Latest news with #Maths
Spectator
11 hours ago
- Politics
- Spectator
The migrant hotel protests are all about class
'It's got nothing to do with racism. My daughter is black. She's half-Ghanian,' says one Isle of Dogs resident, watching the stand-off outside the Britannia Hotel in Canary Wharf. She's come with a friend who's worried for her young child. 'I've got a seven-year-old and I don't want her to play downstairs. You're scared for them, really scared.' Since Lutfur Rahman's Tower Hamlets council announced that the hotel would be used to house asylum seekers, protesters gather daily. Steel fencing has been erected to guard the entrance. Police officers line up on the edge of the pavement. Protesters attend regularly, sometimes daily. They wear British flags, Nike Tech tracksuits, with many in face masks and balaclavas to hide their identities. Some protestors are very glamorous, knowing they might be on TV. Others are in sliders. On Friday, counter-protesters affiliated with Stand Up to Racism arrive. They line up on the other side of the road, holding yellow and pink placards, shipped in by the organisers. Many are young women. Some have colourful hair and septum piercings, others wear Birkenstocks and keffiyehs. Even local resident Gary Stevenson, trader turned left-wing YouTuber, turns up to gawk at the protesters. I ask him what he thinks of the protest, he says I'll have to speak to his agent. The police presence is heavy. Class, not race, is the driving force of division here. Working-class rage is boiling up in the UK. Canary Wharf is in the borough of Tower Hamlets, which has the highest rate of child poverty in the UK. The overall poverty rate is nearly double the average for London. Research shows that social cohesion breaks down in deprived areas. Here, it's not just breaking down; it's shattering. The protesters aren't angry about ethnicity, but economics. Locals resent the government funding full-board accommodation for asylum seekers while they struggle. As an asylum seeker in Britain, the government covers your basic needs: accommodation, financial support that can add up to nearly £50 a week, healthcare and education. Councils such as Wandsworth have even launched a scheme where asylum seekers can get a 50 per cent discount on Lime and Forest bikes. To add insult to injury, the protestors hear a prime minister repeatedly telling them that things will get worse before they get better. One cleaner who spoke to the Sun said staff at the hotel had been given redundancy letters when it became asylum accommodation. 'There's people here that work hard, day in and day out,' one woman outside the hotel tells me: 'They can't afford a place like this. Why are they [asylum seekers] getting it?' Opportunities for the protester's children are bleak. The Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson has admitted that white working-class children are being 'written off' by society, calling it a 'national disgrace.' Nationally, fewer than half of all pupils on free school meals achieve a pass in English or Maths GCSE – compared with 68 per cent of their better-off peers. Among them, white children are among the lowest achieving groups in the country: not even 20 per cent reach that benchmark, and they are the least likely of any major ethnic group to go to university. White kids have it worst of all – thanks to successive governments prioritising skin colour over deprivation. A problem rooted in class has become exacerbated by race. It's no wonder then that tensions have flared up across the country. Protests have occurred in Epping outside the Bell Hotel, where Hadush Kebatu was staying along with 140 other men. He has appeared in court after allegedly trying to kiss a 14-year- old girl and a woman in the town (he denies the allegations). Pollsters at More in Common found that core to the Epping residents' opposition was a sense that the views of local people have been overlooked. The majority of the public oppose the asylum hotel policy, their polling found, and locals are angry the government can't stop the small boat crossings. Other polling finds that social cohesion is breaking down in the most deprived areas, just like in Canary Wharf. The resentment among work-class protesters towards the counter-demonstrators, the main political parties and the country's senior politicians is on display. 'My grandad fought for this country and then you've got people like that – Daddy's money,' one man says, gesturing towards the counter protestors. Research from Public First finds that a third of working-class voters hold an unfavourable view of the Conservatives and Labour, compared with just a quarter of professional-class voters. Nearly half say Sir Keir Starmer doesn't represent them 'at all', versus 35 per cent of professionals. Successive governments, they feel, have prioritised race over class, leaving poor people economically squeezed and politically ignored. The left fear racialising the issue of class, and the right's promise of 'Levelling Up' has given way to the politics of triage. The people at the bottom of the list are now making themselves heard. Ministers plan to empty the hotels through 'Operation Scatter', moving asylum seekers into houses of multiple occupancy (HMOs) across the country. The strain will fall first, and hardest, on poorer communities. The protesters argue it is their neighbourhoods that bear the brunt, while the effects of immigration are never properly addressed by politicians. One told me, 'these people haven't even lived their lives. They've had money from their mums and dads – they don't know what immigration is.' At the Britannia protests, there's a rare political unity: the shared hatred of Keir Starmer. He's variously called a 'traitor' and an 'enemy' who will cause civil war. Nigel Farage's Reform UK gets cautious approval from the protesters – though one notes: 'He doesn't have a magic wand. He's not going to wave it and return the UK to its former glory that we all fell in love with.' At about 9 p.m., both sides begin to head home. Tomorrow, the original protesters will be back. One woman tells me she's been attending every single day since they began. She won't leave until the council shuts the hotel asylum scheme down.
RNZ News
6 days ago
- Sport
- RNZ News
Thousands of students compete in country's biggest maths competition
Maths was the winner on the day, as thousands of school pupils across the motu have competed for glory in a the country's biggest maths competition. The Times Tables Rock Stars Mathematics Competition was held earlier today, with the event involving two corresponding 30-minute quizzes across the North and South islands. Erica Stanford was keeping a keen eye on proceedings at a Christchurch school, and herself, was put to the times tables test. Adam Burns reports. To embed this content on your own webpage, cut and paste the following: See terms of use.
RNZ News
6 days ago
- Sport
- RNZ News
Thousands of students compete in country's maths competition
Maths was the winner on the day, as thousands of school pupils across the motu have competed for glory in a the country's biggest maths competition. The Times Tables Rock Stars Mathematics Competition was held earlier today, with the event involving two corresponding 30-minute quizzes across the North and South islands. Erica Stanford was keeping a keen eye on proceedings at a Christchurch school, and herself, was put to the times tables test. Adam Burns reports. To embed this content on your own webpage, cut and paste the following: See terms of use.
Mint
06-08-2025
- General
- Mint
Kaizen in class: Small changes could have an enormous impact on school education
Next Story Anurag Behar Amazing outcomes can be achieved through tiny improvements by people dedicated to education. Here's the story of a school in a remote rural area that has shown how it can be done. Big changes happen through small changes, not through sweeping reforms. Gift this article It would be inaccurate to call the three rooms in this school 'classrooms.' In most primary schools, dedicated rooms are assigned to classes—Class 1 to Class 5—or shared if there aren't enough; and so they are called classrooms. Here, however, the rooms are designated by subject. Perhaps they should be called 'subject rooms.' Unlike in other schools, when a class period ends here, students move but the teachers stay. The system is not unheard of. It exists in some countries as standard practice and in a few elite Indian schools. But to find it in a government primary school, tucked away in what we might call a 'remote' area, is astonishing. How did this happen? Also read: Education crisis: Don't let fads disrupt the fundamentals of learning The head-teacher has been with the school since it opened 18 years ago. A local, he studied in a village primary school before moving to a town for middle and secondary education. Years after founding this school, he found himself reflecting on his own student days. What stayed with him was the monotony of sitting in the same room, year after year. Through his middle school years, his class remained in one room—only the sign outside changed from 'Class 6' to 'Class 7' to 'Class 8.' That memory sparked an idea: Why not have students move between rooms for each period? Not for any grand educational theory, but because he remembered how dull it was staying in one place all day. He suspected the children would enjoy the little chaos of moving. And so he re-arranged the school. Hindi, Maths and English each got a dedicated room. For Environmental Studies, lacking a fourth room, he fashioned a makeshift space in the courtyard, shaded by thick foliage. The children loved it. The movement brought excitement, a break from the stillness that defines most classrooms. As the months passed, something unexpected emerged. The teachers began treating these rooms differently. These were no longer just spaces they occupied, they were 'their' subject rooms. Slowly, the rooms transformed. Posters went up, teaching aids accumulated, corners filled with games and materials tailored to each subject. What was once a storage problem—where materials were either unused or left to decay—became the enabler of thriving, subject-specific resource centres. All because the teachers now felt a sense of ownership. When I visited years later, it was clear that these changes were just one part of a broader culture of not standing still but trying to improve—pedagogical practices, teaching-learning material, handling of children, relationships with the local community and more. The results reflected this culture of steady improvement. The Class 3 children I met had the language and math capacities expected at their age, including in English. In a country struggling with foundational literacy and numeracy, this achievement in a 'remote' rural area would be notable. But what stood out even more was their confidence, a sense of fun and joy without the faintest sign of any sort of discrimination or prejudice. When I asked the head-teacher how they had achieved all this, he had no grand theories. He simply said he tried to do his job a little better each day, and his team worked with him with total dedication. Also read: Why some parents love schools with fewer than 100 students When I pressed him further, with 'Did no one try to stop you when you restructured the school so fundamentally?", his response was a matter of fact 'Kaun aata hai yahaan jo rokega yaa poochhegaa (no one comes here, so who is there to stop or question)?" The local village community is fully with him, having observed the school's consistent improvement over the years. This school is yet another example of the reality and possibilities of our school education. Learnings? First, our schools are plagued by resource constraints, have little support and serve communities in poverty, which presents an entirely different order of educational challenge. Second, a group of dedicated and thoughtful teachers can achieve a lot. Third, a head-teacher can play a significant role in setting a culture that energizes teachers and engages students to make it a truly functional school. Fourth, even hard resource constraints and multiple challenges can't contain the spirit of those who are committed. Fifth, and most importantly, we have lots and lots of people with such spirit—certainly teachers in our schools, but also in many other spheres. These are people who are dissatisfied with the state-of-affairs in the country and want to see India improve. Our policies are often—though not always—supportive and encouraging of this spirit. But too often, their implementation is not. They get mired in a sclerotic and hierarchical culture that treats teachers as the cause of our education system's problems and not key allies in changing and improving it. This attitude must be transformed if we want to change Indian education to achieve the outcomes we aspire for. Over time, these changes accumulate to deliver something extraordinary. Those who create these apparent miracles are our real heroes, though they are rarely aware of it. Perhaps that's why they succeed. Topics You May Be Interested In Catch all the Business News, Market News, Breaking News Events and Latest News Updates on Live Mint. Download The Mint News App to get Daily Market Updates.
South Wales Argus
31-07-2025
- Business
- South Wales Argus
Cllr Mary Ann Brocklesby on Monmouthshire County Council
But that doesn't mean that local authorities do not have their own particular priorities and the ability to make choices on how they deal with the financial challenges. In Monmouthshire, our focus is on what we can do, not what we cannot. This was how we set out our stall, clearly, before we were elected and we have relentlessly kept to that agenda. Our approach is yielding positive results in so many different ways. At the heart of everything we do, our 'style' if you like, is the ability to work collaboratively with community groups, other organisations and our residents, and where necessary, to try a different, innovative approach. As just one example of how this can work for the benefit of all, we have just been awarded the highest score of any local authority in the whole of the United Kingdom for our work on waste reduction and food by a community interest company, Climate Emergency UK. They assessed all local authorities and scored them according to ambitious targets. Monmouthshire got the highest score, 93 per cent, for our work on Waste Reduction and Food and the second highest overall score in Wales across seven varied themes. The cabinet member responsible for this aspect of our work, Catrin Maby, made clear that the result recognised what we have been doing together with local communities. And never one to sit on our laurels, she added: 'We can be proud of what we've achieved, but we also know we need to keep on doing better.' This was possible because of the environmentally conscious way that our residents and many others worked with us, not against us. Continuing the theme of working in partnership, we have just launched a STEM Programme (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) which is a trigger for attracting new businesses to our county and can also underpin links between employers and schools. Here we will be able to harness the skills and energy of local school teachers, engaging effectively with pupils. Our aim is also to establish a flexible and innovative apprenticeship centre in the county. We are focusing not only on helping students pass their exams but also on equipping them with marketable skills that will benefit them for their futures. The increased uptake of those following STEM subjects will interact positively with training and employment opportunities. It is another excellent example of our approach to partnership and collaboration on a wider canvas. Hence, I do not see our authority as a beleaguered island, surrounded by breaking waves. No, we are at the beating heart of a wonderful county, working alongside so many others to build a better, 'healthier' (in all senses of the word) Monmouthshire, which in turn can stimulate a better future for all. Councillor Mary Ann Brocklesby is leader of Monmouthshire County Council.
