Newsround

What’s been happening in the news just lately?

• A report from a new education think tank, Education and Skills (EDSK), challenges the accuracy of Ofsted inspection grades such as outstanding, good or requires improvement.

A spokeswoman for Ofsted dismissed the think tank’s claims saying, “There is little new in the report and several inaccuracies. Some of it we have said ourselves and are addressing through our new inspections, which will launch this autumn.”

You can read their report ‘Requires Improvement’ here.

• As part of Brighton and Hove City Council’s pronoun badges campaign, schools are to give pronoun stickers to pupils to prevent “misgendering”. Messages such as “gender is a spectrum”, “respect my pronouns, respect me” and “my pronouns matter”.

The council’s badges indicate whether people would like to be addressed as “he”, “she” or “they” and some are left blank to allow people to fill in their own pronouns.

(Image: Brighton & Hove City Council)

• The Online Harms White Paper sets out the government’s plans for a world-leading package of online safety measures that also supports innovation and a thriving digital economy.

• Over 300,000 toddlers have never been read a nursery rhyme by their parents.

• Mathematical mindset theory increases motivation and that this change is reflected in brain activity of learners attempting mathematical problems.

• How does learning work? See this brilliant series of three short animated films from David Didau.

• Time for a sad face emoji. A new study finds that lecturers should put emojis in their feedback to students to better bond with them. Dr Ben Marder, a senior lecturer at the University of Edinburgh’s business school and an expert on social media says, “Essentially, when communicating with students who are digital natives we as staff need to communicate in a manner that they are familiar with to build a healthy relationship. Our research finds that the use of smileys in emails and assessment feedback increases perceptions of the sender, course evaluations and the likelihood that students will act favourably when asked to carry out a task.”

Invented by Shigetaka Kurita in 1999, he says

I don’t accept that the use of emoji is a sign that people are losing the ability to communicate with words, or that they have a limited vocabulary. Some people said the same about anime and manga, but those fears were never realised. And it’s not even a generational thing … People of all ages understand that a single emoji can say more about their emotions than text. Emoji have grown because they meet a need among mobile phone users. I accept that it’s difficult to use emoji to express complicated or nuanced feelings, but they are great for getting the general message across.