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Take an exclusive behind the scenes look at the making of the Disney Epic Mickey 2: The Power of Two video game. Meet some of the key people behind the creation of the game, and get a deeper understanding into the core gameplay features, mechanics and storyline. Disney Epic Mickey 2: The Power of Two [...]

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For most parents, it’s an achievement to get the children to school in time with everything they need (homework, the signed consent forms, the right sports kit, musical instruments, the cake for the charity fundraiser). But it seems we should also now be weighing their school bags. The combined weight of everything they are having [...]

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The new headteacher of a school called the strictest in Britain has unveiled plans to create a chain of similar schools. Peter Hughes, the principal of Mossbourne Academy in Hackney, is setting up another secondary school and wants to open a primary school in the borough. Mr Hughes has taken over from Sir Michael Wilshaw, [...]

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Some of London’s most deprived children will be damaged further by being struck off the special needs list, a leading headteacher warned today. Children who act as carers, those who are homeless or whose parents have died could lose out on extra support, Jo Shuter, head of Quintin Kynaston school in St John’s Wood, claimed. [...]

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Schools in England will be banned from taking pupils’ fingerprints and using face-recognition technology unless they get permission from parents. New government guidance says written parental permission must be obtained to use students’ biometric data. Pupils themselves will also be allowed to refuse to participate. Schools can use fingerprinting or face scanning for recording attendance, [...]

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There is no clear link between performance pay for teachers and raising standards in schools, says an international survey. The OECD has examined data from its Pisa tests to find whether targeting pay improves pupil achievement. Previous studies have identified the importance of high-quality teaching. But the OECD’s Andreas Schleicher says the international evidence reveals [...]

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Bronx high school teacher Charles Best found that the resources for his classroom were severely lacking. He and his fellow teachers bought pencils and copy paper out-of-pocket, and spent much of their time together discussing the ways they wished they could engage their students if they had the extra funding. “The resources our students needed [...]

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Schools in England will be sent copies of the King James Bible from this week to mark its 400th anniversary. Education Secretary Michael Gove said the text had had “an immense influence” on the English-speaking world. He said pupils should learn about its role in the nation’s history, language, literacy and culture. The move is [...]

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Charities, teachers’ leaders and campaigners yesterday condemned plans that could remove thousands of children from the special-needs register. Ministers have announced a series of reforms in the belief that too many children at schools in England have been wrongly labelled as having special educational needs (SEN). There will be a new single category of SEN [...]

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The sheer demands placed on timetables are leaving schools with little opportunity to promote resilience, optimism, courage, generosity, empathy and good manners, it was claimed.   Anthony Seldon, the Master of Wellington College, Berkshire, said old-fashioned values were traditionally passed on to pupils through competitive sport, artistic performances and voluntary work in the local community. [...]

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From opera at La Scala to football at the San Siro stadium, from the catwalks of fashion week to the soaring architecture of the cathedral, Milan is crowded with Italian icons. Which makes it even more of a cultural earthquake that one of Italy’s leading universities – the Politecnico di Milano – is going to [...]

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A schizophrenic who knifed a schoolboy to death and wounded three other pupils after failing to take his medication was today jailed for at least 20 years. Serif Aslan stabbed Kasey Gordon, 15, in the heart in front of horrified shoppers. Aslan, 34, who was free to roam the streets despite a long history of [...]

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Children should not have to start school until they are six to prevent early ‘adultification’, an academic has claimed. Going against conventional wisdom that their intellect should be fed and stimulated early on, education expert Dr Richard House says that over-emphasis on the three Rs – reading writing and arithmetic – can actually cause long [...]

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Pupils should not be subjected to full classroom tuition until the age of six to off-set the effects of premature “adultification”, it was claimed.   Dr Richard House, a senior lecturer at Roehampton University’s Research Centre for Therapeutic Education, said gifted pupils from relatively affluent backgrounds suffered the most from being pushed “too far, too [...]

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A study led by a University of Bristol academic found that a child’s educational achievements can be harmed when a father loses his job. Using British Cohort Study data, Professor Paul Gregg studied job losses during the 1980s recession to assess the impact of unemployment on children’s academic performance.   The research found that children [...]

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A head teacher boasted about breaking children down after reducing them to tears, a tribunal heard yesterday. Eirios Hall, in her 50s, is alleged to have humiliated and violently manhandled pupils at Ardwyn Nursery and Infant School in Welshpool, Powys. A General Teaching Council for Wales hearing was told that children would break down into [...]

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Normally, it’s the teachers telling their easily-distractible students to concentrate and be serious. But at Abby Kelly Foster High School, the teachers are the ones who are the class clowns. Several of the teachers at the Massachusetts charter school agreed to dance in the background of the video as history teacher Mike Penny asked his [...]

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IT is the sort of louche behaviour Brideshead Revisited’s Sebastian Flyte might have revelled in during his Oxford days. But today’s pyjama-clad students drifting in to the dining hall for breakfast at Brasenose College face a dressing down. Laminated signs have appeared warning students to end the  ‘slovenly practice’ of eating breakfast in their night [...]

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Prince Edward has declined a Belfast pupil’s appeal for a royal reprieve from homework. The prince was visiting Lagan College on the outskirts of the city in the first engagement of a one-day visit. During a presentation in the main hall, year eight pupil Michael Hare asked the prince to sign a royal pardon which [...]

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The final of the competition, which was broadcast on Sunday night on BBC2, was won by teenage cellist Laura van der Heijden. However Norman Lebrecht, the arts critic and BBC Radio 3 presenter, criticised the corporation’s coverage as being “low-key to the point of torpor”. Viewers also accused the corporation of using a lightweight production [...]

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Some people are born a success, scientists believe. Research shows that much of our predisposition towards determination, sociability and self-control and sense of purpose is in our genes. In fact, our DNA plays a bigger role in influencing these traits than our upbringing and the company we keep. Taken together, these facets of personality can [...]

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Plans to change the “special needs” system in schools will have a big impact upon teachers like me, as well as millions of pupils and their parents. That said, the system does need an overhaul. Far too many pupils are judged as having “special educational needs” (SEN). Last year, an Ofsted investigation found that one [...]

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England’s schools should take lessons from Japan and the Far East on how to improve performance, the shadow education secretary says. Stephen Twigg says despite many school reforms, there has been little change to the style of classroom teaching since Victorian times. Labour’s number one priority for education is raising the quality and status of [...]

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Fifteen-year-old cellist Laura van der Heijden has won the BBC’s Young Musician prize for 2012. The teenager played Sir William Walton’s Cello Concerto with the Northern Sinfonia at the competition’s final at The Sage in Gateshead. Accepting the £2,000 prize, van der Heijden, from East Sussex, said she felt “amazing” and “so, so lucky”. She [...]

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Thousands of parents whose children fall behind in reading will get vouchers to spend on private tutors under plans unveiled by Nick Clegg today. It marks a major new drive to provide “catch-up lessons” for struggling youngsters from poorer families in their first year of secondary school. Mr Clegg hailed the Evening Standard’s Get London [...]

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Tintin is experiencing new and exciting adventures these days. Not just in the cinema, but in Belgian courts as well. Bienvenu Mbuto Mondondo, a Congolese national studying in Brussels, filed suit to obtain an injunction against the continued publication, distribution and sale of Hergé’s comic book Tintin in the Congo (Tintin au Congo), as well [...]

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Sheffield’s Labour city council has succeeded with a bid for £1,800,000 to the Arts Council which will pay for all children and young people in the city to learn a musical instrument or sing in a choir. They don’t have to. Older readers may recall terror in the classroom at having to pluck away in [...]

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During the second Indio-China War, 270,000,000 submunitions were dropped on Laos inside cluster bombs. Cluster bombs are bombs that instead of having one block of explosives at the tip contain dozens of small tennis ball-sized capsules that are made to detonate on impact. Of these submunitions dropped on Laos from cluster bombs, 80,000,000 failed to [...]

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The year was 1948. The world was still reeling from the atrocities committed in the second world war, which left many people missing their relatives, their homes and some, their lives. The world’s answer to this was a bit of paper, containing 30 articles that all humans should be entitled to. So on a rainy [...]

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I’m cold. I’m shattered. My hands are searing with the coldness. I’ve got no job, and nowhere to live. I’m all on my own, with no one to comfort me. Every night I go through this agony. Will I be mugged? Will I be kidnapped? Will I be hurt? No one cares about the homeless. [...]

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Disney are normally associated with talking animals, princes and princesses, and objects which have come to life with a tough of magic. Well, the magical wizards at Disneyland have made that last thing a reality, after unveiling a high-tech solution which can turn anything – from doorknobs to buckets of water – into interactive buttons. [...]

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Pupils are being distracted from exam studying due to their college sending them ‘top revision tips’ by text, Twitter, and Facebook, it was claimed today. Students at Havering Sixth Form College in Hornchurch, Essex, say the ‘obvious’ messages are ‘annoying’ and are actually interrupting their A-level preparation. Daily tips aimed at revising pupils include ‘buckle [...]

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Under the biggest shake-up of the system for 30 years, ministers will toughen up rules on the diagnosis of behavioural and learning problems. It follows concerns that schools are abusing the system to disguise poor teaching and climb league tables. For the first time, rigorous screening measures will be introduced to prevent pupils from being classed [...]

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The Government will not ring-fence the £2.5bn a year to be handed to schools for the most disadvantaged pupils to ensure all of it is spent on them, Nick Clegg admitted yesterday. The Deputy Prime Minister said it would be wrong to “micro-manage” every school from Whitehall by dictating how money allocated under his “pupil premium” scheme [...]

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Social media: It’s not just for college kids anymore. Families use Facebook to stay in touch across generations. Friends well into middle age share photos on Instagram. There’s even an 80-year-old grandmother on a quest for 80,000 Twitter followers. But how does social media’s widening reach affect the family unit? The brand-engagement firm GMR Marketing [...]

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Like most loving parents, Chris and Kathy Coker were anxious when their son Bradley embarked on his gap-year trip around the world. Even though they knew he was sensible, it was hard not to worry about what could go wrong. And so, the Cokers recall, they breathed a sigh of relief when they learned that [...]

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Thousands of children have lost the chance of a decent life because of the ban on mixed-race adoption, the state equality chief has admitted. Trevor Phillips said it was his greatest regret that he failed to challenge the race rules which denied children the chance of a loving family and instead left them at the [...]

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Mega-wealthy Chinese parents are paying out hundreds of thousands of pounds for their children to have lessons in the art of chit-chat – to help them get into Oxbridge. The families are doing their utmost, including paying out the huge sums to British ‘education consultants’ based in China in order to give their children the [...]

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Name: Keepon Big Idea: Keepon is a little robot, developed in Japan, that is used to research childhood communication and interaction. The consumer version, MyKeepon, funds the construction and distribution of Keepons to labs around the globe. Why It’s Working: Keepon’s simple design and mannerisms make it an effective communication tool that doesn’t intimidate kids [...]

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As many as 450,000 children could be removed from school special needs registers because they have been wrongly labelled as requiring extra help, the Government will announce today. Campaigners fear the cuts could leave thousands of children “cut adrift”. One in five schoolchildren in England is on the register. The rules are designed to toughen [...]

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Parents in England are to be given control over their children’s special educational needs (SEN) budgets, allowing them to choose expert support rather than local authorities being the sole provider. In what the government described as the biggest reform of SEN for 30 years, the measures will also legally force education, health and social care [...]

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A study by the Welsh Institute of Social and Economic Research, Data and Methods (WISERD) suggests undergraduates completing the course fare less well than those who have not. The findings are revealed on BBC Radio Wales’ “Eye on Wales” programme. The Welsh Government says it will widen research into the Welsh Bacc’s impact. The qualification [...]

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For those of you actively job seeking at the moment don’t forget that finding and applying for a new role couldn’t be simpler with our help. Firstly take a look at the thousands of jobs on offer at Schools Jobs and then skip to our lovely new careers page here where you will find top [...]

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The primary school was in Surrey, the head teacher recalls, but its catchment area was far removed from the affluent image enjoyed by much of the county. Among the four-year-olds joining the reception class, she had several who had not been toilet-trained. She put it down to inadequate parenting and sent them home until they [...]

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Though I went to four girls-only schools and only ran away from one of them, I can’t get over one difficulty about educating girls apart from boys. There’s a lot to be said for it: the girls don’t have to worry about what boys are thinking of them when they’re trying to learn; they do all the tasks [...]

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On Thursday, the education secretary, Michael Gove, eloquently described how much of this nation’s talents and capabilities are strangled at birth by the power of the old school tie. “Those who were born poor are more likely to stay poor and those who inherit privilege are more likely to pass on privilege in England more [...]

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What is it about men in the kitchen that makes them so outspoken? The latest to let off steam is the top chef, Marcus Wareing, who criticises the trainee cooks working for him as lazy and clueless, only interested in how many hours they have to work and having an exaggerated sense of entitlement. Asked [...]

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Seventy thousand primary school leavers will take part in intensive two-week summer schools this year to keep them from falling behind during the six-week break. Nick Clegg will announce tomorrow that the “top-up” lessons will be provided to children from poor backgrounds by two-thirds of secondary schools, as part of a drive to highlight the [...]

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Police are warning primary school pupils about chatting online amid fears that paedophiles are targeting children on websites such as Moshi Monsters and Club Penguin. Bedfordshire Police is sending officers into more than 300 schools to raise awareness about online imposters after parents highlighted possible ‘grooming’ incidents. One mother told police that her son was [...]

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You might not have realised it, but men are being oppressed. In many walks of life, they are routinely discriminated against in ways women are not. So unrecognised is this phenomenon that the mere mention of it will appear laughable to some. That, at least, is the premise of a book by a South African philosophy [...]

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