#education-policy

#education-policy

The White House is making it clear that it's putting AI education front and center, advocating for its use to teach impressionable young minds despite the tech's shortcomings.

Mayor Mamdani has been very clear he wants to reduce class sizes in accordance with the mandate. But both he and the chancellor have suggested that more time and more money may be needed. It would not be unreasonable for the city to commit to a 70%, 80%, 90%, and then 100% timetable.

Beginning in the fall of 2026, all Florida middle and high school students will be required to take a yearly social studies class on the history of communism. The curriculum has already received the stamp of approval from the conservative Heritage Foundation (the group behind Project 2025), a right-wing nonprofit organization called the National Association of Scholars (NAS) and a NAS spinoff called the Civics Alliance.

The text of the bill, HB333, adds new language to the Virginia statutes that requires any local school board that imposes new restrictions on any program of instruction on or relating to the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the United States Capitol and any accompanying curriculum or instructional materials, or any instruction provided by a teacher as a part of any program of instruction.

Most middle schools and high schools do not have a requirement to teach Social Emotional Learning; therefore, most high school students have less than two years of SEL learning, which was given to them when they were three and four years old. The result is that most adults do not have formal social and emotional learning skills, and yet they are expected to have emotional intelligence.

While there has been no specific incident giving rise to this decision, the Board consider it both prudent and responsible to pause occupation of the building in order to implement priority works and ensure full statutory compliance. Among the issues being addressed are structural and building compliance verification measures.

Ministers have asked the exams watchdog, Ofqual, to extend current arrangements, providing GCSE maths, physics, and combined science students with formula sheets. Ofqual is consulting on extending this until current GCSEs are reformed following a curriculum review. The government will then consider if memorisation is required for new qualifications.

The bill, H.R. 7661 also known as the 'Stop the Sexualization of Children Act', was introduced by Illinois representative Mary Miller who has a long history of anti-trans politics. It seeks to amend the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 to ban federal funds being used to 'develop, implement, facilitate, host, or promote any program or activity for, or to provide or promote literature or other materials to, children under the age of 18 that includes sexually oriented material'.

We acknowledge that the measure may have a serious impact on the group one claimants if they are unable to afford private education which accords with their religious convictions, but it is important to bear in mind that they have the option of home schooling if free education in the state sector is not acceptable to them.

The system is now at breaking point for graduates. I believe student loans have become a debt trap. Student loans have become a debt trap, and the system requires urgent reform to address unsustainable interest rates and unfair repayment conditions that burden graduates with excessive debt obligations.

By alleging that school officials transitioned Blair's gender identity without parental consent, Trump aimed to mobilise support for a ban on gender-affirming care for transgender children, telling Congress that "no state can be allowed to rip children from their parents' arms and transition them to a new gender against the parents' will," adding: "We must ban it, and we must ban it immediately."

From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging. At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground.

How do you get teenagers to put their phones away for hours at a time? That is the question many schools are trying to solve as bans on cellphones sweep the U.S. more than 30 states so far now restrict their use during the school day. One of those states is Kentucky, where all public school classes must now be cellphone free. Districts can set their own policies to achieve that goal.

Evaluating a language by its usefulness is reductive about as soul-destroying as telling a passionate mathematician that they don't need to bother learning complex theorems because a computer could do it. I did two language A-levels (German and Japanese) and went on to do a Japanese degree at university. Despite Japanese being less useful than Spanish in terms of the number of speakers, it has enriched my life in countless ways.

Americans are getting worse at math. Student scores have fallen to their lowest point in decades. Nearly half of high school students barely meet what the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) considers a "basic" level of comprehension, and more than 900 freshmen at the University of California, San Diego - 12.5% of the institution's first-year class in 2024 - had the mathematical proficiency of a 13-year-old.

It is, officially, just a small part of wider guidance for schools and colleges, titled Keeping Children Safe in Education, which covers everything from the basics of safeguarding, checks on staff and dealing with harassment. The section on students who might question their gender covers about five of the document's 201 pages, guiding institutions about what they should do in such circumstances. Unlike the previous guidance it is statutory it must be followed. It is currently being consulted on, and so will not come into force until September. The DfE says it will then be reviewed annually.

Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging. At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.

Parents should be involved in the "vast majority" of cases where a child questions their gender, according to new government guidance for all English schools. The legally-binding advice says schools should not initiate steps towards social transitioning - when pupils change their name, pronoun or clothes to reflect their gender identity - and should instead consider carefully what other support a child might need.