Schools in north-eastern Italy have banned pork products in school meals to make them acceptable to Muslim migrants, meaning traditional dishes like prosciutto, porchetta and pasta all’amatriciana are off the menu.
The post Pork Banned in Italy’s New Muslim-Friendly School Meals appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.
School looking to sell piece of open land beloved by people in Devon town to fund refurbishments
On Saturdays throughout autumn, residents of Totnes have met at a field on the banks of the River Dart to play ballgames, fly kites or simply sit on the grass and chat.
But it hasn’t just been about having fun – this has been a “play protest” aimed at trying to save a beloved piece of open land in the historic Devon market town.
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© Photograph: Jim Wileman/The Guardian
© Photograph: Jim Wileman/The Guardian
© Photograph: Jim Wileman/The Guardian
To protest against shameful conditions in schools is entirely legitimate. The government’s response is not
As a secondary school pupil in 1994, I took part in protests against a reform that would have allowed French employers to pay young people below the minimum wage. Our campaign was successful, but if we had had to face the terrifying police response unleashed on student protesters in France over recent weeks, I would have stayed at home.
A 14-year-old boy, Eden, suffered a fractured jaw and had teeth knocked out after a police teargas grenade struck him in the face. Sixteen-year-old Maël lost the sight in one eye allegedly after being struck by a shot from an LBD, a form of rubber-bullet launcher. Evan, 15, had his hand blown off in an explosion involving a police stun grenade. And in Dunkirk, a police SUV is alleged to have driven repeatedly at groups of secondary school pupils, as an officer could be heard saying: “Come closer, we’ll smash their fucking faces in.” Accounts from children left terrified by brutal treatment in police custody describe traumatic experiences with severe psychological and physical consequences.
Rokhaya Diallo is a French journalist, film-maker, activist and Guardian Europe columnist
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© Photograph: Tonny Linke/NurPhoto/Shutterstock
© Photograph: Tonny Linke/NurPhoto/Shutterstock
© Photograph: Tonny Linke/NurPhoto/Shutterstock
School choice in Ohio has taken a big hit. On Thursday, a panel of the state's 10th District Court of Appeals unanimously ruled the state's Educational Choice Scholarship, or EdChoice, program unconstitutional.
Vouchers Hurt Ohio (VHO), a coalition of public school districts, banded together in 2022 to sue the state over the EdChoice program, which uses public funds to finance scholarships for K-12 students to attend private schools. Under EdChoice's "Traditional Plan," which has been around since 2005, students can receive annual scholarships as high as $6,166 for elementary and middle school and $8,408 for high school. The scholarship's "Expansion Program," which state lawmakers created in 2013, awards maximum scholarship amounts identical to the Traditional Plan, "but scale based on a family's income," according to EdChoice, an educational freedom nonprofit. The organization says the scholarship program supports more than 100,000 Ohio families.
The VHO argues that the EdChoice scholarship program drains funding from the public school system, depriving Ohio students of much-needed resources. Its website states "private school vouchers create a system of state-funded discrimination" and that school choice is a "myth." Interestingly, the Court of Appeals of Ohio's 10th Appellate District largely concurred.
The court's ruling came down to Article VI, Section 2 of the Ohio Constitution, which says that the state must secure a "thorough and efficient system of common schools."
The panel held that the EdChoice voucher program violates this mandate by funding a "competing system of uncommon schools." Writing for the court, Judge David Leland took the argument further, contending that EdChoice schools "actually end up depriving families of choice." He cited private schools' selective admissions process and urban concentration, calling the defendants' appeals to choice "a fundamental misnomer," because the choice to admit students rests with the schools, not the families.
Keith Neely, an attorney at the Institute for Justice who represents families using EdChoice in the case, argues that the program funds families rather than a competing school system.
He also challenges the court's rationale that the state's obligation to fund public schools implicitly prohibits them from funding other forms of education. "I think that's just fundamentally wrong as a matter of constitutional interpretation and also just as a matter of public understanding," he tells Reason.
The court "seemed to take the view that any dollar spent on other educational programs like scholarships is a dollar that could be spent on public schools instead, but that's not how budgeting works," he says.
Neely says that public education funding is separate from the scholarship program and that every funding decision has tradeoffs. If the court finds that EdChoice's school voucher program violates the state's obligation to fund public schools, what stops it from reaching the same conclusion for other programs, like the Jon Peterson Special Needs Scholarship or the Cleveland Scholarship program, which provides private school tuition scholarships for K-12 students living in the Cleveland Municipal School District?
Neely also points to Simmons-Harris v. Goff (1999), where the Ohio Supreme Court partially reversed a lower court's ruling and found that school choice was constitutional under the same public-education clause. The court invalidated the Cleveland scholarship program in question, finding that it was "improperly enacted by the legislature," according to the Institute for Justice. However, the Ohio Legislature later reenacted the program.
The families using the EdChoice scholarship program—as well as the state's attorney general—plan to appeal to the Ohio Supreme Court, and Neely is optimistic that history will repeat itself in this case. He tells Reason, "When you look at what the Constitution says, and you look at what the court said in Simmons-Harris, I think the only conclusion that the Ohio Supreme Court can walk away with is that programs like the Educational Choice Scholarship program are constitutional." Families will be able to keep their scholarships while the litigation is pending.
This case is just one battle in a nationwide war on school choice. A recent report from Reason Foundation, the nonprofit that publishes Reason, found that 80 percent of public-school students live in states with "weak or ineffective open enrollment laws." These laws "allo[w] students to transfer to public schools other than their residentially assigned one, provided space is available," writes Jude Schwalbach, senior policy analyst at Reason Foundation. Several states are also holding out against the Education Freedom Tax Credit, a new federal tax credit that offers a dollar-for-dollar tax refund for donating to K-12 scholarship programs.
The court's decision reflects the broader rationale fueling that opposition: that education dollars going to anything other than public schools are taken from ordinary students. For decades, policymakers have invested in that premise, yet student outcomes have little to show for it. The real myth isn't school choice; it's that giving families more options means betraying students' education.
The post Ohio Court Strikes Down a Scholarship Program That Supports More Than 100,000 Families appeared first on Reason Magazine.
Pete Crockett says the history of British education is not simply one of children dutifully accepting adult instruction, while Simon Dawson says Kitty Sayers misses the mark when describing English attitudes. Plus a letter from Kevin Donnelly
Reading Kitty Sayers’ interesting article, I was reminded of the rich, and perhaps too easily forgotten, history of direct action by British schoolchildren (Angry French students take to the streets. British students don’t – and I think I know why, 10 October). Far from being historically meek or unquestioningly compliant, they have demonstrated a remarkable capacity for challenging authority.
At Marlborough college, troops were once summoned to dislodge rebellious pupils occupying an island in the school grounds. In the late 1700s, Winchester college experienced several rebellions.
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© Photograph: Amer Ghazzal/Alamy
© Photograph: Amer Ghazzal/Alamy
© Photograph: Amer Ghazzal/Alamy
Beneath a wave of school protests in France lies a more existential worry: the future prospects of an entire generation
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Say what you will about France’s high schools, they still produce world-class slogan writers. Here’s a brief selection spotted during three weeks of blockades and marches over chronic teacher shortages, overcrowded classes and crumbling buildings:
“Pas d’avenir, pas de calme” (No future, no calm). “Diplômés aujourd’hui, précaires demain” (Graduates today, insecure tomorrow). “Vous détruisez notre futur, on bloque votre présent” (You destroy our future, we block your present).
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© Photograph: Sarah Meyssonnier/Reuters
© Photograph: Sarah Meyssonnier/Reuters
© Photograph: Sarah Meyssonnier/Reuters
Students from the Agrupamento de Escolas Silves Sul received a hero’s welcome at Faro Airport on Sunday evening after returning from a successful Model United Nations (MUN) conference in Manchester,
The post Algarve students return triumphant from UK diplomacy conference appeared first on Portugal Resident.
School ceilings keep falling on students’ heads across the country in the last couple of days, where such incidents are being reported on a daily basis. Shortly before classes ended for the weekend, a large piece of plaster fell from the ceiling injuring a 14-year-old student. The boy at Thermi Gymnasium by Thessaloniki was hit […]
The post School ceilings keep falling on students’ heads, injuring minors during classes appeared first on Keep Talking Greece.
Thousands of children and teenagers with special educational needs are at risk of losing specialist support, as Inclusion Resource Centres (CRI) are still unaware of the level of funding for
The post Thousands of pupils with special needs at risk of losing support appeared first on Portugal Resident.
The Charles Lepierre French Lycée in the Portuguese capital is closed this morning for security reasons, according to SIC television news, which reports that “a blockade” similar to those currently
The post French school in Lisbon closed for security reasons appeared first on Portugal Resident.
The crisis of school placements – already having seen several schools increase class sizes beyond recommended numbers – continues, with another 380 “late enrollment requests” received in certain areas, the
The post Further pressure on over-full state schools: 380 ‘new’ pupils request places appeared first on Portugal Resident.
Violence has returned to the streets of France today as far-Left protesters lead clashes with police amid warnings that demonstrators have been told to "bring knives" and "stab civilians".
The post Violence Returns to Streets of France Amid Warning Protesters Have Been Told to “Bring Knives” and “Stab Civilians” appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.
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