in life. It [...]

Read the full story

A family have claimed they were stopped from boarding a flight because their son has Down’s Syndrome and was not wanted in the first class section. Joan and Robert Vanderhorst are threatening to sue American Airlines after they say they were victims of discrimination over their 16 year old son Bede. The couple claim as [...]

Read the full story

The first day at primary school is an exciting prospect for any young girl. There are so many hair styles to consider – pigtails, ponytail, bunches… But little Harriet Russell had more choices than most, as she got to choose a wig as well. The four-year-old, from West Bradford, Lancashire, has suffered from alopecia since [...]

Read the full story

The charity Save the Children, best known for helping some of the world’s poorest families, has launched its first appeal to help UK children. The charity says the UK’s poorest children are bearing the brunt of the recession, with some missing out on regular hot meals or new shoes. The campaign urges the government to [...]

Read the full story

Save the Children, which traditionally focuses on Africa, Asia and South America, is to raise money for families in this country amid claims that youngsters are going hungry as they bear the brunt of the Government’s austerity drive during the recession. It warned that many children were missing out on regular hot meals, failing to [...]

Read the full story

A seven-year-old Colorado girl has been diagnosed with bubonic plague, in state’s first case of the archaic illness since 2006. Doctors believe Sierra Jane Downing contracted the disease, also known as the ‘black death’, from a dead squirrel while camping with her family in Pagosa Springs. Fleas are common transmitters of the plague. The girl’s [...]

Read the full story

A rogue strain of the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine has been proven to have caused deafness in at least two children, it has been claimed. Katie Stephen, who lost the use of her left ear days after being inoculated as a child, is reportedly the first known victim to prove her case to the [...]

Read the full story

The Food Standards Agency (FSA) is going to review its advice to pregnant women and other groups of people who could be at risk of health problems as a result of being infected with toxoplasma, a microscopic parasite carried by cats and transmitted in contaminated food. The Independent revealed yesterday that toxoplasma is infecting up [...]

Read the full story

Behaviour in schools is far worse than official estimates indicate, research suggests. A survey of 243 trainee teachers to be presented to the British Education Research Association conference in Manchester this morning, reveals that one in four said less than half the lessons they had at school were “under the relaxed comfortable charge of the [...]

Read the full story

A study of identical twins has shown that breast feeding, daily moisturising and hormone replacement therapy positively affects how a woman’s breasts age. However smoking, drinking alcohol and having multiple pregnancies can accelerate breast aging, according to researchers. The study, published today, shows how environmental factors, as well as higher body mass index (BMI) and [...]

Read the full story

It seems even the Tooth Fairy is not immune to inflation. According to a new study children in the U.S. receive an average of $3 for each tooth lost, an increase of 15 per cent on last year. And to coincide with the findings a free app has been released which allows parents to calculate [...]

Read the full story

There were emotional scenes today as the family and friends of a four-year-old boy who drowned after slipping from a jetty attended his church funeral. Dylan Cecil slipped into the sea off a jetty while on holiday with his family in Burnham-on-Sea, Somerset on Sunday August 19. He was said to have been trying to [...]

Read the full story

The poll of more than 3,000 women aged 28 to 45 found 24 per cent regretted having waited so long, and 17 per cent were worried about being too old to conceive. In addition, almost one in 10 (nine per cent) had already resorted to fertility treatment because of difficulties in getting pregnant naturally. And [...]

Read the full story

Researcher assessed the spelling, grammar, understanding of English and IQ of primary and secondary schoolchildren and compared those skills with a sample of their text messages. There was no evidence of any significant relationships between poor grammar in text messages and their understanding of written or spoken grammar. The results will reassure parents who may [...]

Read the full story

A study of over 1m births has found that that more women are being diagnosed with cancer while pregnant or in the folowing 12 months. The study authors said this was partly due to more older women having babies but this only explained a small part of the phenomenon. The research, published in the British [...]

Read the full story

The doctor looked at me with a mix of consternation and bewilderment. She had not diagnosed an incurable disease. She had merely informed me, crisply yet patiently, that at 45 my chance of having a baby was minuscule. ‘You just have to face it. The odds of conceiving are very low and in the unlikely [...]

Read the full story

I write this not for sympathy but in search for understanding. I sat in my office, unable to stop crying. I didn’t understand why. I had just been given excellent news, for the second time that year I received an outstanding rating from a lesson observation. I took a few seconds of joy from the [...]

Read the full story

A major whooping cough outbreak in England and Wales escalated in July with 1,047 new cases in one month. The total number of cases for 2012 is now 3,523, three times higher than the number for the whole of 2011. The Health Protection Agency (HPA) has said it is “very concerned” by the outbreak. The [...]

Read the full story

Gosfield School in Halstead, near Braintree in Essex, is cutting its junior school fees by between 18 and 40 per cent when it opens its doors to its 200 pupils next Wednesday. Gosfield believes it is the first independent school to slash its fees on this scale. At entry level, parents will be paying £1,500 [...]

Read the full story

The number of pensioners becoming insolvent has risen to its highest level since records began more than 50 years ago. Over the past six years, the annual toll has increased by more than 100 per cent, a survey revealed. The rise among the over-65s is faster than among any of the younger age groups – [...]

Read the full story

Thousands of rapists and paedophiles will be able to appeal against their inclusion on the sex offender register from today, despite concerns from the NSPCC that they must ‘always be considered a risk’. Ministers were forced to change the law after the Supreme Court ruled two years ago that it was a breach of offenders’ [...]

Read the full story

A teenager mowed down a woman in a hit-and-run over drug payments, leaving her with such severe head injuries she regressed to being a 12-year-old. James Slater, 20, knocked over Amanda Richards as she rode a bike because he was embroiled in a dispute with her then-boyfriend over an outstanding cannabis payment, a court was [...]

Read the full story

A boy of four cried ‘Daddy’s killed Mummy’ and ‘She’s all red’ after his soldier father murdered his mother in a frenzied knife attack at their home, a court heard. Lance Corporal Ian Lowe, 25, is alleged to have kicked down the door to Leanne McNuff’s home and stabbed her in the neck and arm [...]

Read the full story

A toddler died from a methadone overdose after social workers failed to take him into care, a damning report revealed today. Jayden Lee Green, who was just a month short of his second birthday, was found dead in his parents’ bed after overdosing on the heroin substitute in August last year. The toddler, who was [...]

Read the full story

Educational osmosis, or the “sponge” method of learning ALL AGES, BEHAVIOR + LEARNING Ah! Back home from our last hurrah of summer: two weeks in California, including a week at Fiddle Camp with my daughter. I wrote this post on the last day of camp, while in the daze and haze of witnessing my girl [...]

Read the full story

Rested, restored, reconnected with our families, we approach the autumn with fresh resolutions. We want to keep the spirit of summer alive, maintain the children at the centre of our lives, encourage their education (and have more fun along the way). Do they lead us on or are we leading them? It is a tricky [...]

Read the full story

The recession has been lingering over our country for too long now. But rather than becoming consumed by the doom and gloom, savvy mothers have found creative ways to turn the negatives of economic turmoil into a positive. According to new research, the recession has fuelled a record boom in big ideas and inventions amongst [...]

Read the full story

They might be on the small side, but this troupe of tiny hat fans are probably the cutest ever animals to ever don headgear. The adorable batch of chicks were given a variety of hats for these wonderful pictures, with additions including wooly hats, bridal outfits and even a miniscule replica of the headwear worn [...]

Read the full story

This baby lemur took a piggy-back ride around his new enclosure at Chessington World of Adventures today. Raiky is one of two new arrivals at the zoo. He climbed on to the back of his older brother, Alaotran Gentle lemur Tsingy, in a display of their new brotherhood “bond”, according to their keeper. Chessington Zoo [...]

Read the full story

Being heavily pregnant with her first child, Robbie Williams’ wife Ayda Field could be forgiven for wanting to put her feet up. But it looked like the American actress just couldn’t resist enjoying one last night of freedom before becoming a first time mother. The brunette, 33, looked glowing in a black maternity shift dress [...]

Read the full story

Global youth unemployment will continue rising over the next five years, according to a new report from the International Labour Organization. The effects of the euro crisis will spill over from developed to emerging economies, the ILO says, pushing youth unemployment to almost 13% by 2017. The ILO warned that many young people have given [...]

Read the full story