Some serious reading for the weekend:

1. Socioeconomic Inequality and Educational Outcomes: Evidence from Twenty Years of TIMSS is an open access publication examining trends in educational inequality using twenty years of grade 8 student data collected from 13 education systems by the IEA’s Trends in Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) between 1995 and 2015, with a focus on two research questions: a) How has the inequality of education outcomes due to family socioeconomic status changed for different education systems between 1995 and 2015? b) To what extent have education systems managed to increase the academic performance of disadvantaged students between 1995 and 2015?

Link here https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-11991-1 and PDF below.

2. Here’s a sombre map of Peoples under Threat from the Minority Rights Group (MRG) https://peoplesunderthreat.org/

and here’s a collection of short articles and case studies about Life at the Margins https://stories.minorityrights.org/lifeatthemargins/home/

The newest MRG video is ‘Anybody hear me’ about the Kirmancki dialect of Kurdish, which is on the brink of extinction https://youtu.be/ECl7DiMDXl4

and here’s their YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/@minorityrights with, on the face of it, disappointingly low viewing numbers for many of their films?

3. FACT is the Forum for Across the Curriculum Teaching, and it’s just celebrated the publication of the thirtieth edition of its journal https://www.factworld.info/en/Bulgaria-FACT-Journals-Issue-30 Try The Magic of Esperanto by Eddy Hunt or Monastic Life in the Middle Ages by Thomas Ziegelwagner, which puts a Monty Python sketch to good service in a CLIL lesson. PDF below.

FACT also has a country page, where you can click on your country’s flag to see what materials are available https://www.factworld.info/countries

4. Economising with Imagination in Harsh Times is an article that Geoff Mulgan wrote for Ethos, the Singapore Civil Service College journal https://knowledge.csc.gov.sg/ethos-issue-25/economising-with-imagination-in-harsh-times/

“Governing in booms”, says Mulgan, “is very different from governing in times of retreat. In this different context, governments need to think and act to use resources carefully while also addressing deep-seated problems. Here, useful ideas can be drawn from ecology, which has introduced many to the idea that policies of reduction—whether reducing energy and materials use, waste or carbon emissions—can be as important as policies for growth.”

I especially liked his taxonomy of twelve different forms of economising: pure economies, economies of trimming, economies of delay, economies of scale, etc. PDF below.

5. And, finally, just in case you think it’s all been a bit too serious today – which it probably has, sorry! – here’s Melanie Butler on the re-naming of a mountain in Wales https://www.elgazette.com/putting-out-the-flames-of-culture-wars/