Bills have jumped 42% in England over the past 10 years – and that excludes the cost of breakfast clubs and extracurricular activities

Parents of primary schoolchildren in England will pay 42% more for after-school childcare this year than they did 10 years ago, with annual bills now exceeding more than £2,800 a child in some parts of the UK.

A Guardian analysis of data collected by the children’s charity Coram has revealed that the annual cost of after-school care for children aged 5 to 11 in England has risen by 5% over the past year to £2,636.

How did it affect your plans for either further education or getting a job? Did you go through resits? Tell us

The government plans to introduce a new “stepping stone” qualification from 2028 for students in England who do not achieve a pass in GCSE maths or English.

The new preparatory level 1 qualifications - one level below GCSEs - will “give students the essential knowledge and skills before they resit English or maths GCSE,” in an effort to “end the resit treadmill”, the government said.

Just 8,383 jobs for people leaving university were advertised in July, says recruitment website Adzuna

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Graduate job vacancies in the UK have sunk to their lowest level since they started being tracked a decade ago, according to a recruiting website.

Just 8,383 jobs for people leaving university were advertised in July, Adzuna reported on Monday, down 45% compared with the same point last year and the lowest since the company started gathering the data in 2016.

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After Emily Thornberry’s call for the government to ban goods from the occupied West Bank (see post at 11:05), Peter Beaumont and Quique Kierszenbaum report on how Israeli settler attacks in areas designated for a future Palestinian state and currently under direct Palestinian control have almost doubled since 2025.

They wrote:

According to a report by the Israeli human rights organisation Yesh Din, shared with the Guardian, data shows that almost two-thirds of incidents of settler violence so far in 2026 have taken place in the so-called Areas A and B – placed under Palestinian Authority governance in the 1995 Oslo accords.

The report, The Next Frontier, Violence by Israeli Civilians in Areas A and B, describes the “rapid shift” in “violence and pressure exerted by the government, military and settlers on Palestinians … from Area C into Areas B and even A”.

No 10 North is putting more power into every postcode across the country so communities can unleash and unlock their own potential.

I’m bringing together mayors from different political parties to work on these challenges, because people deserve problem-solving rather than point-scoring.

The days of Westminster hoarding power are over.

This government has kickstarted the biggest transition of power and resources in a generation, taking it from Whitehall and putting it back in the hands of local communities.

I asked 13 people about the things they have carried from college into adulthood –and found their modern day equivalents

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One of the highlights of the summer before college was trotting off to my local Linens N Things to outfit my new home, a triple dorm room in the Little Building at Emerson College in Boston. Armed with a list of must-haves and strongly suggested essentials, I filled a shopping cart with a lot of stuff I’d use immediately (jersey twin XL sheets) and stuff that I’d eventually throw away after four years (the very same sheets, useless after college when you will never see a twin XL bed again.)

Most, if not all, of the stuff I bought didn’t make it out of Boston, save for a pop-up laundry hamper that did a tour of duty in San Francisco, surviving three moves in four years, before being relegated to its final resting place, the garbage can.

21 things tweens want for back-to-school season, according to tweens

Government confirms plan for ‘stepping stone’ qualification in England as students face retaking maths or English after failure to achieve grade 4

The government’s plans to make young people continue studying maths and English if they fail GCSEs could be demotivating and ineffective, according to education experts and school leaders after retake pass rates slumped this year.

Only one in seven students in the age group retaking GCSE maths after a previous failure got a grade 4 or above this summer, while only one in six managed to pass English, meaning the majority will have to retake the exams next year if they remain in education or training.

Researcher Nathan Cofnas previously claimed Black people would hold few high-profile positions in a meritocracy

Nathan Cofnas, the academic who made plagiarism allegations against Prof Jason Arday before his death, has been suspended by a university.

Arday, 41, resigned from his role at the University of Cambridge this month after coverage of Cofnas’s accusations of plagiarism. The allegations, which were not proven in any formal investigation, triggered questions about Arday’s achievements.

Find a course at one of the top universities in the country. Our league tables rank them all subject by subject, as well as by student satisfaction, staff numbers, spending and career prospects

Jared Cooney Horvath argues that educational technology undermines how children learn and develop

Jared Cooney Horvath is on a mission. In the wake of global campaigns for smartphone bans in schools and social media restrictions for under-16s, the neuroscientist wants to raise the alarm about educational technology in classrooms.

A former teacher, Horvath believes the use of screens and digital tools in schools is undermining how children learn and develop. “This might be one of the hardest truths our generation has to face,” he writes in his book, The Digital Delusion.

In one court in Kent, most cases relate to term-time holidays, but non-attendance is a complex issue and post-pandemic rates remain high

As the long school summer break approached its mid-point recently, Margate beach was crowded with families enjoying the brief reprieve between the year’s fourth and fifth heatwaves. For most, thoughts of the classroom were probably not at the forefront of their minds.

But for the seven mothers and two fathers who were summoned at 10am to a stuffy room in the town’s magistrates court, set just behind the beachfront strip of arcades, the subject was unavoidable. They were among hundreds of parents due in courts across England this month for failing to ensure their children had regularly attended school over the course of the last academic year.