Family News Home

Trying to persuade older children to join a family trip? Joanna Symons suggests 10 breaks that teenagers won’t sneer at.
Parents are not ideal travelling companions as far as older teenagers are concerned, but if you want to keep family holidays going there are certain options that will still pull them in.
Remote cottages or serious culture [...]

Laura Casey is facing the reality of turning off life-support for her husband, Seamus Casey, after the celebrated young Christchurch opera singer was hit by a car, leaving him in a coma in Sydney.
Casey, 27, attended Burnside High School and did a Diploma of Performing Arts at the Hagley Theatre Company before moving offshore to [...]

From right to left on the whiteboard Shazia Siddique writes the names of the five seasons in Urdu - yes there are five, including the rainy season - and explains to her attentive class of year 9s that by the end of the lesson they should be able to read, write and speak about them [...]

There are no easy fixes for tackling the country’s adult illiteracy problem, but occasional breakthroughs occur.Quick Reads would appear to be one. The scheme, launched just two years ago to encourage adults who lack confidence with reading to try to get through a book, is boasting amazing results.Of the people who have read one of [...]

All our own workSome press releases are fascinating; some are utterly irrelevant. It’s not common, though, to find one that makes your jaw drop open in horror.But the proudly proclaimed news that “[c]ustom essay-writing service Prof-Essays has recently employed 20 essay-writers for its two new departments, IT%26 Science and IT%26Arts” should do it.If you’ve not [...]

Hindi by podcastHarry Potter is faced with the realisation he is getting older. After his cousin Dudley pulls a prank on Hedwig the owl, the ensuing squawking drills through Harry’s hangover; enraged, the wizard turns Dudley into a replica of Michael Jackson’s nose. Meanwhile, Ron Weasley, swooning over his classmate Hermione, breaks in to a [...]

Playground politicsThose wondering whether Ed Balls (the new prime minister’s most devoted lieutenant) and Lord Adonis (the old prime minister’s closest education adviser) can really work together should be reassured by a picture, which was taken last July on a joint visit to the TreeHouse special school for children with autism in Muswell Hill, north [...]

The future’s yellow St Theresa’s is a big primary school on the east side of Leeds.I’m there with David Blunkett and the Yellow School Bus Commission. We’re about to greet the 150th yellow bus to join a scheme run by First West Yorkshire and Metro, the regional transport services.It’s part of a mission to push [...]

It was not the most significant occasion on which Svend had offered vital assistance. He had begun working with Danish Airlines, in Copenhagen, in the late 1930s and, following the Nazi invasion of Denmark in 1940, he had joined the resistance - where his knowledge of aircraft movements proved useful. And with Mary, his Welsh [...]

If the trial is meant to help his victims or their families live with their emotional scars, it may fail. ‘I need to go to the court. I need to be in front of him and to show him that he has not won, that he has not broken me,’ said Dahina Le Guennan, who [...]