Cribsheet of the week 23.11.10

We have an exclusive report by Joanna Moorhead on the educational prospects of children in care , based on the work of Sonia Jackson, a professor at the Institute of Education in London. "It's extraordinarily difficult for young people who've come out of care to continue in education. They've all had difficult family lives, many have suffered physical or emotional abuse, and they've often been moved from one foster home to another." One of their biggest problems is the inflexibility of the education system in this country, Jackson says, which is rigidly tied in to children's ages. But her research has uncovered individuals who buck the trend and it shows there is one thing that really can make a difference: a teacher. Report card • Frances Booth, occasional Cribsheeter, was one of the first volunteers to work at Nick Hornby's new writing centre, the Ministry of Stories. Read about her session with a group from Jubilee primary school – and their story about Bob the Fat Man who's scared of hair. "I listen to gabble after gabble of idea after idea. Bob the Fat Man's life spirals off in all manner of directions. "'Great, write it down!' is all that they need. Soon lines are pouring on to their pages. "I look round at a room full of young writers, busy, focused, engaged. This is exactly what all the writers who have backed the Ministry of Stories were hoping for, I think." • Far far away from the story-writers, a group of youngsters are fighting to save their local school which has just 14 children. If it goes, they'll be travelling 30 miles to the nearest alternative. Where are they? On the Hebridean island of Mull. Many small rurals schools across the UK are under threat of closure as local authorities lose funding. Martin Wainwright considers the case of Kettlewell in North Yorkshire. • The spotlight is shining full-beam on school sport in the face of government threats to cut funding, and teachers are concerned about the effects on children who do very little exercise already. Researchers, meanwhile, are looking at the lives of athletically gifted children and asking whether they are in danger of falling into abusive relationships with their coaches . According to evidence at a Brunel symposium, those who train at the highest level are at most risk of being emotionally abused by coaches, and several have been subjected to sexual abuse too. Dr Daniel Rhind says: "Right the way through sport, there's the 'no pain, no gain' idea, which is about pushing someone right to the edge. And what we're thinking now is that emotional abuse is the gateway to sexual abuse." What you said In announcing reading tests for six-year-olds, the government said it would be launching a consultation to ask teachers, parents, the public and education professionals for their views on how the test should work. To which Rachelthedigger responded : "Why the blinking flip are they asking parents and the public? What do we know about teaching children to read? I don't even remember learning to read myself! "Does the blithering idiot Gove actually think he's going to get some meaningful feedback from us, or is this just an ideological health and safety exercise, so that when it all goes runny, they can say 'Well, we're not liable – we asked you and this is what you told us you wanted!'?" Quote of the week Almost 300 university staff wrote to the Guardian in support of the student demonstration tomorrow: "We support the day of protest against tuition fees on Wednesday, following the magnificent demonstration by university and school students and by university staff on 10 November. "We are utterly opposed to the destruction of broad-based, critical education and its replacement by education for the market that is enshrined in the Browne report. We are defending not just our jobs, but the values which brought us into higher education, reflecting the wider significance of education to society. "The coalition's proposals to slash funding for the arts, social sciences and humanities risk losing not just a generation of artists, but also a generation of critical and creative thinkers." More stories from the Guardian Thinking of having an argument with a vice-chancellor, or a student? Or a Lib Dem, for that matter? What you need in Jeevan Vasagar's complete guide to tuition fees . Have you always been baffled about why universities are grouped into strange clubs called things like the Russell Group and Million+? Peter Scott comes to your rescue. WorldSkills, the XFactor of vocational learning , takes place in London next year. Young chefs, gardeners, hairdressers and robot designers are training hard. We discovered last week that universities are the biggest beneficiaries of donations over a million pounds. Here's a guide to getting yours . Academics from Oxford and Cambridge join forces. No, not to cheer on young people in boats. They are petitioning their governing bodies about plummeting pensions . Stories from around the web A colleague tells me that armed gunmen fired at a father outside her children's school at 9am yesterday morning, just as parents were taking kids into class. "Mums were sticking their heads into their babies' prams to protect them as the gunmen raced by," she said. The Mirror has the full story of what police think was a "carefully planned hit that went wrong" at Woodford Green primary in Essex. A thinktank warns that the government's pupil premium may end up being spent on the wrong children , the BBC reports. Ofsted inspections are to be overhauled in the white paper , says the Telegraph, and schools will no longer be tested on whether they promote equality or community cohesion. Blog pick Guerillamum has blogged on the chilling story of a top London academy that refused a place to a disabled girl of 11 because "her wheelchair takes up too much space", as reported in the Evening Standard . Guerillamum writes: "It appears that to be born with a disability can disqualify you from access to the high quality education the education secretary champions so vociferously. It is not acceptable in 2010 for this sort of discrimination and prejudice to be present in publicly funded education establishments. Over to you Mr Gove." Twitter fave ClassroomTweets is the work of a year 2 class which is using Twitter to practise spelling. Its logo is a bright smiley sun, and every tweet is utterly endearing. They've been studying the story of Joseph. Here's a picture of his amazing coat . And here's a tweet about what they're doing: "The safdernoon we are dasing joseph and his aimzing tecknecoluled dream coat." Competition Do you have a clever way of using technology to teach children at your school? Enter the Classroom Innovation awards by sending us a short video of what you can do. There is a primary and secondary category and each winner will get £7,500 of Asus computing kit. Take a look at some of the entries so far . 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