The Autumn Budget, set out by chancellor John Healey yesterday, made little mention of the education sector, but Tes has summarised everything schools need to know. This includes a decline in mainstream school spending, an increase in special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) deficits (set to reach £5.7 billion in 2027-28), and an annual £60 million funding package for PE and school sport partnerships. By Jabed Ahmed. 

Meta executives discussed ways to discredit the academic and bestselling author Jonathan Haidt in an effort to turn the scientific community against him, court documents have revealed. According to internal meeting minutes disclosed as part of a lawsuit in the US, senior staff at the social media company discussed recruiting prominent researchers to write "takedown" pieces to undermine Mr Haidt's credibility with the press and the courts. The social psychologist has spearheaded a global campaign highlighting the damage phones and social media cause to children's mental health, and his bestseller The Anxious Generation inspired both the Australian and British government to introduce social media bans for children. By Mark Sellman, The Times. 

Paul Morgan, head of St Julian's School in Lisbon, writes to The Times in response to the Joint Council for Qualifications' list of 'tell-tale AI words'. He warns the guidance "risks penalising the very pupils we have taught to write well", saying "the pupil who weighs evidence and chooses a precise word may look suspect, while the one who tells a chatbot to 'write like a 16-year-old' may sail through". The answer, he argues, lies in conversation: "A teacher who asks a pupil to explain a paragraph aloud will spot borrowed thinking soon enough." The letter can be found a third of the way down the page.

The number of British teenagers taking gap years before applying to Oxbridge and the most selective university courses has risen to its highest level since available records began, new figures suggest. The deadline for Oxbridge and Cambridge applications, as well as those for competitive courses such as medicine, dentistry, and veterinary science, was 15 October. Figures released by the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (Ucas) show that applications from British 19-year-olds – those who have taken a year out after completing A-levels – increased by 16.2 per cent to 6,880, the highest level since 2019. Nick Hillman, director of the Higher Education Policy Institute, has suggested the rise could be the result of more students considering alternatives to university, such as degree apprenticeships. By Albert Tait and Ben Butcher, The Telegraph. 

Laura Whitcombe writes in The Sunday Times about her struggle to find a co-educational state school place for her son. She lives in the borough of Kingston upon Thames, where 73 per cent of mainstream secondary schools are single-sex, and she is not within the catchment area for any of the mixed options. Her remaining options are a selective state boys' school and a co-ed independent school. Calling for change, she writes: "Why should something available to so many free of charge come at such a high cost to us? It’s not good enough that local authorities have no statutory duty to provide co-ed school places." 

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