Friday January 24th January marks International Day of Education. The word education is used to describe the activities of imparting or acquiring knowledge or skill, usually in a formal setting like school or university. International Day of Education honours ‘education and its centrality to human well-being and sustainable development.’ Education is a human right that offers children ‘a ladder out of poverty and a path to a promising future’. Despite this, ‘about 265 million children and adolescents around the world do not have the opportunity to enter or complete school; 617 million children and adolescents cannot read and do basic math; less than 40%...
This week’s word for Wednesday comes from the mid 19th century and, like many words in the English language has evolved from the merging of two Latin words. Ubiquitous. Let’s take a look at the Latin words that make up this compound: The Latin ‘ubi’ means ‘where’ and ‘ubique’ translates to ‘everywhere’. Combining these two stems seems to pose a question before answering it: ‘Where?’ ‘Everywhere’. Ubiquitous has several synonyms that you might be more familiar with such as omnipresent or universal. In the last 50 years or so, a usage of this word has risen significantly, so it is certainly worth understanding its meaning and origins and adding to your own vocabulary. Having multiple w...
In September 2012, the Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg announced that UK secondary schools will receive £500 of additional ‘Catch-Up Premium’ funding for each Year 7 pupil (aged 11-12 years old) who did not achieve Level 4 or better at Key Stage 2 in reading and/or maths. The aim of this funding is to pay for additional support for these pupils in literacy and numeracy to help them to catch up and access the secondary curriculum more fully. This support is welcome. According to Department for Education figures (from the 2012 Key Stage 2 provisional data and the autumn 2012 School Census data), 13 per cent of UK Year 7 pupils did not achieve level 4 in reading in 2012...
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