Responding to an editorial on the extent of sexual abuse of pupils by their peers, a reader calls for more nuance and compassion. Plus a letter from Donna Hill

As a paediatrician specialising in the care of children who have been sexually abused, I am well aware of sexual harm that occurs in school settings by peers (Editorial 5 October). This is just one aspect of the wider issue of children and young people who sexually harm other children and young people.

Of all the children my organisation cares for, 30% are harmed by other children – data we shared with the children’s commissioner in their report in 2023 on the impact of pornography on harmful sexual behaviour on children.

Parity of esteem with physical healthcare remains a distant prospect. Ministers must do more to tackle rising distress

Perhaps the single most important finding of the independent review into mental health, ADHD and autism in England, published last Friday, is that mental distress across the population, and particularly young people, has substantially worsened. Its chair, Prof Peter Fonagy, told the BBC that the former health secretary Wes Streeting had been “completely wrong” to suggest that conditions and disorders were being overdiagnosed.

Mr Streeting acknowledged his mistake. But some rightwing politicians and commentators have leapt on the notion that medicalisation of ordinary states of mind is behind the huge rise in young people seeking help. This review should bury that idea. Instead, this should be a moment to face facts. First, that the rises in psychological distress, and the need for support with neurodevelopmental differences, are real and tied to social changes. Second, that current services are not up to what is being asked of them.

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

There is much to agree with in the Fonagy review into mental health support. Without serious public funding, however, its approach won’t work

Back in late 2025, when Keir Starmer’s grip on the Labour party was loosening and Reform UK was still in its pomp, the then health secretary, Wes Streeting, commissioned what the government called its “Independent review into prevalence and support for mental health conditions, ADHD and autism”.

Here, it seemed, was not just an inquiry into England’s ever-extending waiting lists for the diagnosis of mental illness and neurodevelopmental conditions, and the dire lack of support for people who experience one or both of them. The review would also dovetail with two other huge issues: mounting claims of “overdiagnosis”, which Streeting had appeared to partly endorse, and the government’s drive for the reform of so-called welfare. An apparently well-briefed piece in the Times seemed to speak volumes: work led by the renowned psychologist Peter Fonagy, it said, was commencing just “as Labour seeks a fresh crackdown on welfare spending” amid diagnoses “which have become the most common reason for a sickness benefit claim”.

John Harris is a Guardian columnist

The choir leader and presenter on not fitting in at his all-boys grammar, how synthesisers changed everything, and his ‘dithering’ start on TV

Born in London in 1975, Gareth Malone is a choirmaster and broadcaster. He began his career running youth and community choirs for the London Symphony Orchestra and first appeared on TV in 2006’s The Choir. He has since created choirs with Leicester schoolboys, Aylesbury prisoners, as well as the Military Wives, which produced the No 1 single, Wherever You Are. He lives in London with his wife and three children. His new live show, Sing-A-Long-A-Gareth: At the Movies, is on tour across the UK this autumn.

I was 15 and just coming into my own with my confidence, as you can tell by the double denim and the pose. The photo would have been taken at a party at my parents’ house in Bournemouth. When I wasn’t filling up guests’ drinks, I’d be playing some songs – it looks like I’m playing B flat major, so I suspect at this very moment it was Hey Jude.

The phenomenon of pupils wrecking equipment and setting fire to classrooms predates the current crisis. Is it rooted in poverty, social media peer pressure – or just plain boredom?

Like most French primaries on Wednesdays, Marcel Pagnol school, in the eastern suburbs of Lyon, was shut on 19 June 2024. But at 6.30pm that evening, two boys turned up late for school – by two years. Former pupils there, the 13-year-olds struggled to break through the crispy lattice of the front-door window with a garden fork and a broom. Using a window-breaker, they finally created an opening large enough to force their way in without hurting themselves.

What happened next is captured in a video the pair subsequently posted on Snapchat. Once inside they prowl the classrooms, corridors and canteen, slinging around scooters and smashing up computer equipment, setting off fire extinguishers and upending furniture. They help themselves to pouches of Capri‑Sun from the fridge: “I don’t give a fuck – I’m taking the lot.” The boy not filming sets small fires as they move through the building, squirting each one with a little jet of lighter fuel. “I love what’s happening here!” says his accomplice. “I love fire.”

When Sarah Maloney’s primary school crush danced back into her life, she braced for a ‘teenage whirlwind romance’. Then one night, she realised they were both all in

• Find more stories from the moment I knew series

In 2017 I was 16, went to an all-girls Catholic school in Melbourne and had zero tolerance for teenage boys and their nonsense. Instead I spent a lot of gossip time lamenting Jake, who broke my tiny heart in primary school and then moved hours away.

A debutante ball was coming up. It was an expensive tradition that was fundamentally at odds with my values but I couldn’t say no to a pretty dress and dancing – I was a teenage girl, after all. Some friends asked cousins or co-workers from our part-time jobs to be partners. I got knocked back by everyone. When I complained to my mother, she let me know Jake had moved back to town, and did she want me to ask his mum if he would be willing?

I grew up in France, where all children are taught about the revolutionary roots of their nation and what the state owes its citizens. The lessons leave their mark

Young British people have plenty to be angry about. Crushing student debt, private-school privilege, a housing market they can’t enter. Yet unlike their French counterparts, they have little tradition of turning that frustration into collective action. I grew up in France as a Briton, and for years I have watched my French friends do something my British ones never seem to: take to the streets.

“To arms, citizens! Form your battalions! Let’s march, let’s march!” It shouldn’t be too surprising, given the rousing lyrics of La Marseillaise, that France’s revolutionary spirit is not a relic of the past.

Kitty Sayers is a master’s student in journalism

Exclusive: Former minister’s review warns that dramatic action is needed over huge drop in youth apprenticeship starts

A national apprenticeship readiness scheme should be introduced in England to close the gap for young people between leaving school and starting work, the government is to be told.

Alan Milburn, who is leading a major review into Britain’s youth jobs crisis, will call for a new “national pre-apprenticeship route” to offer young people further education, training and work experience.

Some change in our lifestyles and environments over a generation has caused this increased risk. What, exactly, is a mystery

• Prof Devi Sridhar is chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh

In the field of global health, we often talk about each generation living longer and healthier lives than their parents. We’ve seen this in the gains in life expectancy, the sharp decrease in child mortality and in the near elimination of many vaccine-preventable diseases. But since the turn of the century this progress has stalled, and in some cases several health metrics have gone backwards.

Take cancer, which was long thought to be a disease linked to old age. While most cancers do indeed still occur in elderly people, a new report highlights that a number of cancers are increasing in people who are under 50, often referred to as “early onset cancer”. The report, undertaken by the World Cancer Research Fund, looked at data from 12 different cancer types in England, the US and the Netherlands over the past 20 years. What they found isn’t pretty.

Prof Devi Sridhar is chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh

England-focused mental health review returns stark warning and calls for shift to ‘needs-led’ system

• Explainer | What has the Fonagy review found and what does it recommend?

• Analysis | No ‘snowflakes’: mental health review says today’s youth have it harder and harms are real

The NHS in England is heading into a “world of system failures” as it struggles to cope with relentlessly rising demand for mental health, ADHD and autism care, leaving those affected desperate for support, a government-commissioned inquiry has found.

The stark warning was made in a review led by Prof Peter Fonagy into the sharp rise in demand over recent decades for help with mental health and neurodevelopmental conditions.

Campaigners and Send parents including Chris Packham, Carrie Grant and Sally Phillips urge ministers to work with families and organisations to preserve individual provision and improve accountability in the system

The legal rights of children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities (Send) are still under threat. The government’s proposed Send and education otherwise than at school (Eotas) reforms would significantly reduce existing legal rights to enforceable education, health and care plans (EHCPs), parental choice of educational settings and independent routes of appeal.

We support the government’s ambitions for a more inclusive education system. Better teacher training, earlier identification of need, greater specialist expertise and a properly staffed workforce are all necessary. But none of these initiatives require children and families to surrender the legal protections they currently have.

In ad to be shown before The Social Reckoning, Ian Russell will say ‘too little has changed’ since death of Molly, 14

Molly Russell’s father will tell UK cinemagoers that “Instagram helped kill my daughter” in an advert to be shown before screenings of a new film about Mark Zuckerberg’s social media empire.

In the 30-second ad before The Social Reckoning, released on Friday, Ian Russell says “too little has changed” since the death of his 14-year-old daughter, who took her own life in 2017 after viewing harmful content on Instagram.

More than half of US students surveyed said the problem damaged their ability to do academic work, study finds

Procrastination is the biggest problem that can harm students’ academic performance at university, according to a study of more than 65,000 young people who placed it above issues such as ADHD, anxiety or financial worries.

The study found that nearly half of the students surveyed named procrastination as the thing damaging their ability to do academic work, more than twice the number who named depression, while the same proportion said procrastination caused them significant distress above any other problems including family pressures or bullying.

Anna Bird and Rick Burgess respond to the government’s proposal to axe the health element from universal credit that disabled people under 25 receive

Reports that the government is considering removing the universal credit health element for disabled people under 25 will be alarming for families (Key disability benefit for young people may be axed under major welfare changes, 1 October). For many, it raises serious concerns about how they will keep disabled young people supported and able to participate in everyday life.

At Contact, we hear from families worried about universal credit and its impact on disabled family members. Some receiving the health element are studying, working part-time or volunteering; others have disabilities so significant that paid employment is impossible.

Unprecedented protests that began in low-income suburb are turning ugly, with investigations under way into police brutality

• Europe live: latest updates from protests in France

Before dawn on Tuesday outside the Lycée Sophie-Germain in central Paris, hundreds of teenagers dragged wheelie bins, metal barriers and shopping trolleys to build a barricade outside the front door of their secondary school.

Climbing to the top of the piles of bins, pupils held banners calling for more funding and greater equality in French schools.

The debate around the schools protests is angry and polarised. I fear this is a foretaste of how election tensions next year will play out

• Helen Massy-Beresford is a British journalist who lives in Paris

It would be tough to argue that the demands of France’s protesting high school students are not reasonable ones, worth taking to the streets for: investment in crumbling schools, replacing absent teachers, reducing class sizes and overstuffed timetables, and bridging the inequality gap between schools in different areas.

The protests across the country on Tuesday, which demonstrators dubbed l’acte III (Act 3), or la grande mobilisation, were billed as the most dramatic day of action yet, with more school blockades and a march through central Paris in the afternoon. More than 400 schools closed preventively, including my elder daughter’s, a combined collège (for 11- to 15-year-olds) and lycée.

Helen Massy-Beresford is a British journalist and editor who lives in Paris

A generation facing unprecedented challenges deserves better than an underfunded education system

One of the most famous slogans in France’s May 1968 student protests declared “L’imagination au pouvoir” (Power to the imagination). In a postwar context of steady growth, the ’68ers dreamed of shaping an egalitarian society, freed from the social constraints of their parents’ generation. Nearly five decades on, in a very different economic climate, the goal for most of the tens of thousands of pupils disrupting schools across the country is more modest. As one placard on display had it: “I’d like to be worrying about my maths exam, not my future”.

A huge turnout of hundreds of thousands of protesters on Tuesday – a number that included many parents and teachers – confirmed the depth of resentment at years of budget cuts leading to crumbling school buildings, overcrowded classes and chronic staff shortages. Other complaints point to a lack of resources to deal with the now frequent heatwaves that make classrooms intolerable in May and June, and the unfairness of an opaque, algorithmically driven selection process for universities.

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

Officers also carry out baton charges as students, staff and parents march in cities including Paris, Marseille and Lyon

• Europe live – latest updates

Police have fired teargas at ⁠protesters as more than 250,000 pupils, teachers and parents demonstrated across France on the biggest day yet of a campaign for better high school conditions that has been marred by often violent clashes with police.

The French prime minister, Sébastien Lecornu, said at least 215 teenagers and 85 school staff had been injured since the protests began more than a fortnight ago, calling the figures “the heaviest ⁠toll in decades paid by the school system”.

A teenager struggling with climate anxiety searches for hope in an unexpected place – writing letters to imprisoned activists. Max, 14, is on a quest to understand the human stories behind direct action and why so many climate protesters are in prison​. As replies begin to arrive, a dialogue bridging generations unfolds and connection transforms despair into purpose. ​When Max writes to the judge presiding over a high-profile trial​, he is surprised to hear the letter referred to in the judge's closing remarks