Male teacher Andy Bell. Photograph: David Sillitoe
How important is it to have men in the classroom? Boys need male role models, claim campaigners. But at least one teaching union thinks it's a ridiculous fuss about nothing. Join the debate on our Mortarboard blog – we'd love to know what you think.
Report card
Photograph: Christopher Thomond School triumph Nadia Clarke's parents fought tooth and nail to get their severely disabled daughter a place in a mainstream school. Eleven years ago, the Guardian told their story. This year she wrote her GCSEs.
Dream jobs Big chunks of the BBC are heading off to Salford – leaving an awful lot of skilled staff behind. Good news for northern colleges and universities, as a furious recruitment drive gets underway.
Mind games The school that's trying to improve results by teaching 'mental toughness' to boost confidence
What you said
Photograph: Keystone/Hulton Archive In response to a story about admissions tutors blaming schools for producing applicants who were incapable of independent thought, negomilamb wrote:
'I have found A-levels incredibly difficult because they are so easy. I find it so sad when you have six pages of boxes to literally tick when you're writing an essay on Hamlet. A-levels don't allow you to think creatively and they don't challenge, and therefore they just feel like a waste of time and sixth form college is a joke. I know I'm also speaking for many of my friends.'
Quote of the week
Photograph: Christopher Thomond This week's quote comes from commentator Ian Jack:
'This week a draft proposal in a bundle of reforms under government consideration suggested that students who agreed to stay at home could have their tuition fees waived, if in exchange they abandoned claims to maintenance loans and bursaries. You can see that in a poorer and less luxurious society it could make financial sense, though it will be bad economic news for buy-to-let student landlords, long-distance train companies, rock concert promoters and bar and brasserie owners: the beneficiaries of a liberated, sometimes libertine, way of living that millions of middle-class students have taken as a right. My daughter's generation would regard its death as an outrage.'
From the margins
Photograph: Peter Byrne/PA Does watching videos make babies cleverer? And does it matter what they watch? There's huge money to be made out of convincing parents the answer to these questions is yes. But academics aren't convinced, writes Marc Abrahams in his weekly Improbable Research
Stories of the day
Photograph: Alex Maguire/Rex Jim has fixed it Jimmy Saville is fixing it for medical students to do research while they study
Communication breakdown Learning English empowers people in the most vulnerable communities. But classes are disappearing because of cuts
Photograph: Felix Clay Creative summer Children make masks that reveal their feelings and fears about going to seco15/07/2009
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