Positive thinking

Julia Badger, University of Oxford   The latest Statutory Assessment Test results (Sats) have been released and will reveal whether all the coaching and anxiety has paid off for schools and pupils. Sats have never been far from controversy. Introduced in 1989, the national curriculum aimed to ensure standardised teaching across all government funded schools – and Sats were the assessment of performance against expectation. The results provide schools with a way of monitoring children’s progress and can be accessed by secondary schools to help set their Year 7 pupils into ability groupings. The data, which is published by the Department for Education, also allows for comparison of schools – which can help parents with school selection. On top of this, Sats provide additional insight into school performance for Ofsted inspections – which allows the government to monitor whether schools are enabling children to show progression. The tests have become “high-stakes” –...

Michael Smith, Northumbria University, Newcastle   Writing about positive emotions may help to reduce stress and anxiety, according to our new study , published in the British Journal of Health Psychology. Earlier research has also found that writing about negative emotions – getting things “off your chest” – can improve your mental health . And it seems to benefit physical health, too. Stress affects your physical health, so it is thought that improvements in mental well-being might stop people becoming physically unwell. Research has shown that writing about negative emotions can lead to fewer visits to the doctor , fewer self-reported symptoms of ill health , and less time off work due to ill health . Not many studies have investigated writing about positive emotions, but if writing about negative emotions helps people deal with their negative thoughts and feelings, then it’s possible that focusing on positive emotions might have a positive effect on people’s me...

Nicholas Allen, Royal Holloway ; Erica Consterdine, University of Sussex ; Feargal Cochrane, University of Kent ; John-Paul Salter, King's College London , and Maria Garcia, University of Bath   After a summit with her cabinet that sparked several ministerial resignations, British prime minister Theresa May has published a controversial white paper setting out her government’s vision for Brexit. This will now be sent to the European Union for further negotiations. Experts assess the proposals in key areas. An appeal to party unity Nicholas Allen, Reader in Politics, Royal Holloway, University of London The publication of the Brexit white paper is the latest step in Theresa May’s effort to broker a common position for negotiating future UK-EU relations. It is also the latest step in what might be called the Cabinet “peace process”. Senior ministers have been sniping at each other for months and two cabinet ministers – David Davis and Boris Johnson – have res...

Karen A Snedker, University of Oxford   Severe mental illness is on the rise in the UK, and an increasing number of people with mental illness are behind bars and supported by inadequate mental health services . This is a situation that could be improved by the introduction of courts specifically geared for hearing cases involving defendants with mental health issues. In England, there are more than 31,000 people with mental health problems in prison. In one sample of prisons in England and Wales, more than one-third reported significant symptoms of anxiety or depression and 10% were identified as having a psychotic disorder. The neglect and mistreatment of defendants with mental health issues raises human rights concerns. The prevalence rate of defendants with serious mental illness coming before UK courts is not well known. As of 2006, one study estimates that slightly more than 1% of defendants appearing at magistrates’ courts were identified as having a se...

Ernestine Gheyoh Ndzi, University of Hertfordshire   The gender pay gap has been around for as long as woman have been in the workforce. No matter the reasons that get put forward as to why men get paid more than women, it generally comes back to the fact that women take on more child rearing and caring responsibilities than men. The gender pay gap in the UK stands at 18.4% in favour of men for full-time and part-time workers, according to the Office for National Statistics . But what the ONS fails to account for is the number of women on zero hours contracts. If it did, the gender pay gap would be even worse for women. Gender pay gap regulation, introduced in 2017 requires companies that employ 250 employees or more to publish annual gender pay levels in their organisations. But zero hours contract workers are not considered as employees under the law. This means that those on zero hours contracts – a group of which women make up a bigger share – are left out of...

Cam Donaldson, Glasgow Caledonian University   The NHS has survived to the age of 70 and now costs the UK just over £120 billion per annum. Many advanced economies spend even more on healthcare per head of population. Why do fully paid-up capitalist nations persist with this Stalinist approach to healthcare? Instinctively we might cite humanitarian and political reasons. But is this enough? Arguably access to food is a more fundamental human right, yet we don’t have a National Food Service. Governments do intervene in food markets, providing social security to poorer people to feed themselves – and we can debate whether it’s adequate . Generally, however, food is left to the market. In contrast, healthcare spending comes mainly from the public purse – see below. Total health expenditure/state-funding Figures based on purchasing power parity, a form of currency conversion to help compare countries. Figures include all ...

Sarah Rodgers, Swansea University   Britain has a housing crisis, not just in terms of a shortage of homes and sky-high prices , but in terms of the poor state of existing homes. Four in ten British homes don’t meet the basic criteria to secure occupants’ well-being, according to a recent survey. Researchers have looked into individual measures to improve housing and their effects on the people living in them. In New Zealand, for example – which has a similar climate to the UK – reduced asthma wheeze and fewer visits to the doctor were reported by people who had insulation improvements to their homes. In another New Zealand study, low-income tenants whose homes had fall-reduction modifications, led to reduced falls as intended. In the UK, though specific initiatives like these have been assessed, no one has looked at the effect that whole-home improvement can have on health, until now. Our latest research is the first to investigate how improvement of a whole h...

Alexis E Cullen, King's College London   People with autoimmune disorders, a collection of diseases where the body’s immune system attacks its own cells, are more likely to have psychosis, according to our latest research . Previous research found that rates of rheumatoid arthritis were lower in people with psychosis than would be expected in the general population. But later studies showed that other autoimmune disorders, such as coeliac disease and autoimmune thyroid disorders , were more common in people with psychosis. This led scientists to the view that there is a connection between autoimmune disorders and psychosis. But conflicting findings meant that it was difficult to reach any conclusions about the relationship. Given the uncertainty about the relationship between these disorders and psychosis, and growing interest in this area, we decided to review the research and conduct a meta-analysis – a method in which data from several studies are combined and an...

Stella Chatzitheochari, University of Warwick and Lucinda Platt, London School of Economics and Political Science Almost half of all young people in England now go on to higher education. This means that teenagers in the UK are more likely to go to university than ever before. Official figures reveal that 49% of students in England are expected to enter advanced studies by the age of 30. But our new research shows that students with special educational needs and disabilities are far less likely to go to university than those with no known disabilities . Our study investigated the different factors influencing disabled young people’s attainment. We examined data from a longitudinal survey of about 16,000 young people in England, linked with administrative data on school performance. Our analysis covered young people with special educational needs and those with long-term mental and physical conditions. We found that only 26% of disabled students achieve five A* to ...