"A lot of young girls say, 'If my boyfriend hit me, I'd be out that door straight away,'" says Sophie Pounde, 15. "But you may not know what you'd do before you're actually in that situation."

"I kept coming out with stereotypes, like 'she's clever, so she'd know to leave her boyfriend'," agrees her classmate, 15-year-old Emma Densham. "But we learned that there is no stereotypical person who is abused - it can be absolutely anyone."

The girls, pupils at Hendon school in London, are talking about an 11-week drama project on domestic abuse that they've just completed, guided by Daniel Rachel from the educational charity Tender, which works through the creative arts with young people to address issues of domestic and sexual abuse. Their class was not unusual, he says, in being utterly shocked by some of the statistics he presented them with. The facts the girls keep mentioning are that a woman will on average be attacked 32 times before seeking help, and that two women a week are killed by their partner or ex-partner.

Defining boundaries

Their group is working on a presentation to perform to the rest of their school in assembly. As year 11 students, and at an age when they are having to negotiate their first romantic relationships, taking time to learn how to define their own boundaries - and what to do if lines get crossed - is clearly highly relevant.

But is there sufficient support in place if a student who has a painful home situation ends up feeling that they have to "tell on their parents" after a discussion on domestic abuse? And how is an issue like this dealt with when it comes to primary-age children, who could be left feeling anxious by the information?

Shying away from talking to young children about unhealthy relationships is no way to help them deal with the upsetting and possibly dangerous situations that some will have to face on a daily basis, says Angela Holleran, headteacher at Holy Cross primary school in Liverpool.

The recent conviction of a father for the serial sexual abuse of his two daughters highlights the importance of acting on uneasy suspicions. Ignoring signs that domestic abuse may be taking place is not an option, says Holleran firmly, no matter how uncomfortable it may be for a professional to face parents with their concerns. "It's a highly relevant subject even to primary-age children, though it has to be handled in a sensitive and age-appropriate way," she says. "Child protection and safeguarding are top priority in this school. I'm conscious that in 90% of cases of domestic abuse, children are in the same room or in the next room. We have to teach them how to keep themselves safe."

A new draft code of conduct for teachers by the General Teaching Council for England, published last month, puts a duty on teachers to report any suspicion of abuse affecting children.

Holleran recently invited the children's charity NSPCC into her school to lead a programme called "Relationships and Respect" with year 4 and 5 pupils, after writing to all parents asking if they had concerns about the subject to be covered. She received no negative responses, but emphasises that before any work is done in class all staff are given training in how to respond to children's concerns, "because otherwise, it could do a lot of harm".

Across Liverpool, volunteers from the police, health service, youth offending team and domestic violence support services have all been trained to go into schools to deliver the NSPCC programme. Elaine Benson, the charity's domestic violence co-ordinator for education, emphasises that from a young age, children need to be made aware what makes for healthy and unhealthy relationships, partly so that they recognise if they need to find ways of keeping themselves safe at home, or inform other adults of their situation, but also because they need alternative models for their own relationships as they grow up.

Everyone acknowledges, nevertheless, that domestic abuse is always going to be a difficult subject to cover, not only for children, but also, potentially, for some staff. Denise Harding is a sex and relationships education consultant who recently worked with the charity Women's Aid on its new lesson plan toolkit, "Expect Respect". She says: "Remember, some teachers are victims of domestic abuse, and some teachers will be perpetrators. Dealing with teaching a lesson in this situation is going to be very uncomfortable." The toolkit, she explains, has been created to help teachers over any initial unease, and provides them with a range of resources, discussion topics and sources of support to draw on when tackling the subject of domestic abuse with each year group.

Addressing the reality that some children in every class are experiencing domestic abuse is all too easy for the curriculum to ignore, she continues, as there is no requirement for the fact that it happens to be acknowledged or explored.

"There is stuff about gender stereotyping that can contribute to a discussion about unhealthy relationships, but the words 'domestic violence' or 'abuse' are rarely used," she says. This is despite the fact that 750,000 children a year witness domestic abuse, "and those kids are going to have a very tough time, and not easily reach their full potential".

Should schools therefore be hoping that children will disclose abuse happening in their homes as a result of hearing it discussed in a classroom setting?

More disclosure

"I think we're expecting that more children will disclose, though not necessarily to a teacher," says Harding. But immediate referral to the school's child protection officer is the only way ahead if a disclosure is made in school, she states firmly, a position reiterated by Fred Asquith, the drama teacher at Hendon school who initially invited Tender to work with his students.

"The agreement we make is that whatever is said within the group isn't talked about outside the group, but if someone disclosed abuse, we would immediately have to inform our child protection officer. We made that very clear," says Asquith. "And I would regard that as a very positive outcome, as hopefully it would lead to change for that young person."

Domestic abuse is the norm for some children, and forms their expectation for how adult relationships operate. So the opportunity to look at respectful behaviour towards partners and family can give pupils a chance to make up their own minds about the right ways to treat people, says Pounde.

"I thought it was a really positive thing to bring into school: it opened our eyes to the different things that domestic violence can be," she says. "For instance, initially everyone in the class thought control was a good thing - you know, that a man might have control over finances and women over the house. But in fact, each person should be responsible for every aspect of a relationship and the only thing you should have control over is yourself."

• Schools
• Domestic violence
• Young people
• Children
• Child protection

A colleague mentioned to some students that he liked to work in cafes. A member of the incoming class, looking a bit concerned, replied that while he had himself done some bar work, he was yet to try his hand at waiting on tables. I think he was joking, but even so, it did give me a sense of how far the status of academics has fallen. Not long ago, another colleague was asked by a mortgage broker whether his work gave him opportunities for overtime.

Still, it is not status but the working methods of the philosophers that concern me here. Until I finally found a laptop able to accommodate my eccentric typing style, I wrote out almost everything longhand, in very nasty writing, in little notebooks, or on the backs of things, and wrote on buses and tube trains, on park benches, and, indeed, in cafes. Now most of my writing has to be done at a table or desk. But at least it has the advantage that I can read what I have written.

My interest in the issue of working methods was revived recently when reading Richard Reeve's sparkling biography John Stuart Mill: Victorian Firebrand. Reeve quotes a contemporary of Mill, commenting on Mill's methods at work in the East India Office: "When particularly inspired, he used, before sitting down at his desk, not only to strip himself of his coat and waistcoat, but of his trousers; and so set to work, alternately striding up and down the room and writing at great speed."

I am not ready to declare in this column whether I typically write with my trousers on or off, but I think I can say with some confidence that I have never taken them off in order to write.

The working methods of Jean Jacques Rousseau, described in his extraordinary Confessions, written in 1765, struck more of a chord with me. This was probably the very first modern autobiography, in that it attempted to provide a frank portrayal of all aspects of his life. Most readers remember it for its depiction of Rousseau's clumsy attempt to kickstart his sex life by exposing himself to a farm-girl. Of course I have not forgotten that, but I found a much more appealing life model in his writing habits. Rousseau complains that he was unable to sustain his attention on any project for very long, but, luckily, he was able to switch attention from topic to topic. Therefore, he says, he could continue to work for many hours by working on many manuscripts simultaneously.

Pub conversations with other academics seem to suggest, though, that most colleagues work a different way. All attention must be given to one project at a time, and a working session begins with a sort of re-burying of oneself in the topic, going back over previous work, with much shuffling of books and papers, and elaborate coffee rituals. And then writing begins, to be continued, perhaps, to the middle of the following evening.

Possibly the most extreme example of this approach is that of Bertrand Russell, when working on the logical foundations of arithmetic in 1902-04. Later he reflected: "Every morning I would sit down before a blank sheet of paper. Throughout the day, with a brief interval for lunch, I would stare at the blank sheet. Often when evening came it was still blank."

What a choice. Rousseau's ADHD or Russell's OCD. Whatever happened to the model of the philosopher sipping an espresso, drawing on a Gaulois and laconically noting insights with a Mont Blanc fountain pen in an artist's sketchbook? Probably always a myth, sadly.

These days, if a philosopher is to be found in a cafe, he or she will, most likely, be rather excitedly checking email on a handheld device. And to find what, exactly? That the MacArthur Foundation has finally done the right thing and is about to deposit a huge payment in their account? That the vice-chancellor has, without being asked, granted them three years' research leave? Fat chance. It will be a request to act as external examiner, or a reminder of a report that was due last month. Still, for as long as they keep their trousers on while working out how to respond, all should be well.

• Jonathan Wolff is professor of philosophy at University College London. His column appears monthly

• Postgraduates
• Philosophy
• Higher education

One of the good things about being a student is that you don't have to spend much time looking on the bright side.

Ditch the moaning about debt, study deadlines, job prospects or flatmates, and you'll soon run out of conversation and find it harder to form those empathetic bonds with fellow students that being at university is all about.

But there are times - in a cold January in the middle of a recession, say, suffering from post-Christmas debts, a hangover, and no heating - when it's useful to learn how to be optimistic.

First, think about your debts. Think about how much worse it would be if interest rates weren't at their lowest level since 1951. Thanks to the Bank of England cutting its base rate last month, the student loan interest rate has been cut from 3.8% to 3%, and will fall again if the bank's base rate goes down any further. So the bigger your debt, the richer you are - relatively speaking.

Next, you may be living in a rat-infested basement with a broken boiler, but at least it probably belongs to someone else. That means no mortgage. If it does belong to you, great! You managed to get on the housing ladder, and because the number of students is rising, you'll probably still be able to let it.

Now, studying. By now you will probably have had to do some work. You may even have exams. This means you can no longer kid yourself that you can sail through your course without reading anything or going to any lectures. This can be a bit of a downer. On the other hand, it reminds you that if studying were that easy, a degree wouldn't be worth having. Also, spending time in libraries is cheap. And warm.

Finally, flatmates. They may neglect the washing-up, leave damp towels on the carpet and spend every evening snogging a different stranger on the sofa, but at least you're not married to them. And if you are, great! You managed to find a life partner who's prepared to put up with you swanning about all day getting into debt.

If you're still struggling to keep your chin up, bear in mind that looking on the bright side when you're a student is easy. It is only when you find yourself in the world of work, needing to assure your boss of 110% commitment, that your powers of optimism are really going to be tested.

• Students
• Higher education

Willem Buiter is just answering a call from Time magazine. He is telling them about the bursting of the "huge bubble" caused by what he calls the "financialisation" of the British economy.

I'm here to talk to him about what might be termed "Keynesianisation" in response to the evaporation of that bubble. But it will have to wait a few minutes. He waves me towards a coffee table in his spacious office at the London School of Economics (LSE) where he eventually joins me for a chat while tucking into a late sandwich lunch. A particularly busy day, perhaps? "I've been even busier than usual since August 2007, when the crisis started," he replies between mouthfuls, a trace of his Dutch origins tinged with transatlantic overtones.

Buiter's academic career, at Yale and Cambridge, was interrupted in 1997 by three years as an external member of the Bank of England's monetary policy committee, followed by five years as chief economist at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. He left in 2005 to take up his current post as chair in European political economy at the LSE.

Disingenuous

"Academia's fun," he says wryly. "It beats working for a living." His lengthy list of published work suggests that he is being disingenuous. And now he is in demand as a consultant (clients have included the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank) as well as a media pundit. He also writes a feisty blog for the Financial Times - a recent example was headed "Confessions of a crass Keynesian".

So did he foresee the depth of the hole towards which the economy was plunging? "Not in August 2007, I didn't," he says. "I saw the slowdown coming, but the seizing up of credit and the drying up of capital markets didn't happen until the Lehman Brothers default [in September 2008]. That was the moment of cardiac arrest."

Attempts by the government to resuscitate the patient on this side of the Atlantic are routinely described as Keynesian, as opposed to monetarist. Is that the case and, if so, have we understood what Keynes meant?

The LSE's chair in European economy just about stifles a yawn before answering: "I find debates about what Keynes really meant singularly uninformative. But, yes, the government has been playing at Keynesianism by prescribing a dose of expansionary fiscal policy to try to reduce the severity of the recession. Trouble is that it was such a low dose and so cack-handedly presented that most of the public didn't recognise it as a stimulus at all. If [the government] really wanted to stimulate demand, it would have been more effective to give every adult a cheque for £500."

Keynes also suggested programmes of public works to reduce unemployment and put money into otherwise empty pockets. "The problem with public works is that you have to have viable projects, unless you want to commission the digging of holes in the morning and then filling them up in the afternoon," Buiter says. "And the government doesn't have a list of projects that can be started immediately."

What about its programme for insulating houses? "That's private, not public works," he says. "Give people incentives to lag their lofts by all means, but it's up to individuals whether they take up the offer. Getting public investment projects going takes far longer, partly because of Britain's esoteric planning laws. But even if you were Joe Stalin himself, it would still take time to get houses, schools or prisons off the ground. I'm not saying that Britain doesn't need better infrastructure. Public transport in London, for instance, is an international disgrace. But the lead time from planning a project to somebody sinking a shovel into the ground is two to three years at the very least." The UK can't afford to wait that long, Buiter argues.

"The Bank of England, with government backing, should have been far more aggressive from the start to induce banks to release the money they're hoarding." Proposals to fine banks if they refuse to lend fairly are a "beginning", he says. "But it won't be enough. I can foresee long and expensive court cases to decide what's 'fair'. And by the time they've decided, the recession will be much further down the road." Buiter would prefer to set the banks targets, and tax them on the difference between the target and what they actually lend.

Shock tactics are required, he maintains, because Britain now has the most vulnerable of major European economies - partly because of our refusal to join the eurozone and partly because of our over-reliance on the financial sector. "It grew from 7% to 9% of GDP in a decade," he points out. "Britain began to look more and more like a bank itself. And that's a dangerous position to be in."

Naive belief

It is a process he traces back to Margaret Thatcher's rise to power in 1979. "She introduced light-touch regulation - or soft touch as I call it. There was a further relaxation of all kinds of credit to all kinds of borrowers. And new Labour did nothing to stop it. They simply spent the tax revenues on expanding the public sector. Lax regulatory standards were coupled with a naive belief by consumers that house prices would keep on rising for ever. So when the financial crisis hit, British households were the most indebted in the world."

As for the euro, don't get Buiter started. He has written about it extensively and been a staunch advocate of Britain joining from the moment the zone was created. "This crisis has simply reinforced the argument," he says. "Sterling is more vulnerable to bank runs than global reserve currencies like the euro and the dollar."

Buiter brings to his analysis a cross-Channel as well as transatlantic breadth of experience. He was born in 1949 in Holland, the son of the first general secretary of what is now the European Trade Union Confederation.

"My parents were Christian socialists," he says. "There's a rich Dutch tradition of church influencing politics, a bit like Methodism and the early Labour party here."

His father's work took the family initially to Luxembourg and then to Brussels. Young Willem completed the European baccalaureate there before returning to Dutch soil to do his first degree in Amsterdam. "I didn't like it much," he admits. "Student revolutionaries kept occupying the buildings." (Well, it was the late 60s.)

Cambridge turned out to be more to his taste. Revolutionary activity was not unknown in the Fens, but life in Emmanuel College proved quiet enough to allow him to get on with some work. "After that I just continued going west," he smiles, "and drifted into academia." Well, that's one way of putting it. He acquired a PhD (with distinction) at Yale before teaching both there and at Princeton as well as Cambridge and London. His second wife, Professor Anne C Sibert, is an American and just happens to be head of economics, maths and statistics at Birkbeck College in London.

Buiter himself has dual British and American nationality and claims to be "perfectly happy on either side of the Atlantic". Surely the pay, though, is better on one side than the other? "Yes, but in economics you can always make fees from consulting. London's not a bad place to be for that." And, yes, despite the public transport, he enjoys living in the city.

Buiter, in his 60th year, is still a passionate tennis player. "I'm currently out of commission with a rare variant of tennis elbow, and it's driving me mad," he grumbles. One of his regular partners is his Peruvian (adopted) son David Alejandro, 17. A bit of an age difference, then? "Yes, but there's no mercy on court." In the meantime, his verbal returns remain punchy.

Age: 59

Job: Chair in European political economy, London School of Economics

Before that: Chief economist and special counsellor to the president of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development

Married with two children

Likes tennis, music (particularly Mozart), science fiction and fantasy novels

Dislikes public transport in London and fundamentalism of all kinds

• Academic experts
• London School of Economics and Political Science
• Economics
• Higher education
• Credit crunch
• European Union

I wanted to be a building surveyor from a very early age. My dad was a carpenter, a general foreman on new house builds. As a child, I use to go to work with him at weekends, passing him tools and generally helping out.

When I was 15, my dad died. I just went into freefall. My dad had been suffering from motor neurone disease, which leads to weakness and wasting of muscles, loss of mobility in the limbs, and difficulties with speech, swallowing and breathing. Over a number of years, I'd seen my dad go into a vegetative state. When he died, I lost focus at school and didn't do very well in my exams, so that was the end of my plans to become a surveyor. Fortunately, a man in my village offered me an apprenticeship as a carpenter, which I loved.

In 2001, I started thinking about teaching. Customers were always asking me to show them how to do the things they were paying me for. My wife said I was putting myself out of business. She encouraged me to ask the college if they had any teaching jobs. I've been here ever since.

I'm course manager for pre-apprenticeship courses for 14- to 18-year-olds. We have 45 places for 14- to 16-year-olds from local schools. They come to us one day a week and work towards vocational qualifications, including the City & Guilds' introductory certificate in construction and the BTec first diploma in construction. They learn a bit of everything: health and safety, manual handling, carpentry, masonry, painting and decorating. Some students come to us because the school environment doesn't suit them. They find sitting in a classroom day in, day out really difficult. I can relate to that, as I found school difficult, particularly as I have dyslexia. We have some students who are a nightmare at school, but get on great in the college environment, where they are on first-name terms with the teachers. For some, being in a more adult environment is really motivating and has a knock-on effect on their behaviour in school.

At the moment, we don't have any young women on our pre-construction courses. I'm trying to recruit some more girls by going out to visit local schools. The old stereotypes about girls going into beauty and hairdressing still stand.

Last month, I organised an open day for 50 girls from local schools who were about to choose their GCSE options. As well as driving a mini-digger, they did some painting and decorating, and soldered pipes in a plumbing workshop. They also had the opportunity to speak to females in the industry, including surveyors, engineers, apprentice plumbers, electricians and construction workers. They all got stuck in and really enjoyed it. At the end of the day, the majority said they would definitely consider a career in construction.

I've got four daughters, aged seven to 20. I'm keen for them to stay open-minded about possible careers. Most girls have never considered a career in construction. They have little knowledge of the variety of jobs available. If we can get them started early, there's a better chance they'll give it a go.

• Steven Kendall is the pre-apprenticeship manager for built environment at Camborne College, Cornwall

• Further education

If Bethany Law and James Simmonds were nervous when they stepped in front of the panel of judges, they didn't show it. The teenagers from Stantonbury Campus in Milton Keynes were sharing their ideas to highlight the plight of the 72 million children around the world who don't go to school - and with their impassioned, inventive pitch, they became the first winners of the Steve Sinnott award for the young global education campaigner of the year.

The award was launched last year following the death in April of Sinnott, then general secretary of the National Union of Teachers (NUT). He had been a passionate advocate of the Global Campaign for Education (GCE), an umbrella body of charities, including ActionAid, and teaching unions. Following his death, a proportion of the donations made to his memorial fund was used to found the award, which will see the winners travel to a developing country to talk to pupils, teachers and government ministers there. James and Bethany would be the perfect ambassadors, according to Mary Sinnott, Steve's widow, who was one of the judges. "They'd have floored him," she says.

Impressive ideas

They floored the judges, too, with an impressive cascade of ideas to enlist other students in their campaign. "I've long thought it was unfair that the world was divided into rich and poor," says Bethany, 15. Their plans try to bridge that gap, calling for a web platform for young people across the world to talk to each other, and proposing to use the experiences gained on their visit to publish online case studies of the pupils and teachers they would meet - as well as offering them to school textbook publishers. As James, 14, put it: "We use these books every day. If the case studies in them were linked to this campaign, we'd all know about it."

Community action was key to their ideas for putting pressure on governments around the world to step up to the task of hitting the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) to "ensure that, by 2015, children everywhere, boys and girls alike, will be able to complete a full course of primary schooling". Teachers as well as pupils would be encouraged to get on board; a YouTube channel would show campaign videos and, crucially, invite responses from anyone who wanted to get involved. And a collection of text messages from young people across the UK would be presented to the prime minister as a pupils' petition. "The responses from students would be more important than us just telling them what we've seen," James pointed out.

Fluent, passionate and creative, Bethany and James ticked all the boxes for the award, which was set up to find young people to help spread the word among their peers, as well as to a wider audience in the worlds of politics and the media through the many activities in which the GCE is engaged.

To enter the competition, schools were asked to demonstrate a longstanding commitment to the campaign for education for all, something Stantonbury has achieved through its exchanges with schools in Tanzania and India. It is also home to Global Education Milton Keynes, a resource centre working on these very issues.

The runners-up, and their schools, also made their mark on the judges. Sinead Jein and Alex Whitington, both 13, from St John Payne Catholic comprehensive in Chelmsford, Essex, devised a quirky DVD, What the Newsreaders Don't Tell You, putting themselves in the shoes of their peers who struggle to get an education, by walking 10 miles to get to school and sitting through a lesson in a language they didn't understand. But, like the winners, they knew that talking to politicians would be just as crucial as appealing to other students. "If every country put more effort into [meeting the MDG], it could happen," stressed Alex.

Campaigners to watch

The judges - including the acting general secretary of the NUT, Christine Blower, and the chair of the campaigns group for GCE UK, Janet Convery - agreed that here were two young campaigners to watch. "Governments listen more if you're a child," said Sinead. "Children bring fresh ideas."

Emma Courtney and Libby Rees, both 13, from Bournemouth school for girls, in Dorset, brought a mountain of fresh ideas with them. A media onslaught, charity dinners, signing up the Brownies ... they had all bases covered in their plans to make sure everyone got involved in the campaign. And this wasn't simply a wish list: they are already putting their thoughts into action. Emma and Libby have met the schools secretary, Ed Balls; campaigned at the Labour party conference and at a European Union summit in Portugal; and appeared on Newsround.

"Education is something that no one can take away from you," they told the judges. "It's important that children get involved now, so that when they grow up, they still want to make a difference."

There seems no doubt that these young people will be making a difference from now on. Education Guardian will be covering James's and Bethany's trip later in the year, as well as the launch of the 2009 Global Campaign for Education, which this year focuses on literacy, at the end of January.

Claire Phipps is editor of Education Guardian and one of the judges of the award

• International education news
• Schools

Rarely a week goes by without a news item criticising a faith school - for its admissions procedure, its selection process, or another policy.

This is not surprising, given the reinvention of the faith school in the last few decades. From humble schoolrooms, where the poorest and neediest children could be educated, they have become some of the wealthiest and most high-performing schools, educating a disproportionately small number of disadvantaged youngsters. There are now nearly 7,000 faith schools in the state sector and they make up about a third of all maintained schools. The academy programme has opened another door to faith groups through religious sponsorship.

Last month, the Runnymede Trust accused faith schools of becoming more exclusive. A report by the policy research group called for an end to selection on the basis of faith and claimed that parents were choosing such schools because of their academic reputation, and not for their religious ethos.

One of the central arguments of the trust is that a faith education runs contrary to schools' statutory duty to promote community cohesion. The report says: "Our research has shown that commitment to the promotion of cohesion is not universal and, for many faith schools, not a priority. Despite the existence of a statutory duty ... many faith schools have done very little to engage with community cohesion initiatives."

Governors of faith schools, therefore, have an uphill struggle to reverse negative feelings - knowing that some sectors of society would like the whole faith school system eradicated.

However, governors can help their school to become more integrated into, and accepted by, the community. The first question is who governs? A church of England primary school in my town had three governors who lived in the same short road - which was home to the vicar, who was also the chair of governors. What sort of a diversity message does that give to the wider community?

The second question is who else uses the school? Extended schools and encouragement to form partnerships with other educational providers and businesses mean schools can have much more open campuses. Does your faith school embrace a secular open-door policy? Are after-school clubs available to students from neighbouring, non-faith schools? Is there a playgroup on site that welcomes any parents from the neighbourhood? Are the buildings used for adult education, music groups or hired to local businesses?

A third area for faith school governors to scrutinise is all procedures and policies, particularly admissions, that could expose the school to criticism. There are no excuses for badly worded admissions criteria - government guidance may be long and complicated but it is available, and governors should contact higher authorities, such as the local authority or religious board, if clarification is needed.

Part of the Department for Children, Schools and Families's response to the Runnymede Trust report was: "Ministers are clear that all schools, faith or not, must play a big role in the wider community. The bottom line is that faith schools are successful, thriving, popular and here to stay."

As governors, we must work on strengthening ties with all areas of the community - and persuade faith schools to share their success with everyone.

• The Runnymede report, Right To Divide?, is available from runnymedetrust.org

Education.governor@guardian.co.uk

• School governors
• Schools
• Faith schools

Reports of the recent protests at Stansted airport, which led to the cancellation of 57 flights, highlighted the fact that one of the protesters, Lily Kember, 21, was a student at Edinburgh University. According to Kember, her fears of climate change were more "terrifying" than the thought of being arrested.

But airports are not the only places where students are now staging protests. Careers fairs across Britain have been disrupted in the past few months by students campaigning against the environmental policies of several multinational organisations. In scenes reminiscent of the 1968 campus protests, groups of highly organised students have used careers fairs as platforms for airing their views.

One of the firms targeted by campaigners is the energy provider E.ON. Last year, the German-owned firm announced it would be replacing its power station at Kingsnorth with two new coal-burning stations. According to E.ON, the £1bn project will mean a more efficient and cleaner way of producing electricity, while reducing carbon emissions by almost 2m tonnes a year. But critics have argued that the environmental impact will undermine the government's commitment to tackling climate change.

Intimidating tactics

The issue is proving highly controversial on campus. At several universities, protesters have distributed "E.ON, F.off" badges, and banners with the slogan "No new coal" have been draped over displays. At one careers fair, protesters even dumped bags of coal on the company's stand.

Energy suppliers are not the only firms to find themselves the focus of this year's protests. BP, QinetiQ, the Ministry of Defence, BAe, Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), the army, Barclays Global Investors and Shell have all found themselves facing student demonstrations. At one fair, exhibitors from RBS were confronted with a mass "die-in". At another, BAe staff found themselves being shadowed by a silent procession of grim reapers.

But while the stunts can appear lighthearted, for staff on exhibition stands - many of who are themselves recent graduates - student demonstrations can be intimidating. One employer has admitted to hiring security teams when visiting certain campuses. Exhibition staff are also coached in how to handle student demonstrators.

The return of the student demo has taken universities by surprise. According to surveys, today's students are on the whole satisfied with their higher education experience. Compared with previous generations, they are also more career-minded. After all, for many of them, improving their career options is why they went to university. So why are they protesting?

One explanation is that, like students in the 1960s, they are idealistic and values-driven. Growing up in the early 1990s, they are also sceptical of politicians and big companies - a scepticism that is likely to be enhanced by the credit crunch.

It's a view taken by Danielle Grufferty, president of the University of Liverpool's guild of students. She argues that students are not apathetic; they simply lack faith in politics. "Two million marched in February 2003 calling for no war in Iraq, and what became of it?" she asks. "When students campaigned to keep the cap on university tuition fees, we drew out huge numbers. Nevertheless, the vote was lost. People keep targeting students for their apathy, but when nothing we say or do seems to affect government policy, what is our alternative?"

Nor should anyone underestimate the impact corporate social responsibility and the environment has on today's undergraduates, even if, somewhat inconsistently, they remain among the biggest consumers of bargain air travel. In one recent study, 72% of undergraduates said they would have to be happy with an organisation's ethical record before accepting a job offer.

But the similarity between students today and the class of 68 stretches only so far. The days of the campus sit-in, when students would barricade themselves in the dean's office, sometimes for days on end, seem to be a thing of the past. This could be because students now can't afford lengthy protests. Unlike students in the 60s, most of them have part-time jobs to go to.

The way student demonstrations are organised is also very different. In the 60s, the main form of communication was hastily printed magazines and newsletters. Today, communications take place through social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace. So effective have these become that one group, Indymedia UK, claims to have organised protests at 19 different universities.

One Sheffield-based group, called Kick 'Em Off Campus, describes on its website how its members have "repeatedly invaded careers fairs to confront recruiters and arms manufacturers". Images of these "invasions" have been captured on students' phones and uploaded directly to the website.

For careers services, the rise of student demonstrations raises difficult questions. Positioned as intermediaries between students and employers - and the organisers of careers fairs - careers services have a responsibility to both parties.

Objectivity

In organising events, careers services are very keen to preserve their reputation for objectivity, particularly when dealing with recruiters. It is also never clear how representative protesters' views are of the wider student body. While some of this year's demonstrations have attracted lots of attention, each of the firms targeted continues to receive thousands of applications from student job seekers. As the credit crunch continues to bite, the likelihood is that applications will continue to increase.

Gill Frigerio, from the University of Warwick's careers service, says: "The point we always make to protestors is that careers services are impartial; our role isn't to block employers from attending careers fairs, but to try to create an environment where students can meet with employers and decide for themselves where they want to apply. We encourage students using our events to think about their own ethical positions and to find out as much as possible about employers."

So is being a student protester a bad career move? Not if you want to become a politician. A number of today's MPs were once student protesters, including Peter Hain and Jack Straw, who, while president of the Leeds University student union, led a four day sit-in in the Parkinson building.

Perhaps this is something employers could think about the next time they find themselves facing a group of student demonstrators. One of them might be the future lord chancellor.

• Dr Paul Redmond is head of careers and employability at the University of Liverpool

• Students
• Student politics
• Higher education

I like the idea that a school's success – measured by the attainment and behaviour of its pupils – depends on its moral principles.

How easily our educational and social problems could be solved if all we had to do was teach children to care for the sick and elderly, as Karen Glaser seems to suggest.

As a socialist, as well as an atheist, I've often reflected on how the Christian churches – unlike political parties of the mainstream left – still talk unashamedly about human equality. Perhaps their schools do so well because pupils absorb the belief that they are all equal in the eyes of God?

Unfortunately, there is not a scrap of evidence that the success of church or other faith schools has anything to do with religious teaching, moral ethos or principled commitment to equality. All the research, mostly from the London School of Economics, shows the schools' apparent success is almost entirely explained by the characteristics of the pupils who attend them.

Children at voluntary-aided faith schools, primary and secondary, tend, compared with other children in their locality, to come from affluent homes and to have high attainment on entry. They are less likely to be eligible for free meals.

However, one study, even after taking account of background characteristics, found a very small advantage for faith primary schools in maths and English scores at 11. This would give the children of Marcus du Sautoy, Karen Glaser and the other parents at Simon Marks Jewish primary a boost in lifetime earnings: they'll get 0.0042% more than other people's children. Big deal!

What gives faith schools their edge is not moral teaching but control of their own admissions. Results are similar for other schools, such as academies, that control admissions, but not for those faith schools (voluntary-controlled) where the local authority calls the shots.

Some schools deliberately and consciously weed out unsuitable children, arguing that their families aren't sufficiently committed to the school ethos. Most set admissions criteria that, to be generous, we can describe as unconsciously selective. For example, a requirement for regular churchgoing sounds innocuous. But it's the middle-classes who are more likely to attend church. And parents who drag their children to church every Sunday are likely to be those who also make sure homework gets done and don't allow their children out on the streets at night.

I don't think Du Sautoy and Glaser are hypocrites. They are members of an ethnic minority who want to keep their culture alive. Nor do I think ill of the generality of non-believing parents who take advantage of faith schools. They want their children to mix with others from respectable homes who share similar values on, say, violence and drugs. Peer-group effects are powerful and all parents, no matter how committed to social equality or atheism, fear their children falling into the wrong company.

What is offensive is the implication that non-faith schools are uncaring, philistine and amoral. To listen to some parents, you'd think the teachers go round advocating crack cocaine and sexual promiscuity and encouraging pupils to sing We Don't Need No Education. The truth is that non-faith schools are as likely (or unlikely) as faith schools to make moral values stick, and that the latter's only secret is the pupils and families they recruit.

• Faith schools
• Schools
• Religion
• Atheism

Two-year-old Taylor Peacock is bashing the living daylights out of a lump of clay in the middle of the Falmouth art gallery, as his mum Taleah, 21, laughs and encourages him on.

Bish, bash, bosh, and the clay is beaten into submission, with fist imprints, nail scratches and deep indentations made by chubby little fingers all combining to create Taylor's very own individual artwork. A circular cut-out is taken by Cornwall College's ceramics tutor, Linda Styles, for glazing and firing, and Taylor immediately starts shrugging off his red plastic overall before tearing around the gallery with his mate, 22-month-old Dylan MacLean, who's also just finished his first foray into ceramic art.

"I've not been here since I was at school. There was no reason to come back until now," says Dylan's mum, 19-year-old Gemma Instance. "I think it's great that he'll have his tile up on the wall. All the family will be along to see it. I'll make sure they all do – well, I won't have to, they'll want to come!"

"I reckon my family will come too, though it's not really somewhere they'd come if it wasn't for Taylor doing this – none of us are into art, really," says Taleah.

Taleah and Gemma are part of the "Wild Mums" offshoot of Cornwall's Wild Young Parents project that was set up to give young mothers under the age of 23 a source of emotional, educational and practical support, with a range of literacy and numeracy, craft activity, parenting and healthy-eating courses taught by Cornwall College's Skills for Life team.

Styles's baby and toddler tile workshops, run in collaboration with the gallery, is the latest example of the way in which Wild is managing to attract young mums to its sessions. Their continued contact is important to these women's – and their children's – long-term health, as around 80% of those attending Wild Mums groups across Cornwall have experienced domestic abuse, with 90% having suffered from postnatal depression. They are referred by health visitors, midwives, doctors and social workers – or, having heard from friends of the support on offer, they self-refer.

"To come in to an art gallery situation – well, most of these young women just wouldn't normally consider it," says the group's co-ordinator, Ellie Nicholas. "And it's hard to do messy things like this at home, because they won't have the sort of space it takes."

It's not just the Wild Mums who've got involved, however. Taleah and Gemma are just two of the scores of parents, grandparents, babies and toddlers to have come to the workshops, which are specifically aimed at getting as many youngsters as possible from the local community involved in creating a prominent new art installation for their town's art gallery. Money secured from the Heritage Lottery Fund has enabled the gallery to run 20 sessions for a range of families – not just underprivileged ones – across the community: while the Wild Mums have done their bit, so has the local Susie group for mothers and children who've experienced domestic abuse, a local breastfeeding group, and many of the toddlers who attend the gallery's regular "baby paint" sessions.

 "Working with babies is something I find incredibly optimistic," says Styles, who has designed the workshops to be as flexible as possible – parents can turn up at any time within the designated period, and crafting a useable tile takes as little or as long as the babies' and toddlers' attention spans can cope with. "It's reached mums who might not usually have accepted this as an activity for them, even though at first when they arrived, some were quite hesitant."

Now nearly complete, the tile installation in the gallery's grand, lofty foyer is one of the first artworks visitors will see when they arrive. More crucially, says the gallery's director, Brian Stewart, it will hopefully help to give these children, as they grow up, a sense of entitlement to visit a space they might otherwise have felt excluded from.

Stewart could easily have commissioned a Cornish artist to restore the Victorian tiling that was ripped out in the 1980s. But, he explains, he wanted to use this restoration project as a way of giving children the knowledge that they could create art that was valued highly enough to be placed on permanent public display.

"Because this building has been here since 1894, and has its own history linked to the town, I thought it would be nice if a whole generation could come back and point out the tile they did as babies," he explains. "That's why we're mapping every single tile as it's installed."

None of this would work if this was a prissy sort of place with a "don't touch" ethos. In fact, Stewart's approach to curating his exhibition space won the Guardian's award for the country's most family-friendly gallery in 2006: this morning, it's clear that children have an absolute right to be there as various members of the public wander through looking at the exhibitions while wet clay is being messily manipulated into different shapes by overalled toddlers at a big table set bang in the middle of the biggest room.

"Widening access" and "promoting inclusiveness" is the kind of language used on funding application forms: seeing the jargon in action though, it's clear that these mums will feel comfortable coming back, not just for a quick glance at their child's tile cut-out, but to take part in other artistic and educational activities as their families grow up.

• Children
• Social exclusion
• Exhibitions
• Arts for all
• Early years education

Rachel has never received a violation from the federal aviation administration during her flying career. Rachel must be a great pilot. Which of the following can be said about the reasoning above?
A) The definition of the terms creates ambiguity
B) The argument uses circular reasoning
C) The argument uses analogy
D) The argument is built upon hidden assumptions
E) Is this test really going to show you anything other than the fact I have enough money and/or self-hatred to spend months cramming for a test that indicates nothing other than my wealth and/or self-hating ambition?

The above question is from the LSat (I made up one of the options), a three-and-a-half-hour standardised test required for all applicants to American law schools, intended to gauge analytical skills, logical reasoning and reading comprehension. In the law school admission process, the LSat is considered to be of equal weight to your entire undergraduate career – which seems particularly cruel to American students, whose graduating mark or GPA is a cumulative score where every essay and course they take counts toward their final grade, which is hardly the doss around for three years then cram for eight final exams education I received in the UK.

Officially, your undergraduate score, personal essays, references and LSat score will all determine whether or not you're admitted into a law programme, but some prestigious universities reportedly use the LSat as a one-glance mechanism for determining whether to even spend time reading an application. Yet the problems with the LSat are more numerous than the number of options on a standardised test sheet. Not only is it widely considered to be a poor predictor of success, as well as potentially ethnocentric, it increasingly produces a result that the richest students can buy with thousand-dollar tuition programmes, fuelling a billion-dollar test-preparation industry that has no interest in the common good of education.

I had to take the test in Tel Aviv earlier this month because it was the closest test centre to my country of residence (test-takers can request a non-listed test site if their country doesn't provide an LSat, but the fees are so exorbitant it's probably cheaper to cross a border to the nearest listed centre). In an unpleasant introduction to the famous lack of social cohesion of graduate school, at the test site young NGO workers based in Palestine made uneasy small-talk with Ivy League-educated alpha-males, all pink polo shirts and preppy hairstyles, who flew in from America on business. As I overhead two of them discussing whether, statistically speaking, option D was the correct answer 1% more often than any other letter, I wondered whether I'd ever be ambitious, rich, obsessive-compulsive or pink-polo-shirted enough to fit in at law school, even if I did get through the next three-and-a-half hours of logic "games".

The exam itself wasn't too bad – although I don't get my results until next week, and unlike essay exams, it's difficult to guess your score accurately (having to sit in the exam room for that long seems more of a test of how well your bladder can hold up than anything else). But what's most depressing is that a good score probably means nothing about a person's actual intelligence, other than their ability to learn a certain test format. A 2005 Canadian report (pdf) claimed that although "the reliability of the LSat has been questioned on numerous occasions, it still is heavily weighted by law schools, who claim it tests law-school required skills". But law school professors admit that law students will not be asked to answer the same number of questions under the strict time constraints of the LSat, with its back-to-back sections of 35 minutes for every 24-28 questions. Earlier this year the dean of UC-Berkeley's law school sought support for national research on LSat alternatives that measure characteristics central to success as a lawyer, such as negotiating skills and stress management.

But an alternative to the LSat wouldn't just benefit all good potential lawyers who mess up the day of the LSat. It would primarily help ethnic minorities and students from poor backgrounds – socio-economic groups for whom American universities talk a lot of talk, but deliver few results. A 1998 study showed a significant LSat score difference between minority and white students from the same universities with identical GPAs, indicating that this is either because minority students are more likely to be from low-income backgrounds and cannot afford expensive test-preparation materials, or that the test itself is ethnocentric and favours the knowledge (pdf) of students from certain types of backgrounds.

Even without these problems in reality, the very concept that the LSat gauges some kind of innate aptitude for logic and analytical reasoning seems bogus. Aside from the larger question of whether test-assessed knowledge can ever really be innate, the basic fact is that test-preparation companies guaranteeing higher scores "or your money back" would not be booming if the notion that you can't prepare for the LSat was in any way true.

But despite all the problems with the test's reliability as a performance predictor, more than a few have a vested interest in law school admissions' continued emphasis on the LSat. Companies such as Kaplan - owned by the Washington Post company - and The Princeton Review aggressively advertise their courses on most US and Canadian campuses, offering classes and private tuition for sums that can enter several thousand dollars. Making several billion dollars a year, Kaplan has a near-monopoly on this market, and the company recently settled out of court on accusations of anti-trust collusion with competitors between 1997 and 2006.

As a student writer at The Cornell Daily Sun recently wrote: "With no scholarships available for a test prep course and no financial aid, it's basically so that those who can afford it get a 'leg up' over those who have earmarked their pennies to pay for pasta. Is this the modern day version of daddy pulling out his chequebook to get you into college?" The test-preparation industry locks the LSat into a negative cycle: The more successful Kaplan is, the more students will likely feel the need to take test-preparation classes in order to compete with their peers, leaving those who simply can't afford them in an even worse position.

And yet little of this seems to register in the public attitude to the LSat. In Legally Blonde, heroine Elle Woods crams for the exam in a single, upbeat montage. The obsession with finding out Barack Obama's LSat score can be added to list of internet-driven nut-job conspiracies that the president-elect has faked everything from his birth certificate to his law degree. Perhaps more interesting is the recent blogosphere griping that writer Elizabeth Wurtzel didn't deserve her place at Yale Law because her LSat score was below average for the school. Given that Wurtzel, for all her faults, is a bestselling author and award-winning journalist, it seems odd that people think Yale should have judged her for her LSat – a supposed indicator of success – more than, well, her actual success.

Such is the problem with the standardised tests. As long as they continue to matter to other people, you have to play the game too. There's little to gain from fighting against them – or refusing to study for them – when there are so many other applicants who are willing to spend thousands of dollars on test preparation. During an economic downturn such as this, applications to grad school typically rise, as recent graduates either decide to wait out the recession in academic institutions, or fear for their job prospects if they don't acquire new qualifications. American law school is also an increasingly attractive option for many British students. In the international humanitarian and NGO community for instance, an American JD is often more respected than the myriad qualifications that British students can claim qualifies them in law. And while obviously almost no one, myself included, could ever afford the fees – which for the top 20 schools
can reach $150,000 there are also more funding and scholarship opportunities than in the UK, as rich alumni, charity-donation incentives and extensive investments mean American universities are far less strapped for cash than their British counterparts, at least for now.

The test industry and the problems of the LSat as a predictor of success undoubtedly mean we'd be better off if law schools placed less emphasis on a student's performance on the standardised test. But I'm beginning to wonder whether, given its many faults and the nefarious practices it encourages, the LSat is intended primarily to teach prospective law students a valuable lesson in respect to their future career: Life's unfair, so just try to select the best out of a bunch of bad options.

• United States
• School admissions

Children who leave school innumerate cost the taxpayer more than £2bn a year, research has found.

A report by consultants KPMG published today estimates the long term costs of so many children leaving school unable to add up could be as high as £44,000 per person up to the age of 37. This adds up to £2.4bn to the public purse annually.

The report, commissioned by the educational charity Every Child a Chance Trust (ECCT), considered the long-term consequences of poor numeracy for individuals and estimated the public cost. The largest cost – nearly £1.9bn – is caused by so many innumerate people being unemployed.

The extra support needed for special education needs pupils in schools costs £235m annually, including the cost of exclusions and truancy. Criminal costs account for £165m, as so many people who struggle with basic maths drift into crime. The cost of substance abuse and teenage pregnancy come to £98.9m, and there are health costs caused by treating depression of £17.5m.

The report estimates that the cost of the government-backed early intervention Every Child Counts (ECC) programme, launched in 2007, work out at around £2,600 per pupil. The programme gives children aged seven who have the greatest difficulties with numbers half an hour of individual tuition by specially trained teachers every day for around 12 weeks.

Initial research, to be published next month, suggests that such early intervention can lift around eight out of 10 of the children who receive it out of numeracy failure. Based on this evidence, the report says that every £1 spent on the ECC programme will save between £12 and £19 later on.

The ECCT is urging businesses to make a contribution to extend the programme to give children a maths toolkit to take home, including CDs of number songs and rhymes, maths computer games, dice, counters, bead strings, place value cards, and other games. Barclays has pledged £1.2m.

Sir Peter Williams, chancellor of the University of Leicester and author of an independent report into early years maths teaching, said: "In our review last year, we made clear to government the importance of getting maths teaching right in the primary school, and the impact on individuals and society if we don't. It may be costly to provide early intervention to tackle children's numeracy difficulties, but as this new report makes very clear, such investment will pay for itself many times over in the future."

John Griffith-Jones, chairman of KPMG and of the ECCT, said: "We should be deeply concerned about the high costs of innumeracy described in the report. As a business whose people are highly numerate, it seems only right that we should help to do something about the 30,000 children who leave primary schools each year barely able to do the simplest calculations.

"The charity has therefore devised this nationwide plan, implemented locally, and we very much hope that the business community will respond."

Mike Amato, head of distribution and product at Barclays, said: "In the current complex financial climate, it makes economic sense to intervene early with youngsters to help them develop core numeracy skills which will help them manage their finances one day successfully, which in turn helps to drastically reduce the costs to society."

The reports comes as academics urged all pupils in secondary schools to be taught the statistical skills they need to make sensible life decisions.

Professor David Spiegelhalter, of the University of Cambridge, told the Times that familiarity with statistical thinking and principles of risk would help people decipher research findings into health matters and invest their money more wisely.

Education costs

• Special needs support - numeracy (primary): £51.5m

• Special needs support - numeracy and behaviour (secondary): £90.5m

• Cost of maintaining a statement of special educational needs: £83.4m

• Educational psychologist time: £4.1m

• Permanent exclusions: £0.9m

• Truancy: £2.8m

• Adult numeracy classes: £2.0m

• Education total: £235.2m

• Mathematics
• Schools

The diary of Anne Frank, claimed to be the most widely read piece of non-fiction apart from the Bible, still resonates in the 21st century. In a corner of west London, a charity, the Anne Frank Trust, is using the powerful story of the Jewish teenager's years in hiding in a warehouse attic in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam to open the minds of young people to many of the issues around personal responsibility and prejudice that they face today.

For Deirdre Higgins, pastoral manager at the study centre in Ealing, a pupil-referral unit for up to 80 children aged between 11 and 16, the diary provides a new dimension to her work on emotional literacy. "I had done some work on Anne Frank before, in high school, when I was head of history – so I knew its value in a historical context," she says. "But the diary has many levels, and it tied in with what we were doing in PSHE and active citizenship, and it has also been used to look at the issue of bullying."

The young people at the study centre, who are on the edges of mainstream education, also have a natural empathy with Anne Frank, says Higgins. "It's about the whole nature of them being here, about their feelings of not being included. It means they have been able to question that as well as other issues around cultural diversity and the right to choose, as well as human rights."

The trust, set up to keep the legacy of the 15-year-old teenager alive, has so far worked with 30,000 pupils, mostly in deprived London boroughs, in the last two years but is now taking its Positive Voices … Positive Attitudes project to other parts of the UK. This year it begins working with schools in Glasgow and Edinburgh as well as Durham and the north-east.

The project manager, Jamie Arden, says: "At the beginning, we work with the local authority to identify what is going on locally, to help identify specific schools which are in need to the project team where there is conflict, that could be division in terms of race or schools where there is a high rate of bullying. We could also work with a school where may be there is tension in the community outside the school and the project can be used by the school as a way of bringing these communities together."

The charity uses an exhibition, mostly archived pictures of Anne Frank and her family and photographs that reflect the social history of the times, such as of Nazi rallies, as the starting point for its work. It also trains some of the pupils as guides, who go on to tell the Anne Frank story in their own words to their classmates as they tour the exhibition.

The project facilitator, Mark McEvoy, says: "The exhibition then becomes more about their space – it's not just about us coming in and doing our thing. We deliver the exhibition through photographs. We then use the story as a backdrop to talk about the Holocaust and racism. We then relate it to their lives, with discussions around human rights, racial prejudice, knife-crime and gangs. It's always about bringing the story into the context of their lives."

The exhibition remains in the school for two weeks while project workers run a series of workshops around creative writing, art and drama as well as others that look at bullying and human rights, personal responsibility, and the right to choose. The potential of the trust's work to enrich the secondary school curriculum is acknowledged by Ali Longston, community cohesion and citizenship consultant at Ealing borough council. "It links in with many areas of work – conflict resolution, racism and being a citizen," she says. "It fits very well with the current curriculum."

This year the story of Anne Frank is being brought to television viewers in a BBC1 week-long drama, The Diary of Anne Frank, which begins today. It will be shown in five 30-minute episodes on weekday evenings before EastEnders, and the BBC hopes the series will help bring the diary to a new generation.

The trust has assisted the BBC on the adaptation, and has dedicated resources on its website to coincide with the screening. The trust's executive director, and one of its founders, Gillian Walnes, says: "The series will especially appeal to schools, because there are five half-hour programmes which fit comfortably with the length of classroom lessons."

The trust's project for schools has evolved from its core work, which is devoted to a mobile exhibition about Anne Frank. It has been touring the UK since 1988, when the trust was set up with the blessing of Otto Frank, who wanted to see an educational trust established in the UK to build on the legacy of his daughter. So far the exhibition has been seen by 3 million people.

The trust has also been working in young offender institutions and prisons. For Walnes, the appeal of Anne Frank is far-reaching because her diary makes people think about the big questions – such as our shared responsibility for humanity – but also because it speaks about that time in life between being a child and an adult. "The diary is like a life speeded up; it's everybody's growing up, but Anne also represents the face of the persecuted," she says.

• Race in schools
• Bullying
• Judaism
• Schools
• Personal, social and health education

Colleges would cautiously welcome an immediate raising of the school leaving age to 18 – although fitting all the extra students in could be tricky at first, further education principals said today.

Further education colleges rather than school sixth forms will probably take most of the strain if the government brings forward its plans to lift the leaving age, because the bulk of young people affected are likely to have outgrown school and a squeeze on apprenticeship opportunities is anticipated.

More money and better advice for 16-year-olds about their options are urgently needed if the change is hurried through, according to the Association of Colleges (AoC).

College leaders nevertheless claim their institutions are more flexible than schools in adapting to changing circumstances. And they believe their experience in teaching disenchanted 14-year-olds has geared them up to deal with 16-year-olds reluctant to continue with education.

"Personally I would welcome an immediate raising of the leaving age," said Ioan Morgan, principal of Warwickshire college, who reckons that many colleagues would feel the same.

"There are a lot of principals who would say 'the sooner we get our hands on these youngsters, the better'. The problem is going to be capacity because it would bring a lot more potential customers. I think that we, in partnership with schools, would be able to cope and would relish the challenge," he added.

A more guarded welcome was sounded by Sally Dicketts, principal of Oxford and Chewell Valley college, which currently teaches just under 3,000 16- to 19-year-olds.

"If this happens in September and there is funding to support it – and that's a big if – we could handle it in most areas because we would have long enough to recruit the staff needed," she said.

Ministers should agree to new measures for assessing colleges' effectiveness if they are to absorb much larger numbers of students during the economic downturn, says Ruth Silver, principal of Lewisham college, south-east London.

"It would be ironic if the measure of success in times of rising unemployment would continue to be getting people jobs," she said. "We need new measures in difficult times."

At present Lewisham college teaches 2,500 16- to 19-year-olds. "We could take as many as we could find. As a big hefty vocational college it's no problem for us. We don't want to see these young people with nothing meaningful to do."

Rushing forward the leaving age rise could mean the number of 16- to 19-year-olds joining Warwickshire college in September ballooning from 4,000 to 6,000, Morgan said.

An instant hike in the leaving age ought to offer more than simply taking teenagers out of unemployment statistics, he believes.

"It would allow us to begin the urgent job of training young people for the upturn in the economy," he said. "What we don't want is a delayed recovery owing to a lack of skills."

Colleges could find themselves confronting a cohort of resentful 16-year-olds who had not been expecting to have to stay on in education, but they should not baulk at this, Morgan says.

"Our experience in further education is that we're very good and successful at remotivating youngsters who need to have a different type of experience to what they are getting in schools.

"If students are hacked off with what's happening in school you don't expose them to more classroom activity – you have to be innovative."

Colleges have to make sure that their activities are "vocationally focused" and relevant to employment, he said. They have to use material and equipment that are current in industry and to employ teachers with industrial experience who relate well to young people.

If the government expects colleges suddenly to find room for more students it should beef up the campaign by FE lecturers for pay parity with school teachers, Morgan reckons.

"Colleges fully support raising the leaving age to 18," says Martin Doel, the AoC's chief executive.

"However, any move to accelerate the decision would need to be properly considered. This should include providing independent advice to young people about their choices and making sure adequate funding is available for both vocational and academic courses."

• Colleges
• 14 - 19 education
• Further education
• Education policy