Michael Gove, the education secretary, faced renewed attacks today when it emerged that only 153 schools had applied to become academies – despite

Only 153 schools have applied to become academies despite a government fanfare claiming the number was more than a thousand, official figures revealed

At least 10,000 teenagers fail to achieve five good GCSEs each year simply because they were born too late in the school year, research has revealed.

A

The proportion of pupils expelled or suspended from school fell dramatically last year, government statistics revealed today, prompting claims of a

The taxpayer is spending more than £15m a year to send the children of British diplomats and military officers to private schools such as Fettes, Winchester,

Inequality in Britain is so entrenched that "rich, thick kids" achieve more than their "poor, clever" peers even before they start school, the education

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Courtesy to guardian.co.uk.

Courtesy to guardian.co.uk.

Courtesy to guardian.co.uk.

Combining world class education opportunities with the unique history, culture and the many public resorts, the city of Cambridge, Massachusetts is the best way to spend a beneficial and amusing summer. 

How to spot a good beach by Hugh GrahamThe editor of Time Out's Seaside Guide suggests 10 ways to know you've found the perfect beach:

1) Crashing

As experts warn the ongoing cuts in the public sector could result in record levels of graduate unemployment; despondent graduate jobseekers may find

I want to teach drama but feel like a charlatan as I lack qualificationsI returned to the country two years ago and I still haven't found stable, satisfying

Alom Shaha recently raised the issue of how science teachers should respond to being asked questions about God that arise in science lessons. Shaha

Are oral traditions still relevant? Are they slowly being replaced with technology? In 1992 my son Jesse, the anthropologist Robert Bruce and I drove

Each edition of the American Psychiatric Association\'s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) has a massive impact on psychiatric

The news that Åsne Seierstad, Norwegian author of The Bookseller of Kabul, has been successfully sued by one of her book\'s characters will be greeted

Was it a hilarious howler or does he simply not like women? The pope\'s new children\'s book, The Friends of Jesus, tells the stories of 14 of Jesus\'s

Strong relationships are said to have great health benefits: a review of studies into the impact of relationships on health found that people had a

The idea that child abuse can be thwarted by tightening laws about home education has been around for some time. The tragic case of Khyra Ishaq prompted

Now in its 41st year, and with a winners' roster that boasts some of the late 20th century's finest novelists – from William Golding to Nadine Gordimer

Rosemary Hill must have good judgment as a historian: she has won a prize for her book on Stonehenge and enjoyed praise for her study of Augustus Pugin.

In Evelyn Waugh's Decline and Fall, Mr Levy, of Church and Gargoyle scholastic agents, explains to Paul Pennyfeather: "We class schools … into …

Amazon unveiled two lighter, more advanced versions of the Kindle e-reader today, alongside a new UK ebook store that it claimed will send sales of

Phytoplankton might be too small to see with the naked eye, but they are the foundations of the ocean food chain, ultimately capturing the energy that

Global temperatures in the first half of the year were the hottest since records began more than a century ago, according to two of the world's leading

Tall men and large women are prime targets for midges, according to researchers who surveyed people at Loch Ness, in the Scottish Highlands.

Scientists

The chemical engineer Sir Frederick Warner, who has died aged 100, was internationally renowned for his pioneering work in building chemical plants

British, American and Norwegian engineers are in a race to design and build the holy grail of wind turbines – giant, 10MW offshore machines twice

Marine engineering for an innovative wave-power project off Orkney is to be provided by Britain's biggest arms manufacturer, BAE Systems. The defence

BP has rejected accusations of muzzling the scientists and academics it has hired to help fight hundreds of lawsuits relating to the Gulf of Mexico

Courtesy to guardian.co.uk.

Arachnophobes, look away now. On Saturday evening, while at my friend's back-garden barbecue, I was bitten by a spider. I felt a sharp sting – like

It\'s tougher than Kevlar and stronger than steel, and no one really knows how to make it. Except spiders of course. And silkworms.

Scientists

A field near Gretna in Dumfriesshire might not be an obvious place to find the world\'s oldest living creatures, but a team of scientists has done just

Courtesy to guardian.co.uk.

The last revellers seem to have cleared up scrupulously after the final party at Marden Henge some 4,500 years ago.

They scoured the rectangular

The archaeologist Raymond Allchin, who has died aged 86, first became fascinated with the cultural history of

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The government has released its eagerly anticipated response to the Science and Technology Committee's Evidence Check on Homeopathy and, incredibly,

The number of scientific experiments carried out on animals in the UK dropped by 37,000 last year to just over 3.6m, according to data released today

"We know a lot of things, but what we don't know is a lot more." So said Edward Witten, one of the world's most prominent theoretical physicists, when

From Sarah, by emailDear Carole, Please can you help me with an embarrassing problem which I can't seem to control that annoys my boyfriend (and my

Today's top Society Guardian news and commentInquiry calls for closure of children's heart surgery unit

Compulsory retirement at 65 to be phased

Ministers must urgently review the law on home education to prevent further tragedies, the independent review into the death of Khyra Ishaq recommended

Productivity of public services dipped sharply in 2008 despite a spurt of government spending in Gordon Brown's first full year as prime minister, first

A report is to be published today investigating the failures that led to the death of a seven-year-old girl who was starved by her mother after she

The scene on 20 April 1836 was horrific: the artist lay in a welter of gore on the floor of the summerhouse at his London home, his coat and waistcoat

Courtesy to guardian.co.uk.

Canadian archaeologists have found a British ship abandoned more than 150

Four white former students in South Africa today pleaded guilty to humiliating five black workers in an infamous internet video. The case of the "Reitz

The bone-dry wood creaks as the book opens at a page representing the course of the moon, framed by black balls and red crescents. The manuscript contains

The Home Office published figures today showing the number of scientific procedures carried out on live animals in Great Britain last year.

According

Verily Anderson, who has died aged 95, published more than 30 books – memoirs, biographies, children\'s stories and work ranging from personal

I think it was Sarah Crown who first set me off. "Is it just me?" she asked (while accepting the cliche of that opening phrase), "is it just me, or

Ali Shaw was born in 1982 and grew up in a small town in Dorset. Earlier this year he won the Desmond Elliott prize with his first novel, The Girl With

The late Swedish journalist Stieg Larsson has beaten Stephenie Meyer and James Patterson to become the first author to sell more than one million ebooks

Gabriel Josipovici is one of our best critics and he's quite right: let's have a debate. But this is a difficult time for the modern English novel.

After 11 years of toil, Charles Bicht has finally had his day. Dressed in a safari suit, the white-bearded Floridian this Saturday beat 123 other hopefuls

Fanaticism: On the Uses of an Idea, by Alberto Toscano (Verso, £16.99)

As Winston Churchill put it unimprovably, a fanatic is "someone who can't

Earlier this year Meg Rosoff expressed a desire to let loose with an illegal firearm, goaded by the "aggressive pinkness" of the upcoming Queen of Teen

As publishers and retailers wring their hands over agent Andrew Wylie's reincarnation as the ebook publisher of authors including Philip Roth and John

And here we have it: this year's Man Booker longlist – the "Booker dozen", as it is whimsically, not to say tweely, known.

First impressions

Those of us who yearned for more action and excitement at Comic-Con after a drab Friday may have ended yesterday thinking that we should be careful

Carola Hicks, who has died of cancer aged 68, was a glamorous academic and a serious populariser of art. She created something new in the world of contemporary

Title of experiment: Examination of Plays about Science.

Purpose: To determine why so few good plays about maths and science are written, when

Seven years ago, exasperated by living in a tiny London flat, the writer Tahir Shah enacted the cherished fantasy of stressed city dwellers everywhere

It's kicking off in the quiet carriage. At Reading, two elderly people get on and the lovely hush that has existed on this corner of the 09.59 from

A life of booze, fags and slothfulness may be enough to earn your doctor's disapproval, but there is one last hope: a repeat prescription of mates and

Conventional wisdom says that the better educated a woman is, the more likely she is to delay motherhood. But a new study suggests personality type

Facing steep competition from Apple\'s iPad, which can do just about everything a computer can in addition to displaying books, Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN)

The overwhelmingly positive response to Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss's drama Sherlock, which started on BBC1 at the weekend, suggests that it will

Last month in Madrid, Diego A Manrique, a man who is pretty much the Spanish equivalent of John Peel, introduced me at the Dia de la Musica festival

Gordon Brown's account of the global financial crisis is due to be published in November, with all proceeds going to charity, it was confirmed today.

Publishers

Polly Toynbee's assertion that the coalition government has absolute power in both chambers of parliament (Comment, 20 July) suggests she has not paid

When Edna Healey, wife of the Labour politician Denis Healey, wrote her book Wives of Fame (1986), about three women married to men of genius, her preferred

Plans to create hundreds of Swedish-style free schools in England will prove a costly experiment and risk increasing racial and social segregation as

The US website Cool Tools has compiled a list of the best magazine articles of all time that has sparked much online debate.

No doubt compiled

Tom Stoppard is returning to the BBC after a long absence by writing the screenplay for a five-part drama set during the first world war.

BBC2

The Independent has asked its long-standing, award-winning education editor Lucy Hodges to leave.

She has refused to accept a redundancy offer

I am just back in the office from delivering a course in Aberdeen. I still do some of the training from time to time to keep a feel for what people

Funding from the UK government to support primary education in developing countries has helped increase pupil enrolment rates, but has had little impact

Julie Taymor's revisionist version of Shakespeare's The Tempest will be the closing feature at this year's Venice film festival.

Starring Helen

I've always thought of poets as the goalkeepers of the literary world – the last line of defence. Guardians, custodians, gatekeepers, sentries –

It will be one of those rare afternoons when England – or at least a great chunk of it – pauses. Tens of thousands of football fans have booked

First, a declaration of interest: one of the co-authors of this book, Scott Murray, is a colleague at the Guardian/Observer. That will not stop me complaining

Mrs Lesley Brown, the world's first test-tube mother, gave birth to a baby girl at Oldham General Hospital, Lancashire, last night after a caesarian

Singapore\'s long-serving administration has won some time to ponder how it will deal with yet another self-inflicted blow to its global branding.

The