Positive thinking

   Simon Burgess, University of Bristol One of the toughest subjects in classrooms at the moment is the recruitment and retention of teachers. Their level of pay is often cited as a problem – and possibly part of a solution. In England, the public sector pay freeze of recent years has meant real terms pay cuts for many teachers. But another part of the picture is the procedure which decides how much an individual teacher gets. Until recently this has been the pervasive public sector approach under which pay has generally increased automatically over time. But what if that were changed? Could the profession be made more attractive to high performers? Could more teachers be persuaded to keep on teaching? Back in 2013 the British government introduced one of the most wide-ranging reforms to teachers’ pay for many years. The most striking element was the requirement for all Local Authority (LA) maintained schools to introduce “ performance-related pay ” (PRP)...

   Emma Long, University of East Anglia The press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of government and inform the people. Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government Justice Hugo Black, New York Times v. US (1971). Steven Spielberg’s new film, The Post , which explores the events that led up to New York Times v. US, echoes Black’s sentiment. The film tells the little known story of how the Washington Post came to be the second newspaper after the New York Times to publish extracts of the so-called “ Pentagon Papers ”. The case helped to expose the lies and half-truths told to the American people about the Vietnam War by their own government and standing up to the bullying of the Nixon administration in the process. The film addresses many themes, including sexism in the workplace, industry competition, journalistic integrity and the problems of an industry facing increasing financial pressures. But at heart ...

   Anne Marie Rafferty, King's College London Nursing is often seen as the beating heart of the NHS. But, if recent media reports are anything to judge by, the beating heart is badly in need of a cardiologist. Outsiders looking in would rightly be puzzled by the UK government’s policy for planning the largest workforce in the NHS, and the apparent chaos, contradiction and confusion that has characterised the process. Nothing seems to make sense. For example, we have been under-producing nurses in England over the past decade at a time when demand for care – due to a growing elderly population and an increase in people with multiple long-term illnesses – has increased. Many of our counterparts in developed countries, such as the US, Australia, Belgium and Finland, have been boosting recruitment to meet the growth in demand. Significantly, the number of doctors in England has expanded by 20% over the past decade to meet growth in demand, so it is not si...

   Dianna Smith, University of Southampton and Claire Thompson, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Statistics from food banks across England show a frightening rise in the number of people using their services, meaning that more and more people don’t have enough money to feed themselves. Between April 1, 2016 and March 31, 2017, the Trussell Trust provided 1,182,954 three-day emergency food packages – up 73,645 from the previous year. People affected by food poverty face severe threats to their health and well-being. As well as the stress, depression and anxiety that can result from not having enough money to feed their families, people experiencing food poverty also face a higher risk of obesity , because the only foods they can afford tend to be cheap, sugary, processed and fattening. Some researchers have already mapped out who is using food banks, which is a big step towards understanding the problem. But academics like ourselves are i...

   Connor Bamford, University of Glasgow and Julien Amat, University of Glasgow The UK is being hit with one of the worst flu seasons in recent decades. A total of 664 hospital admissions and 85 confirmed deaths have been reported since the beginning of winter 2017. The British media have blamed “Aussie flu” for the outbreak. The truth is, there is not just one flu strain we should be worried about, and “Aussie flu” is a bit of a misnomer. First, a bit about flu strains. There isn’t really a flu virus. Flu virus is a name we give a group of four closely related viruses: influenza A, influenza B, influenza C and influenza D. While humans can’t catch influenza D ( that’s for pigs and cows ), we can be infected with influenza A, B and C. Public health officials, however, are less worried about influenza C as it isn’t a major cause of illness. But influenza A and B are a real worry. Influenza A has been found in – and causes disease in – lots of animals,...

Moheeb AbuAlqumboz, University of Huddersfield The construction industry has always been characterised by uncertainty. Managing large construction projects involves enormous challenges, coming from the political, economic, social and technological environments involved. The bigger the project, the bigger the challenge. For big infrastructure projects such as railways and hospitals, we’re talking multi-million pound contracts and thousands of employees, over a number of years. So, in many ways, the collapse of the UK’s second-largest construction company, Carillion, is not surprising. The National Audit Office, which scrutinises the UK government’s public spending, predicted that more than one-third of mega projects – the kind that the government outsources to Carillion – will fail in the years ahead. And yet the shape and speed of Carillion’s demise was still shocking – even to the many industry observers who were watching its poor performance over the past year. Not lea...

Alexander Baratta, University of Manchester The way we talk can reveal a lot about us and our origins – in terms of region, class and ethnicity. The UK has a wide variety of accents but not all are created equal – with some accents deemed to be more socially acceptable than others. Maybe it’s not surprising, then, that my research has shown that teachers in the UK often feel under pressure to change their accents. Based on four studies I have conducted since 2014, it appears that many teachers – notably those from the North and Midlands – are being told by mentors to adopt a more general (less broad) version of their accents to help construct a more professional identity. For some, this equates to linguistic prejudice (or certainly preference), yet it is disguised as being based on a need to be “better understood” by the children they are teaching. The Department for Education states that teachers in England must : Demonstrate an understanding of and take responsi...

Carol Fuller, University of Reading Damian Hinds has been announced as the new education secretary in the prime minister’s cabinet reshuffle. He will replace Justine Greening, who is leaving the government. He received one of the biggest promotions – he was previously employment minister in the Department for Work and Pensions. Before this he was exchequer secretary to the Treasury, and before that, a whip. As part of his new role, Hinds will face tough decisions on school funding and university tuition fees, so here’s hoping he is up to the job. But given that Brexit is taking all of government’s energy and many considered Justine Greening to be valiantly battling a system in crisis without any support , I am somewhat doubtful as to the new education secretary’s ability to make much difference – an end to the government’s preoccupation with Brexit is not likely to be happening any time soon. The one gleaming light though is that, as a previous chair of the A...

   Lowri Dowthwaite, University of Central Lancashire Over the past two decades, the positive psychology movement has brightened up psychological research with its science of happiness, human potential and flourishing. It argues that psychologists should not only investigate mental illness but also what makes life worth living. The founding father of positive psychology, Martin Seligman, describes happiness as experiencing frequent positive emotions, such as joy, excitement and contentment, combined with deeper feelings of meaning and purpose. It implies a positive mindset in the present and an optimistic outlook for the future. Importantly, happiness experts have argued that happiness is not a stable, unchangeable trait but something flexible that we can work on and ultimately strive towards. I have been running happiness workshops for the last four years based on the evidence from the above field of psychology. The workshops are fun and I have earned a rep...

   Kayleigh Chester, University of Hertfordshire Bullying is a problem for schools worldwide. It is a fairly common behaviour, although it can be difficult to identify the number of young people who have been bullied because of the different ways bullying is measured. One 2014 review of 80 studies suggests that roughly 35% of children experience bullying at some point. In a class of 30 students, this would mean that ten young people will have been a victim of bullying. Childline reports that bullying is one of the top three reasons young people contact them. Bullying is generally thought of as an intentional, harmful behaviour which is carried out repeatedly. The repetitive nature distinguishes bullying from other forms of conflict or aggression among young people. There are four main types of bullying behaviours: physical, verbal, cyber and relational (or social). Relational bullying is probably the least known form of bullying. But it is also one of the m...