Ucas figures are out today, showing the number of students applying for university this year – and to nobody's surprise there has been a record-breaking surge, as students try to get in before fees rise in 2012. Tens of thousands of young people are likely to find themselves without a place on a course. Watch out for Jessica Shepherd's report soon.
As anger about tuition fees and the loss of grants for disadvantaged students continued to mount, the leadership of the National Union of Students found itself in all kinds of trouble at the weekend.
Its president, Aaron Porter, had to be led away by police from angry protesters in Manchester calling for his resignation. Both the Mail and the Telegraph claim that he was also subjected to anti-Semitic abuse. Here's the footage, you decide. When vice-president Shane Chowen took his turn at the microphone, he was pelted with eggs and oranges.
Police used pepper spray on protesters at Boots in central London, who were demonstrating against the company's alleged tax avoidance. Some had to be hospitalised, including Jed Weightman:
"One police officer sprayed towards us and because I was tall I got a lot of it in my face. My eyes were streaming and I couldn't see anything."
Tory election candidate @MatthewSephton is causing a ruckus on Twitter by tweeting: "Good to see the police taking firm action."
Stories from the Guardian and Observer
• Yvonne Roberts comes out in favour of Michael Gove's boot camps for problem pupils.
"There are currently at least 16,000 pupils excluded from school. In addition, there is an unquantified "ghost army" of young people who attend but whose assets are deep-frozen, unrecognised by the system or who truant or who are phobic as a result of bullying and live in a limbo land of solitary confinement at home but are still registered at school.
Boot camp clearly won't work for all. But we know from a mass of research that while it has a rightwing resonance, in practice, minus sadism, it may encourage a young person to understand that what he or she does can and does have an impact on their lives."
@tothechalkface tweets: "Observer praises 'boot camp schools'. Please, lets not give up on idea of motivating chn to learn, not forcing them."
• Oxford University's head of undergraduate admissions, Mike Nicholson, says the obsession with league tables in state schools is detrimental to top students. The problem is that too much effort is being put into getting Cs for lower-achieving pupils and not enough attention is paid to B students capable of getting As.
"Maybe there are students who are being missed, who have got a solid B potential and aren't in any danger of dropping below that C grade that's going to get the school an extra percentage point on their performance figures. That's the group of students who could be being disadvantaged."
• A scheme to waive fees for the poorest university students is just too complicated, says the thinktank million+. It risks "adding another layer of complexity" to the already complicated system of student bursaries and grants.
• Free schools will receive almost twice as much state funding for admitting a pupil from a poor home as one from a wealthier background, Jessica Shepherd reports this morning.
Stories from around the web
• The Telegraph reports that a "showdown is looming over cuts in teacher training".
"In a move certain to trigger a new confrontation with public-sector unions, the government will announce today that the number of students training to work in secondary schools will fall by more than 2,000 from September, a decrease of 14%.
Ministers will also abolish bursary packages over concerns that millions of pounds are being wasted each year training students who never make it into the classroom."
• Cambridge university is offering all its employees the chance to apply for voluntary redundancy to ease the pressure of budget cuts, reports the Independent. All those accepted under the plan will be given a lump sum equivalent to one year's salary.
• And the Independent has another good tale: One of the country's top-performing state schools, Hockerill Anglo-European College in Bishops Stortford, Hertfordshire, has appointed a student counsellor with the sole aim of helping pupils to apply for universities overseas because their fees will be cheaper than those in England from next year.
• Tory and Telegraph favourite Katharine Birbalsingh is being blamed for the sudden closure of the inner-city academy where she was deputy head, reports the Telegraph. St Michael and All Angels in Southwark, south London, has been declared "non-viable" after applications fell dramatically in the wake of Birbalsingh's remarks about it at the Tory party conference.
As Jeevan Vasagar wrote in a report last week:
"Birbalsingh's speech in October attacked dumbed down standards in exams and 'chaos' in classrooms. She illustrated her speech with pictures of children, referring to one who said his friend was 'born with anger management'. She said the children's use of the phrase revealed 'a deeper culture of excuses'."
• @SchoolDuggery points out that: "A massive debate going on @localschools_uk about Steiner schools taking free school status".
Insight into journalism seminars for teachers
A unique opportunity for teachers to spend a day at the Guardian, find out how a national news media organisation works and get ideas and resources that can be used in the classroom.
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.
Multimedia 31 March Writing for a news website, web editing, blogging, the use of social media, video production; podcasting.
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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