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23 minutes ago
- Yahoo
New secondary school to open for SEND pupils
A new independently-run special school is set to open in York. The Inspire Academy, on Cornlands Road in Acomb, has been officially registered by the Department for Education, following a successful pre-registration inspection by Ofsted. The facility is due to open its doors for the upcoming autumn term to 40 pupils aged 11 to 16. In a statement headteacher Rickie Wilson said he was "thrilled" to open the school, which had been developed with a "commitment to creating a nurturing and ambitious environment for young people who need it most". A spokesperson said the school would serve children with "social, emotional and mental health and other special educational needs". They said the curriculum would be "ambitious, inclusive, and responsive to individual needs, preparing students for GCSE qualifications and life beyond school". The Ofsted inspection, which took place in June, praised the school's "broad and well-sequenced curriculum" and said it had "established the foundations of a strong culture of safeguarding". Inspectors confirmed that Inspire Academy was "likely to meet all the independent school standards when it opens." Each place will cost £20,000 in state funding. On the academy's website, it said referrals for admission would be decided by whether a child was on-roll at an Excel Learning Trust mainstream school, required respite to support their existing school place, or were at risk of permanent exclusion. Requests for places for pupils from other schools or directly from a local authority could also be made directly to the head of school. Listen to highlights from North Yorkshire on BBC Sounds, catch up with the latest episode of Look North. More stories like this Free breakfasts improving attendance - school Private school to close after 125 years Related internet links Ofsted Inspire Academy
Yahoo
23 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Airport gets £900k fine for plane de-icer pollution
East Midlands Airport has been fined almost £900,000 for polluting a nearby brook with de-icer. The airport, which cannot connect to a mains sewer and so is responsible for the run-off from its runways, pleaded guilty to three discharges of contaminated water into Diseworth Brook in January and February 2022. Airport managing director Steve Griffiths apologised, and said it had taken "decisive action" and invested more than £10m in its drainage. But sentencing the airport at Derby Crown Court on Monday, Judge Martin Hurst said it had failed to properly invest in its systems from 2015 onwards, and said the money being spent "should reasonably have been spent then". He handed the airport - which he said was the second biggest freight airport in the UK and 14th largest in terms of passengers - a fine of £892,500 and costs of £65,687.54, as well as a victim surcharge. The judge said the airport had been "reckless" and caused "risk to livestock and the residents of the village of Diseworth". Sewage fungus The court heard the systems to process water contaminated by de-icer - to be released into both the River Trent and Diseworth Brook - were installed in the year 2000, with a "useful service life" of 20 years. Run-off from the essential de-icing, including of runways and aircraft, is held in a series of winter and summer ponds, which let water out at different times of the year, and hold different levels of contamination. The court was told Environment Agency investigations had found defects throughout their systems, including with monitors, pumps and pond liners. It led, on three occasions, to Diseworth Brook - which runs "straight through the middle of the village" - being polluted. Levels of up to eight times the level allowed were detected on one occasion, the court heard. This pollution causes outbreaks of sewage fungus, damaging water quality and harming plant life. Judge Hurst said the investment of more than £10m in the systems since the breaches showed the airport had been responsible and taken action, albeit "five years too late". Following the hearing, Mr Griffiths said: "I'd like to say sorry for the three breaches that we had in early 2022, where we discharged water beyond our permit into the local watercourses. "We took decisive action at that point in time and we controlled those issues and that was ahead of any prosecution taking place." Follow BBC Leicester on Facebook, on X, or on Instagram. Send your story ideas to eastmidsnews@ or via WhatsApp on 0808 100 2210. Related internet links East Midlands Airport Environment Agency HM Courts & Tribunals Service
Yahoo
23 minutes ago
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Opinion: Parents Want to Support Their Kids. Behavioral Science Can Help Them Follow Through
For over 10 years, the Behavioral Insights and Parenting Lab at the University of Chicago has been investigating how parents make decisions. A key insight from our research is that what parents do does not always align with what they intend to do. This 'intention-action gap' can reduce parents' engagement with their children, which in turn interferes with children's skill development. This gap is a common characteristic of decision-making. People plan to save for retirement or stick to diets, but often fall short of their goals. In parenting, the stakes are higher: Not reading a bedtime story or skipping a day of preschool may seem momentarily insignificant, but small gaps in learning time accumulate over time, making it increasingly difficult for children's skills to catch up. Why do well-intentioned parents sometimes struggle to follow through with engaging their children, and how can behavioral science help parents close the intention-action gap? Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter The field of behavioral economics offers insights into what creates intention-action gaps and our research identifies practical ways to bridge the gap. Many of these approaches rely on the concept of 'nudges' — subtle changes in how choices or information are presented that make the desired action easier or more likely to occur. In parenting, nudges often come in the form of reminders, feedback, or other simple tools sent through digital technology. These nudges acknowledge that busy parents aren't failing to engage their children in learning activities that are key to the child's future because they lack love, knowledge, or good intentions; rather, daily life is full of friction and temptations. Our research has shown that 'present bias,' a manifestation of the intention-action gap, is central to parenting choices. Parents, like everyone, often prioritize immediate rewards over future benefits. Raising a child requires long-term effort; while considerable research shows that reading books to a toddler boosts their language skills in the future, the benefits of today's actions can be long delayed. Meanwhile, daily distractions and fatigue demand immediate attention. Related This bias can cause parents to focus on the 'now' rather than the 'later,' even when they value activities like reading. In our Parents and Children Together (PACT) study, we tackled present bias by sending parents text-message prompts and goal-setting reminders to read to their children from a digital library that we provided to parents. These reminders were intended to 'bring the future to the present.' Parents who received these reminders read to their child over twice as much over six weeks compared to parents who received the digital library with no reminders. Notably, the parents who gained the most were those who exhibited present-biased preferences in assessments given before the experiment began. In other words, the parents most prone to procrastinate on reading were the ones who saw the greatest improvements when we helped them overcome present bias. Parents without present bias already read regularly, so the extra reminders had little impact for them. Tools to Help Parents Follow Through Another successful example of narrowing the intention-action gap from our research lab is the 'Show Up to Grow Up' study, a randomized controlled trial we conducted to increase attendance in Chicago's publicly funded preschool programs. Our intervention sent personalized text messages to parents over 18 weeks, indicating the number of days their child had been absent and highlighting the learning opportunities they missed while not in school. The messages reminded parents of their commitment to adopt good attendance habits and their goals to help their child develop kindergarten readiness skills. For children whose parents received these messages, preschool attendance increased by about 2.5 school days, and chronic absenteeism — a measure of missing 10% or more of the school days in a school year — decreased by 20% compared to the children of parents who did not receive the messages. The text nudges and reminders helped align parents' actions with their long-term goals. This type of light-touch program is inexpensive and easy to scale, making it a viable tool for education policymakers aiming to reduce early absenteeism. Technology offers a promising solution to close the intention-action gap. Our recent Children and Parents Engaged in Reading (CAPER) study provided families with a tablet preloaded with a digital library of over 200 high-quality children's books. The tablet had no apps or internet access beyond the library to reduce distractions. The goal was to remove the obstacle of finding new books and to make shared reading as easy and engaging as possible. Related The impact on children's language skills was notable. Over an 11-month trial, low-income children whose families received access to the digital library showed approximately 0.3 standard deviations more progress in language skills (equivalent to three months of language learning on the test we gave to children) than those who did not, moving from roughly the 41st to the 50th percentile nationally. Notably, the treatment impact was significantly larger – 0.50 standard deviation, equivalent to approximately five months of language learning on the test we gave to children – for parents who exhibited present-biased preferences in assessments administered before the experiment began (as in the PACT study). Sometimes the best way to narrow the intention-action gap is to reduce barriers to the intended action. From Research Insights to Early Childhood Policy These research insights go beyond academics: They offer a new toolkit for early childhood policy. Traditional parenting programs often assume that if parents are informed about the benefits of their decisions or provided with free resources, they will naturally act accordingly. However, information and resources alone don't always lead to behavior change, especially when cognitive biases interfere. Relatively low-cost, behaviorally informed interventions can directly address the intention-action gap. For example, text-message programs can be scaled through school districts, pediatric clinics, or social service agencies to encourage behaviors like daily reading, conversations, or preschool attendance. Digital tools, such as the library tablet in the CAPER study, could be integrated into public early education programs or library initiatives to ensure families have access to books and find them easy and enjoyable to use. Such approaches can promote equity by focusing on parents who face more cognitive biases or for whom these biases cause the most harm. Behavioral tools can help close early learning gaps before children reach kindergarten, which research shows is the most effective and cost-efficient time to empower parents as active partners in their children's development. Solve the daily Crossword
