Food critic Grace Dent is to replace Gregg Wallace as host of Celebrity MasterChef after he “stepped back” in the wake of allegations over his conduct. Wallace stands accused of historical misconduct – of making inappropriate comments and of sexually harassing behaviour. Wallace’s lawyers say the allegations are false. There’s a common refrain when people discuss cases of this nature – that sexualised comments are just “harmless fun”.

The difference in average GCSE English and maths results between poorer and richer pupils – the so-called “attainment gap” – is the largest in England in over a decade, according to a recent government analysis. Reducing this gap is something politicians have struggled with for decades. But education professionals do know of one way to reduce it, which was made clear from the last few years of exam results

All the teenagers collecting their GCSE results this year have overcome significant difficulties. Their secondary school education has been thrown into upheaval by COVID-19: they have faced cancelled classes, have had to learn from home, have dealt with the social isolation and uncertainty of spending a significant part of their childhood in a pandemic.

The experience of having travelled to South Africa will undoubtedly remain an important milestone in my life, because beyond how exciting any of us might be to visit an unknown place, this experience brought together many elements that make it a unique and growing experience both personal and academic.

COVID-19 restrictions required universities to move their classes online. It was a tremendous – although difficult – learning experience for all involved in this shift. As restrictions have been lifted, universities are moving back to in-person teaching. With campuses getting busy again, it may look like nothing has changed. Universities would be wise, though, to reflect on lessons learned during the pandemic. 

Read more about how the Covid-19 pandemic led Erin Bousse (a Traditional route PhD Student) to revise her planned fieldwork away from face-to-face data generation to using online technologies in innovative ways. Erin has received a BAICE fieldwork grant for this remote research with refugees in Kenya.

What does it mean to be masculine? Are normative assumptions, based on a gender binary, outdated in 2021? Based on research with adolescent male dancers, Chris Marlow explores these and other questions, examining the discourses through which masculinity and dance are constructed, negotiated and resisted. 

The cancellation of exams due to the pandemic has meant that 2021 has been a year of hurried experimentation in school assessment. But despite claims of grade inflation under the temporary system deployed this year, it’s worth considering whether there is anything we can take away from this experience to improve things in the future.

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced education providers to make an emergency shift to online teaching and learning. The preliminary results of this project suggest that although learning designers were ready to embark on the pandemic emergency, the transition has not been smooth. The decreased timelines and an accelerated pace of work required them to take on additional, significantly expanded responsibilities and adopt new ways of thinking about the design process.

Covid forced a number of changes to the ways we assess in higher education, and some people have expressed optimism that these positive changes are here to stay. Taking the example of authentic assessment, I argue that such optimism may be misplaced. I suggest we need to think in more transformative terms about both authentic assessment in particular and the purposes of assessment in general.