Education – The Conversation

University still pays off – even in lower-wage Britain

2025-11-04T18:14:45Z

In the upcoming budget, Chancellor Rachel Reeves is expected to raise the minimum wage to £12.70 an hour: £26,416 annually for a full-time job. This means that the gap between salaries for minimum wage jobs and those for professional jobs that require a degree is shrinking fast.

Some smaller law firms are already paying newly qualified solicitors barely more than minimum wage. “Why would young people take on £45,000 of student debt if they can earn the same stacking shelves?” one executive told the Financial Times.

The concern from business leaders is understandable, but it’s focused on the wrong problem. This isn’t a story about university losing its value. It’s a story about Britain becoming a lower wage economy.

Based on all available evidence, university remains a sound long-term investment. The raw undergraduate earnings premium – the simple difference between graduate and non-graduate median salaries – stands at £11,500 per annum.

Earnings by education level:

Median Gross Annual Earnings by Education Level, Working Age Population (25-64), England. Sean Brophy/Office for National Statistics' Labour Force Survey, CC BY-NC-ND

Earnings typically accelerate as graduates progress through their careers and gain labour market experience. The lifetime earnings premium – the additional amount graduates earn over their working lives compared to non-graduates – remains substantial. The most comprehensive recent analysis estimates that the average UK graduate earns about 20% more in net lifetime earnings than a comparable non-graduate – equivalent to roughly £130,000 for men and £100,000 for women after taxes and student loan repayments.

The issue isn’t whether university pays off. It’s that in the current UK economy, everything pays off less.

It bears emphasising here that investing in education remains the primary mechanism an individual has to improve their life chances. In other words, the problem is structural and not the fault of recent graduates.

Britain’s lower wage trajectory

Britain is undergoing a fundamental shift in its economic position relative to competitor nations. It’s transitioning from a top-tier wage economy to a mid-tier one.

The compression of graduate starting salaries against the minimum wage is merely a symptom of this broader downward trend. Since the 2008 financial crisis, UK wage growth has stagnated compared to other advanced economies.

Wage growth in G7 countries, 2008-2024:

Real wage growth comparison, UK vs OECD countries, 2008-2024. Sean Brophy/OECD Data Explorer, Average annual wages, US dollars, PPP converted, CC BY-NC-ND

Much has been written about Britain’s so-called “productivity puzzle”, but one of the likely culprits is the fact that British executives don’t invest in training their workers compared to their international competitors. Instead the burden of upskilling the UK workforce shifts to universities.

This in turn causes the government to apply pressure to the higher education sector to be more responsive to the needs of employers, which has the perverse effect of calling for the elimination of what are deemed “low value degrees”.

Yet universities are several steps removed from the day-to-day realities of the workplace, and are far less suited to providing role-specific training than employers themselves.

When neither employers nor universities effectively address the skills needed in the economy, the result contributes to a low-investment, low-productivity trap that depresses wages across the entire economy.

The productivity gap:

UK productivity growth comparison with G7 nations, 2008-2024. Sean Brophy/OECD Data Explorer, CC BY-NC-ND

Until private sector leaders tackle it through renewed training investment, blaming recent graduates or universities for wage compression is misplaced.

Wage compression affects everyone, but it’s particularly visible at the graduate entry level. When the overall wage distribution compresses, entry-level professional salaries get squeezed from below by rising minimum wages and from above by stagnant mid-career earnings.

Risk and reward

The average English graduate now carries £53,000 in student debt. In a high-wage-growth economy, taking on substantial debt to access the graduate premium makes clear sense – you’re buying a ticket to rapid salary progression. In a low-growth economy, the same debt represents a different risk profile for the same investment.

And the social mobility implications are real. Students from families who can afford to subsidise them through university and early career years face less risk than those who cannot.

The fundamental calculus that favours university education hasn’t changed. Educated workers still earn more, enjoy better employment prospects, and have more career options. But the simple fact is that financial returns may be lower in a lower wage economy.

This is similar to how investors adjust expectations after decades of high returns. The question isn’t whether to invest in university, but what financial returns to reasonably expect. A graduate premium of 15% instead of 20% is still a premium. Reaching peak earnings in your early 50s instead of mid 40s is slower, but the trajectory still leads upward.

Britain is settling into a mid-tier wage economy unless firms start investing in workers like their international competitors do. This creates a risk of brain drain, as graduates seek higher wages in countries that value their skills more highly.

Until that changes, universities are urged to scrap “low-value” degrees while employers slash training and expect graduates to bring the skills they no longer provide through training. The graduate premium still exists – but in a lower wage economy, expect it to be smaller.

Sean Brophy does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Design and technology’s practical and creative skills should see it revived in the school curriculum

2025-11-03T17:22:27Z

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Studying design and technology (D&T) at school gives children the opportunity to get up from behind a desk and learn practical skills. It’s the only subject in the national curriculum in which children can develop and create tangible solutions to real problems.

They can get an insight into whether they might enjoy careers in design, fashion, engineering, technology or food. And they can learn skills that will be useful to them at home, in the workplace and in society.

D&T could play a crucial role in the government’s aim to revitalise the national curriculum in England, enrich children’s learning, and prepare young people for vocational education and training. The practical and hands-on approach children learn through D&T in primary and secondary schools can raise their awareness of vocational options and prepare them for technical and vocational education after their GCSEs, whether or not they chose an overtly D&T-related career pathway.

Once a thriving part of the national curriculum, D&T has suffered years of decline. The ongoing review of the national curriculum in England provides the ideal opportunity for national education policy to revive the value of practical and creative learning for its pupils.

D&T was a compulsory GCSE until 2004. It has since plummeted in popularity. The number of GCSE entries has shrunk in England from over 400,000 entries in 2004 to 137,016 in 2025. School funding has also decreased in real terms, affecting relatively expensive subjects such as D&T.

GCSE Design and Technology entries from 1996 to 2024. Matt McLain, CC BY-NC-SA

The introduction of the English Baccalaureate (EBacc), which compares schools based on how many students take certain GCSEs, has added to this issue. The EBacc is weighted towards traditionally academic subjects: English, maths, the sciences, geography or history and a language. It incentivises schools to encourage students towards these subjects.

The knock-on effect of this has been the drastic reduction of curriculum time and budgets for more practical and creative subjects, such as D&T, in many secondary schools. This prioritisation of certain subjects over others may also affect how young people think about learning skills that prepare them for work in the creative and manufacturing industries.

Design and technology teaches young people practical skills. BearFotos/Shutterstock

There also aren’t enough D&T teachers. Government census data for England shows that in 2024-25, just 618 D&T trainees were recruited – 39% of the target number. It was an even lower number the year before.

Bursaries for new teachers are also lower for D&T than for subjects such as chemistry, computing, mathematics and physics. This means graduates in Stem subjects – science, technology, engineering and maths – who would be good candidates to teach D&T may opt for science or maths instead. In 2018, the Department for Education excluded D&T from a list of what it considered Stem subjects.

Yet in a world facing rapid technological change, climate challenges and skills shortages, practical and creative subjects such as D&T are more vital than ever. England faces a critical skills gap in design, engineering and manufacturing. These are industries essential for growth.

The World Economic Forum’s 2025 Future of Jobs report outlines the core skills prioritised by employers. Many of these are promoted by D&T: they include creative thinking, technological literacy, quality control, and design and user experience.

Design and technology is not a nostalgic throwback or a soft alternative to academic rigour. It is a challenging and vital part of preparing young people for the future. As England faces economic, environmental and social challenges, we need a curriculum that equips students to think creatively, solve real-world problems and engage with technology meaningfully.

The final report of England’s review of school curriculum and assessment, due for publication this autumn, presents an opportunity for a renaissance in practical and creative learning, as well as a revaluing of experience alongside knowledge.

Matt McLain received funding from the Department for Education to draft the current subject content for GCSE and A Level design and technology. He is also a trustee for the Design and Technology Association, who support the teaching of the subject in schools.

Special educational needs reform could be a bureaucratic nightmare – here’s how to put families first

2025-10-30T13:53:48Z

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Plans to reform support for children with special educational needs in England have been delayed after the government announced its new policy would not be unveiled until 2026, rather than autumn 2025.

However, there has already been some indication of what the government will do. The education secretary, Bridget Phillipson, recently promised to set “clear expectations for schools” on how they work together with pupils’ parents. She also outlined her intention to overhaul the process by which parents can make complaints.

In a statement, Phillipson said: “To help us deliver the most effective set of reforms we can, I have taken the decision to have a further period of co-creation, testing our proposals with the people who matter most in this reform – the families – alongside teachers and other experts.”

The additional wait for the schools white paper that will set out the policy will be disappointing to those who are keen to see change in the system. But it also creates an opportunity to ensure the government gets reform right.

As an expert in inclusive education, I argue the call for closer collaboration and the explicit mention of family involvement are excellent signs. However, the government should rethink its framing of parental engagement as a set of expectations that schools must meet.

On paper, this approach looks as if it could safeguard the support children are entitled to. But in reality it risks reducing what can be a mutually respectful and beneficial partnership to a transactional checklist and added bureaucracy.

What is needed instead is effective partnerships with families based on authentic engagement and courageous conversations, based on respect, openness and compassion.

This change in culture can be supported by improved teacher training. This should promote inclusion as a shared responsibility, rather than as sheer accountability.

For example, for children with additional needs, transitions in their educational journey are important and potentially difficult moments. These include starting school, moving between primary and secondary, between mainstream and alternative educational provision, and into adulthood.

Making family involvement happen

Parents and carers can and should play an important role in their children’s education, and their voices should have power. This is particularly vital for children with special educational needs and disabilities.

Parents know their children best. They see their strengths, struggles, and the little things that make a big difference. Irrespective of this, they are routinely excluded or sidelined from decisions about their child’s education.

A recent House of Commons committee report on special educational needs highlights that many parents feel treated as inconvenient or unreasonable. These adversarial dynamics have severely eroded trust in the system.

Findings from an all-party parliamentary group inquiry into “loss of the love of learning” reveal that parents lose confidence in formal education: it’s perceived as a source of anxiety, stress and exclusion for children whose needs may require different teaching and learning approaches.

For these reasons, parental involvement must be central to reform of special educational needs support. Joint planning, emotional support, and coordination at every stage with teachers and others involved in the child’s journey is needed. This can help children adjust and reach emotional and developmental milestones.

We need to move away from a situation where parents are seen only as receivers of expertise, not as experts themselves.

Parents’ knowledge and experiences of disability and difference can lead to real change. It’s right that they are involved in decision making, at school and community level and in national consultations on education policy.

Parents’ experiences and knowledge can offer real value. Rido/Shutterstock

Without real input in decision making, the risk is that parental involvement becomes tokenistic rather than transformative, especially when deep-rooted systemic injustices remain in education for children with special educational needs.

Decent parental engagement requires other changes to the system. Children with special educational needs and disabilities often receive support from different services. These need to be coherent so that parent and carer involvement does not become fragmented. The Education Select Committee’s call for a joint workforce strategy on special educational needs and disabilities, including health and care services, must be taken seriously.

Equally, trust and respect needs to be reinstated towards teachers and Sencos: teachers who have an additional role as their school’s special educational needs coordinator. Despite often working in extremely hard conditions and with limited resources, teachers often absorb demonising attitudes and blame.

Sencos are not allocated the time and continued training required for their role. They also do not have the power to make strategic decisions on inclusion.

The Labour manifesto promised to “light the fire” of opportunity for every child. By truly bringing families into their children’s education, the upcoming white paper on schools could be that spark. Otherwise, it risks becoming another layer of bureaucracy in an already overwhelmed system.

Paty Paliokosta does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Why so many children in the youth justice system have special educational needs

2025-10-29T18:10:51Z

Sabphoto/Shutterstock

Walk into any custodial youth justice facility in the UK – from young offender’s institutions to secure training centres and children’s homes – and you’ll be met with an unexpected reality: the majority of children in these settings have special educational needs and disabilities.

In particular, a very high proportion of children in custody have neurodisabilities. These are long-term conditions affecting the brain and nervous system, and range from autism to brain injuries and foetal alcohol spectrum disorders.

These conditions are grouped together because they affect children’s cognition (including memory, attention and concentration, and executive functioning – mental skills necessary for daily life), as well as their emotional regulation, social communication skills and physical development. This is a pattern repeated in youth justice systems across the world.

For example, estimates suggest that 50% to 87% of children in custody globally have a brain injury. However, research from Canada suggests that brain injury affects around 20% of children in the general population. Over 60% of children in custody globally have a speech, language and communication impairment, compared with 1-3% in the general population globally.

Autistic children make up between 2% and 18% of children in custody across Europe and the USA, compared with 0.3 to 1.9% in the general population in Europe and the USA. While there is significant difference between countries, approximately 30% of children in custody globally have ADHD. This compares with 7% in the general population globally.

While just 0.7% of children in the general population have foetal alcohol spectrum disorders, these affect 11% to 21% of children in custody. Foetal alcohol spectrum disorders are a range of cognitive, behavioural and physical conditions which can affect a child as a result of their mother drinking alcohol during pregnancy.

Some children in custody may have very complex needs, with multiple overlapping conditions. Additionally, children may have needs that don’t quite meet diagnostic criteria for any one condition but still have a significant impact on their lives. These children have often had disrupted educational backgrounds, with multiple school moves or periods of absence. This means that they also may not have had their needs identified in school.

Why is this happening?

Of course, having a neurodisability in no way makes children inherently criminal. The majority of children with special educational needs will never come into contact with the youth justice system. So what is it that makes this small group who do more vulnerable?

School exclusion appears to be a really key component in pathways into the justice system for these children. My research with colleagues explored rates of neurodisability and school exclusion in prisoners in Wales. We found that those who scored more highly on a measure of neurodisability were also more likely to have been excluded from school. Those who had been excluded from school were also more likely to have had their first conviction at a younger age.

This finding aligns with Department for Education statistics, which indicate that exclusions are disproportionately affecting children with an identified special educational need. Children with special educational needs represent just around half of all permanent exclusions in England. However, they represent only about 17% of the mainstream school population.

School exclusion plays a role in this pathway. AlexandrMusuc/Shutterstock

There is plenty of convincing evidence that school exclusion is harmful, and increases the chances of children ending up in the criminal justice system.

Despite this, many accounts report a concerning rise in the use of zero-tolerance behavioural policies in the UK. This could be linked with a rise in the rates of school exclusions reported in the most recent Department for Education statistics.

In 2023-24 there was a 21% increase in the use of fixed-term exclusions (sometimes called suspensions) in England from the previous year. There was also a 16% increase in permanent exclusions.

Combined vulnerabilities

Children who end up in the youth justice system often have multiple other disadvantages layered on top of this systematic exclusion from school. For example, my recent study with colleagues used data from half a million children in the UK. We found that child poverty compounded the likelihood of having contact with the youth justice system for children with neurodisability. This means that it was children who had both disadvantages who were most vulnerable.

This growing body of evidence demonstrates that society is failing these children. When children with neurodisability and complex social disadvantage continue to be punished and excluded, we can’t be surprised when they end up on the fringes of society.

There are ways to remedy the problem of school exclusion. These include more specialist classrooms and units, as well as providing teachers with more options and support for children who aren’t thriving in the mainstream classroom.

In addition, more can be done to remove the layers of disadvantage that these children experience. More generous family welfare policies might help to lift children out of disadvantage and support them to have a better start in life.

Action like this could divert children away from the youth justice system long before they ever have contact with the police.

Hope Kent currently receives funding from ADR-UK, and has previously recieved funding from the Economic and Social Research Council. She is affiliated with the UK Acquired Brain Injury Forum.

‘Hallucinated’ cases are affecting lawyers’ careers – they need to be trained to use AI

2025-10-29T14:56:19Z

Gorodenkoff/Shutterstock

Generative artificial intelligence, which produces original content by drawing on large existing datasets, has been hailed as a revolutionary tool for lawyers. From drafting contracts to summarising case law, generative AI tools such as ChatGPT and Lexis+ AI promise speed and efficiency.

But the English courts are now seeing a darker side of generative AI. This includes fabricated cases, invented quotations, and misleading citations entering court documents.

As someone who studies how technology and the law interact, I argue it is vital that lawyers are taught how, and how not, to use generative AI. Lawyers need to be able to avoid the risk of sanctions for breaking the rules, but also the development of a legal system that risks deciding questions of justice based on fabricated case law.

On 6 June 2025, the high court handed down a landmark judgment on two separate cases: Frederick Ayinde v The London Borough of Haringey and Hamad Al-Haroun v Qatar National Bank QPSC and QNB Capital LLC.

The court reprimanded a pupil barrister (a trainee) and a solicitor after their submissions contained fictitious and inaccurate case law. The judges were clear: “freely available generative artificial intelligence tools… are not capable of conducting reliable legal research”.

As such, the use of unverified AI output can no longer be excused as error or oversight. Lawyers, junior or senior, are fully responsible for what they put before the court.

Hallucinated case law

AI “hallucinations” – the confident generation of non-existent or misattributed information – are well documented. Legal cases are no exception. Research has recently found that hallucination rates range from 58% to 88% in response to specific legal queries, often on precisely the sorts of issues lawyers are asked to resolve.

These errors have now leapt off the screen and into real legal proceedings. In Ayinde, the trainee barrister cited a case that did not exist at all. The erroneous example had been misattributed to a genuine case number from a completely different matter.

In Al-Haroun, a solicitor listed 45 cases provided by his client. Of these, 18 were fictitious and many others irrelevant. The judicial assistant is quoted in the judgment as saying: “The vast majority of the authorities are made up or misunderstood”.

These incidents highlight a profession facing a perfect storm: overstretched practitioners, increasingly powerful but unreliable AI tools, and courts no longer willing to treat errors as mishaps. For the junior legal profession, the consequences are stark.

Many are experimenting with AI out of necessity or curiosity. Without the training to spot hallucinations, though, new lawyers risk reputational damage before their careers have fully begun.

The high court took a disciplinary approach, placing responsibility squarely on the individual and their supervisors. This raises a pressing question. Are junior lawyers being punished too harshly for what is, at least in part, a training and supervision gap?

Education as prevention

Law schools have long taught research methods, ethics, and citation practice. What is new is the need to frame those same skills around generative AI.

While many law schools and universities are either exploring AI within their modules or creating new modules that look at AI, there is a broader shift towards considering how AI is changing the legal sector as a whole.

Students must learn why AI produces hallucinations, how to design prompts responsibly, how to verify outputs against authoritative databases and when using such tools may be inappropriate.

The high court’s insistence on responsibility is justified. The integrity of justice depends on accurate citations and honest advocacy. But the solution cannot rest on sanction alone.

How to use AI – and how not to use it – should be part of legal training. Lee Charlie/Shutterstock

If AI is part of legal practice, then AI training and literacy must be part of legal training. Regulators, professional bodies and universities share a collective duty to ensure that junior lawyers are not left to learn through error or in the most unforgiving of environments, the courtroom.

Similar issues have arisen from non-legal professionals. In a Manchester civil case, a litigant in person admitted relying on ChatGPT to generate legal authorities in support of their argument. The individual returned to court with four citations, one entirely fabricated and three with genuine case names but with fictitious quotations attributed to them.

While the submissions appeared legitimate, closer inspection by opposing counsel revealed the paragraphs did not exist. The judge accepted the litigant had been inadvertently misled by the AI tool and imposed no penalty. This shows both the risks of unverified AI-generated content entering proceedings and the challenges for unrepresented parties in navigating court processes.

The message from Ayinde and Al-Haroun is simple but profound: using GenAI does not reduce a lawyer’s professional duty, it heightens it. For junior lawyers, that duty will arrive on day one. The challenge for legal educators is to prepare students for this reality, embedding AI verification, transparency, and ethical reasoning into the curriculum.

Craig Smith does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Children with special educational needs are more likely to miss school – it’s sign of a system under strain

2025-10-27T10:16:01Z

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Pupils with special educational needs and disabilities are twice as likely as their peers to be persistently absent from school.

Persistent absence means that they miss up to 10% of school sessions (sessions are a morning or afternoon at school). For those with an Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP) – a legal document that lays out support they are entitled to – the picture is even worse. They are up to seven times more likely to be severely absent, meaning that they are missing more than half of school sessions. Absence is higher still for pupils in special schools compared with those in mainstream education.

Suspensions tell a similar story. Pupils with special educational needs are almost four times more likely to be suspended than those without.

Engagement among pupils with special educational needs also drops sharply in secondary school. Only 45% say they like being at school. And it’s not just pupils who feel the system isn’t working: three-quarters of teachers in a recent survey said schools are not inclusive enough for all pupils.

The current approach to inclusion often relies on case-by-case fixes, but this isn’t sustainable. Since 2016, the number of EHCPs has risen by over 80%, yet the systems for assessing and meeting children’s needs have not kept pace. Many children’s needs go unidentified or unmet, leaving families feeling unsupported and forced to fight for help in an under-resourced system.

Many teachers also feel that school isn’t inclusive enough for children with special educational needs. Ground Picture/Shutterstock

Schools, too, say they struggle to access the external professionals needed for assessments. In one survey, school staff ranked meeting the needs of pupils with special educational needs as their second-biggest challenge, just after budget pressures.

Lifelong effects

When needs go unmet, the consequences can be long-lasting. Persistent absence and suspension both increase the risk of young people leaving school without qualifications and not going into work or training. These issues can spill into adulthood, with poorer job prospects and a higher risk of involvement with the criminal justice system. Addressing special educational needs effectively isn’t just about education – it’s about improving life chances.

The solutions start with making mainstream education genuinely inclusive and properly funded. Schools need cultures that promote belonging and partnership with families to rebuild trust and confidence. National standards for inclusion would help, as would more training for school staff and leaders, alongside better access to specialist support professionals.

We also need to rethink what counts as success in education. A broader mix of qualifications and career paths would help young people play to their strengths and prepare for the future. Schools can also boost engagement by giving pupils more say in decisions that affect them, offering greater choice in the curriculum, and ensuring access to enrichment activities – sport, arts, volunteering and social opportunities – which are proven to improve attendance and wellbeing.

For pupils with special educational needs, timely, targeted support can make all the difference. Skilled mentors, smaller classes, adapted timetables and evidence-based support programmes can help pupils boost school attendance and academic progress. They can also help children manage their emotions and enable them to feel more connected to school. For those struggling with transitions – such as moving schools or preparing for work – proactive planning, supported internships and job coaches can ease the process and build confidence.

Even with good inclusive practice, some pupils will still struggle. In those cases, high-quality alternative provision can offer a temporary respite and a route back to mainstream education.

Unless we rethink what education is for – and how we support pupils to engage with it – thousands of young people will be denied their potential. One of us (Caroline Bond) contributed to the development of an approach that mainstream schools can use to help children feel safe in school. It was created with parents, autistic young people and professionals to offer a practical way for schools to understand and support pupils who find school attendance especially difficult.

With school attendance under national scrutiny and special educational needs funding under pressure, this is a crucial moment to ask how we can build a system that genuinely includes every young person – not just in name, but in practice.

Luke Munford receives funding from UKRI and the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR).

Caroline Bond does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

What are V-levels, England’s new post-16 qualification, and will they improve vocational education?

2025-10-23T16:40:35Z

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The government has announced that consultation will begin on a new vocational qualification for England: V-levels.

These are intended to replace a number of existing technical routes currently available to post-16 learners, and make it possible for students to combine academic and vocational courses. V-levels will, the government claims, streamline the options available to students and offer a clearer pathway to both higher education and the workplace.

Few would disagree that the vocational sector in England needs a shake-up. But is the new qualification really the solution the government promises?

V-levels are planned to begin in September 2027 as part of a gradual four-year rollout. Each V-level will equate to 360 guided learning hours, the same as one A-level. Possible subjects may include arts, craft and design, music and music performance, education and early years, legal services, and travel and tourism.

The equivalence with A-levels means that students should be able choose to take several V-levels in different subjects. They could even mix and match them with A-level subjects, rather than having to make a choice between an academic and a vocational route.

This contrasts with other vocational options available to young people after their GCSEs such as apprenticeships and T-levels, the latter of which are equivalent to three A-levels but focus on a single, specifically technical, subject.

In theory, students can currently mix A-levels with another type of work-related qualification, the BTEC, but in practice this option isn’t widely available. It is envisaged that the new V-levels will replace BTECs, which will be gradually de-funded.

The new qualifications are proposed as part of the government’s recent policy document on post-16 education and skills. They form part of Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s plans for two thirds of young people to either go to university or achieve a technical qualification by simplifying the “confusing” and “fragmented” landscape currently faced by 16-year-olds and their families.

If successful, the shift in focus away from Tony Blair’s aspirations for 50% of young people to go to university could be a significant step in promoting parity between academic and vocational pathways.

In theory, students will be able to mix and match academic and vocational subjects. DJ Creative Studio/Shutterstock

If students will indeed be able to mix A-levels and V-levels, the new initiative represents a significant step towards breaking down the perceived divide between academic and vocational qualifications. But this will only hold true if students are able and willing to combine them in the way the government suggests.

However, V-levels will involve more non-examination assessment than A-levels. This may mean that students continue to see A-levels as a more prestigious accreditation.

There is also the risk that some higher education institutions may not consider a V-level the same standard as an A-level when assessing entry requirements. Their smaller size may even mean that V-levels are seen as having less status than the BTECs they replace.

Many of the proposed V-level subjects are already available as a single-subject BTEC, but the new qualification will mean less commitment to choosing a specialist area at a young age.

In theory, young people might therefore be able to choose a V-level in, say, criminology alongside A-levels in subjects such as law and sociology. In practice, it remains to be seen how easy it will be for schools to offer such flexibility to their students.

Students wishing to specialise will be left with one option: a T-level in a single subject. The consultation papers state these have demonstrated a “strong performance” since their introduction in 2020, although this has been contested in some quarters.

While the de-funding of BTECs appears to reduce the options available, the government promises T-levels will “continue to grow”, with proposed new subjects including sports science, care services, music technology and performing arts. However, some of these will require the development of the appropriate occupational standards – a description of an occupation set by Skills England – first.

The proposals have been described as a “big step forward” in their ambition for “a more joined-up system” by the Association of Colleges. Others, including the Sixth Form Colleges Association, have sounded a note of caution over the “significant qualification gap that will open up when BTECs are scrapped”.

The intentions behind the new proposals seem positive. Previous vocational offerings after GCSEs have assumed students are ready to specialise at 16. The size of the qualifications available have made it difficult for students to combine academic and vocational qualifications in the way imagined here.

Elizabeth Gregory does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

England’s new phonics target sets schools an almost impossible task

2025-10-23T16:40:08Z

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The target for the proportion of children passing the phonics screening check – a test of how well children aged five and six in England can “decode” words – has been raised to 90%.

This increase, from 84%, comes as part of the government’s mission to “drive up standards”. It also marks a further commitment to the use of systematic synthetic phonics to teach children to read.

Systematic synthetic phonics has become dominant in education policy and in English primary schools, particularly in the last 15 years. Teachers are now well versed in teaching children how to decode words, which means that they say the right sounds – phonemes – in relation to the letters or groups of letters they see on the page.

Children who don’t pass, meaning they don’t sound out the required number of the 40 words in the test, have to take it again in year two. But results in the phonics screening check have plateaued for nearly a decade. This suggests that however hard schools try, and however good they become at preparing the children for the test, some children will still struggle to master phonic decoding.

It is a well established idea in assessment research that when a high-stakes test is introduced, the proportion of children reaching the benchmark increases initially, as teachers become familiar with how to prepare children for the test. However, there is then a ceiling figure which is reached within a few years.

In line with this, national figures for the phonics screening check show that the proportion of children passing initially increased. Pass rates rose from 58% in 2012 to 81% in 2016, as teachers began to prioritise systematic synthetic phonics teaching and learnt how to prepare children for the test.

But, since then, the pass rate has plateaued at about 80%. The only exception is a post-pandemic dip to 75% in 2022. This suggests that despite the dominance of systematic synthetic phonics as an approach, about 20% of children do not find this system works for them at this age.

Meanwhile, the cumulative figure for children who pass the test in either year one or year two stands at around 89%. This suggests that 10% of children simply need more time to pass the phonics screening check, or more input in order to master the skill of decoding. The remaining 10% who never pass may have additional learning needs – which have likely been identified long before the test – or will need to learn to read in a different way.

What this new target does is effectively require the system as a whole (for the target is a national one, not a school-level one) to ensure that those 10% of children who pass in year two, instead pass the first time around.

The importance of age

So, what can schools do to ensure that all children pass in year one? The figures show that boys are less likely to pass at this point – 76% compared to 84% of girls in 2025. Children born in the summer months are also less likely to pass, as they are younger when they take the test: 73% of August-born children pass, versus 84% of September-borns.

Department for Education data on phonics screening check pass rate by birth month:

Percentage of pupils meeting the expected standard in the phonics screening check by month of birth in English state funded schools. Department for Education

The phonics screening check is so closely related to month of birth that it could be argued that it is a test of age rather than decoding. By the time the test is repeated in year two, the gap between August and September-borns has reduced to 7%, and 85% of August-born children pass by this stage.

The disadvantage gap

Moreover, the disadvantage gap – the difference in achievement between children from disadvantaged backgrounds and their more well-off peers – is significant. For the phonics screening check, it’s 17%, meaning that 67% of disadvantaged pupils pass compared to 84% of their peers. This would suggest that if the government wants more children to pass the test, finding ways to reduce the impact of disadvantage on children’s learning would be a highly effective way of improving the figures overall.

What remains, of course, is a deeper question of why the number who pass the phonics screening check should be such a key focus. Research has found no clear evidence that the phonics screening check improves how well children can read at primary school, or that it reduces the attainment gap.

It has also been critiqued as reducing children’s enjoyment of reading. The international comparison data shows a decline in children’s enjoyment of reading since the early 2000s. The proportion of children who really enjoy reading in England is far below the international average.

In the meantime, this is a target that is going to be very difficult to reach. It may result in an even more intense focus on phonics than we have seen thus far, at the expense of other aspects of learning to read.

Alice Bradbury receives funding from the Helen Hamlyn Trust which funds the Helen Hamlyn Centre for Pedagogy at UCL. She is a member of the Labour Party and the Universities and College Union.

I tried out a new version of Minecraft to see why environmental storylines help children learn

2025-10-21T17:07:43Z

A new version of Minecraft aims to teach students about coastal erosion, flood resilience and climate adaptation, and shows how children can use computer games to learn about complex situations.

CoastCraft is a new custom world from the educational arm of the Minecraft team that can be downloaded and added to the game. It is set in the seaside town of Bude, Cornwall, and players attempt to protect the coastal landscape from the various effects associated with sea-level rises and climate change. The game takes about an hour or two to complete.

Bude is experiencing increasing coastal erosion and the project was developed in conjunction with the UK Environment Agency and Cornwall Council as part of a £200 million flood and coastal erosion innovation programme.

In the game, students use animations to help them understand coastal erosion and rising sea levels before being able to explore and engage with a range of coastal management strategies (including relocating key infrastructure, using nature-based solutions such as plants, or potentially doing nothing at all).

I played the game for a few hours and found that the mechanics of Minecraft lent themselves very well to understanding the principles of environmental management.

If you do a bad job, the sea encroaches on the terrain and certain infrastructure is lost (for instance, a car park or toilets). These dynamics add to the immersive experience of the game. They also really nail the realities of future climate change in a way that is potentially far more relevant and digestible than scientific models and projections.

In making the decisions, you get to move around the map to chat with key people about the potential impact of going ahead with a decision and any other factors. You are limited by how much you can spend. Some decisions, like relocating the lifeguard hut, are very expensive (costing 75% of your total funds), while nature-based management, such as sand dune protection, costs nothing. Through this players are actively introduced to decision-making and the implications of their actions.

Throughout the game, there is a major emphasis on balancing the economic, social and environmental impact. You are able to fast-forward to 2040 and then again to 2060 to see what your decision-making looks like down the line.

After each round, you are sent back to a roundtable of NPCs (non-playing characters) who scrutinise your decisions before revealing a sustainability score on how well you managed to reconcile the competing economic, societal and environmental demands. Once you have finished the game, you can return to the main base and also chat to NPCs about different careers in coastal management.

At the University of East Anglia my team ran a series of workshops with staff and students from different disciplines to help establish what and how climate change should be taught (see figure below).

We suggest that teachers should try to include a range of skills into their curriculum design and planning (see image above) to help students understand the multiple ways in which the challenges of climate change can be managed. CoastCraft is an excellent example of this.

In this game students are in an immersive, digital experience that not only provides basic scientific knowledge but also introduces the idea that choices around environmental management have multiple outcomes that need to be anticipated. It shows that the balance between the environment, economy and society is a fragile one needing attention. Research found involving students in role-playing activities (in that case a pretend climate summit) could help them to understand the realities and politics of decision-making.

Making decisions

In CoastCraft, the experience of getting students to actively engage with decisions and trade-offs, deciding what forms of expertise to listen to or base decisions on, and then getting to witness how decisions affect the future can also be important in helping students understand the politics and challenges of local climate change adaptation.

Games can be used as a teaching method to convey complex environmental stories and immerse students in situations they may not otherwise have access to.

Bude in Cornwall is experiencing increasing coastal erosion. Chris276644/Shutterstock

Recently, educational charity Students Organising for Sustainability found that only 22% of respondents felt that children and young people were prepared for climate change through their education. Anecdotally, I’ve had multiple students tell me that they want to learn about how to help solve the problem of climate and sustainability, not simply find out about why it is happening.

CoastCraft has managed to capture the politics of coastal management in an immersive experience. This is an impressive achievement, showing gameplay can be relevant and educational and still fun.

Don’t have time to read about climate change as much as you’d like?
Get a weekly roundup in your inbox instead. Every Wednesday, The Conversation’s environment editor writes Imagine, a short email that goes a little deeper into just one climate issue. Join the 45,000+ readers who’ve subscribed so far.

Elliot Honeybun-Arnolda receives funding from Natural England for work associated with the Public Engagement Laboratory for Nature and Society.

Will England’s new reading test for secondary pupils be useful?

2025-10-20T16:28:14Z

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All secondary-age school pupils in year eight (aged 12 and 13) in England will be required by the government to take a reading test. The declared purpose is to help drive up reading standards so that “everyone can thrive”. Is this additional test a good idea?

Although the results of the tests will not be published, they will be provided to families and to Ofsted (the body responsible for school inspections in England). The existence of the tests may therefore encourage secondary schools to devote more attention to improving reading.

The average levels of reading are high among young people in England, according to international tests. There was a small decline in scores following the pandemic, but this happened nearly everywhere.

The major concern should be for a minority of pupils who arrive at secondary school without the level of literacy needed for school and everyday life. This means that they are unable to access the wider curriculum. Low literacy at this stage is linked to lower exam results when children reach their GCSEs.

Primary schools tend to emphasise literacy and numeracy, but secondary schools introduce separate subject disciplines, many of which are almost impossible to understand without the ability to read fluently. Basic literacy should be a minimal threshold expectation for school attendance.

It is also vital for everyday and later life as a citizen. If the test means that secondary schools will focus even more on these “catch-up” pupils, then so far so good.

A few problems

However, any test involves a cost, as well as the curriculum time devoted to preparing for it. If schools do not prepare for it, then the test will merely provide a snapshot without changing anything.

It will highlight the lower achievement of children from groups we already know come to school with a disadvantage: those with special educational needs and disabilities, and those from poorer backgrounds.

Tests also cause anxiety for some students. And they may not be accurate measures of what was intended. For example, summer-born children, who may start primary school when they are barely four, tend to score lower on reading tests without being behind the expected level for their actual age.

This “summer-born effect” persists well into secondary school. So will the new reading test be calibrated by age? If so, how?

Tests may make some children anxious. Rawpixel.com/Shutterstock

It will be really hard to get everyone to pass this test. Even for the primary phonics screening test, taken in year one, the target is only that 90% of pupils pass. But it is precisely the other 10%, plus a few more (including home-schooled and hospitalised children), that this new test should be aimed at.

Otherwise the results given to Ofsted will just be a summary of the levels of poverty and learning challenges – special educational needs – of the pupil intake to any school. And my research shows that Ofsted is poor at separating context and raw test scores.

The way forward?

If this proposed new secondary school test is meant to be high stakes and to provoke a positive reaction from schools, then why not have it earlier, for a younger age group? Reading is something best learnt young. Perhaps in year four, when there are still two years to prepare for the transition to secondary school – but primary schools may not welcome another test in an already crowded phase.

Either way, a desire to help is not enough. Schools and teachers must know how to help that last 10% or so of children who struggle with reading, cost effectively and efficiently. There is a growing body of robust evidence on how best to improve literacy for struggling readers – but also a proliferation of less useful approaches promoted by advocates, salespeople, and those with a vested interest.

So, in addition to this new test, the government could do more to help schools judge the quality of evidence for or against specific literacy approaches. This would mean that schools use the limited time and resources they have to help children with their reading making use of the most effective ways to get results. They should not simply rely on organisations or commentators who present a collection of evidence without considering the quality of the underlying research.

Stephen Gorard receives funding from Economic and Social Research Council, and Department for Education, to conduct work in this general area.

Four-year-olds don’t need to sit still to be ‘school ready’

2025-10-16T12:31:34Z

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The UK government’s strategy for early years education in England aims to get children in reception “school-ready”. But what school readiness means is debatable.

Education secretary Bridget Phillipson has pointed out that half of reception-aged children “can’t sit still”. And recent writing guidance outlines handwriting and spelling lessons for reception-aged children.

As experts in primary education, we take the view that children aged four and five should not be sitting still at tables. Expecting children to sit still and formally learn how to write at this early age conflicts with widely accepted theories around cognitive and physical development.

Research by theorists in child development emphasises the importance of active play and exploration. Children can develop their interests through free choice activities that support their language, communication and thought.

Researchers argue that young children should be encouraged to understand their world in a range of indoor and outdoor settings that can be explored through the power of play.

Not all children can or should sit still. Children need physical play to develop their strength, coordination, and motor skills before being given a pencil to write. They need role play to learn how to communicate, question, and hold conversations before following instructions.

They should be encouraged to move and explore through free play instead of sitting still. At an early age, children’s enjoyment of learning should be the priority. For every child this will be different, and practice should respond to children’s preferences and interests.

The government’s Plan for Change sets milestones for strategic national developments. In its mission to “break down barriers to opportunity”, the plan aims for 75% of children to achieve a “good level of development” (GLD) by 2028.

This means that children must meet 12 of the 17 prescribed early learning goals. These measure a level of development across areas like language, personal, social and emotional development, mathematics and literacy when children reach the end of their reception year at school, at age five.

There’s a lot of difference between children at age four. Rawpixel.com/Shutterstock

But what does this value? Three of the early learning goals focus on literacy. Children cannot meet the “good level of development” if they have not met the early learning goal for writing.

As well as this, a child may excel in many of the learning goals, but still not meet the criteria. There are other considerations, such as a potential age difference of up to 11 months among children finishing reception.

This creates an uneven playing field, with some children needing more time to develop language and communication, physical, personal, social and emotional skills before a formal move into literacy and mathematics.

The government recommends that reception teachers should plan regular explicit handwriting and spelling lessons that directly target children who may choose not to write in their play. This directive approach might not suit every child and takes away their choice over opportunities to play.

Learning through play

In Finland, children start primary school at age seven. The Finnish educational model sees learning through play as “essential”.

New Zealand’s Te Whāriki is specifically a “play-based” curriculum. It understands that each child learns at their own pace. It explains the power of storytelling and play to build foundations in reading, writing, and maths.

Within the UK, Wales and Scotland focus on play as essential to improving outcomes. Play pedagogy in the Scottish curriculum emphasises responding to the unique needs of each child. Wales views “playwork” as vital for children’s health, wellbeing and overall development.

England’s Early Years Foundation Stage Framework sets the standards that school and childcare providers in England must meet for the learning, development and care of children from birth to five.

In this document the importance of play and following children’s interests is also highlighted. But this is overshadowed by government messaging and guidance on the importance of formalised academic skills such as phonics and writing.

Our research highlights the importance of connections between child development, culture, and responding to children and their environments.

Playful creativity, problem-solving, and experimentation help build strong foundations for learning. Valuing children’s experiences instead of focusing on prescribed milestones helps them learn to connect with the world around them as well as develop academically.

The English Early Years curriculum needs to return to basics. This keeps foundational learning through play at its heart, including all children and responding to their stage of development.

When we play, listen, read and talk with children, we give them a great start in life. This begins with looking at them as individuals. Learning in the early years should foster a love of learning, promote positive relationships and help children to understand the world.

Nurture, care, play and exploration should be prioritised to develop confident, resilient, and adaptable learners who can navigate a fast-changing world.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Could further education colleges get involved with university mergers? It might help meet Keir Starmer’s education goals

2025-10-14T12:38:17Z

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The merger of Kent and Greenwich universities is set to produce the UK’s first “super-university”. This structure will help the universities manage financial risks, while sustaining their distinctive identities. And the merger could also provide a model for the prime minister’s vision for post-compulsory education, outlined recently at the Labour party conference.

Keir Starmer wants two-thirds of young people to enter higher or technical education or apprenticeships. This embraces both further and higher education, and it demands coherence between them. Building on the model agreed between Kent and Greenwich, that could be achieved by colleges joining universities within a single group.

Further education colleges offer a high proportion of the nation’s technical qualifications and apprenticeships, which are central to the prime minister’s target. In towns without universities, colleges provide the route through post-compulsory education. This is often within group structures.

Some already have links with higher education. London South East Colleges, for instance, has seven campuses, which reach south from Greenwich. The group also has a partnership with the University of Greenwich.

Colleges have experienced equal financial challenges to universities, but for longer. They might be wary of joining universities because it could dissipate their distinctive vocational mission. But the model agreed by Kent and Greenwich shows how that can be sustained.

Combining different traditions

While both are universities, the merger of Kent and Greenwich shows it is possible for institutions with very different identities to combine.

Mergers mean institutions can share resources. Rawpixel.com/Shutterstock

The University of Kent was established in 1965, in the wake of the meritocratic vision for higher education laid out in the 1963 Robbins Report.

This report, produced by the government’s Committee on Higher Education, stated that “university places should be available for all who are qualified by ability and attainment”. It argued that universities should provide a liberal education, rather than meeting employers’ immediate needs. This was embodied in the new maps of learning developed by universities like Kent and their greenfield residential campuses.

Greenwich originates from Woolwich Polytechnic. This was the site from which Labour education minister Tony Crosland announced the expansion of polytechnics in 1965.
Crosland wanted to meet “an ever-increasing need and demand for vocational, professional and industrially based courses”. He also opposed the hierarchy of post-compulsory education, which diminished the status of these courses.

Polytechnics became universities from 1992. Their applied courses then made a pivotal contribution to Tony Blair’s 2001 target for 50% of young people to enter higher education. Blair argued that this would create a society “genuinely based on merit”.

By the time this threshold was passed in 2017, Conservative-led governments had established more universities. Citing Robbins, they expected this to drive higher education expansion through competition and student choice.

Reducing polarisation

Starmer’s speech to the Labour conference signals a different approach. “While you will never hear me denigrate the aspiration to go to university, I don’t think the way we currently measure success in education – that ambition to get to 50% … is right for our times,” he said.

Part of the motivation for this approach comes from a desire to counter Reform UK. People without higher education qualifications are more likely to vote for Reform.

Tackling the dissatisfaction of Reform supporters with highly educated elites requires Starmer to depart from previous assumptions about higher education and meritocracy – that a university education is superior to other pathways through lives and careers. That means placing a higher value on apprenticeships and technical education.

Mergers can improve the financial sustainability of universities and colleges by pooling their risks, operations and investment capacity. For example, a recruitment shortfall in one part of a group can be absorbed by others. Services can be provided at greater scale and lower cost within a group. If investment is needed to build provision in one location, that may be secured through the balance sheet of the whole group.

Investment of this kind is crucial for enhancing teaching quality, learner experiences and reputational standing. But group structures can also minimise course duplication and improve progression arrangements. Rather than competing with each other, colleges and universities within a group can agree course content and admissions requirements.

That enables learners to move seamlessly between different levels and types of education. It also builds connections between towns with colleges and the cities where most universities are based, broadening both study options and job prospects.

Group structures could advance separately in higher and further education. That would encourage competition and hierarchy, rather than coherence and progression. But bringing the two streams of post-compulsory education closer together could help achieve Starmer’s ambition to reduce polarisation. It might also give both universities and colleges some financial breathing room.

Chris Millward does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Without proper support, a diagnosis of dyslexia risks being just a label

2025-10-09T12:59:21Z

PeopleImages/Shutterstock

Whether and when to use the label “dyslexia” has been a perennial debate in education.

Some experts and academics argue that there is too much focus on the diagnosis of dyslexia, rather than on providing support for all children who struggle to learn to read. Others argue that children with the most significant difficulties have to fight to get the recognition they need.

Public figures, including celebrity chef Jamie Oliver, have called for all children to receive early screening for dyslexia.

We work together as researchers in psychology and education, with expertise in how children learn to read, dyslexia, neurodiversity, and how children with special educational needs should be supported. While calls for universal dyslexia screening are well intentioned, we believe this approach could lead to more problems than solutions.

One concern is the lack of accuracy in many screening tools, which can result in unclear or misleading outcomes.

Literacy difficulties are complex. Dyslexia is just one of many possible reasons a child might struggle with reading and writing. Focusing too narrowly on dyslexia risks missing other important learning needs.

Screening also has other limitations. A dyslexia screener is a tool used to flag potential indicators of dyslexia, which may involve one or more approaches such as teacher observations, structured audits, questionnaires or digital assessments. It offers only a brief snapshot of a child’s abilities, rather than a full picture of how they learn.

A range of factors influence how children learn. PeopleImages/Shutterstock

Another crucial issue is what happens after screening. Without enough resources to follow up on screening results, teachers, parents and children may be left feeling frustrated and unsupported.

If there’s no clear plan for what happens next, it can raise expectations without delivering real help. This can leave families and educators disillusioned and children without the support they need to succeed.

We both strongly believe in the value of a dyslexia diagnosis in the right context. One of us (Julia Carroll) recently led a project to gain consensus about the most appropriate definition of dyslexia and the best approach to assessment.

On the basis of this research, we believe a multi-phase process should be used. For younger children, the focus should be on needs rather than diagnosis. Extra help should be available for any children starting to fall behind. Some of these children will progress well. Others will continue to struggle, and an assessment for dyslexia may be warranted.

This approach relies on a thorough understanding of a child’s needs, rather than prematurely categorising young children.

Holistic approaches

One of us (Penny Hannant) has developed a broad-based questionnaire to measure and aid development in early schooling. By gathering information about a child’s development, such as how they respond to sounds, move their body, react to sensory input and process what they see, we can build a clearer picture of what kind of support they might need.

This approach allows for teachers to intervene before educational gaps emerge, offering a more refined and responsive foundation for learning.

A full profiling of strengths and weaknesses is also crucial to diagnostic assessment. Recent research indicates that developmental disorders such as dyslexia tend to have multiple causes, and that there is a great deal of overlap between different disorders.

Research suggests that a significant proportion of children with dyslexia also meet criteria for developmental language disorder or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, which can significantly influence how dyslexia develops.

This means that any diagnostic process must take into account the whole child rather than relying on narrow or isolated criteria. To ensure this, schools need in-house specialists who are equipped to conduct holistic assessments and guide tailored support. A well-informed diagnosis not only helps children do better at school, but means they can continue to get the right support as they transition into adulthood.

Penelope Hannant is on the board of trustees with PATOSS, the dyslexia charity.

Julia M. Carroll receives funding from the Education Endowment Foundation and from the Economic and Social Research Council. She is on the board of trustees with PATOSS, the dyslexia charity.

How voice training can help teachers improve wellbeing in the classroom

2025-10-09T04:58:44Z

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Teachers use their voices in the classroom to build enthusiasm, convey knowledge and defuse tensions.

A warm, encouraging voice boosts pupils’ motivation, reduces anxiety and improves connections with teachers and classroom dynamics. Controlling or harsh tones can unknowingly create stress for pupils, erode trust and lead to disengagement.

But teachers are also stressed, and stress can affect the way we speak. Being stressed affects the control we have over our speech. We tend to speak at a higher pitch with more variation, which can induce vocal strain.

Further, listeners can perceive the speaker’s stress from their speech. That perceived stress has the potential to influence the emotions of the listener, too, which in a school can negatively shape a classroom’s atmosphere.

Few teachers are trained in how to use their voice effectively. Neither are teachers trained in how to protect their voice to ensure career longevity and prevent voice-related illness. Providing voice awareness training for teachers could help reduce the impact of stress and overuse on teachers’ voices and transform communication within the classroom.

Supportive classrooms

It has long been known that children learn more and participate better in supportive and engaging classroom atmospheres. The way teachers speak can affect their pupils’ wellbeing, engagement and self-esteem.

Teachers can create these environments by using a tone or style of voice that demonstrates their interest in their pupils. Vocal delivery affects cooperation, and emerging evidence suggests that it has an influence on how pupils learn.

Pupils are less likely to engage in thinking about concepts and problem solving after hearing a harsh-sounding voice. Instead, they rely more on simple repetition, which is less effective for long-term learning. Together, these studies suggest that teachers can create supportive, optimal learning environments through a nuanced use of voice in the classroom.

After hearing harsh, controlling-sounding voices, pupils have reported heightened negative emotions and feeling disconnected from teachers. Listeners take less than a quarter of a second to detect harsh voices, suggesting specialised brain mechanisms for processing threat-inducing voices.

Listening to supportive-sounding voices, which are often soft, warm and slower-paced, enhances wellbeing, increasing feelings of self-esteem and competence.

How teachers speak can encourage children to express themselves. Rido/Shutterstock

Research has found that showing an interest in others through voice cues changes the way listeners disclose information. This means that teachers using a supportive tone of voice could help pupils talk to them about important or difficult issues, such as bullying.

Vocal training

One of us (Silke Paulmann) has carried out research to evaluate the vocal awareness training offered by a teacher training organisation. After training, the teachers spoke in a less monotone voice, increasing their pitch and volume range, and at a slower pace. They used softer ways of speaking, demonstrating that vocal awareness training can alter teachers’ speech patterns.

Teachers are also at risk of voice problems. In a 2018 study, 30% of teachers surveyed reported voice problems, such as hoarseness, a sign of vocal strain or fatigue, or voice loss. In general, teachers are more likely to develop voice disorders compared with the general population.

However, unlike actors or singers, who also rely extensively on their voices, teachers do not typically receive vocal training. Voice training helps prevent long-term voice damage or strain. Proactively addressing teacher voice health could reduce missed work days due to voice-related issues and help improve teacher wellbeing, as they often occur together.

The vocal training we evaluated included techniques to help the trainee teachers master vocal delivery, as well as tips and tricks around voice health. The training emphasised how harsh and sharp-sounding voices can negatively affect students’ wellbeing.

It focused on how classroom communications benefit from soft, warm-sounding tones, creating a supportive and motivating classroom environment. Comparisons of the teachers’ voices before and after training indicated that their vocal quality improved.

Incorporating even short voice awareness training into teacher education and professional development could better equip educators to create supportive, engaging learning environments, protect their vocal health and support their wellbeing. Currently, though, the availability of voice awareness training for teachers is sparse.

Vocal awareness training can improve teachers’ vocal delivery, enhancing classroom communication and engagement. As education systems focus on both teacher and student wellbeing, incorporating such training into teacher development programmes is a crucial step forward.

In future work, Claire Oakley will collaborate with Mario Education (https://marioeducation.com/) as part of an evaluation project.

Silke Paulmann receives funding from the University of Essex Impact Fund and work on motivational prosody has previously been funded by the Leverhulme Trust. She collaborates with Mario Education (https://marioeducation.com) and 5Voices (https://the5voices.com) on projects related to teacher voice use.

Children are capable of extreme bravery from a young age – a psychologist explains how

2025-10-07T13:01:54Z

afotostock/Shutterstock

Developmental research often tells us how ego centric children are. Yet all too often we hear of children who are forced to demonstrate great courage and care in in a crisis.

The ongoing inquiry into the 2024 mass stabbing of young girls in Southport, England, has produced accounts of extreme bravery among the children subjected to the attack. Indeed, the report of a child standing in front of her sister to protect her from knife blows shows a level of courage many adults might not have possessed in the same circumstances.

Details have also emerged of young children holding the door open to allow other children to escape from their attacker first and of children helping others not draw attention to themselves by running or screaming. Similar accounts often emerge from school shootings in the US – take, for example, the report of a teenager confronting a gunman who attacked pupils at a high school in Colorado in September 2025.

How could such young people conduct themselves with so much composure and selflessness? Psychological research shows that children develop the cognitive, personal and emotional skills needed earlier than people might realise.

Although much of our understanding of human courage comes from the adult field, developmental psychology professor Peter Muris’s 2009 study examined the link between fear and courage in children aged eight to 13. His interviews and studies with his young participants found there may be a link between increased courage and the personality traits of extroversion, openness and intellect.

He also found 94% of the children in his study had already carried out at least one courageous action in their lives, such as dealing with an animal they were afraid of or defending a friend from bullies.

And a 2021 study found that extroversion in teenagers seemed to protect them from developing anxiety. It could be that many of the young children who have acted bravely in a crisis had higher scores of this protective trait.

Experimental psychologist, Joana Viera, and her colleagues in their 2020 study explored how humans react when faced with a threat in the form of an electric shock and the option to help another person avoid the shock. They found that as the likelihood of the threat increased, humans were more likely to go to the aid of another, even at risk of a shock to themselves. Their study suggests that defensive states of mind also activate cognitive processes which promote care giving.

Psychologists Tony Buchanan and Stephanie Preston explored how stress can promote altruism, in their 2014 analysis. They emphasised that the neural circuits that support care-taking under stress overlap with brain circuits associated with reward and motivation. These two areas act together during times of stress, helping shift the persons response away from avoidance of threat towards the protection of others.

This care taking mechanism is seen in many animals from rats to gorillas. Social psychologist Daniel Batson suggested there are two types of responses to acute threat, one motivated from personal distress which is self focused and another based upon sympathetic or empathic responding linked to altruism. We all have the potential to respond in either way, which makes the courage of these children all the more impressive.

Several psychologists have found children as young as 12 months old can recognise and respond with empathy to distress in other humans. A 2011 study found that children as young as two years old could respond to others’ distress with verbal comfort, advice and distraction. The researchers also demonstrated that infants responded with heightened distress when presented with the sounds of distress in others.

Very young children can respond with empathy to others’ distress. Christin Lola/Shutterstock

In order to remember instructions and to show higher order skills such as empathy and the care of others over oneself, the children needed to draw on their developing executive function and areas of the brain’s limbic region. This system is a group of connected brain structures that helps regulate emotions and behaviour. These areas are typically fully developed by young adulthood.

The limbic region. VectorMine/Shutterstock

In the stories that have emerged, you can hear how the children seem to have internalised advice from adults about how to act in an emergency. Repeated instructions are actually easier to recall under acute stress.

These structures are developing throughout childhood. But research has persistently shown that children of preschool age perform executive functioning tasks such as the ability to perceive and respond to another person’s emotional state. Rather than respond from a instinctive fight or flight response, the children who stay calm during critical moments contain their fear enough to care for others.

A 2010 study investigated the areas of the brain in adults associated with increased bravery. Participants with a fear of snakes had to bring a live snake close to their head. The study found courage was associated with the dissociation of fear and sensory arousal. This means that those people who show courage during stressful situations may disconnect from their feelings of fear and their physiological experiences of fear in the body.

The combination of dissociation and instruction retrieval could help explain how they were able to stay so calm and come to the aid of others. Indeed, caring for others in times of distress can distract us from our own acute distress.

Self efficacy, or the ability to act during times of threat can also protect people against the development of post traumatic symptoms. And a 2019 study found that positive traits such as hope, competence and optimism may also protect people against the development of post traumatic stress disorder.

In all instances where children are faced with such great adversity, one can only hope the bravery and mastery they show offers some protection against the immense psychological trauma the endure.

Kirsten Antoncich does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Fifteen books to help children learn about women’s place in history

2025-10-03T17:17:54Z

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Research by charity End Sexism in Schools has found that over half of history lessons delivered to children aged 11 to 14 in England feature no women at all. With the government set to allocate funding to boost the provision of school libraries, here are some books – for a range of ages – to open young eyes to women’s lives, experiences and marginalisation in our past.

Books that strike a balance between being age appropriate, featuring rich, well-researched context and capturing the attention are top of my list. If they focus on lesser-known women in history, all the better.

For primary school children, biographical collections dominate the field. Take Kate Pankhurst’s Fantastically Great Women Who Changed the World. This book introduces young historians to a host of inspiring women from different ethnicities and backgrounds, while carefully setting out the circumstances and barriers that each woman faced in her time and place. The cartoon illustrations and accessible format of the text are a sure-fire classroom pleaser.

Kay Woodward’s What Would She Do? Advice from Iconic Women in History does a similar job for children aged around nine upwards, but with an added participatory element. It presents readers with the real-life dilemmas that the iconic women faced and encourages empathetic problem solving – what would she do? It also underscores the importance of resilience.

Vashti Harrison’s Little Leaders. Bold Women in Black History is an excellent choice. Meanwhile Rachel Ignotofsky’s Women in Science introduces young readers to women of diverse backgrounds, from antiquity to the 20th century, who have made their mark in maths, science and technology.

Biography anthologies introduce children to a wide range of historical figures. Twinsterphoto/Shutterstock

Along with the books compiling sketches of notable women’s lives, there are growing numbers of detailed biographies for primary school children that illuminate women’s place in the past. In the mainstream, there’s the Little People, Big Dreams series. My favourites feature architect Zaha Hadid, singer Aretha Franklin and artist Louise Bourgeois.

Particularly engaging historical biographies for children include Counting on Katherine, the story of Katherine Johnson, an African-American mathematician whose orbital calculations were instrumental in early US space missions. Kathleen Krull’s inspirational story of American lawyer and Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg also deserves a mention, along with Haydn Kaye’s book on the British suffragist pioneer Emmeline Pankhurst.

Women’s rights

My own research includes a focus on early 20th-century feminist activism. I’ve read Kay Barnham’s Women’s Rights and Suffrage with my six year old. It examines women’s historical legal status and political resistance from a global perspective. Then there’s David Roberts’ beautifully illustrated Suffragette: The Battle for Equality and Susan Campbell Bartoletti’s How Women Won the Vote. These books document the key ideologies and objectives of Edwardian British suffragism.

But what about the ordinary women of history, those of us who did not crusade or trailblaze – or at least not in public? Sadly, few books aimed at primary school children address this question head on. However, there is hope on the horizon for teens.

My 13-year-old daughter’s current favourite book is the teen edition of Philippa Gregory’s Normal Women. Making History for 900 Years. Gregory gives a detailed account of the lives of a diverse array of women over this broad time period in English history, highlighting the role of patriarchy and women’s subjugation in everyday life. With accessible language, relatable stories and illustrations, Normal Women is a surefire hit with older children trying to make sense of their place in the world.

Kate Mosse’s Feminist History for Every Day of the Year is also a captivating read, supplementing the multi-biography of notable women format with relative unknowns, for an older audience.

This kind of work, which goes beyond celebrating the famous few and sets out to write women back into the past, represents real progress in historical works for the next generation.

Rachael Attwood does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Specialised teachers can make mainstream schools better for children with special educational needs

2025-10-02T11:58:19Z

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Most pupils who go through the lengthy process of being identified with dyslexia, autism or another condition end up spending the bulk of their time supported not by a trained specialist teacher but by a teaching assistant.

Teaching assistants work with great dedication, but they are not equipped with the specialist training needed to teach children with special educational needs and disabilities effectively. The result is that pupils too often fall further behind, despite the system recognising their needs.

Later this year, the UK government will publish a long-awaited document on planned policy for schools and special educational needs in England. This is set to include the intention to establish more inclusive mainstream education – mainstream schools that are equipped to educate children with special educational needs. The way to do this is to ensure specialist support is available in mainstream schools.

The gaps are stark. By the end of primary school, children with special educational needs and disabilities are almost two years behind in writing, and about a year and a half behind in reading and maths. These are not inevitable outcomes. They reflect unmet needs and under-resourced classrooms.

Parents may value inclusion and want their children learning alongside peers. But studies consistently report parental frustration that schools are often not equipped with the specialist expertise needed to meet those needs.

True inclusion cannot mean simply placing pupils with educational needs and disabilities in the same room with their peers. Without expert teaching to adapt lessons, build literacy and support language and behaviour, inclusion risks becoming tokenistic.

Instead of prioritising investment in specialist teachers within schools, funding has increasingly been channelled into outsourced provision and tribunals. Research suggests that too much funding is tied up in a small minority of cases, when it could be used to strengthen special educational needs provision in every mainstream school.

A more useful approach treats inclusion and specialisation not as opposites but as partners. Specialist teachers bring the deep knowledge of how to support particular needs, while mainstream teachers provide the shared environment where all children can learn together. When these two are connected, pupils get the best of both worlds.

The cost of outsourcing

A central issue lies in how the special educational needs and disabilities system currently delivers support. Many families who can afford private assessments or are able to pursue tribunals succeed in securing additional help for their child, often through placements outside the local authority system. But this approach means only a small group of children gain access to specialist private or publicly funded provision, while many others with equally significant needs remain unsupported.

This reliance on outsourcing is also costly. Expensive independent placements and external assessments absorb government funds that could otherwise be invested in improving provision in mainstream schools. In effect, public resources are concentrated on the few rather than spread to benefit the many children in need.

A more sustainable model is to develop in-house expertise. If every school had specialist teachers able to identify needs early and provide targeted support, far fewer families would feel driven to seek help through tribunals or private routes. Bringing services into schools would ensure that specialist expertise is consistently available to all pupils who need it.

The UK government plans to prioritise special educational needs provision in mainstream schools. Rawpixel.com/Shutterstock

If the government is serious about meaningful reform, I believe it must fund new special education teacher training programmes to expand the supply of specialist teachers, ensuring every mainstream primary and secondary school has access to them.

It should make training in special educational needs and disabilities mandatory across the teaching profession, to reduce variation in identification and support. And it should replace policy ambivalence with a clear commitment: inclusion must be backed by specialist expertise and enforceable entitlements, not just rhetoric.

The special educational needs system is under intense strain, but this is also a moment of choice. England can continue to oscillate between rhetoric and retrenchment, or it can finally embed specialist expertise in the heart of mainstream education.

The government’s decision this autumn will shape the life chances of hundreds of thousands of children. We should not expect children to succeed without the specialist teachers they urgently need.

Johny Daniel does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

The overlooked service that could make plans for a library in every primary school in England a reality

2025-10-01T15:31:29Z

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In a speech delivered at the Labour party conference, Chancellor Rachel Reeves committed to “providing a library in every single primary school in England by the end of this parliament”.

This new scheme should help to achieve the goal set by the Libraries for Primaries campaign, established in 2021, to ensure that every primary school in the UK has a library or dedicated library space.

This is a welcome development. Our research focuses on the value well-stocked libraries can provide to schools and pupils.

School libraries are a vital resource for enriching learning across the curriculum. They provide graduated texts to support learners from the very start of their reading journeys and give children access to a wealth of information, ideas, perspectives and stories.

This investment comes at a time when reading for pleasure is rapidly decreasing. According to a 2025 survey by the National Literacy Trust, only a third of children aged eight to 18 enjoy reading in their free time. Government data shows that 25% of pupils leave primary school unable to read at the level expected.

Some school libraries are very well stocked and are inviting spaces for children to read and share books. However, these spaces need constant investment to keep them up to date and relevant with high-quality texts. Doing so can be difficult for many schools whose budgets are tight.

School library services

To keep pace with developments in children’s book publishing is a substantial undertaking. Schools need to ensure that within their staff team there is sufficient knowledge and expertise to manage and maintain a vibrant library collection. It is also important that school libraries are aligned with the curriculum. Libraries should be an inclusive resource for communities of children with diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds and learning needs.

Many people don’t know that school libraries can draw on the resources and expertise of local School Library Services to keep their stock up to date and changing on a regular basis. They are typically funded and run by local authorities and employ trained librarians who can help schools run their own libraries. However, our research has shown that they are not available in all areas of England, and they are not financially secure in the long term.

School libraries can be refreshed every term by new stock borrowed from the School Library Services, curated by expert librarians. For example, the Leeds School Library Service serves 180 primary schools. It delivered 9,514 boxes of resources throughout the academic year 2022–23.

School Library Services have a wider range of books and resources than a single school could hold. As items borrowed from School Library Services are returned after a set period and then shared with other schools, they offer a model of library resourcing that is more sustainable that a single investment in a school library stock update. One teacher we spoke to said: “You don’t want 30 books to store, you want to use them and send them back and get 30 different ones. I think that’s a huge benefit.”

Some School Library Services help schools to set up their libraries, reorganise them and select great quality texts so that their libraries are current, appealing and easy to manage. School Library Services typically employ specialist children’s librarians with an understanding of the local area, and in some instances can even provide artefacts such as objects and costumes to further stimulate learning. Investment is needed in these services to ensure that they can replenish stock and train new school library specialists.

Finding a book they connect with is really important for young readers. AnnGaysorn/Shutterstock

The wide choice of reading material a library provides gives children more opportunity to find a book they connect with than, for instance, a classroom reading corner. Being able to find a book that they want to read is important to becoming an engaged reader.

Some children will want to read about their favourite video game, others may be more interested in sport, and some will relish the opportunity to delve into a fantasy world of imagination. Talking about the children in their class, a teacher we interviewed said that a good choice of books “spurred some of them on to actually start reading”. Another teacher reported that school libraries “helped promote reading in school because kids have had more access to books”.

The renewed focus on school libraries is long overdue and we look forward to seeing the benefits that schools will reap from this new funding. But in addition to investment directly in primary school libraries in the short term, financial commitment to strengthening School Library Services will also pay dividends for future generations of child readers.

Lucy Taylor has received funding from UK Literacy Association, and the Association of Senior Education Librarians (ASCEL) via Arts Council England (ACE) for projects related to this topic.

Paula Clarke has previously received funding from the UK Literacy Association, and the Association of Senior Education Librarians (ASCEL) via Arts Council England (ACE), for projects related to this topic.

Labour to revive maintenance grants and further education – but can it improve skills and social mobility at the same time?

2025-10-01T13:22:52Z

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Keir Starmer’s recent speech at the Labour conference placed the UK at a “fork in the road”, telling the audience that there is a choice between “renewal or decline”.

Schools, colleges and higher education providers might be pleased to hear that the prime minister sees that education has an important role to play in this renewal. However, the details of the plans contain some challenges – as well as opportunities – for universities, colleges and young people.

Starmer’s vision for a changed education sector in England attempts to use the same measures to tackle two separate problems. On the one hand, proposed reforms attempt to remedy gaps in skills in the workforce. On the other, they address the need to promote social mobility. This is a precarious path to walk.

A key announcement that preceded Starmer’s speech was the limited return of student maintenance grants. At present, students from disadvantaged backgrounds are able to access a maintenance loan to support their study.

This must be paid back once the recipient starts to earn above the threshold of £25,000 for students starting their degree since 2023. The threshold is higher for those who began their studies earlier. The proposed grants will not need to be repaid, lowering student debt for those who are eligible.

However, these grants will only be available to students from lower-income backgrounds studying “priority” courses. These include computing, engineering, the mathematical sciences and health and social care.

This announcement has received a cautious welcome from some quarters. A spokesperson for the Access Project, an organisation focused on improving access to higher education, said: “While we welcome the decision to reintroduce maintenance grants for priority subjects, we hope future funding extends grant eligibility to all higher education courses.”

But some responses have been distinctly negative. These grants seem to be based on taking funding directly from universities in the form of a levy on international student fees. This has resulted in much concern in the already cash-strapped higher education sector.

This is now accompanied by the scrapping of Labour’s long-standing target of half of all young people entering university – now a reality. This will perhaps not be unexpected for those in higher education, who have seen the sector and its students struggle with decreasing resources in the last decade.

Instead, Starmer announced that the aim is now for two-thirds of young people to enter either higher education or an apprenticeship by the age of 25. Starmer spoke directly about attempting to change perceptions about further education, which he described as “the Cinderella service, ignored because politicians’ kids don’t do it”.

This is a valuable and welcome initiative. A more integrated approach to funding and regulation for further and higher education also provides opportunities for the education sector to undergo meaningful renewal.

But again, there is a focus on skills: 14 new technical excellence colleges will concentrate on “high-growth sectors such as advanced manufacturing, clean energy, and digital”.

A social shift that would raise the status of further education to equal that of university will take significant time to achieve – especially when so many careers now require a degree. It is likely to be well into the next parliament and beyond before the target of two-thirds of young people in apprenticeships or higher education can be realised.

What’s more, widespread concerns about the value of university and especially of the worth of “rip-off” degrees can be misplaced. Higher education remains an incredibly powerful tool for social mobility for young people from poor backgrounds.

I believe that many parts of the higher education sector are ready to adapt to become part of the “renewal” the government seeks. Extra funding and opportunities for further education are also to be welcomed.

However, the funding problems colleges and universities face remain serious, despite the government’s investment. And a focus on specific skills means that education in the arts, for instance, remains far more accessible for wealthier young people.

While I appreciate the ambition of trying to address the thorny problem of a skills gap alongside social mobility, there is a risk that in trying to do both, the government achieves neither.

Helena Gillespie receives funding from TASO.

How generative AI is really changing education – by outsourcing the production of knowledge to big tech

2025-09-29T11:37:45Z

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Generative AI tools such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude are now used by students and teachers at every level of education.

According to a report by Anthropic, the company behind Claude, 39% of student interactions with the AI tool involve creating and improving educational content, such as practice questions, essay drafts and study summaries. A further 34% interactions seek technical explanations or solutions for academic assignments – actively producing student work.

Most responses to this from schools and universities have been to focus on immediate concerns: plagiarism, how assessments are conducted and job displacement. They include teaching AI literacy or developing courses for students on how to use and understand AI tools.

While these are important, what’s being overlooked is how evolving generative AI systems are fundamentally changing our relationship with knowledge itself: how we produce, understand and use knowledge.

This isn’t just about adding new technology to classrooms. It changes how we think about learning and challenges the core ideas behind education. And it risks granting power over how knowledge is created to the tech companies producing generative AI tools.

The bigger shift

Generative AI tools, including ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini, can now create content, combine information and even mimic reasoning. As these AI systems are used more in classrooms and lecture theatres, they start to challenge the traditional ways we think about knowledge and learning.

My research focuses on what’s known as AI epistemology. Epistemology is the study of the origins and nature of knowledge. AI epistemology in education means grappling with new questions about how knowledge is produced.

Generative AI can instantly generate seemingly authoritative text on any subject. This forces us to reconsider what constitutes “original thought” versus “assisted thinking”. Traditional skills such as source evaluation, logical reasoning and weighing up evidence, need to be reconsidered when the “source” is a complex AI system trained on huge amounts of data that we can’t fully see or understand.

This represents a profound departure from centuries of education built on human-to-human knowledge transmission. Generative AI doesn’t just change what students learn but fundamentally alters how they come to know anything at all.

Students are increasingly likely to validate ideas by how well generative AI explains them, and increasingly less through their own analysis.

Traditional education relies on learning activities and assessments that align with what teachers want students to be able to do or understand. For example, if the goal is critical thinking, students practice analysing texts and are tested on their analysis skills, not just memorisation, to build deep understanding. But this framework assumes students construct knowledge independently through experience and reflection.

AI is changing how students form knowledge. EF Stock/Shutterstock

Generative AI fundamentally disrupts this model. Students can produce sophisticated outputs without the cognitive journey traditionally required to create them.

Students are now becoming co-creators of knowledge in a machine-mediated system. Co-creation means these groups work together to produce learning outcomes. But co-destruction occurs when their conflicting goals undermine the educational experience. My research on value co-creation and co-destruction in higher education reveals that students, educators, administrators and technology providers with competing interests are shaping educational value.

For example, students might want efficiency, educators want deep learning, and tech companies want engagement metrics. These tensions can either enhance or erode learning quality. This framework now applies to AI integration. When generative AI helps students genuinely understand concepts, it creates value. When it enables shortcuts that bypass learning, it destroys value. Co-creation in education isn’t new, but generative AI as a co-creator changes everything.

Human thought survival

While often framed as the fourth industrial revolution, the current AI shift is more accurately an intellectual revolution. When we outsource thought unthinkingly to machines, we hand unprecedented power to shape knowledge to the technology companies developing this evolving technology.

Tech companies already turn our online behaviour into profit by collecting data to predict and influence what we do next, but we now face something deeper. If a handful of companies own the primary means of knowledge production, they control how we understand the world. Their algorithms’ biases, training data choices, and commercial incentives will determine what is produced and disseminated.

We’ve been here before. Social media exploits our cognitive vulnerabilities to capture our attention. But this time, the stakes are higher. It’s not just our attention at risk, but our capacity to think independently.

This isn’t about whether traditional education remains relevant. It absolutely does. It’s about educators defining what meaningful learning looks like now it’s accompanied by AI.

Generative AI isn’t just a sophisticated calculator; it changes how we understand knowledge. It’s reshaping how students conceptualise expertise, creativity, and their own cognitive capabilities. This will fundamentally change how young people think and learn.

Educators must ensure pedagogical wisdom, not commercial interests, guides this transformation. Encouragingly, this work has started. Centres for responsible AI, such as the one at my own university, ensure educators are driving these critical conversations rather than simply responding to them.

Kimberley Hardcastle does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Your age shouldn’t put you off learning a new language – what the research says

2025-09-23T12:37:00Z

If you’ve always wanted to learn a new language, don’t let age put you off. People aged over 60 can be independent and flexible in how they learn a language – and successful, too.

There is ample evidence from decades of research that, as we age, some of our perceptual and cognitive abilities gradually decline. Our hearing and vision are not as sharp as they used to be, we process information less speedily, and our memory may not be as good as it was when we were younger. These are all known corollaries of healthy ageing which do not normally have a major adverse impact on daily life.

What is noted less frequently is the possibility that these effects need not be deficits in themselves, but may arise from a lifetime of accumulated knowledge and experience. The older we get, the more information we have to sort through, and this may slow us down. In this context, it is also important to highlight the fact that general and especially verbal knowledge can actually grow with increasing age.

In line with this, researchers have investigated language learning in late adulthood and shown that there is no age limit to our ability to learn a new language – we can do it at any point in our lives. However, it is less clear which approach to language learning and teaching works best later in life.

Research with younger adults indicates that an explicit approach which includes explanations of the target language and spells out grammar rules, for instance, is most effective.

At first glance, we may assume that this should apply to older adults too, or indeed that it should be even more true for them, given that it reflects a traditional approach to language instruction. Older adults may well have experienced exactly such an approach during their schooling and may therefore favour it.

To date, there is surprisingly little research that has put this assumption to the test. A recent study in the Netherlands found no evidence that late-life language learners would do better with an explicit approach.

Indeed, it did not matter whether instruction was explicit or implicit, that is, with or without any grammatical explanations. The senior volunteers did equally well, regardless of how they were taught.

Comparing approaches

In my new study with colleague Renato Pavlekovic, we compared an explicit with an incidental approach to language learning. In a small set of online lessons, 80 English-speaking volunteers aged between 60 and 83 learned the beginnings of Croatian – a language they were completely unfamiliar with.

In the explicit approach, a full explanation of the grammatical structure we targeted was given. In the incidental approach, there was no explanation, but additional practice exercises were available instead.

Older learners were successful with different learning methods. fizkes/Shutterstock

We found that learners did equally well regardless of the instructional approach they experienced. They first learned a set of vocabulary items and subsequently the targeted grammatical structure to a high level of success, achieving average scores of around 80% accuracy. This suggests that the teaching approach did not matter to these late-life learners – they could find their own way independently of how the learning materials were presented.

In this new study, we also explored the role of cognitive and perceptual factors as well as our volunteers’ self-concepts: that is, how they felt about their own health, happiness and abilities. In addition, we asked questions about their (former) occupations and prior language learning experience. Interestingly, we found a connection between the ability to learn implicitly (that is, picking things up from context without being aware of it), occupational status (whether someone was retired or still working) and self-concepts.

Specifically, people who reported a more positive self-concept showed better implicit learning abilities. Moreover, people who were still working at the time of the study showed better implicit learning abilities than individuals who were retired – something we had observed in a previous study too. Importantly, this effect was independent of age.

Superficially, a link between employment status, implicit learning ability and self-concept may not make much sense. There is arguably a common denominator, though: confidence could be at the centre of a self-reinforcing cycle. A person with strong implicit learning ability remains in the workforce for longer. This boosts their self-concept, which in turn makes them continue with their occupation for longer.

While in work, they need to take the rough with the smooth; they cannot only engage in activities they enjoy. This means that they continue drawing on their implicit learning ability, and so forth.

Taken together, the results of our study show that late-life language learners can be very successful. They seem to be sufficiently independent to choose the path that works best for them, so it does not matter so much which teaching approach is used. In addition, confidence is important; it appears to arise from a combination of ability and social status.

Karen Roehr-Brackin received funding from the British Academy/Leverhulme Trust (grant reference SRG23\230787) which supported the research project reported here.

Shakespeare for children: an expert’s top ten books to spark their imagination

2025-09-22T12:26:48Z

Nicoleta Ionescu/Shutterstock

As pupils head back to school, they may well encounter Shakespeare’s plays and poems – perhaps for the first time.

I have written about books on Shakespeare’s life or plays for children and young adults for the last three years: fiction and fact, picturebooks and graphic novels, early readers to full-blown novels. Here are my top ten texts that take Shakespeare, run with him, and sweep up readers as they go.

Authors writing about Shakespeare for young people are surprisingly consistent in sticking to widely accepted scholarship. Authors’ notes often acknowledge the academic research that inspired them.

Readers are likely to come away from these books with greater understanding of Shakespeare, some pressing questions about him, and – above all – the experience of reading for pleasure. They are listed roughly in order of reading age.

1. The Boy, the Bear, the Baron, the Bard by Gregory Rogers, 2004

The young protagonist of this wordless picture book boots a football through time and onto Shakespeare’s stage, sparking an irate bard’s pursuit of him through a gorgeously-drawn Elizabethan London.

The boy quickly finds allies in his flight – rescuing a caged bear and an imprisoned noble. He even lands on the royal barge, in time for a dance with Queen Elizabeth I and courtiers. All’s well that ends well, but re-reading will enable you to spot quirky details in the drawings and put words in the characters’ mouths.

2. Bold and Brave Women from Shakespeare by Anjna Chouhan and the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust (authors), Becca Stadtlander (illustrator), 2024

The organisation that looks after Shakespeare’s houses in Stratford-upon-Avon has created this picture book anthology, with short sections on separate figures.

While its title has echoes of Mary Cowden Clarke’s 1850 book, The Girlhood of Shakespeare’s Heroines, its content departs from her Victorian moralising. The depiction of characters, from Cleopatra to Lady Macbeth, offers feminist overtones and a range of skin tones.

3. Rock Bottom by Ross Montgomery (author) and Mark Beech (illustrator), 2020

One instalment in a series of four “Shakespeare Shake-ups”, this book for primary schoolers retells the story of A Midsummer Night’s Dream using the familiar devices of children staging a school production and plans to impress a crush crashing.

I have laughed out loud reading these books. They tell relatable stories about friendship, awkwardness and teacher-pupil tensions. You might forget the plots are from the plays, they’re so deftly retold, but Shakespeare buffs will enjoy spotting allusions.

4. Much Ado About Nothing by Steve Barlow and Steve Skidmore (adapters), Wendy Tan Shiau Wei (illustrator), 2022

My favourite in a series of six editions of Shakespeare’s plays in graphic novel form. Each has a pithy, modernised text and resources at either end of the book to support readers’ understanding of both the play and the period.

Much Ado also exemplifies the series’ commitment to diversity. Importantly, this gels with the diverse casts students are likely to see in contemporary films and performances of Shakespeare, and reflects the ethnic diversity of school (and national) populations.

5. King of Shadows by Susan Cooper, 1999

From a popular British fantasy writer for children, this novel was significantly inspired by the reconstruction of Shakespeare’s Globe theatre in London. It’s the most compelling of a slew of Globe-focused theatre adventures published at the turn of the millennium.

A stage-mad American boy, grieving his parents, time-travels to early modern England and is mentored in acting – and surviving loss – by Shakespeare, who mourns his dead son, Hamnet. Plague contagion allows for some top-notch body swapping.

Shakespeare’s Globe in London is a reconstruction of the Elizabethan Globe Theatre. David G40/Shutterstock

6. Cue for Treason by Geoffrey Trease, 1940

The original “children-in-disguise go on Shakespeare’s stage” novel – at least for me. It was a class text at the end of primary school. It differs from King of Shadows in opening with travelling players touring the Lake District, although it takes in London’s early modern glitterati later. Real historical figures abound and are delightfully shady, as in biographical Shakespeare fiction generally.

7. The Dark Lady by Akala, 2021

This take on destitute children in Elizabethan London running into a kindly, father-figure Shakespeare has various unique qualities. One is balancing the main plot about Henry, a pickpocket who has the supernatural ability to read any language, with cryptic fragments from “the Dark Lady” of Shakespeare’s sonnets, for whom the book is named. Here, she is imagined as the descendent of an African ruling elite.

Akala is a Black British rapper and writer, whose work prominently features Shakespeare – though there are lashings of Charles Dickens’ Oliver here too.

8. Love Disguised by Lisa Klein, 2013

Adolescent Shakespeare opens this novel narrating his Stratford childhood, his father’s business woes, and plans to rescue his family’s fortunes while working in the theatre. In addition to having Shakespeare as the protagonist, this book offers an unusual explanation for his wife Anne Hathaway’s pregnancy before marriage. This is territory well-trodden by scholars, but Klein inventively borrows plotlines from Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure and All’s Well that Ends Well in her interpretation.

9. Saving Hamlet by Molly Booth, 2016

In the vein of Hollywood Shakespeare movies, the narrator’s high school is staging Hamlet and it’s going disastrously. The novel mashes up this genre with time-travelling theatre adventure, so that assistant-director Emma moves back and forth at will between two theatre worlds. The ideas she gleans from each benefit the other, so two high-stakes productions of Shakespeare’s famous tragedy are saved.

Theatre-kids will enjoy a writer who really knows her stuff: oft-overlooked tech crews are well-served by details of lighting and sound production. Saving Hamlet features several modern-day lesbian and gay main characters, with contrasting experiences of coming out.

10. Juliet Immortal by Stacey Jay, 2011

I came to this book because of the Twilight saga, and so may young readers with a taste for paranormal romance. It is set among teens staging Romeo and Juliet at their California high school. Narration is split between a modern-day girl, Ariel, and the undead Juliet.

The story deals superbly with consent, relationship violence and toxic masculinity – all elements of the play that literary critics have acknowledged – and also models positive alternatives. For those whose vampiric appetites aren’t sated, there’s an equally-gripping sequel: Romeo Redeemed.

This article features references to books that have been included for editorial reasons, and may contain links to bookshop.org. If you click on one of the links and go on to buy something from bookshop.org The Conversation UK may earn a commission.

Sarah Olive is a member of the British Shakespeare Association's Education Committee (a registered charity) and founding editor of the free, online magazine Teaching Shakespeare.

Curious kids: why do we dream?

2025-09-18T12:09:51Z

Jorm Sangsorn/Shutterstock

Why do we dream? Vishnu, aged nine, Kerala

That’s a really interesting question, and people have been asking it for thousands of years. But it’s difficult to answer because dreams are difficult to study scientifically.

Think about it: how easy do you find it to remember your dreams every night? Not everyone can do this. If we can’t remember our dreams, we can’t study them.

Curious Kids is a series by The Conversation that gives children the chance to have their questions about the world answered by experts. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to curiouskids@theconversation.com and make sure you include the asker’s first name, age and town or city. We won’t be able to answer every question, but we’ll do our very best.

Some ancient cultures like the Egyptians, the Greeks and the Romans believed that dreams were important messages from the gods. But even they could not agree about exactly where dreams come from, why they happen or what they might mean.

In the last 100 years, many scientists across the world have learned a lot about the science of dreaming. But even still, there is disagreement.

Some scientists think dreams have an important job, others do not. I’ll explain some of the most well-known ideas.

Around the year 1900, an Austrian psychologist (someone who studies how we think) called Sigmund Freud published an influential book called The Interpretation of Dreams. In it, Freud wrote about his experiences of talking to other people about their dreams (and his own dreams too).

He believed that dreams came from wishes or desires buried deep in the mind. He thought these wishes were usually transformed in some way to disguise them in the dream, as they could be quite scary or rude.

Freud would help people to work out what these hidden wishes and desires might be, so they could address them in waking life. He also wrote that dreams are a part of the process that helps keep us asleep, that dreams protect sleep from disturbances. And there is some evidence to support that idea.

Freud’s ideas had a great influence on thinking about dreams for many decades. But since Freud’s time, we have learned much more about how sleep works. And that has inspired new ideas about what dreams might (or might not) be doing.

In the 1970s, scientists like Allan Hobson started to reject Freud’s ideas about dreams, and suggested that perhaps dreams don’t do anything important. In Hobson’s view, dreams had no hidden meaning or function to them.

He thought they might just be random side-effects of chemical processes going on in the brain during sleep. It is one good explanation for why dreams often seem so strange. Hobson thought little bits and pieces of knowledge and imagination get activated and merge together meaninglessly.

But other scientists since then have noticed that not all dreams are strange. Many of them are in fact quite ordinary, and some have content that is important to the dreamer.

Perhaps you have dreamed about something that happened in your life recently, like a fun day out with your school friends or family, or maybe you dreamed you were in a film you watched the day before.

We often dream about things that had a significant effect on us in waking life, or are related to worries we carry with us. And this I think is the most important thing we need to realise: our dreams are connected with our waking lives.

Dreams don’t always make sense - at least at first. Roman Samborskyi/Shutterstock

Some scientists now believe that dreaming about these things might help us to process them, or give us new ideas about what to do in our waking life. This is still difficult to test though. Whether or not this is what dreams are really doing by themselves, you have the choice to look at your dreams and decide what new ideas you can draw from them.

Another interesting idea is that dreams evolved long ago to help us survive threats. A lot of people seem to report dreaming about being chased by monsters or dangerous animals. Maybe you have too.

Some scientists see this as evidence for a threat simulation system that emerged back when we were living in caves and had to hunt for our food while trying not to be hunted ourselves.

If we survive a threatening encounter in a dream, that could better prepare us for surviving real threats when we are awake. The problem with this idea though is that it is too dangerous to test properly.

Even if someone dreams about fighting a tiger, for example, scientists cannot then lock people in a cage with a real tiger and see how well they survive!

That’s one of the exciting things about being a scientist. There are still lots of questions to answer and we’re learning new things all the time.

Anthony Bloxham does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Songs for Littles: the research that explains YouTube sensation Ms Rachel

2025-09-17T16:18:07Z

For many parents of babies and toddlers, there is one YouTube channel that is a household name. Ms Rachel and her Songs for Littles has attracted nearly 17 million subscribers, offering a colourful, playful space where music, movement and early learning meet.

But beyond the catchy tunes and pink overalls, research backs up why her videos are so effective, and why parents should consider joining in, not just letting their children watch.

For years, music therapists have studied how musical interaction supports early development. My own research has looked at how music can strengthen the bonds between parents and their children.

Before becoming a global phenomenon, Rachel Anne Accurso was a pre-school music teacher. When her son experienced a language delay, she sought speech therapy support and noticed a lack of resources for children needing help with language development.

Drawing on her teaching experience, she began creating small music classes tailored to early learners, which eventually became the online content we now know.

When the pandemic hit in 2020, parents were starved of social interactions for their children. Ms Rachel’s videos – featuring her signature pink overalls, funky headbands and high-energy performances – became a lifeline for many.

Learn to Talk with Ms Rachel.

Her colourful videos offer engaging activities that parents and children can listen to and explore together. Simple musical games such as peek-a-boo and action songs encourage family playtime, while attractive graphics and high production standards make the channel very appealing.

Today, the channel has more than 11 billion views, while Ms Rachel herself is estimated to be worth US$6.5 million (£4.8 million).

So, why are her videos so appealing to children and effective for their development? Part of the answer lies in what psychologists call “communicative musicality”. Research has shown that early interactions between parents and infants are intrinsically musical.

‘Parentese’

Elements like rhythm, timing, pitch and phrasing are central to how babies and toddlers engage with the world. When adults speak to children, they instinctively use “parentese”. This is a higher-pitched, exaggerated style of speech with lively gestures and expressive faces. These cues capture attention and make learning fun. They help children absorb language naturally.

Ms Rachel’s videos mirror these principles. Her songs are simple, repetitive and often interactive. They encourage children to respond, copy gestures or sing along.

The videos’ structure, like predictable openings and closings, clear cues and pauses, support attention and help children feel secure while exploring language. Funny moments, surprises and lively expressions make the experience enjoyable, helping the children learn without it feeling like a lesson.

Baby’s First Words with Ms Rachel.

Building on these musical connections can also help develop the bond between parents and child. My research in 2021 into the importance of parents singing with premature babies shows this.

Parents were excited to learn that their babies recognised their voices from before birth. The connection was already there and they just needed to build on it to keep the bond growing and developing.

Ukraine

In 2022, a book I co-authored, looked at the benefits of group music therapy families with pre-school children displaced from Ukraine to the UK due to the war. Some children had speech delays or were struggling to socialise with their peers. In some cases, parents were struggling to bond with their children.

After eight weeks of small group music therapy sessions, significant changes began to take place. Parents reported not only language development but progress in sharing and playing with others as well as feeling more love for their children.

Music became a feature at home too. The songs the children learned became part of family life. Parents were making up their own songs too, about brushing teeth and getting ready for nursery. They realised that making these activities into a musical game made them special times that were full of fun.

What was important in the music therapy groups was to keep the format the same each week. The groups began with a “hello” song on the guitar, where every child was greeted by name. From this beginning, other songs were introduced.

There was time for improvised music with everyone playing and trying out new sounds with instruments before a quieter section using lullabies was introduced. The group ended with a “goodbye” song to finish the experience.

Keeping the same structure ensured the group was a safe space where everyone knew what was going to happen next. This meant the families could really let themselves be part of the experience.

Ms Rachel’s formula of simple repetitive songs using “parentese” is a brilliant way of helping pre-school and nursery-age children develop language and social skills. And, perhaps just as importantly, it’s fun. For children and parents alike, music provides a chance to connect, laugh and grow together.

Elizabeth Coombes received funding from The Music Therapy Charity for the work with premature babies. Very small amount; less than £1000.The first study with Ukrainian Families was not funded. I have since done another study (not referenced here as data analysis still ongoing) with Afghan and Ukrainian families.

Is your child in a classroom with other year groups? Here’s how it could help them

2025-09-15T11:31:00Z

Rawpixel.com/Shutterstock

Some children at primary school, as they head into a new school year, will find themselves learning alongside children of different ages. Year one and year two might be educated in the same classroom, for instance.

Many schools have mixed year group teaching for a range of reasons. It might be because of the size of school: in schools with a small number of pupils, it may be more practical to combine classes.

In other situations, the school may have expertise that they would like to use in the best possible way, and they feel that putting year groups together would be the best way to support all children. This might be because both year groups need to build strength in a particular subject, which a certain teacher specialises in. Or it might be the best way to make use of the school’s resources, such as teaching assistant expertise, to support children.

The routine and structure of the class will be set up to support each child and also ensure that the right level of learning is provided to children.

Much of the research carried out on mixed-age classes is based in small rural schools, as that is where there tends to be the most mixed-age classrooms. It is worth noting that the outcomes of these small schools are generally as good as schools nationally. Research has found limited impact on children, their learning and outcomes as a result of mixed-age classes.

A review of research findings on mixed-age classrooms has found that there is no empirical evidence that student learning suffered from this style of learning. In fact, some students in mixed-age classrooms have reported higher scores in their attitudes towards school and self-concept (how they feel about themselves) compared to their peers in single-age classrooms.

Reflecting the real world

In the world outside school, children regularly interact across a wide range of ages. At home, they often live alongside siblings and relatives spanning multiple generations. In after-school clubs and activities, children may differ by several years in age. Public spaces for play and learning such as parks and museums are open to children of all ages.

Beyond childhood, it is uncommon to encounter higher education or professional environments composed of people from only a single age group. Even during the primary school day, it is typical for children of all ages to share break times. In nearly every context, mixed-age interaction is the norm except for one notable exception – the school classroom.

Apart from in classrooms, mixed-age friendships are the norm. Inside Creative House/Shutterstock

There are some additional benefits to mixed-age classes. They may help enhance social skills, promote individualised learning, and help children thrive socially and emotionally.

They can create a more realistic approach to learning, where older children work more independently and can mentor younger children, and enhance children’s communication and collaboration skills. They can also support a greater sense of belonging and community in schools, when children across year groups form friendships.

A new school year is full of excitement but also apprehension. There will be a lot of new things for parents and their child to manage and cope with. Having your child go into a mixed-age class is a supportive start and one which, if managed well, may enhance children’s experiences in school.

It is important that communication between school and parents is open and honest. Schools will consider a wide range of resources that will support all children’s development over the time that they are in school.

So it is important that if you are unsure about sending your child into a school where there are mixed-age classes, that you have conversations with the school about what they are planning, and how they will be supporting children to develop their learning. Parents and school working in collaboration is the best way to support children as both school and parents have a key role play in supporting children’s development.

Children who are in mixed-age classes will not feel any different to single age classes. As a lot of mixed-age classes are in small schools, there is an additional benefit in that it prepares children to move to high school where they will encounter and mix with children of all ages. Being in a mixed-age class will support and offer a variety of friendships and support their time in school.

Pinky Jain does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.