They were once considered an inoffensive publication, used mainly to announce upcoming cake sales, inset days and quiz nights. But now school newsletters have become the latest front of a battleground between teachers and pushy parents, as schools try to reassert their dominance by using increasingly ‘authoritarian’ language. Read more
Transgender students should not have to declare their birth gender when applying to university sports clubs, the National Union of Students is expected to rule. At the moment transgender or intersex students are only allowed to join the teams that they were assigned to at birth rather than the gender that they identify with now. Read more
Oxford University students have been warned they may be being racist if they fail to look another student in the eye or talk to them directly. Undergraduates were also told not to ask a black or ethnic minority student where they are from ‘originally’, and that joking about someone’s accent may be racist. The Oxford equality and diversity unit’s warnings come in a list of “micro-aggressions” sent out in its Trinity term newsletter. Read more
The government’s funding of its free schools programme has been denounced as ‘incoherent and too often poor value for money’ in a hard-hitting report by a cross-party committee of senior MPs. The report by the public accounts committee accuses the Department for Education of spending ‘over the odds’ on unsuitable sites and building free schools in areas where extra places are not always needed. Read more