Pointed (well made points!) by @holliemcnish.bsky.social on Facebook. The truth is, as we reported in the Lit in Colour 5 year report, that the proportion of candidates answering on a play or a novel by a woman at GCSE is now down to just 3.5%. Fingers crossed new GCSE regs do something about it.

Look, everything is terrible right now, but if you are in your 40s, Masters of the Universe is everything you need from a He-Man film. Go see it and then, hear me out, campaign for a Thundercats made by the same people.

The older I get the more convinced I am that Philip K Dick knew a thing or two.

Mar Hicks@histoftech.bsky.social · 2mo ago

with alt text

Trans people are not “fighting for unpopular positions that society isn’t ready for.” Trans people are fighting to KEEP the rights we have enjoyed for decades. We have been able to legally change our gender markers since the 70s and before. Same with bathrooms, sports, youth, all for decades.

Absolutely shameful updated guidance from the EHRC on trans people. I am APPALLED.

Paul Black was such a lovely man, as well as a titan in the field, and I am so glad that T&F have supported us to make this gesture as editors of the ORE.

Oxford Review of Education@oxfordreved.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Paul Black (1930–2026) influenced the field of education through his work on formative assessment, transforming the relationship between learning, pedagogy, and assessment. Taylor & Francis have made his ORE articles free to view in perpetuity. doi.org/10.1080/0305... doi.org/10.1080/7136...

My excellent colleague @katiedd.bsky.social has just published this remarkable investigation into rampant book banning in a Greater Manchester secondary school library. 193 books including The Da Vinci Code, Twilight, White Teeth and 1984 Graphic Novel www.indexoncensorship.org/2026/03/scho...

School book banning escalates in the UK as Greater Manchester secondary school censors scores of books - Index on Censorship

A school librarian faced a disciplinary hearing and scores of books were removed from her school library after she stocked Laura Bates’ Men Who Hate Women

indexoncensorship.org

I’m running a 2 hour online workshop for teachers, heritage professionals, journalists & anyone who wants to be able to discuss the British Empire and its afterlives with nuance and concision. It’s on 1st June. Do sign up if interested? onlineshop.sussex.ac.uk/product-cata...

📢 Call for Proposals: STORIEs Conference 2026 The online STORIEs Conference (Students’ Ongoing Research in Education Studies) will take place on 10 April. We invite proposals on the theme of: "Power, Equity and Hope: Education Amid Shifting Inequalities" Submit by end of 25 Feb ➡️ bit.ly/4azNL84

We are delighted to celebrate the Professorships of Maia Chankseliani and Velda Elliott with a special public seminar. 📅 9 March, 5pm - 6.40pm 📍 Seminar Room A and online 👥 All welcome Register to join in-person ➡️ bit.ly/4tDMjc3 Or online ➡️ bit.ly/4aPo8Qx

💻 WEBINAR: Gamifying climate change education In this webinar, hosted by the Education and Training for the Climate Research Hub and the Oxford Education Deanery, we will hear from three pioneers in climate games and interactive experiences. Interested? Register now ➡️ bit.ly/4rOwJIY

I did in fact, accidentally swallow the rest of it whole. So much love for this book.

Velda Elliott@veldaelliott.bsky.social · 6mo ago

This is lovely. The cover promises "the comedy goblins deserve" and it absolutely is. Never before have I read a graphic account of a unicorn in breech birth. It's a novella so I'm having to parcel it out and ration it so I don't accidentally swallow it whole. Nine Goblins by T Kingfisher.

This is lovely. The cover promises "the comedy goblins deserve" and it absolutely is. Never before have I read a graphic account of a unicorn in breech birth. It's a novella so I'm having to parcel it out and ration it so I don't accidentally swallow it whole. Nine Goblins by T Kingfisher.

I can hardly bear it. Guaranteed my permanently angry father is nodding along furiously in his £240,000 house

Adam Bienkov@adambienkov.bsky.social · 8mo ago

For context the 'Middle England' referred to here is the 0.5% of households living in homes worth more than £2 million

Inside the Factory is such a good thing. You've never seen 2 children as entranced as when Paddy McGuinness explain how sausage rolls are made.

To be clear: deportations to increase cultural homogeneity is the text book definition of ethnic cleansing. Demands that come even close to this are so far outside any democratic norm and the rule of law. What has happened to a country when this is not condemned in the strongest possible terms?

Also I don't know why Hague doesn't understand the purely ceremonial role of Chancellor....

Nate O@nateo.bsky.social · 10mo ago

Not once have I seen an explanation for why teenagers must hear things that upset them in virtue of the unspecified speech-acts being upsetting, nor have I ever seen an explanation for why teenagers will be forbidden to express displeasure with upsetting things.

I saw every political party leader in the UK on the news talking about the attack on the Jewish community in Manchester except the one political party leader who is Jewish and from Manchester. Maybe I missed something?

The Greens requested an interview on the Laura Kuenssberg Show with Zack Polanski when he was elected leader, but were denied, with a promise to interview him during Green conference instead. This was then scrapped citing the Manchester synagogue attack. Polanski is both Jewish and from Manchester

BBC Laura Kuenssberg Show Accused of Anti-Green Bias After Cancelling Zack Polanski Interview

The new Green Party leader was the only major party leader not to have been granted a conference interview on the flagship BBC show

bylinetimes.com

The mistake most make about the climate crisis, is in thinking that anthropogenic climate change, is the crisis. No, the climate crisis is that the science clearly describes the danger of ACC, but our whole system, acts as if this danger is not real. That is the crisis. 3/9

A work of art

'Tylenol' is known in the civilised world as Paracetamol 2.4 million children born in Sweden between 1995 and 2019. Studied 186,000 children whose mothers were treated with paracetamol during pregnancy. news.ki.se/no-link-betw...

No link between paracetamol use during pregnancy and autism or ADHD in children

In the largest epidemiologic study to date of the risk of giving birth to a child with autism, ADHD or intellectual disability following acetaminophen use during pregnancy, researchers found no associ...

news.ki.se

Hey a thing I really don’t want to get lost here is that while Tylenol doesn’t cause autism, IT’S FINE TO BE AUTISTIC. Let’s not grant them the premise that autism should be eradicated in our way to correct the science, okay? Okay.

Will Oxford disclose how much it paid (or did not pay) for this? Surely a sweetheart deal (has research money thrown in!) so OpenAI can plaster Oxford over its marketing and raid other unis’ fees, library budgets to throw into the sector’s massive inference funding chasm.

University of Oxford@ox.ac.uk · 11mo ago

NEW: Oxford will be the first UK university to give all staff and students free ChatGPT Edu access, from this academic year. ChatGPT Edu is built for education, with enhanced privacy and security.

Simply astonishing. Maybe Lecturer A should not have to mark over 100 essays in a two-week window in the first place? Invest in qualified staff and reduce impossible workloads FFS www.kcl.ac.uk/about/strate...

‘when the METR team looked at the employees’ actual work output, they found that the developers had completed tasks 20 percent slower when using AI than when working without it. “No one expected that outcome…We didn’t even really consider a slowdown as a possibility.”’ Lololol

PCI Guru@jbhall56.bsky.social · 11mo ago

If there is any field in which the rise of AI is already said to be rendering humans obsolete—in which the dawn of superintelligence is already upon us—it is coding. This makes the results of a recent study genuinely astonishing. www.theatlantic.com/economy/arch...

New open access article! Racist epithets in the classroom: Unpacking attitudes to the N-word in teaching English TLDR: White students and teachers should not say/ read the n-word aloud (But please do click on the link anyway!) onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Racist epithets in the classroom: Unpacking attitudes to the N‐word in teaching English

Since 2020, there has been a growing discussion around the representation of Black lives in the curriculum, and their representation in the classroom. There is a need to examine the ways in which tex...

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

New open access article! Racist epithets in the classroom: Unpacking attitudes to the N-word in teaching English TLDR: White students and teachers should not say/ read the n-word aloud (But please do click on the link anyway!) onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Racist epithets in the classroom: Unpacking attitudes to the N‐word in teaching English

Since 2020, there has been a growing discussion around the representation of Black lives in the curriculum, and their representation in the classroom. There is a need to examine the ways in which tex...

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

Child number 1, about to be 8. Loves humor, graphic novels, is reading things like What If? by Randall Monroe and FAQ About the Universe by Jorge Cham. Looking for similar type things, pretty much any topic. Any suggestions?