50 school pupils get TB screening

18 April 2011 Last updated at 16:10 GMT TB primarily affects the lungs Children at a Lurgan school are being offered screening for tuberculosis after confirmation that a pupil is being treated for the disease.

About 50 pupils who attend St Michael's Grammar School are being offered the screening on Wednesday.

The Public Health Agency and Southern Health Trust have said the move is "a precautionary measure in line with standard guidance".

Information has been sent to parents of all the children who attend the school.

Dr Michael Devine, consultant in communicable disease at the PHA, said: "I would like to reassure parents and those who attend the school that children with TB are rarely infectious to others and the risk to pupils and staff at the school is low.

"A number of people who have been in close contact with the patient have been identified and are being offered preliminary screening as a standard precautionary measure.

"This will involve a skin test (Mantoux test) which will be carried out by healthcare professionals from the trust."

TB is a serious but curable infectious disease which normally affects the lungs but can also affect other parts of the body.

It is usually spread through the air when a patient coughs or sneezes. TB is a difficult infection to catch and usually requires prolonged close contact.

The most common symptoms include:

a persistent cough that gets progressively worse over several weeks; loss of weight for no obvious reason; fever and heavy night sweats; a general and unusual sense of tiredness and being unwell; coughing up blood.

Gerard Adams, principal of St Michael's, said: "Our first concern is for our student who is currently being treated for TB.

"On behalf of all staff and pupils at the school I would like to send our very best wishes for a speedy recovery.

"We must also look to ensuring the health and wellbeing of all our other pupils and so we have screening taking place as a standard precautionary measure."

He said the school would make every effort to ensure the screening takes place as quickly as possible with minimal disruption to the school.

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Rio school shooting pupils return

18 April 2011 Last updated at 23:02 GMT Students read a special edition of a paper on their return to school Students have returned to the school in Brazil where a gunman killed 12 children on 7 April.

Those killed were between 10 and 13 years old, and all but two were girls.

The gunman, a former pupil at the school in Rio de Janeiro killed himself after being wounded by police.

The director of the school said the first days would be taken up by individual counselling sessions with the students and therapeutic activities such as painting.

A group of parents from the Tasso da Silveira school in the west of Rio met with local officials on Monday to ask for a permanent medical and psychological unit to be created at the school.

Local Education Secretary Claudia Costin said the classrooms where the shootings happened had been repainted to erase traces of bullet holes and blood.

She said the two rooms where the greatest number of pupils had been killed had been turned into a library and an IT room.

Revenge for bullying

On the weekend, officials released new videos recorded by the gunman, 23-year-old Wellington Menezes de Oliveira.

The gunman said he had been bullied at school

In one of them, he reads out the suicide note which was found on him after the shootings.

In the other one, he tells of the humiliations he says he suffered at school. In it, he says he hopes what happened "would serve as a lesson".

Police say he went into a classroom with two revolvers and lined people up before shooting them in the head at close range.

Security video footage shows children running down hallways to escape as he reloaded his guns. He shot himself in the head after being shot in the leg by a policeman.

Four of the 12 pupils who were injured in the attack remain in hospital.

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'Tensions' as ethnic pupils excel

13 April 2011 Last updated at 09:29 GMT The research examined the relationship between tolerance and classroom ethnic diversity As pupils from ethnic minorities increase their competence in the classroom, their white peers become less tolerant, according to research.

The Institute of Education, University of London, study suggests white British pupils feel "threatened" by high-achieving black and Asian children.

It also found white pupils performed better as classes became more diverse.

Researchers examined data on England, Germany and Sweden from a 1999 study of 90,000 14-year-olds in 28 countries.

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It seems that the ethnic minorities are only accepted by majority pupils if they stay in a subordinate position”

End Quote Dr Jan Germen Janmaat Institute of Education The results show that in England, a 50% increase in the "civic competence" - the knowledge and skills that citizens needed to participate effectively in a democratic society - of ethnic minority pupils coincided with a 20% drop in the tolerance of white British pupils.

Tougher competition

Report author Dr Jan Germen Janmaat, from the Centre for Learning and Life Chances in Knowledge Economies and Societies, said: "As soon as minorities assert themselves and become as competent as the majority, the latter may well become defensive and intolerant.

"It seems that the ethnic minorities are only accepted by majority pupils if they stay in a subordinate position.

"This may be down to competitive anxieties - ethnic groups may not be perceived as a threat when they are struggling to succeed, but as they increase their status and become more adept at finding their way in society this seems to change."

Dr Janmaat said the findings could be even more relevant in today's climate of tougher competition for jobs.

"If even in times of great optimism and economic growth such as the late 1990s we see the phenomenon of 'competitive anxiety', it is likely to be even stronger in times of scarcity."

The study also found a small correlation between classroom diversity and the civic competence of white British students.

The more diverse the classroom, the better the white students performed, it found, contradicting the belief that diversity undermines the performance of white British students.

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Crackdown disciplines 230 pupils

7 April 2011 Last updated at 19:21 GMT Some parents are angry that pupils are being sent out of class

More than 230 out of 1,250 pupils were removed from classes at a school in Cambridgeshire as part of a head teacher's zero-tolerance programme.

About one in five City of Ely Community College pupils were disciplined on the first day of a crackdown on "low-level disruptive behaviour".

The new policies were introduced by head teacher Catherine Jenkinson-Dix.

Pupils not wearing the uniform or using mobile phones were taken out of class and made to work in a school hall.

Zero-tolerance

Governor Ben Gibbs said parents had been warned of the new policy, brought in on Monday, which also punished chewing or eating in class.

Mr Gibbs said the number of offenders fell to fewer than 200 on Tuesday and by Wednesday it was down to 115.

He said senior staff had studied other schools' use of similar zero-tolerance policies and decided to follow suit.

Teachers, most parents and the majority of pupils approved of the new approach, he added.

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