Testing of disability identification tool for schools

There has been an ongoing concern about the lack of reliable data on disabled children in schools. To date there has been no consistent way of identifying and categorising disabilities. Schools in England are currentlyrequired to collect data on children with Special Educational Need (SEN), but this does not capture information about all disabled children. The lack of this information may seriously restrict capacity at all levels of policy and practice to understand and respond to the needs of disabled children and their families in line with Disability Discrimination Act (2005) and the single Equality Act (2010). The aim of the project was to test the draft tools for identifying disability and accompanying guidance in a sample of all types of maintained schools in order to assess their usability and reliability and whether they resulted in the generation of robust and consistent data that could reliably inform school returns for the annual School Census

Provision for mathematically able children in primary schools: a review of practice five years after England dropped the gifted and talented initiative

After the abandonment of the Gifted and Talented initiative and the recent developments in mathematics educational policy (i.e. the new national curriculum and the ‘mastery’ initiative), this research project aimed to explore the current primary school situation regarding educating the ‘most able’ children in mathematics, along with teachers’ views, experiences and perceived needs. This was a pilot research study gathering insights from a small number of schools in order to identify areas that could be improved by larger-scale research studies. The findings obtained from 49 schools under four local educational authorities in South West England suggested that the education of children with the ability or potential to excel in mathematics has reached a crucial stage. There is a real need for specialised support and guidance in recognising and developing mathematical potential for classroom teachers and school leaders who try on their own to discover what could enable them to meet the government’s educational target of achieving ‘excellence everywhere’. This support should have underpinnings from theory and research, preventing our schools from using questionable practices or repeating methods that have failed in the past. This article highlights research areas specifically for this reason. It also raises some questions with potential implications for the Special Educational Needs Coordinator’s role, as well as for implementing new initiatives like the mathematics ‘mastery curriculum’

BERA-TACTYC Early Childhood Research Review 2003-2017

BERA/TACTYC Review of Early Childhood Education and Care in the UK, 2003-2017 has involved a wide range of early childhood specialists, both in the early consultation stages, and in writing the five main sections of the Review. Teams of authors and their reference groups came together from TACTYC – the Association for Professional Development in Early Years, and the BERA Early Childhood Education and Care SIG. Using specific questions to interrogate the literature, each team worked on one of five main themes: Professionalism; Parenting and Family; Play and Pedagogy; Learning, Development and Curriculum, and Assessment and School Readiness. These themes are contextualised within broad policy issues in the UK. The Introduction shows the working methods for the Review, and the Conclusion brings together key messages and suggestions for future research. We hope that the Review will prove useful to a range of early childhood specialists, including students, researchers, practitioners, policy makers and teachers in further and higher education. We intend to create a User Review that will be aimed at practitioners and to engage other stakeholders in current trends and debates. The Review is being launched at a time of change and uncertainty within early childhood education and care, and we hope that the Review will provide a focal point for discussions about future directions in the four UK policy frameworks, the importance of research, and how we use research evidence to inform provision and practice

Not the right kind of ‘digital capital’? An examination of the complex relationship between disabled students, their technologies and higher education institutions

The paper focuses on disabled students in higher education (HE) and their use of technologies to support their learning. Disabled students commonly report that they feel they have to work harder than other students because they have to manage both their disability and their study. Access to and accessibility of technologies affects how well disabled students manage this workload. Data were collected from disabled students in a teaching-intensive university in UK using an online questionnaire survey and a follow-up semi-structured interview. A ‘digital capital’ framework was used to explore the relationship between disabled students and their technologies and examine the potential complexities of this relationship in more detail. Our results show that while disabled students do have access to social and cultural resources; sometimes these resources are not appropriate or effective (e.g. school-based ICT qualifications) or they are not drawing on all the possible resources available to them (e.g. non-institutional based support or support from disabled students). This means that disabled students can lack the ‘right’ kind of digital capital to enable them to succeed within HE environments. These findings have implications for how HE institutions conceptualise and organise technology related support services for disabled students

The 2018 report of the Lancet Countdown on health and climate change: shaping the health of nations for centuries to come

The Lancet Countdown: tracking progress on health and climate change was established to provide an independent, global monitoring system dedicated to tracking the health dimensions of the impacts of, and the response to, climate change. The Lancet Countdown tracks 41 indicators across five domains: climate change impacts, exposures, and vulnerability; adaptation, planning, and resilience for health; mitigation actions and health co-benefits; finance and economics; and public and political engagement. This report is the product of a collaboration of 27 leading academic institutions, the UN, and intergovernmental agencies from every continent. The report draws on world-class expertise from climate scientists, ecologists, mathematicians, geographers, engineers, energy, food, livestock, and transport experts, economists, social and political scientists, public health professionals, and. doctors. The Lancet Countdown’s work builds on decades of research in this field, and was first proposed in the 2015 Lancet Commission on health and climate change,1 which documented the human impacts of climate change and provided ten global recommendations to respond to this public health emergency and secure the public health benefits available (panel 1)

The Changing Landscape for Stroke\ua0Prevention in AF: Findings From the GLORIA-AF Registry Phase 2

Background GLORIA-AF (Global Registry on Long-Term Oral Antithrombotic Treatment in Patients with Atrial Fibrillation) is a prospective, global registry program describing antithrombotic treatment patterns in patients with newly diagnosed nonvalvular atrial fibrillation at risk of stroke. Phase 2 began when dabigatran, the first non\u2013vitamin K antagonist oral anticoagulant (NOAC), became available. Objectives This study sought to describe phase 2 baseline data and compare these with the pre-NOAC era collected during phase 1. Methods During phase 2, 15,641 consenting patients were enrolled (November 2011 to December 2014); 15,092 were eligible. This pre-specified cross-sectional analysis describes eligible patients\u2019 baseline characteristics. Atrial fibrillation disease characteristics, medical outcomes, and concomitant diseases and medications were collected. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics. Results Of the total patients, 45.5% were female; median age was 71 (interquartile range: 64, 78) years. Patients were from Europe (47.1%), North America (22.5%), Asia (20.3%), Latin America (6.0%), and the Middle East/Africa (4.0%). Most had high stroke risk (CHA2DS2-VASc [Congestive heart failure, Hypertension, Age  6575 years, Diabetes mellitus, previous Stroke, Vascular disease, Age 65 to 74 years, Sex category] score  652; 86.1%); 13.9% had moderate risk (CHA2DS2-VASc = 1). Overall, 79.9% received oral anticoagulants, of whom 47.6% received NOAC and 32.3% vitamin K antagonists (VKA); 12.1% received antiplatelet agents; 7.8% received no antithrombotic treatment. For comparison, the proportion of phase 1 patients (of N = 1,063 all eligible) prescribed VKA was 32.8%, acetylsalicylic acid 41.7%, and no therapy 20.2%. In Europe in phase 2, treatment with NOAC was more common than VKA (52.3% and 37.8%, respectively); 6.0% of patients received antiplatelet treatment; and 3.8% received no antithrombotic treatment. In North America, 52.1%, 26.2%, and 14.0% of patients received NOAC, VKA, and antiplatelet drugs, respectively; 7.5% received no antithrombotic treatment. NOAC use was less common in Asia (27.7%), where 27.5% of patients received VKA, 25.0% antiplatelet drugs, and 19.8% no antithrombotic treatment. Conclusions The baseline data from GLORIA-AF phase 2 demonstrate that in newly diagnosed nonvalvular atrial fibrillation patients, NOAC have been highly adopted into practice, becoming more frequently prescribed than VKA in Europe and North America. Worldwide, however, a large proportion of patients remain undertreated, particularly in Asia and North America. (Global Registry on Long-Term Oral Antithrombotic Treatment in Patients With Atrial Fibrillation [GLORIA-AF]; NCT01468701

The 2020 report of The Lancet Countdown on health and climate change: responding to converging crises

The Lancet Countdown is an international collaboration, established to provide an independent, global monitoring system dedicated to tracking the emerging health profile of the changing climate. The 2020 report presents 43 indicators across five sections: climate change impacts, exposures, and vulnerability; adaptation, planning, and resilience for health; mitigation actions and health co-benefits; economics and finance; and public and political engagement. This report represents the findings and consensus of the 35 leading academic institutions and UN agencies that make up the Lancet Countdown, and draws on the expertise of climate scientists, geographers, and engineers; of energy, food, and transport experts; and of economists, social and political scientists, data scientists, public health professionals, and doctors