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Coronavirus and school exams: despite plan for grading pupils, there may be trouble ahead
NuPenDekDee/Shutterstock Two weeks after the A-level and GCSE exams were cancelled, English assessment authority OFQUAL has decided how grades will be decided for these qualifications. They will be awarded by teachers in the first instance, and these recommendations will then be moderated by exam boards. The fact that this announcementContinue Reading
Children’s asthma and sleep apnoea has improved during lockdown – a clinician explains why that might be
Sergey Novikov/Shutterstock It’s Monday morning and I’m running my regular children’s sleep clinic. Except it’s not a Monday morning like any other I have had in my 20 years of practice. I am running the clinic on my laptop, seeing patients and their families on a video screen rather thanContinue Reading
Algorithms are designing better buildings
Sberbank Technopark in Russia by Zaha Hadid Architects. Zaha Hadid Architects When giant blobs began appearing on city skylines around the world in the late 1980s and 1990s, it marked not an alien invasion but the impact of computers on the practice of building design. Thanks to computer-aided design (CAD),Continue Reading
Homeschooling during coronavirus: five ways to teach children about climate change
Discuss how flying less could help the planet. Shutterstock Schools around the world have closed in reponse to the COVID-19 pandemic, so many families are finding themselves thrust into homeschooling. Parents are figuring out how to teach their children subjects like mathematics and grammar, while also juggling other commitments, allContinue Reading
Life inside Pluto? Hot birth may have created internal ocean on dwarf planet
Pluto, with its basin Sputnik Planitia on the right. NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute/Alex Parker Pluto, along with many other dwarf planets in the outer solar system, is often thought of as dark, icy and barren – with a surface temperature of just −230°C. But now aContinue Reading
Curious Kids: if the whole world is dealing with coronavirus, will there be less war?
iyd39/Shutterstock If the whole world is dealing with coronavirus, will there be less war? – George, aged 11, UK This is a very serious and important question. Lots of people believe that wars should stop so that we can focus on dealing with coronavirus. In some cases, this has happened.Continue Reading
In praise of further education colleges: empowering students who have been written off
Monkey Business Images/Shutterstock Education policy for schools in the UK has become more and more focused around performance. The expectation is that students reach milestones of understanding and learning in each subject. This means that almost a third of young people – those that do not meet these milestones –Continue Reading
Coronavirus could accelerate dying pub culture – is community ownership the answer?
The Ivy House, Author provided British pubs are dying. In 2001, the UK counted 52,500 pubs. In 2018, that figure stood at 38,815. Now the fall-out from coronavirus will likely devastate the industry further as pubs struggle to reopen safely and generate enough income to survive. This dramatic rate ofContinue Reading
Did a volcanic eruption in Alaska help end the Roman republic?
The death of Caesar. Vincenzo Camuccini/Wikipedia Julius Caesar was assassinated on the Ides of March (March 15) in 44BC and a bloody civil war followed. This brought down the Roman republic and replaced it with a monarchy led by Caesar’s nephew Octavian, who in 27BC became the emperor Augustus. AContinue Reading
Coronavirus: there is an urgent need to re-open schools – this is how to make it happen
UK Education Secretary Gavin Williamson said he wants nothing more than to see schools back up and running following their closure during the coronavirus lockdown. But he insists he cannot yet give a date for that to happen since there were “no plans” to open schools over the summer whileContinue Reading