Due to a house move, there won’t be any Christians in Education updates next week. Don’t go away – we’ll be back just as soon as the new broadband provider permits.
One in three internet users between the ages of 12 and 15 say they saw ‘hate speech’ online in the past year, according to Ofcom’s latest survey of children’s media habits. It is the first time the UK regulator has posed a question about the topic in its annual study. The NSPCC charity said the finding was ‘very worrying’, adding such posts should not be tolerated. Read more
Parents unable to give up work to look after their children can breathe a sigh of relief. Sending youngsters to nursery is likely to be better for them than being at home, because it helps them to develop social and everyday skills, a new report has found. In contrast the children of stay-at-home mums fare less well, having poorer speech and movement, according to research from the London School of Economics and Oxford University. Read more
Very stressful events affect the brains of girls and boys in different ways, a Stanford University study suggests. A part of the brain linked to emotions and empathy, called the insula, was found to be particularly small in girls who had suffered trauma. But in traumatised boys, the insula was larger than usual. This could explain why girls are more likely than boys to develop post-traumatic stress disorder , the researchers said. Read more
Oxford Dictionaries has declared ‘post-truth’ as its 2016 international word of the year, reflecting what it called a ‘highly-charged’ political 12 months. It is defined as an adjective relating to circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than emotional appeals. Its selection follows June’s Brexit vote and the US presidential election. Read more
It’s a familiar phrase for anyone with children: ‘I don’t want to do my homework.’ But in Spain it’s not just youngsters feeling like this, parents are fed up too because they say children are being set too much extracurricular work. So much so, that they have launched a weekend homework strike this month after the OECD found Spanish school children spend a third longer on homework than the average in developed nations. Read more
Schools are still struggling to find good staff with many blaming the crisis on teacher shortages and funding pressures, according to a report. For the third year running, head teachers are reporting problems with recruiting all types of school staff, from teachers to senior leaders, a National Association of Headteachers’ survey found. Read more