The UK’s Department for International Development has announced £100m of funding to help 175,000 of the world’s poorest girls get an education. The push will include smartcards that monitor attendance and offer incentives for families to send their daughters to school. It will also deploy satellite broadband to improve connectivity in rural areas. Putting girls through school is increasingly seen …

No one likes to think that their success has at least as much to do with their parents forking out as it does their own hard work Eton College, Berkshire. Photograph: Corbis Ihave lived in Britain – mainly on, sometimes off – for 25 years, but there are still two things about this country I don’t understand. Number one: why …

Virtually every key profession is dominated by privately educated pupils snaffling the senior jobs Getty Images The stranglehold former public-school pupils have on the UK’s top jobs has laid bare in a hard-hitting report out today. The study, by the Sutton Trust education charity, shows that virtually every key profession is dominated by privately educated pupils snaffling the senior jobs. …

Nurseries have resisted fee hikes for the first time in eight years, amid fears they will price parents out of the market, a report claims. Average prices rose by inflation only, as providers in Britain realised they had reached a “crunch point”, the Family and Childcare Trust report says. Education and Childcare Minister Sam Gyimah said government investment had boosted …

The stranglehold former public-school pupils have on the UK’s top jobs has laid bare in a hard-hitting report out today. The study, by the Sutton Trust education charity, shows that virtually every key profession is dominated by privately educated pupils snaffling the senior jobs. Their grip on power is most noticeable in the judiciary, where 74 per cent of leading …