Children

Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain More should be done to break the "grass ceiling" of hidden school underachievement in rural areas, a new study warns. The research is published in the journal Education Sciences. Traditional narratives are that urban pupils do less well compared to those living in the countryside, and exam performance data shows rural…

As World Book Day runs its annual event to promote reading for pleasure among children, it has revealed new research showing that more than a third of children cannot choose what they want to read, and one in five feel judged for what they do read.“Children have told us that they think that reading choices are judged by the adults around them,” said Cassie Chadderton, CEO of World Book Day. “It discourages them, it puts them off reading for pleasure and by choice”.The survey of 1,000 7- to 14-year-olds in the UK –…

World Obesity Day 2024 will be celebrated on March 4. Obesity among children in…

The ominous messages began arriving in Elissa’s inbox early last year. “You sell pics of your underage daughter to pedophiles,” read one. “You’re such a naughty sick mom, you’re just as sick as us pedophiles,” read another. “I will make your life hell for you and your daughter.” Elissa has been running her daughter’s Instagram account since 2020, when the girl was 11 and too young to have her own. Photos show a bright, bubbly girl modeling evening dresses, high-end workout gear and dance leotards. She has more than…

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Lack of support for early years language and communication development is leading to a “literacy crisis” that could be costing the economy £830m for each school year group, according to new research.The report, led by Pro Bono Economics (PBE) and commissioned by KPMG UK in collaboration with the National Literacy Trust (NLT), also found that there are about 106,000 five-year-old children in England each year who are not currently meeting the expected standard for literacy but could with adequate support.PBE estimated the…

If we get to the end of 2024 with a better news story than Willy’s Chocolate Experience in Glasgow, I will be absolutely staggered.It’s the perfect story. You’ve got high expectations versus miserable reality. You’ve got an organiser who – if his reams and reams of apparently AI-generated self-published books are any indication – has a samurai-level expertise when it comes to parting people from their money. You’ve got the fact that he runs a company called House of Illuminati. You’ve got police involvement. You’ve got…

Photo: House of Illuminati / Stuart SinclairPolice were called to the scene of “Willy’s Chocolate Experience In Glasgow, Scotland” as children burst into tears when the “immersive experience” promised in AI advertisements turned out to be a sparsely decorated warehouse.House of Illuminati, the organization behind the event, reportedly charged up to £35 for tickets (about $45) for an afternoon of activities based on the Timothée Chalamet Wonka reboot. The event was promoted with AI renderings full of lollipop forests,…

Get our free weekly email for all the latest cinematic news from our film critic Clarisse LoughreyGet our The Life Cinematic email for freeBradley Cooper has been mocked by fans following an interview in which he became visibly emotional over how much he “misses” Leonard Bernstein – despite never having met him.The actor and director stars as American composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein in the 2023 biopic, Maestro. Described as “a love letter to life and art”, Maestro depicts the decades-long relationship between…

Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain After analyzing DNA from almost 10,000 people from ancient and pre-modern societies, our international team of researchers have discovered six cases of Down syndrome in past human populations. Our results, published today in Nature Communications, show people with Down syndrome lived in ancient populations. Although…