Newsround

What is making the news just lately?

• Take a look at the Children’s Voices report from the Children’s Commissioner which examines the wellbeing of vulnerable groups of children in England and their relationship with mental health services.
• If that’s not enough to make you feel depressed, then follow this up with  the Teacher Wellbeing Index 2018, conducted in partnership with YouGov. This highlights a stress epidemic and rising mental health issues across the entire UK education workforce. Great.
• Should prison officers be recruited to support behaviour in schools? Take a look at the blog by Dr Amelia Roberts at the UCL Institute of Education.
• More than a third of all state schools in England and Wales (more than 7,000 schools) are run by religious organisations. Is that a problem? Some think so. Academic Ruth Wareham has been appointed as Humanists UK’s new Education Campaigns Manager to lead the campaign to end religious privileges and discrimination in the education system. She says religious schools are “one of the greatest problems in British life today.”
• The Education Secretary Damian Hinds says he is prepared to change the law in order to crack down on schools with high numbers of unfair expulsions.
• Addressing the Lords during a debate about the state of music education in schools, Lord Black of Brentwood, says music “literally disappearing from our schools”. He told the House of Lords,

Instead of music being a fundamental right of all children, it is rapidly becoming the preserve of the privileged few at independent schools as it dies out in the state sector.

• The University of Oxford has released a sample of interview questions to help students who want to study at the top institution. Could you answer these questions?
• The news is – you are working too hard even over half-term! If you think that the more you work the more productive you are then think again. 50 hours a week is plenty. Chris Eyre says, “The figure of 50 hours a week is not as arbitrary as it sounds. Studies in industry productivity suggest that this is the maximum amount of time where we can be fully effective.”