Category: Students

  • For some students, home doesn’t feel like home

    For some students, home doesn’t feel like home

    In Britain, we can be oddly squeamish when talking about class, whether known or implied through a person’s accent, appearance, or behaviour.

    But not having an honest conversation with ourselves and our institutions about it is actively harming our students, especially the ones who are from the area where our institutions sit.

    I was one of a team of authors that published a report at the back end of 2024 exploring the role of social class and UK home region at Durham University. Our research, which was supported by the university, found that students from North East England had a lower sense of belonging than their peers.

    This is in comparison to students from other northern regions, the rest of the UK, and international students. And it is true even if they are from more advantaged backgrounds.

    I’ll say that again – students from North East England feel excluded from Durham University, which is in… North East England. This highlights that a problem at Durham University is not only class, but preconceived stereotypes based on how a person speaks, acts, or their family background.

    This article explains how we built our evidence base, and how the university responded, including by integrating our recommendations into the new Access and Participation Plan, and resourcing new staff roles and student-led activity.

    From anecdote to evidence

    The student-led report came out of the First Generation Scholars group in the Anthropology department in 2022.

    Having heard repeatedly the issues that first generation students were facing, and feeling it ourselves, we decided to move beyond anecdotal stories which were known in the university, and produce something concrete and legible which couldn’t be denied.

    We devised a survey and sent it to every student, with a 10 per cent response rate. Follow up focus groups were conducted to add additional context to the quantitative findings and ensure the voices of those who had been let down were heard.

    The findings were grouped into seven areas – overall sense of belonging at Durham, peer relationships, experiences in teaching and learning, college events and activities, college staff relationships, experiences in clubs and societies, and financial considerations.

    Across all these areas, social class had the strongest and most consistent effect. Students from less privileged backgrounds were more likely to feel ashamed of the way they speak, dress, and express themselves.

    They students felt targeted based on their background or personal characteristics – and said they were:

    …being told countless times by a flatmate that I seem the ‘most chavvy’ and continuously refer to Northerners as degenerates.

    …at a formal dinner, students laughed at my North-east accent, they asked if I lived in a pit village.

    The irony is that due to rising housing costs, many students really are being forced to live in pit villages.

    These instances weren’t only present in peer interactions – but also took place in the teaching and learning spaces. One student said that during a lecture, the lecturer mentioned that they couldn’t understand what the IT staff member was saying due to his North East accent – which was the same as the students’.

    Another noted that their peers were “sniggering when I made a comment in a tutorial.” Comments like these have led to students self-silencing during classes and, in some cases, changing their accents entirely to avoid stigma.

    Anecdotally, I’ve heard students say that their families laugh when they hear their new accent. If we are implicitly telling students that they have to change who they are in their own region, their own city, amongst their own family in order to fit in, we are telling them that they are not safe to be authentically themselves. That message lingers beyond university.

    The report notes that other groups of students also experienced exclusion. These included women, LGBTQ+ students, and students with a disability – although only disability came close to the magnitude of effects explained by social class and region.

    It should be noted that these are protected characteristics, while class and region are not. But there was also an interaction between these characteristics, class, and region. Women from less advantaged backgrounds from North East England had a worse time than their southern peers – which they reported as being due to their perceived intelligence and sexual availability. One North East female student stated,

    I was a bet for someone to sleep with at a college party because ‘Northern girls are easy.’

    Tackling the sense of exclusion

    The report also highlights instances of real connections for students. It was often in the simplest gestures, such as having a cup of tea with their college principal, porters saying hello in the corridor, or a lecturer confirming that they deserved to be at Durham, despite the student’s working-class background.

    We were worried that the university might be quick to dismiss, bury, or simply ignore the report. However, they’ve stepped up. The report has been used in the new Access and Participation Plan (APP), underpinning an intervention strategy to increase students’ sense of belonging through student-led, funded activities.

    That builds on the creation of new, instrumental staffing positions. In discussions following the launch event for the report, there was a real buzz and momentum from colleagues who spotlighted the work they were doing in this area – but with an awareness that more needs to be done.

    A key issue is connecting this discrete but interconnected work. Many activities or initiatives are happening in silos within departments, colleges, faculties, or within the central university, with few outside those realms knowing about it.

    In a time when every university is tightening their belts, coordinating activities to share resources and successes seems like an easy win.

    It would be easy to dismiss the problem as unique to Durham – the university and its students have often been under fire for being elitist, tone deaf, or exclusionary. But it’s likely that students at other institutions are facing similar barriers, comments, and slights.

    I’ve spoken to enough colleagues in SUs to know that it isn’t just a Durham problem, not even just a Russell Group problem. There will be those who are afraid of what they might find if they turn over that particular stone, actually having a good look at how social class impacts students belonging.

    But I’d argue it’s a positive thing to do. Bringing it into the light and confronting and acknowledging the problem means that we can move forward to make our students’ lives better.

    Read the full report here, including recommendations, and the university’s comments.

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  • The maintenance loan now covers only half of students’ costs

    The maintenance loan now covers only half of students’ costs

    I’m in two minds over whether it was a curse or a blessing – and I may be retrospectively overstating its impact.

    But when I sat down to watch a bit of telly back on Tuesday 13th May 2003, I had no real sense of the extent to which it would end up causing me lost sleep over silos.

    The Day Britain Stopped was a BBC1 docudrama, set in the near future, that explored how a devastating chain of events could leave the country completely paralysed.

    First, a national rail strike pushes huge volumes of passengers and freight onto the roads, overwhelming the motorway network.

    Then the M25 becomes jammed after multiple accidents, including one on the Dartford Crossing. Poor coordination between highways management, police, and emergency services slows response times, and conflicting rerouting decisions worsen the congestion, leaving rescue crews unable to reach incidents.

    Then severe delays ripple through the air transport system, compounded by diverted flights and congested airports. And these all lead to a mid-air collision between two aircraft near Heathrow – killing hundreds – as communication and coordination systems fail under strain.

    Gridlock

    I was thinking about The Day Britain Stopped on a campus a few weeks ago. Student leaders were explaining a proposal from their university to take 30 ECTS credits or so of most degrees (ie a semester) and turn them into a compulsory placement.

    A “mini sandwich” is not, all things considered, a terrible idea. Students would gain valuable work experience – which we know helps with graduate outcomes – and in aggregate there would end up being a moderate reduction in teaching and assessment costs.

    But on the assumption that it would often be unpaid, given the maximum maintenance loan is now significantly below the National Minimum Wage (when chunked out at 30 weeks for 35 hours a week), working full-time for a semester would pretty much prohibit students from earning the extra that many need to now.

    Just like the two teams each re-routing traffic down the same country lanes around the M25, it’s a classic case of not seeing the full picture – and when combined with the HE sector’s preference for policy over scenario planning, potentially disastrous. But nothing like that could be coming in the year ahead, surely?

    Britain’s best days are ahead

    This does nothing for my doom-mongering street cred, but back in May 2024 – when HEPI and TechnologyOne published work from Loughborough University on a Minimum Income for Students (MIS) – I allowed myself a little optimism.

    In a sea of information that seemed to be designed to entice participation rather than be realistic about the costs of it, I imagined that the headline figure – that students need £18,632 per year outside of London to achieve a baseline student experience – would start to adorn .ac.uk cost of living webpages offering budgeting advice to students.

    Given the methodology for calculating the MIS was close to that used by the Living Wage Foundation, and given the Westminster government’s intent to ask the Low Pay Commission to (to all intents and purposes) replicate that methodology for the National Living Wage, I even allowed myself to imagine for a few moments that government might commit to closing the gap between available support and liveable income. It surely wouldn’t be committed to a liveable income for work but not one for study?

    Alas, it wasn’t to be. Vanishingly few of the universities that offer “typical” or “sample” student budgets quote anything like that figure – and that’s if they offer one at all. International students are still misled into thinking that the maximum maintenance loan will cover their costs, parents are still completely in the dark about what they’ll really need to contribute, and many of the survival stories that I’m told by new student leaders every summer have gone from amusing to heartbreaking.

    The MIS report even recommended that when students apply to higher education, UCAS could compare the support available from the student’s home UK nation with their expected living costs. But at the time of writing, the admissions service’s webpage on budgeting instead offers “average” spend figures from 2020, and somehow omits the £2,110 that the source study found students spending when preparing for higher education.

    Governments, meanwhile, did little. This coming September, Scotland is offering up a freeze (real terms cut) on maintenance support, Northern Ireland has an increase that still falls significantly short, and both Wales and England are increasing the maximum by 3.1 per cent. A frozen means test threshold means even fewer will get that max in England – and right now both RPI inflation and CPI inflation are in fact running at 4.1 per cent.

    Update: It’s all worse

    As such, if last year’s report was like a warming sign, the 2025 update to the MIS report ought to be like a fire alarm. The update expands on the 2024 research by examining first-year students and those living in halls for the first time – and through focus groups across five UK cities, researchers found that first-year students face the highest costs of any student group – £418 per week including rent to reach a minimum acceptable standard of living.

    This represents a “first-year premium” of around £14-20 more per week than continuing students, driven by both “setting-up” costs (laptops, kitchen equipment, bedding) and “settling-in” costs (freshers week activities, food wastage while learning to budget, and higher social spending to establish friendships).

    The financial pressure on students has intensified dramatically across all UK nations. In England, even students receiving maximum maintenance support can only cover half (50 per cent) of their actual living costs, forcing them to work over 20 hours per week at minimum wage to make ends meet.

    That, I add in passing, is 20 hours more a week than most politicians’ alma mater allows students to work to have a fulfilling student experience:

    Studying at Oxford is an exciting experience with plenty of opportunities and a high number of contact hours. For this reason, paid term-time employment is not permitted except under exceptional circumstances and in consultation with your Tutor and the Senior Tutor.

    Students from different UK nations face different circumstances – Welsh students have 63 per cent of their costs covered by maintenance support, while those from Northern Ireland receive support covering just 42 per cent of their needs. The gap between what students need and what they receive has created what the researchers term a “hidden parental contribution” – one that now exceeds £10,000 annually for English families.

    I still regularly encounter those who expect to see mass dropouts as a result of the growing gap – but anyone that works closely with students will tell you that it’s a slow participation implosion that we’re seeing rather than a non-continuation explosion.

    Two-thirds of students now work during term time, the highest on record – pressure that is squeezing out various aspects of university life, as students report less time for independent study, fewer opportunities to join activities, and increased commuting distances. Many are experiencing a fundamentally different university experience than they expected, with a third having less disposable income than planned, and 1 in 5 buying fewer books or course materials.

    Over a three-year degree, the total cost of reaching minimum living standards ranges from approximately £59,000 in Wales to £77,000 in London, excluding tuition fees. And these figures are what students need not for luxury, but simply to participate fully in university life with dignity. Even living in accommodation that is “purpose built” for students, while providing important social opportunities, is typically more expensive than shared private housing – with rent making up to 47 per cent of total living costs in London.

    Thanks to Terry Nutkins, Gordon Banks and Let Loose

    One particularly pleasing aspect of the report is the “surprising” costs that so many miss when casting round the marcomms office for a couple of student ambassadors to cobble up a budget.

    Practical necessities include storage costs between academic years when halls contracts end, insurance for phones and laptops used outside accommodation, and mattress protectors for the “really cheap and uncomfortable” beds typically provided.

    First-year students face particular financial pressures during their settling-in period, wasting money on food while learning to shop and cook independently, plus ongoing laundry costs in halls that can reach £5 weekly for basic washing needs.

    Academic periods bring additional expenses, from extra food costs during exam sessions when students spend long hours in libraries, to transport costs for third-year students attending job interviews and graduate recruitment events.

    Basic costs related to social participation and mental health are also included. They include individual crockery and cutlery in halls to avoid hygiene issues when sharing with strangers, a £20 (!) annual personalisation budget for room decoration that prevents students feeling like they’re “in prison,” and £50 annually for clothing required for university social events and society activities.

    They are seemingly minor expenses – but they all add up, and they highlight how the “minimum” standard isn’t about luxury, but about enabling students to participate fully in university life, maintain their mental health, and avoid social exclusion.

    There’s also dehumidifier packs to combat poor ventilation and condensation from drying clothes, tabletop ironing boards to fit cramped spaces, and overdoor hooks because standard furniture is insufficient for storing belongings across shared living arrangements.

    Technical necessities include extension leads for inadequate electrical outlets and Wi-Fi boosters for poor connectivity, while protective measures like upholstery and carpet cleaners become crucial for avoiding deposit losses. Even basic items like door mats for communal cleanliness and shower caddies for bathroom storage represent additional shared costs when five people live together.

    Beyond accommodation, students face numerous individual costs related to campus life and practical necessities that all accumulate quickly. They include water bottles and Tupperware containers for daily campus use and food storage, delivery and returns costs reflecting modern shopping patterns, and small airers for bedroom clothes drying when shared facilities are limited.

    Admin costs like provisional driving licences at £34 become the most practical form of student ID, cheaper and more portable than passports. And there’s eye tests every two years with potential glasses purchases, and a small budget for everyday medicines and a couple of prescriptions annually – along with significant variations in personal care costs, the report particularly noting “the higher cost of hairdressing for afro hair in particular,” while emphasising that regular haircuts are deemed essential for being “presentable” and maintaining “self-respect”. Luxuries these are not.

    Parental contribution

    The report repeats last year’s calls for urgent, system-wide reform based on five principles: simplicity, transparency, independence, sufficiency, and fiscal neutrality. Key recommendations include increasing maintenance support so students can reach minimum living standards through a combination of government support and reasonable part-time work, providing a “first-year boost” to help new students establish themselves, and raising parental contribution thresholds so families only contribute when they themselves have achieved minimum living standards.

    The researchers argue reforms could be implemented without additional government spending – although the proposal is to reintroduce much-maligned but fairly progressive real interest rates on student loans, ensuring those who benefit most from higher education contribute accordingly. Sadly, they’re usually the loudest too.

    Without reforms, they warn of three critical risks – increasingly unequal access to higher education, declining quality of student experience, and threats to sector sustainability as students struggle to afford university attendance.

    But forgive me for the doom. Any or all of that will have to wait until at least September 2026, and even then is looking increasingly unlikely, given that the Treasury is said to be staring at a £41bn hole in its budget, and is currently borrowing the money on the bond markets to lend to students at an interest rate of 4.5 per cent – a far cry from 0.5 per cent nine years ago.

    And it could all be about to get much much worse.

    Basket cases

    Whether you use RPI or CPI is almost immaterial – it’s the basket of goods that matters, and neither basket captures the basket of a student typified in the MIS. Students spend more on food than the average consumer, and in that basket they’re less able to “trade down” through the brands.

    The Bank of England expects food inflation to be around 5 per cent Q3, rising to 5.5 per cent by the end of the year – higher global commodity prices, higher labour costs and Extended Producer Responsibility regulations that come into effect from October of this year all driving the change.

    In June, Beef and Butter were up at 20 per cent, Coffee was at 12.5 per cent and Chocolate was running at 16 per cent. Decent rent data is hard to come by – but it always seems to increase by more than inflation. If not included in their rent, energy prices have shifted from being a drag on inflation to providing a boost – Ofgem’s price cap for households is £1,720 for July-September 2025, almost 10 per cent higher than the same period last year.

    And the BoE’s key mitigation measure – to cut the Bank Rate by 0.25 percentage points to 4 per cent at its August meeting – might be helping students’ landlords, but it won’t be impacting student budgets.

    Meanwhile, if students have been steadily increasing their term-time work (both in numbers of students and hours worked), that could be a coming problem too. Employment growth has stagnated, and job vacancies have fallen significantly. And while two-thirds of students say they’ve been in work during term time, 89 per cent of applicants are now expecting to find work – rising to 93 per cent of care leavers, 94 per cent of international students and 96 per cent of estranged students.

    Either there’s lots of spare jobs going, or the UK may be about to run out of part-time work for students. That’s a problem few will see coming, will be almost certainly be worse in some cities than in others, and would be exacerbated if the usual ratio of students spending in businesses v those working in those businesses shifts significantly – both having grown gently in tandem as student numbers have grown. The need to convert more jobs on campus to those that students can do has never been greater – even if they sound like the first to have gone as teams have contracted in recent years.

    Some will find work that’s further and further away from campus, some will find work that’s more and more punishing on them both mentally and physically, and some simply won’t find it at all. Many – like the international student leader I met last week – will find themselves working for less than minimum wage just to pay their fees, in a country that couldn’t seem less interested in those sorts of labour market abuses if it tried.

    God forbid a student has a setback, an accident or a costly health problem. Or happens to be a student in a year when if nothing else, there will be major and un-modelled impacts on student housing supply as a result of dramatic reforms to the way that an already scandalously poor rental market is regulated.

    Implosions v explosions

    Maybe a crisis is coming – the classic unplanned-for crisis of the sort in The Day Britain Stopped, when various factors conspire in a single period to multiply each other into something that few saw coming. But even if it isn’t an explosion and we see non-continuation rates fall off a cliff, we can see what’s coming – students choosing to stay at home just as their local university closes courses, students choosing against the extracurriculars that would make up for the skills their course supplies but are no longer needed.

    Students breathing in the spores of black mould as they literally choose between heating, and eating.

    In the 2024 MIS report, the authors warned against any increases to maintenance support that would come at the cost of lower participation in higher education, “for example if an increase could only be paid for by capping the number of students who can study in higher education”. The kneejerk makes sense – neither governments, universities nor students are ever keen on measures that might limit opportunity.

    But offering students a loan that only covers half of their basic living costs, and then asking them to work a minimum 20 hours a week during term-time isn’t “opportunity”, it’s a scam – one that sells “student life” but for those on low incomes offers the kind of experience associated with labour market outcomes they’re less likely to achieve anyway, and one that allows lots of people to pat themselves on the participation back while plunging unsuspecting students into poverty.

    If the country really can’t afford mass participation in higher education, and students can’t afford to be students, the only morally right thing to do is admit it. And if telling students they need £21,126 per year to live on might put some of them off, then maybe it should.

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  • North Carolina Launches Expanded Direct Admission Program for 62,000 High School Seniors

    North Carolina Launches Expanded Direct Admission Program for 62,000 High School Seniors

    North Carolina is taking bold steps to democratize college access with the expansion of its NC College Connect program, which will offer direct admission to more than 62,000 public high school seniors this fall. The initiative represents a significant shift toward equity-focused admissions practices that prioritize accessibility over traditional application barriers.

    The program targets students who complete their junior year with a weighted GPA of 2.8 or higher. By eliminating the often overwhelming application process, NC College Connect removes financial and procedural obstacles that disproportionately affect first-generation college students and those from underrepresented communities.

    “NC College Connect represents a fundamental shift in how we approach college admissions in North Carolina,” said Peter Hans, President of the University of North Carolina System. The initiative reflects growing national recognition that traditional admissions processes can perpetuate educational inequities.

    Maurice “Mo” Green, State Superintendent of Public Instruction, praised the collaborative nature of the effort.

    “When our entire education community works together like this, students win. NC College Connect removes barriers and creates clear pathways to college for thousands of our students,” he said.

    The program’s inclusive design addresses systemic challenges that have historically limited college access for students from diverse backgrounds. By providing direct admission letters and eliminating complex application requirements, the initiative particularly benefits students who might otherwise be deterred by navigating multiple institutional processes.

    Participating institutions span the full spectrum of North Carolina’s higher education landscape, including UNC System universities, independent colleges and universities, and community colleges. This comprehensive approach ensures students have pathways to various types of post-secondary education that align with their academic goals and financial circumstances.

    Dr. Jeff Cox, President of the North Carolina Community College System, highlighted the program’s potential to transform access to affordable education. 

    “By removing barriers and simplifying the process, we’re helping more students access the life-changing opportunities our community colleges provide—close to home and at a price they can afford,” he said.

    Community colleges have long served as crucial entry points for students from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds, offering both career preparation and transfer pathways to four-year institutions. The inclusion of community colleges in NC College Connect recognizes their vital role in democratizing higher education access.

    The program’s commitment to equity extends beyond admissions to address affordability concerns through targeted financial aid initiatives. The Next NC Scholarship and NC Need-Based Scholarship specifically support students from households earning $80,000 or less, covering tuition and fees at participating institutions.

    Additionally, students attending Elizabeth City State University, Fayetteville State University, University of North Carolina at Pembroke, and Western Carolina University benefit from the NC Promise plan’s $500 per semester tuition rate. These historically Black institutions and regional universities serve particularly diverse student populations, making the affordable tuition structure especially impactful for underrepresented students.

    Hope Williams, President of North Carolina Independent Colleges and Universities, noted the unique value proposition of smaller institutions: the personalized attention and specialized programs that can be particularly beneficial for students who might struggle in larger university environments.

    The program builds on a successful pilot year that served more than 70,000 students, demonstrating the demand for streamlined college access. The expansion indicates that initial outcomes validated the approach’s effectiveness in connecting students with higher education opportunities.

    Students can verify their eligibility through the NCCollegeConnect.com portal or by consulting with high school counselors, ensuring multiple touchpoints for information and support. Eligible seniors will receive official admission letters this fall for the 2026-27 academic year, providing ample time for planning and preparation.

    NC College Connect positions North Carolina as a leader in reimagining college admissions to prioritize access and equity. As higher education institutions nationwide grapple with declining enrollment and questions about traditional admissions practices, North Carolina’s comprehensive approach offers a replicable model for other states.

    The initiative’s success will likely be measured not just in enrollment numbers, but in its ability to diversify the state’s college-going population and create pathways for students who might otherwise forego higher education. By removing procedural barriers and addressing financial constraints, NC College Connect represents a holistic approach to educational equity that extends well beyond the admissions office.

     

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  • 4 tips to support the literacy needs of middle and high school students

    4 tips to support the literacy needs of middle and high school students

    Key points:

    Today’s middle schoolers continue to struggle post-pandemic to read and write at the level needed to successfully navigate more complex academic content in the upper grades and beyond, according to a new report from NWEA, a K-12 assessment and research organization.

    Based on NWEA’s research, current 8th graders would need close to a full academic year of additional instruction to catch up to their pre-pandemic peers in reading. This trend was reiterated in recent assessment results from the National Assessment on Educational Progress (NAEP), with only 30 percent of eighth-grade students performing at or above the NAEP proficient level.

    While early literacy initiatives have garnered attention in recent years, the fact remains that many students struggle to read and are not prepared for the rigors of middle school. Students quickly find themselves challenged to keep up as they no longer receive explicit, structured reading instruction, even as they are expected to comprehend increasingly complex materials across subjects, like science, history, or English Language Arts.

    The report, Policy recommendations for addressing the middle school reading crisis, is co-authored by Miah Daughtery, EdD, NWEA VP of Academic Advocacy at HMH (NWEA’s parent company), and Chad Aldeman, founder of Read Not Guess.

    “Our current middle and high schoolers were just starting their literacy journey when the pandemic hit, and we cannot lessen the urgency to support them. But, middle school literacy is complex even for students who are reading on grade level. This demands intentional, well-funded, and focused policy leadership that includes support across the K-12 spectrum,” said Daughtery. “Simply put, learning to read is not done when a student exits elementary school; support cannot stop there either.”

    Policymakers and district leaders must adopt a systems-level approach that supports both early learners and the unique literacy needs of middle and high school students.

    The new report provides four components that can be leveraged to make this happen:

    1. Use high-quality, grade-appropriate assessments that provide specific data on the literacy needs of middle schoolers.
    2. Look at flexible scheduling and policies that promote literacy development throughout the entire school day and help districts more effectively use instructional time.
    3. Understand and support the unique literacy needs of middle schoolers across subjects and disciplines from a systems perspective and invest in teacher professional learning in all disciplines, including at the upper grades, within state and district literacy plans.
    4. Curate relationships with external partners, like community organizations and nonprofits, who share similar goals in improving literacy outcomes, and can both support and reinforce literacy development, stretching beyond the school’s hours and resources.
    eSchool News Staff
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  • AI teacher tools display racial bias when generating student behavior plans, study finds

    AI teacher tools display racial bias when generating student behavior plans, study finds

    This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Sign up for their newsletters at ckbe.at/newsletters.

    Asked to generate intervention plans for struggling students, AI teacher assistants recommended more-punitive measures for hypothetical students with Black-coded names and more supportive approaches for students the platforms perceived as white, a new study shows.

    These findings come from a report on the risks of bias in artificial intelligence tools published Wednesday by the non-profit Common Sense Media. Researchers specifically sought to evaluate the quality of AI teacher assistants — such as MagicSchool, Khanmingo, Curipod, and Google Gemini for Education — that are designed to support classroom planning, lesson differentiation, and administrative tasks.

    Common Sense Media found that while these tools could help teachers save time and streamline routine paperwork, AI-generated content could also promote bias in lesson planning and classroom management recommendations.

    Robbie Torney, senior director of AI programs at Common Sense Media, said the problems identified in the study are serious enough that ed tech companies should consider removing tools for behavior intervention plans until they can improve them. That’s significant because writing intervention plans of various sorts is a relatively common way teachers use AI.

    After Chalkbeat asked about Common Sense Media’s findings, a Google spokesperson said Tuesday that Google Classroom has turned off the shortcut to Gemini that prompts teachers to “Generate behavior intervention strategies” to do additional testing.

    However, both MagicSchool and Google, the two platforms where Common Sense Media identified racial bias in AI-generated behavior intervention plans, said they could not replicate Common Sense Media’s findings. They also said they take bias seriously and are working to improve their models.

    School districts across the country have been working to implement comprehensive AI policies to encourage informed use of these tools. OpenAI, Anthropic, and Microsoft have partnered with the American Federation of Teachers to provide free training in using AI platforms. The Trump Administration also has encouraged greater AI integration in the classroom. However, recent AI guidelines released by the U.S. Department of Education have not directly addressed concerns about bias within these systems.

    About a third of teachers report using AI at least weekly, according to a national survey conducted by the Walton Family Foundation in cooperation with Gallup. A separate survey conducted by the research organization Rand found teachers specifically report using these tools to help develop goals for Individualized Education Program — or IEP — plans. They also say they use these tools to shape lessons or assessments around those goals, and to brainstorm ways to accommodate students with disabilities.

    Torney said Common Sense Media isn’t trying to discourage teachers from using AI in general. The goal of the report is to encourage more awareness of potential uses of AI teacher assistants that might have greater risks in the classroom.

    “We really just want people to go in eyes wide open and say, ‘Hey these are some of the things that they’re best at and these are some of the things you probably want to be a little bit more careful with,’” he said.

    Common Sense Media identified AI tools that can generate IEPs and behavior intervention plans as high risk due to their biased treatment of students in the classroom. Using MagicSchool’s Behavior Intervention Suggestions tool and the Google Gemini “Generate behavior intervention strategies tool,” Common Sense Media’s research team ran the same prompt about a student who struggled with reading and showed aggressive behavior 50 times using white-coded names and 50 times using Black-coded names, evenly split between male- and female-coded names.

    The AI-generated plans for the students with Black-coded names didn’t all appear negative in isolation. But clear differences emerged when those plans from MagicSchool and Gemini were compared with plans for students with white-coded names.

    For example, when prompted to provide a behavior intervention plan for Annie, Gemini emphasized addressing aggressive behavior with “consistent non-escalating responses” and “consistent positive reinforcement.” Lakeesha, on the other hand, should receive “immediate” responses to her aggressive behaviors and positive reinforcement for “desired behaviors,” the tool said. For Kareem, Gemini simply said, “Clearly define expectations and teach replacement behaviors,” with no mention of positive reinforcement or responses to aggressive behavior.

    Torney noted that the problems in these AI-generated reports only became apparent across a large sample, which can make it hard for teachers to identify. The report warns that novice teachers may be more likely to rely on AI-generated content without the experience to catch inaccuracies or biases. Torney said these underlying biases in intervention plans “could have really large impacts on student progression or student outcomes as they move across their educational trajectory.”

    Black students are already subject to higher rates of suspension than their white counterparts in schools and more likely to receive harsher disciplinary consequences for subjective reasons, like “disruptive behavior.” Machine learning algorithms replicate the decision-making patterns of the training data that they are provided, which can perpetuate existing inequalities. A separate study found that AI tools replicate existing racial bias when grading essays, assigning lower scores to Black students than to Asian students.

    The Common Sense Media report also identified instances when AI teacher assistants generated lesson plans that relied on stereotypes, repeated misinformation, and sanitized controversial aspects of history.

    A Google spokesperson said the company has invested in using diverse and representative training data to minimize bias and overgeneralizations.

    “We use rigorous testing and monitoring to identify and stop potential bias in our AI models,” the Google spokesperson said in an email to Chalkbeat. “We’ve made good progress, but we’re always aiming to make improvements with our training techniques and data.”

    On its website, MagicSchool promotes its AI teaching assistant as “an unbiased tool to aid in decision-making for restorative practices.” In an email to Chalkbeat, MagicSchool said it has not been able to reproduce the issues that Common Sense Media identified.

    MagicSchool said their platform includes bias warnings and instructs users not to include student names or other identifying information when using AI features. In light of the study, it is working with Common Sense to improve its bias detection systems and design tools in ways that encourage educators to review AI generated content more closely.

    “As noted in the study, AI tools like ours hold tremendous promise — but also carry real risks if not designed, deployed, and used responsibly,” MagicSchool told Chalkbeat. “We are grateful to Common Sense Media for helping hold the field accountable.”

    Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.

    For more news on AI, visit eSN’s Digital Learning hub.

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  • Adding a trauma-responsive lens for student support

    Adding a trauma-responsive lens for student support

    Key points:

    Across the country, our schools are being taxed beyond their capacity to support educational success. We’ve known for a long time that students need a three-dimensional structure of guidance and encouragement to thrive. That’s why the Multi-Tiered System of Supports (MTSS) framework was created–it’s a prevention framework for early identification of varying student needs and the responses needed to maximize academic success. In theory, an MTSS supports academic, social-emotional, and behavioral needs in equal measure. However, in practice, many schools are struggling to incorporate social-emotional and behavioral components in their MTSS–even as many of their students come to school bearing the effects of adversity, trauma, or crisis.

    This imbalance is leaving millions of children behind.

    Each year, at least 1 in 7 children in the United States experience abuse, violence, natural disasters, or other adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). By age 16, roughly two-thirds of children will have been exposed to at least one traumatic event. This can impair their ability to learn well and contribute to absenteeism, while secondary trauma spirals out from these students to classmates and teachers, multiplying the overall impact. Left unaddressed, the imprint of such events could warp the future of our school and public communities.

    Since COVID-19, schools have reported unprecedented levels of absenteeism and student distress, and supporting trauma-exposed students without training puts more pressure on teachers, who are already burned out and leaving the profession at high rates. Therefore, it is clear to me that creating school-wide networks of trauma-informed adults is essential for fostering supportive learning and growth for students, enhancing educator capacity to nurture trauma-affected learners, and ensuring effective trauma resource management within districts.

    Research has identified a supportive school community as a strong childhood protective factor against the effects of trauma. We should be hopeful about our path forward. But the vision and blueprint for this enhancement of MTSS need to come as soon as possible, and it needs to come from state-level education leaders and school district leaders.

    Gaps in support and expertise

    Consider this scenario: A student who recently experienced a traumatic car accident sits near a window in class, experiencing significant distress or dysregulation without outward signs. A sudden screech of tires outside activates their sympathetic nervous system (the one associated with fight or flight), and the student shuts down, withdrawing into themselves. Their teacher, unaware of the student’s trauma history and unequipped with relevant training, interprets the response as a continuation of past misbehavior or as an academic deficit.

    This sort of misunderstanding takes place in a thousand places every day. I would stress that this isn’t a reflection of bad intentions, but rather a symptom of fragmented systems and knowledge. Even when trauma is recognized, lack of intentional collaboration and training often result in missed opportunities or inconsistent support, which cannot maximize recovery from trauma and may, in fact, hinder it, as research on retraumatization suggests.

    There might be mismatched expectations when teachers send students to the counselor, not knowing that they themselves have a role to play in the healing. In other cases, students may be referred to a school counselor and have a productive support session–but on their way back to class, a seemingly benign statement from a third party can be misconstrued or cause dysregulation, unintentionally undoing the support they’ve received. The solution to all these problems is school-wide training on trauma-informed skills. This way, all educators and staff alike develop a shared knowledge, understanding, language, and responses as they collaborate and connect with students. With the right tools, adults on campus have better trauma-informed strategies to use in their relationships with students and in building a safe and supportive school community.

    The proof is all around us

    Trauma training works synergistically within MTSS: social-emotional and trauma-responsive support allows for better academic outcomes, which work to further reduce behavioral problems, and so on. At the Center for Safe & Resilient Schools and Workplaces, we see this play out often with our school district partners. For example, at Pasadena Unified School District, which was recently ravaged by the Eaton Canyon Fire, trauma-informed best practices and preparations have enabled district leaders to reopen schools with sufficient psychological understanding and interventions along with the needed material support for the 10,000 students who were affected.

    A truly effective MTSS model does not treat trauma as a peripheral concern. It integrates trauma-responsive strategies into every tier of support–from universal practices, to targeted interventions, to intensive mental health services. In that environment, every adult who comes in contact with students has the training to adhere to trauma best practices.

    We are at a juncture where the impact of trauma poses serious risks to the education system, but evidence-based approaches exist to solve the problem. Change from the state level down is the best way to transform school cultures quickly, and I urge state education leaders to take action. Any MTSS plan isn’t complete without a trauma-informed foundation, lens, and programming. And our students–each and every one–deserve nothing less.

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  • Call to promote university racism survey – Campus Review

    Call to promote university racism survey – Campus Review

    The Australian Human Rights Commission’s landmark Racism@Uni survey will appear in student and staff inboxes from August 11.

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  • Gen Z craves purpose. Universities must catch up – Campus Review

    Gen Z craves purpose. Universities must catch up – Campus Review

    Speak to young university students today and a picture emerges of deep concern for justice, hunger for real-world connection, and an urgent desire to belong to something bigger than themselves.

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  • Visa Processing Delays Could Cost U.S. Universities $7 Billion and 60,000 Jobs This Fall

    Visa Processing Delays Could Cost U.S. Universities $7 Billion and 60,000 Jobs This Fall

    Recent disruptions to student visa processing could trigger a 30-40% decline in new international student enrollment this fall, potentially costing the U.S. economy $7 billion and more than 60,000 jobs, according to a new analysis by NAFSA: Association of International Educators and JB International.

    The preliminary projections, based on SEVIS and State Department data, paint a stark picture for higher education institutions that have come to rely heavily on international students for both revenue and academic diversity. The analysis predicts an overall 15% drop in international enrollment for the 2025-26 academic year, which would reverse years of steady growth in this critical sector.

    “This analysis, the first to calculate the potential economic impact of fewer international students on cities and towns across the country, should serve as a clarion call to the State Department that it must act,” said Dr. Fanta Aw, executive director and CEO of NAFSA. “The immediate economic losses projected here are just the tip of the iceberg.”

    The projected decline stems from a confluence of policy changes and administrative challenges that have created significant barriers for prospective international students:

    Visa Interview Suspension: Between May 27 and June 18, 2025, student visa interviews were paused during the peak issuance season—precisely when students needed to secure visas for fall enrollment. When interviews resumed on June 18, consulates received a directive to implement new social media vetting protocols within five days, but with minimal guidance.

    Appointment Bottlenecks: Reports indicate limited or no visa appointment availability in key countries including India, China, Nigeria, and Japan. India and China alone represent the top two sources of international students to the United States, while Nigeria ranks seventh and Japan 13th among sending countries.

    Declining Visa Issuance: F-1 student visa issuance dropped 12% from January to April 2025 and plummeted 22% in May 2025 compared to the same period in 2024. While June 2025 data has not been published, the analysis suggests a possible 80-90% decrease based on the identified disruptions.

    Travel Restrictions: A June 4, 2025 executive order imposed restrictions on nationals from 19 countries, with reports suggesting another 36 countries could be added. These restrictions alone threaten $3 billion in annual economic contributions and more than 25,000 American jobs.

    The economic implications extend far beyond university campuses. International students contributed $46.1 billion to the U.S. economy in 2024-25 and supported nearly 400,000 jobs across various sectors including housing, dining, retail, and transportation.

    The projected 15% enrollment decline would reduce international student economic contributions to $39.2 billion in 2025-26, down from an expected $46.1 billion. This represents not just a loss to individual institutions, but to entire communities that have built economic ecosystems around international education.

    “Without significant recovery in visa issuance in July and August, up to 150,000 fewer students may arrive this fall,” the report warns, highlighting the narrow window remaining for policy corrections.

    Beyond immediate economic impacts, education leaders worry about long-term consequences for American higher education’s global competitiveness. International students contribute to research innovation, provide diverse perspectives in classrooms, and often remain in the United States after graduation, filling critical roles in STEM fields and other high-demand sectors.

    The timing is particularly concerning given increased competition from other English-speaking countries like Canada, Australia, and the United Kingdom, which have positioned themselves as more welcoming alternatives for international students.

    To mitigate what NAFSA calls a “devastating outcome,” the organization is urging Congress to direct the State Department to take two immediate actions:

    1. Provide expedited visa appointments and processing for all F-1 and M-1 students and J-1 exchange visitor visa applicants
    2. Exempt F and M students as well as J exchange visitors from current travel restrictions affecting nationals from 19 countries, while maintaining required background checks and vetting

    The report argues that these policy changes could help institutions avoid the projected enrollment cliff and preserve the economic benefits that international students bring to American communities.

    For institutions planning fall enrollment, the report suggests the need for contingency planning and advocacy efforts to address visa processing challenges. With the traditional summer months representing the final opportunity for students to secure visas for fall enrollment, time is running short for policy interventions.

     

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  • What we lose when AI replaces teachers

    What we lose when AI replaces teachers

    Key points:

    A colleague of ours recently attended an AI training where the opening slide featured a list of all the ways AI can revolutionize our classrooms. Grading was listed at the top. Sure, AI can grade papers in mere seconds, but should it?

    As one of our students, Jane, stated: “It has a rubric and can quantify it. It has benchmarks. But that is not what actually goes into writing.” Our students recognize that AI cannot replace the empathy and deep understanding that recognizes the growth, effort, and development of their voice. What concerns us most about grading our students’ written work with AI is the transformation of their audience from human to robot.

    If we teach our students throughout their writing lives that what the grading robot says matters most, then we are teaching them that their audience doesn’t matter. As Wyatt, another student, put it: “If you can use AI to grade me, I can use AI to write.” NCTE, in its position statements for Generative AI, reminds us that writing is a human act, not a mechanical one. Reducing it to automated scores undermines its value and teaches students, like Wyatt and Jane, that the only time we write is for a grade. That is a future of teaching writing we hope to never see.

    We need to pause when tech companies tout AI as the grader of student writing. This isn’t a question of capability. AI can score essays. It can be calibrated to rubrics. It can, as Jane

    said, provide students with encouragement and feedback specific to their developing skills. And we have no doubt it has the potential to make a teacher’s grading life easier. But just because we can outsource some educational functions to technology doesn’t mean we should.

    It is bad enough how many students already see their teacher as their only audience. Or worse, when students are writing for teachers who see their written work strictly through the lens of a rubric, their audience is limited to the rubric. Even those options are better than writing for a bot. Instead, let’s question how often our students write to a broader audience of their peers, parents, community, or a panel of judges for a writing contest. We need to reengage with writing as a process and implement AI as a guide or aide rather than a judge with the last word on an essay score.

    Our best foot forward is to put AI in its place. The use of AI in the writing process is better served in the developing stages of writing. AI is excellent as a guide for brainstorming. It can help in a variety of ways when a student is struggling and looking for five alternatives to their current ending or an idea for a metaphor. And if you or your students like AI’s grading feature, they can paste their work into a bot for feedback prior to handing it in as a final draft.

    We need to recognize that there are grave consequences if we let a bot do all the grading. As teachers, we should recognize bot grading for what it is: automated education. We can and should leave the promises of hundreds of essays graded in an hour for the standardized test providers. Our classrooms are alive with people who have stories to tell, arguments to make, and research to conduct. We see our students beyond the raw data of their work. We recognize that the poem our student has written for their sick grandparent might be a little flawed, but it matters a whole lot to the person writing it and to the person they are writing it for. We see the excitement or determination in our students’ eyes when they’ve chosen a research topic that is important to them. They want their cause to be known and understood by others, not processed and graded by a bot.

    The adoption of AI into education should be conducted with caution. Many educators are experimenting with using AI tools in thoughtful and student-centered ways. In a recent article, David Cutler describes his experience using an AI-assisted platform to provide feedback on his students’ essays. While Cutler found the tool surprisingly accurate and helpful, the true value lies in the feedback being used as part of the revision process. As this article reinforces, the role of a teacher is not just to grade, but to support and guide learning. When used intentionally (and we emphasize, as in-process feedback) AI can enhance that learning, but the final word, and the relationship behind it, must still come from a human being.

    When we hand over grading to AI, we risk handing over something much bigger–our students’ belief that their words matter and deserve an audience. Our students don’t write to impress a rubric, they write to be heard. And when we replace the reader with a robot, we risk teaching our students that their voices only matter to the machine. We need to let AI support the writing process, not define the product. Let it offer ideas, not deliver grades. When we use it at the right moments and for the right reasons, it can make us better teachers and help our students grow. But let’s never confuse efficiency with empathy. Or algorithms with understanding.

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