Positive thinking

   Adrienne Yong, City, University of London Despite the fact that EU citizens enjoy the right to move to and live in other member states, the UK government has recently ramped up efforts to deport them. In the year ending June 2017, 5,301 EU citizens were deported from the UK, a 20% rise compared to the previous year. This is a troubling figure, especially considering that the law supposedly protects EU citizens from deportation. The charity, Bail for Immigration Detainees , has noticed a rise in EU nationals involved in deportations . As many EU citizens remain anxious about their future in the UK after Brexit, the government has unfortunately sent mixed messages as to whether EU citizens will enjoy the same rights in the UK once it leaves the EU, or if they will simply be deported . Debate already exists in the UK about whether certain individuals “deserve” to be expelled, from people who are not working but seeking welfare benefits , to people wh...

   Mark Boylan, Sheffield Hallam University When it comes to maths, many primary school children in the UK are struggling to achieve their potential, according to new research . The recent report from the Education Policy Institute and UCL’s Institute of Education shows that England has one of the biggest gaps between high and low performing students in the developed world. Only New Zealand and Turkey have a bigger disparity. So while England’s top performing maths pupils achieve a very high standard, the bottom performers lag far behind – with this gap well established before pupils reach secondary school. It’s not surprising then that “mastery” has become something of a buzzword in the UK in the last five years. It’s a word with lots of different meanings , but it’s usually linked to how mathematics is taught in East Asia – particularly in Shanghai and Singapore. Both of which are very successful in international league tables such as PISA. In Shangh...

   Antonio Savoia, University of Manchester Inequality is rising almost everywhere across the world – that’s the clear finding of the first ever World Inequality Report . In particular, it has grown fastest in Russia, India and China – places where this was long suspected but there was little accurate data to paint a reliable picture. Until now, it was actually very difficult to compare inequality in different regions of the world because of sparse or inconsistent data, which lacked credibility. But, attempting to overcome this gap, the new World Inequality Report is built on data collection work carried out by more than a hundred researchers located across every continent and contributing to the World Wealth and Income Database . Europe is the least unequal region of the world, having experienced a milder increase in inequality. At the bottom half of the table are Sub-Saharan Africa, Brazil and India, with the Middle East as the most unequal region. ...

Mel Ainscow, University of Manchester and Maija Salokangas, Trinity College Dublin Academies are back in the news – and not for a good reason. In the same week that parents, children and teachers united in strike action against academy schools, new figures show that more than 64 of these schools are waiting for a new sponsor . These schools are unable to return to local authority control after being abandoned by, or stripped from, the trust that originally managing them. Department for Education figures obtained through a freedom of information request show that more than 40,000 children are being educated in these so-called “zombie schools”. This comes at a time when large pay rises for academy chiefs have been dubbed “unreasonable” by academies minister Lord Agnew. Trusts that are paying leaders more than £150,000 have been asked to explain their “rationale” to the Education and Skills Funding Agency. Academies were first introduced by the Labour government in ...

   Christine Grove, Monash University Knowing how to navigate the online social networking world is crucial for parents and teens. Being educated and talking about online experiences can help reduce any negative impacts on youth mental health and well-being. The Australian Psychology Society ( APS ) recently released a national survey looking at the impact of technology and social media on the well-being of Australians. Around 1,000 adults over the age of 18 and 150 young people aged 14-17 years took part. The survey found more than three in four young people (78.8%) and more than half of all adults (54%) were highly involved with their mobile phones. Young people are reportedly using social media for an average of 3.3 hours each day, on five or more days of the week. The vast majority of adults and teenagers reported their screens and social media accounts were a positive part of their lives. Many use social media channels to connect with family, fri...

   Dr Ned Hartfiel, Bangor University and Rhiannon Tudor Edwards, Bangor University Back pain is the single leading cause of disability in the world. In the US, four out of every five people experience back pain at some point in their life. In the UK, back pain is one of the most common reasons for visits to the doctor , and missed work . In fact, absence from work due to back problems costs British employers more than £3 billion every year . But there is a potentially easy way to prevent this problem: yoga. Our new research has found that exercises from the ancient Indian practice can have very positive benefits for back problems. Our findings suggest that yoga programmes consisting of stretching, breathing, and relaxation methods can reduce sickness absence due to back pain and musculoskeletal conditions. Wellness at work There has already been plenty of research demonstrating the benefits of yoga for NHS patients, showing that patients with chronic...

   Paul Gregg, University of Bath How to address inequality in society by redistributing incomes through taxes and benefits has long divided left and right. But equalising opportunities, commonly called social mobility, has wide political credence. The constrained opportunities of children who grow up in less affluent households is not just an issue of natural justice but also of wasted talents. In an era of stagnant productivity and wages, poor social mobility represents an economic as well as a social cost to Britain. And Britain’s record on social mobility is among the worst in advanced countries, along with the US and Italy. The Social Mobility Commission, which I was a member of until I resigned alongside the chair Alan Milburn in early December, sought to highlight this and to argue for policy engagement to address it. Our latest report highlighted that Britain is not a good country to be born poor and that across the country there is huge variati...

   Daniel Hemel, University of Chicago The tax bill passed by the Senate in the wee hours of Dec. 2 will – if it becomes law – widen the gap between the rich and the poor at a time when income inequality is already approaching historic heights. Initially, most U.S. households are likely to experience a modest tax cut under the Senate plan. However by 2027, the average family earning less than US$50,000 would pay about $250 more in taxes under the Senate plan, while the average family earning more than $1 million would experience a tax cut topping $8,000 a year, according to estimates from Congress’s own Joint Committee on Taxation. Yet even those stark statistics understate the full impact of the Senate bill on long-term inequality in the United States. In my own research, I examine the relationship between the tax system and inequality. In my view, there are two significant reasons why the bill’s impact will be even more dramatic – and even more regres...

   James Robson, University of Oxford ; Katriona O'Sullivan, National University of Ireland Maynooth , and Niall Winters, University of Oxford Just 1.5% of all offers from Oxford and Cambridge universities went to black British A-level students in 2015, recent data obtained by Labour MP David Lammy revealed. The majority of places went to students in the south-east of England with professional parents. This has sparked extensive debate about the accessibility of elite higher education institutions for the socioeconomically disadvantaged and black, Asian and minority ethnic students. It has also led to calls for elite institutions to do more to improve their widening participation schemes and offer more places to students from different backgrounds. In response to these debates, the Oxford African and Caribbean Society explained : It is true that the data reveals significant issues of institutionalised cultural and economic bias at Oxford; however it is al...

   Michele Stua, University of Sussex and Ed Dearnley, University of Sussex With Brexit negotiations stuck on divorce bills and borders, complex issues such as climate change barely receive a mention. Yet the UK has agreements with the EU around emissions targets and technology transfer, and Brexit represents a significant threat to the UK’s progress on cutting carbon emissions. The UK’s recent clean growth strategy document devotes scant attention to Brexit, providing only a single page on “leaving the European Union”. Yet, other public institutions , as well as the mainstream media , have raised questions concerning climate change, Brexit and the UK government’s attitude. The TRANSrisk project is studying risk and uncertainty in low carbon transitions across the globe. Since our inception in 2015, Brexit has introduced a significant new area of uncertainty, with three key issues emerging. These are the UK’s future within a) the United Nations Framework...

   Gina Rippon, Aston University Parents and teachers are painfully aware that it’s nearly impossible to get a teenager to focus on what you think is important. Even offering them a bribe or issuing a stern warning will typically fail. There may be many reasons for that, including the teenager’s developing sense of independence and social pressure from friends. Now a new study, published in Nature Communications , shows that this behaviour may actually be down to how the adolescent brain is wired. Adolescence is defined as the period of life that starts with the biological changes of puberty and ends when the individual attains a stable, independent role in society. (This definition may leave some readers wistfully pondering the second half of that equation). We now know that it is also a time of tremendous brain reorganisation, which we are only just beginning to understand . At this point, the brain’s grey matter, which has been growing exuberantly sin...