1. Two pieces on the funding of education in Britain: first, a piece on the funding of higher education from WONKHE (the clue’s in the acronym) We can’t support everything with cross-subsidy https://wonkhe.com/blogs/we-cant-support-everything-with-cross-subsidy/ I think this issue of huge over-dependence on foreign students may be peculiar to UK universities; it certainly doesn’t apply to Germany, for example

I still remember the sense of disbelief I felt eighteen (!) years ago when visiting a British university on being told that many courses drew of the order of 80-90% of their students from one nationality – and the after-shocks when visiting other universities over the next few months to learn that this was not at all unusual.

2. Secondly, a piece from The Guardian on school funding, with which my own experience as part of a statutory but impotent fig-leaf, a.k.a. a ‘Local Governing Body’, for a school within a multi-academy trust chimes, Council-maintained schools in England outperforming academies in Ofsted ratings https://www.theguardian.com/education/2023/aug/03/council-maintained-schools-in-england-outperforming-academies-in-ofsted-ratings

3. I’d not heard of Laterite https://www.laterite.com/ until the other day when they were mentioned in the Cambridge University REAL Centre’s newsletter. Here’s their blog post on Three Ways School Closures Impacted Rwandan Secondary-Teachers https://www.laterite.com/blog/three-ways-school-closures-impacted-rwandan-secondary-teachers/ Reasonable to assume that some of the lessons learnt in Rwanda apply elsewhere? Hope so!

PDF of the full report on which the blog post was based below https://www.laterite.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Leaders-in-Teaching-learning-synthesis-July-2023-English.pdf (also available, laudably and unusually, in Kinyarwanda)

as is a copy of another Laterite report, Unlocking the potential of technology for learning: the EdTech landscape in Rwanda https://www.laterite.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Laterite_EdTech-landscape-in-Rwanda_Final-report.pdf

4. Thanks to Steve Copeland for this one, the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography’s generous free offer https://www.oxforddnb.com/page/1413

5. And, finally and also from Oxford, William Whyte is Professor of Social and Architectural History at the university. Here’s a short TikTok video of his with some surprising facts about Oxford architecture https://www.tiktok.com/@uni.of.oxford/video/7257471940699442459 and here’s his YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLjgO-QqeHQ3ums9eofqF3QvBwxvw8JdmM