Crib sheet 02.02.10

Do you know how long it took me, To learn how things respire? If you're not even going to ask about it Why did I try? These are the questions put to the exam board AQA by a musical threesome who call themselves MattxMan91 in their hastily penned but rather eloquent composition The AQA Biology Unit 4 Exam Song , now available on YouTube. Webland is all a-tremble with an outpouring of student anger directed at both AQA and OCR over questions in the recent A-level biology exams, and furious Facebook groups are proliferating. Hmmm. I remember, back in the last millenium, when teenagers just sat in their bedrooms picking their spots and moaning, "It's not fair…" Report card Good crop, bad crop Tobacco's image may be about to undergo a transformation – researchers say it could be used to fight HIV Bright sparks Leading educationists share their views on the scrapping of the Gifted and Talented programme in schools Leaving a mark Our favourite philosophy prof, Jonathan Wolff, gets to grips with what it means to produce research "with an impact" On the margins Body envy Here's a juicy piece of research from, erm, the Netherlands. And this is the question two seekers after truth and enlightenment set out to answer: Which body parts do students focus on when they size up rivals in romance? Is this the sort of thing that might tickle the business secretary's fancy? What you said Mikedow had a dystopian vision in response to news that at the age of five, a third of poor boys cannot write their names : "To you baby boomers that will soon be in retirement homes: These are the people that will be changing your incontinence pants; be thankful for the ignorant and disdainful assistance you'll be obliged to accept. So much for your education; not very good at long range thought are you." But firebird2110 took a more sanguine view: "Nobody seems to be stopping to ask if writing your name at age 5 is a measure of anything useful. My daughter was being pushed to do it at nursery, not because it's a massively useful skill but because it would make the nursery look good to boast of x% of children being able to write their name when they left. Apart from anything else, it's rather unfair on children with long names containing any of the trickier letters." Quote of the week Wes Streeting, NUS pres, wins the slot for his soap-opera-esque response to the university funding cuts : "Singling out universities for cuts of this kind seems to me to be an extraordinary act of self-harm by the government." Stories of the day Private universities They're a growing trend as education becomes big business – even Lego's getting in on the act Skills gap The government said there'd be no jobs for people without skills. How did they get it so wrong ? All today's education stories