Not all kids are going to cope very well with Michael Gove's insistence on studying traditional academic subjects. That's the message of two important reports out today, one from MPs, the other from the institute of psychiatry at King's College London, based on a study of twins.
The Commons education select committee said a curriculum that is skewed towards academic subjects could encourage bad behaviour in the classroom. It said teachers were having to teach children who "would not have been in school five to 10 years ago" and assaults on school staff had risen from 171 in 2001 to 251 in the last school year.
It reckoned switching children who were more suited to vocational subjects on to an academic curriculum would exacerbate the problem.
Andy Burnham MP, Labour's education spokesman, said:
"The education select committee echoes the views of parents and teachers who are calling on Michael Gove to rethink his backward-looking curriculum policy.
Alongside solid academic study, young people need technical and social skills to succeed in the workplace and to stay engaged with learning."
Meanwhile academics at King's College London studied 4,400 sets of 12-year-old twins, examining test results in English, maths and science. Their message is that children differ genetically in how and how much they can learn and called for a "personalised" approach to their education.
"Instead of thinking about education as a way of countering genetic differences among children, the field of education might profit from accepting that children differ genetically in how and how much they learn.
"Instead of a model of instruction in which children are the passive recipients of knowledge, a genetically sensitive approach to education suggests an active view of learning in which children select, modify and create their own education in part on the basis of their genetic propensities."
More education stories from the Guardian
• Two-fifths of students from England who started university last year did so on the basis of lower scores at A-level than two E grades. The figures come from the Higher Education Policy Institute, which says the proportion of students without decent A-levels who have gone on to university has rocketed in the last seven years.
Last autumn, 144,543 students from England were accepted on to a degree course with fewer than 80 tariff points – the equivalent of two E grades at A-level. This equates to 40% of all English students awarded places.
Geoffrey Alderman, professor of politics at Buckingham University, told Jessica Shepherd that the figures could point to some universities "scraping below the bottom of the barrel".
"I am all in favour of admitting people who have less than the minimum qualifications; they should be given a chance. But this needs investigating."
• Patrick Kingsley reports on Sukey, the anti-kettling computer project developed to protect student activists.
"The brainchild of a group of young, recently politicised computer programmers, Sukey's main goal is to stop people getting kettled. On the day of a protest, founders collate information from individual protesters - tweets, texts and GPS positions - about what is happening on the ground.
"The Sukey team then update an online live-map of the protest, accessible from smartphones. Simultaneously, they tweet and text brief summaries of events to all their subscribers, telling them where other protesters are situated, and - most significantly - where kettles are forming.
"As the nursery rhyme (from which Sukey takes its name) aptly suggests: "Polly put the kettle on, Sukey take it off again."
• England's universities were told yesterday they will have their budgets slashed by nearly £1bn over the next academic year. The Higher Education Funding Council for England (Hefce) said £940m would be stripped from universities' budgets for teaching, research, buildings and other areas, a 9.5% cut.
• Watch out for a story coming from Jeevan Vasagar about Nottingham and Birmingham universities. They've have just announced a new "partnership" - joint appointments, shared resources, that sort of thing. He'll have details soon.
Intriguing tweet of the day
"Hearing rumours of yet another Gove U-turn in the offing - this time on EMA. But, like school sport, won't go anywhere near far enough."
Education news from around the web
• The Telegraph reports that gangs of muggers disguised themselves as protesters to steal thousands of pounds from students at demonstrations against tuition fees.
"One mugger claimed to have robbed £2,500 in cash and goods from students during a single day as students clashed with police in central London last month.
The balaclava-sporting gangs were able to blend into the crowd because so many students had also covered their faces.
The yobs said they attended the protests with the express intention of mugging people, and took advantage of the police's kettling tactics to corner students where they were enclosed and could not escape. As well as cash they stole purses, laptops and cameras."
• An irreconcilable breakdown in relations among members of the University of Abertay Dundee's senior management team is behind the suspension of its principal and his deputy, Times Higher Education reports. It quotes a source saying senior managers were "effectively at war with each other".
• An "esteemed North East based pharmacy lecturer" has resigned from his post in protest at how he believes the new system of university finance, which will see tuition fees triple, will price poorer students out, says a report in UCU news.
• Traditional boys' schools are "near extinction" as growing numbers of headmasters axe single-sex education to admit girls, according to a Telegraph report. Less than five per cent of establishments listed in the latest edition of the Good Schools Guide – published today – are independent boys' senior schools.
• Pupils in Wales would rather go hungry than eat free school meals because of the stigma of poverty, the BBC reports.
Insight into journalism seminars for teachers
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News 11 March Learn about the 24 news cycle; meet news reporters, feature writers, picture and sub editors; understand the role newspaper advertising; go on a tour of the editorial floors and take part in a workshop creating you own news front page which will be evaluated by an editor.
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Places are limited and likely to fill up quickly, so book soon.
Competition
Children aged between seven and 14 can now enter the Young Human Rights reporter of the year competition, run by learnnewsdesk, the Guardian's online news service for schools, and Amnesty International. A winner and two runners-up in the primary and secondary school categories will win a trip to Amnesty International and the Guardian headquarters in London as well as an MP3 recorder. The closing date for entries is 14 February.
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