Office for Students guidance urges ‘very strong’ approach to permitting lawful speech on campus

Universities in England will no longer be able to enforce blanket bans on student protests under sweeping new guidance that urges a “very strong� approach to permitting lawful speech on campus.

The detailed regulations set out for the first time how universities should deal with inflammatory disputes, such as those between the University of Cambridge and students over the war in Gaza, and rows over academics who hold controversial but legal opinions, such as the gender-critical professor Kathleen Stock.

The guidance issued by the Office for Students (OfS) will make it harder for universities to penalise students and staff for anything other than unlawful speech or harassment.

Academics should not be pressed to support particular views.

Protests should not be restricted for supporting legal viewpoints.

Students or staff should not be “encouraged to report others� for lawful speech.

Universities must “secure freedom of speech� for visiting speakers.

Public accounts committee calls on government to urgently address deficit on high needs spending hitting at end of financial year

Councils in England face being overwhelmed by billions of pounds in debts and reforms that are divorced from reality, according to an influential committee of MPs.

In its inquiry into local government finances, the public accounts committee (PAC) told the Treasury and other departments to urgently address the estimated £5bn deficit on high needs spending – mainly on special educational needs – that will hit council balance sheets at the end of the financial year, potentially driving many insolvent.

Budding scholars pursue overseas jobs amid attacks on education and research, prompting fears of an American brain drain

Eric Schuster was over the moon when he landed a lab assistant position in a coral reef biology lab at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography (SIO). The 23-year-old had recently graduated with a bachelor’s degree in nanoengineering from the University of California, San Diego, into a fiercely competitive job market. He felt like he’d struck gold.

But the relentless cuts to scientific research and attacks on higher education by the Trump administration have turned what felt like a promising academic future into unstable ground.

Guardian investigation finds almost 7,000 proven cases of cheating – and experts says these are tip of the iceberg

Thousands of university students in the UK have been caught misusing ChatGPT and other artificial intelligence tools in recent years, while traditional forms of plagiarism show a marked decline, a Guardian investigation can reveal.

A survey of academic integrity violations found almost 7,000 proven cases of cheating using AI tools in 2023-24, equivalent to 5.1 for every 1,000 students. That was up from 1.6 cases per 1,000 in 2022-23.

Surcharge was a Labour party manifesto commitment at the 2024 general election

The high court has dismissed a wave of legal challenges against adding VAT to private school fees in the UK, saying the government’s decision was a rare example of Brexit freedoms.

The judges said that adding 20% to private school fees would not have been possible under EU law, stating: “This is therefore one respect in which the UK’s exit from the EU has increased the scope of parliament’s freedom to determine policy.�

Local authorities say a £5bn shortfall in special needs funding could leave dozens effectively insolvent within months

Council leaders in England have warned that a multibillion pound deficit from years of overspending on special educational needs has become a “burning platform� that will push scores of councils into bankruptcy within months.

They say time is running out to resolve rapidly growing shortfalls and are concerned the government gave no indication in Wednesday’s spending review how it will deal with Send debts, which are expected to exceed £5bn by next March.

Students say rise in prices was trigger but underlying anger was communist government’s increasing reliance on USD

Having endured electricity blackouts, water shortages, transport failures and the spiralling cost of food, Cuba’s students appear to have finally lost patience with their government over a ferocious price hike for the country’s faltering internet.

Local chapters of Cuba’s Federation of University Students (FEU) have been calling for a slew of measures, including attendance strikes, explanations from ministers and even the resignation of their own organisation’s president.

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Tina Farr has put play-based learning at the heart of lessons at her Oxford primary – with ‘phenomenal’ results

• Children in England growing up ‘sedentary, scrolling and alone’, say experts

When Tina Farr visits the year 2 classroom at her Oxford primary school, she can feel the changed atmosphere since play was put firmly back on the curriculum.

“When I walk in there, I just feel the energy. The children come running up with things they have made, there is always a shop on the go so they will be pricing up something or finding change. They are always working together,� the headteacher says.

They have shaped the fortunes of young people in the UK for four decades. But now even the former education secretary who introduced these exams wants to see them abolished ...

It’s approaching 8.30am on a Wednesday in June and 140 grim-faced teenagers are making their way into an exam hall. Today it’s GCSE maths paper 2 (calculator). A posse of smiling staff encourage and cajole: “Good luck, hope it goes really well.� “Bags at the back please!� “Use a black pen only.� A few stragglers reluctantly make an entrance. “Find your seats quickly, please. Good luck!�

Once everyone is seated, there’s the exam prayer. (This is Urswick school, a mixed Church of England secondary in north-east London.) “Heavenly father, be with me as I take this exam, keep my mind alert and my memory sharp, calm my nerves and help me concentrate.� Some candidates bow their heads, others stare glumly into the distance. Then, a few final words of encouragement. “So, year 11, this is your time to shine. Good luck – you have an hour and a half. You may begin.� And they’re off. Welcome to the 2025 summer exam season.

Dozens of child actors will feature in HBO’s new Harry Potter series, all of them needing on-set tuition to be conjured up between scenes

Harry Potter may have been overjoyed at going to Hogwarts school of witchcraft and wizardry, but the children playing Harry, Ron and Hermione in the forthcoming HBO TV series will vanish from their own schools for the rest of their childhoods.

Instead the child actors – along with those playing Draco Malfoy, Ginny Weasley and the other Hogwarts pupils – will get much of their education from tutors at a “mini-school� to be conjured up at Warner Brothers’ Leavesden studio in Watford, north of London, when filming starts later this year.

The long-running series in which readers answer other readers’ questions on subjects ranging from trivial flights of fancy to profound scientific and philosophical concepts

Should schools still be taking a long summer break – is it detrimental to children’s learning? Or should they go year-round with shorter breaks? Julia Phillipson, Corby

Send new questions to nq@theguardian.com.

For the past decade, the US press has fueled a moral panic over leftists on campus while failing to report on the right’s assault

US universities are facing the Trump regime’s fury. The justification given by the regime is that universities are run by leftist ideologues, who have indoctrinated students to adopt supposedly leftist ideological orientations, as well as hostility to Israel, anti-whiteness and trans inclusivity. Donald Trump and his allies believe the election gave them the mandate to crush America’s system of higher education. But what may be less clear is that it is the mainstream media’s obsession with leftists on campus that has led to the current moment.

The US mainstream media has waged a decade-long propaganda campaign against American universities, culminating in the systematic misrepresentation of last year’s campus anti-war protests. This campaign has been the normalizing force behind the Trump administration’s attack on universities, as well as a primary cause of his multiple electoral successes. Unless the media recognizes the central role it has played, we cannot expect the attack to relent.

Jason Stanley is Jacob Urowsky professor of philosophy at Yale University. He is the author of Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future

A message tucked into an old book serves as a reminder that the assault on the institution is part of a long-planned effort

On the shelf in my library, I have an autographed copy of a book written by a former Republican congressman from New York, John LeBoutillier, titled Harvard Hates America: The Odyssey of a Born-Again American. It was published in 1978, two years before LeBoutillier was elected to Congress – and decades before the Trump administration’s assault on the institution. But its message is familiar in 2025.

The book is a scathing criticism of Harvard University, in large part over its supposed left-leaning professors who allegedly indoctrinate their undergraduates. Its thrust is straightforward: Harvard is America’s problem.

Long after I had graduated from Harvard and was a freshman member of Congress, I realized just how terrible some of the people educating our young are; they are not only liberals, but they use their “power� over their students to preach an anti-American leftist point of view. And this is not confined to Harvard. Indeed, this is a disease spreading throughout the academic world.

I believe that this politicalization of education threatens this country. And, coupled with a bias so obviously evident in the media, makes it difficult for we conservatives to get our message across.

Bernard E Harcourt is a professor of law and political science at Columbia University in New York City and a directeur d’études at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris. He is the author most recently of “A Modern Counterrevolution� in The Ideas Letter

Giving lunch to more pupils is a good move – but poor nutrition points to deeper problems that ministers must face

It was Ellen Wilkinson, education minister in the Attlee government, who announced in 1946 that free school dinners would be introduced, along with free school milk, at the same time as child benefit. No doubt Rachel Reeves, who has a picture of Wilkinson on the wall of her office, is aware of this – and also that the Treasury subsequently decided the policy was unaffordable. The meals were subsidised instead.

Despite these initial charges, and later price rises, poorer children did gain, and keep, an entitlement to free school meals. The announcement last week that this is being extended in England to all those whose parents or carers claim universal credit – rather than restricted to families with incomes lower than £7,400 – should be welcomed by all objectors to child poverty. Being assured of a hot lunch in the middle of the school day makes pupils’ lives better. Children cannot be expected to learn when they do not have enough to eat. This might sound obvious, but is easily forgotten. Scotland and Northern Ireland already have more generous rules in place.

The government’s announcement won’t mean much if disability and Pip cuts push more families into poverty

Good news. Free school meals for all children in England on universal credit is rightly being celebrated by schools, nurseries, further education colleges and children’s charities. There may only be 500,000 extra recipients estimated by the government now, but in the long run 1.7 million children will be eligible, says the Institute for Fiscal Studies. “Fantastic news,� says the Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG), as 100,000 children will be lifted out of poverty by this annual £500 put back in parents’ pockets.

Food matters. Hungry children can’t learn, and many miss school to avoid the public embarrassment of no dinner money and no packed lunch, according to CPAG’s Priced Out of School report. Strong evidence shows a rise in attainment and attendance if you feed children. The Feed the Future campaign finds not just academic achievement but health, happiness, reduced obesity and lifetime earnings improve if children don’t go hungry. Surely that can’t surprise anyone.

Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist