Rachel de Souza names Middlesbrough and Hounslow among hardest places in which to grow up and says some children are being ‘radically failed’

Services for children in parts of England are in a “state of emergency”, according to a report that identifies what it claims to be the hardest places in the country for young people to grow up in.

The children’s commissioner, Rachel de Souza, said in some local authorities individual service failures or systemic problems meant “no child could reasonably be expected to thrive and those that do thrive do so against the odds”.

Downing Street delivered a rare rebuke to a senior member of Donald Trump’s administration

Asked why the Lib Dems were opposed to a third runway at Heathrow when they professed to be in favour of growth, Cooper said she did not accept that a third runway would produce all the benefits its supporters claimed.

She explained:

On Heathrow, it is clear from looking at all of the economic analysis of airport growth over the last few years that many of the promises made by all sorts of different airport companies simply haven’t come to bear.

The promise of higher wage jobs hasn’t been substantiated. Often it’s lower paid jobs, and often not as many as they’ve claimed.

The singing, dancing and sheer joy in the face of police brutality at the protests led by the Cockroach Janta party show people no longer fear India’s regime

In July, as supporters of the Cockroach movement took to Jantar Mantar, the designated protest site in Delhi, incensed over exam-paper leaks and demanding the resignation of India’s education minister, the rest of the nation realised that for the first time since the Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) came to power in 2014, the curse of inertia and the grip of fear had been smashed irrevocably. Prime minister Narendra Modi’s image of invincibility has been punctured.

People in India have been conditioned to believe in an idea of intense slow-burn protests that eventually bring change – but the Cockroach Janta party (CJP) has shown us that the revolution can be fast-tracked.

Meena Kandasamy is a poet and writer based in Chennai

We are accused of dumbing down, but that’s nonsense: this is levelling up. All the evidence shows helping children articulate improves their life chances

• Lucy Powell is UK education secretary and deputy leader of the Labour party

Private schools don’t leave confident communication to chance. They teach it. Debating, public speaking, presentations, interview preparation. It’s all part of the deal. And parents paying the fees would soon have something to say if it wasn’t. They know that being able to speak up, make your case and hold your own can open doors. I want that for every young person, wherever they grow up and whichever school they go to.

This matters now more than ever. Young people are more connected than they’ve ever been, yet too many feel isolated and unheard. Social media is transforming their friendships and relationships. Artificial intelligence is changing the world they will work in. And in an age dominated by screens and algorithms, the human ability to connect, communicate and make yourself heard has never been more important. But the ability to find your voice should never depend on your parents’ income or the school you attend.

Lucy Powell is education secretary and deputy leader of the Labour party

Exclusive: Former health secretary says upfront investment in support is needed ‘if we are going to end the Neet crisis’

Ministers should cut welfare spending to fund more employment support if it wants to end the youth Neet crisis, the author of a government-led review has said.

Alan Milburn, the Tony Blair-era health secretary, told the Guardian he believed ministers should reduce benefits payments to help pay for more employment support, opening a potentially contentious debate within the Labour party over welfare cuts.

It’s a perfect storm of protesters with heartfelt grievances and others set on conflict. The key here is the sense of betrayal that united them on the streets

The first thing I learned on the streets of Paris this weekend is that there is no arguing with teargas. I arrived at Place de la République just after 1pm yesterday. The mood was festive until police started firing volleys of teargas into the square from Rue du Faubourg-du-Temple.

I didn’t see the inciting incident – if there even was one – and tried walking into the cloud of CS gas hanging in the air. It was impossible. The gas clings to your nose and burns your eyes, and you quickly start struggling to breathe. I retreated towards the Boulevard de Magenta, blinking furiously to stop the stinging.

Oliver Haynes is a journalist and co-host of Sacré Bleu: the French presidential election podcast

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.

Exclusive: Ministers considering overhaul of apprenticeship funding scheme to tackle youth jobs crisis

Employers in England are to be forced to pay more to train an older worker than a youth apprentice under plans being drawn up by the government to tackle the youth jobs crisis.

The Guardian understands ministers plan to overhaul Labour’s apprenticeship funding scheme to increase the cost of training by 25% for a worker over the age of 25 in order to encourage businesses to train young people instead.

To protest against shameful conditions in schools is entirely legitimate. The government’s response is not

As a secondary school pupil in 1994, I took part in protests against a reform that would have allowed French employers to pay young people below the minimum wage. Our campaign was successful, but if we had had to face the terrifying police response unleashed on student protesters in France over recent weeks, I would have stayed at home.

A 14-year-old boy, Eden, suffered a fractured jaw and had teeth knocked out after a police teargas grenade struck him in the face. Sixteen-year-old Maël lost the sight in one eye allegedly after being struck by a shot from an LBD, a form of rubber-bullet launcher. Evan, 15, had his hand blown off in an explosion involving a police stun grenade. And in Dunkirk, a police SUV is alleged to have driven repeatedly at groups of secondary school pupils, as an officer could be heard saying: “Come closer, we’ll smash their fucking faces in.” Accounts from children left terrified by brutal treatment in police custody describe traumatic experiences with severe psychological and physical consequences.

Rokhaya Diallo is a French journalist, film-maker, activist and Guardian Europe columnist

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.

Pete Crockett says the history of British education is not simply one of children dutifully accepting adult instruction, while Simon Dawson says Kitty Sayers misses the mark when describing English attitudes. Plus a letter from Kevin Donnelly

Reading Kitty Sayers’ interesting article, I was reminded of the rich, and perhaps too easily forgotten, history of direct action by British schoolchildren (Angry French students take to the streets. British students don’t – and I think I know why, 10 October). Far from being historically meek or unquestioningly compliant, they have demonstrated a remarkable capacity for challenging authority.

At Marlborough college, troops were once summoned to dislodge rebellious pupils occupying an island in the school grounds. In the late 1700s, Winchester college experienced several rebellions.

Initiatives to address youth employment crisis and offer training are being launched in towns such as Telford

Smaller cities and towns across England have higher rates of young people not in employment, education or training than the nine largest cities, analysis shows.

The Centre for Cities, an independent thinktank dedicated to improving the economies of the UK, used 2021 census data to work out the rates across 41 cities and towns in England.

Labour says idea is ‘tin-eared’ as report says fixing rate will cost low-paid workers almost £9,000 over five years

A shadow minister has called for the government to freeze the minimum wage for five years, a move that could cost low-paid workers almost £9,000.

The call came in a report from the Prosperity Institute thinktank, which carries an endorsement from Andrew Sharpe, the shadow business minister. Sharpe said in his endorsement that it was time to take action to address the low rate of young people in work.

Use of death penalty against people for crimes committed when they were children a ‘new low’, say rights groups

A young man faces imminent execution in Saudi Arabia for attending protests and funerals when he was aged 15 to 17, say human rights groups, in the latest example of the kingdom’s surging use of the death penalty for non-violent crimes.

Youssef al-Manasif was arrested in 2017 and accused of crimes including joining demonstrations for religious freedom by the Shia minority and attending funerals that the Saudi authorities deem to be protests. He was convicted and sentenced to death by the specialised criminal court, a secretive tribunal set up for terrorism-related cases.

I doused myself in Poison perfume and made the trip back to my childhood home, friends and college. What could I learn by re-immersing myself in a world that brimmed with hope and potential?

The house in which I turned 18 was full of clocks. Dark wooden things with aged faces. Every room ticked. If you stood in certain doorways, you could hear all the misaligned second hands racing. I could not understand why anyone would want to count away life like that or decorate their living quarters with so many symbols of mortality.

There was no escaping time. Shortly before each hour, a mechanical whir heralded the first chime. We lived in a retirement town with an elderly and conservative population, which amplified the ticking. Worthing, on the south coast of England, was known as “God’s waiting room”. Death was there in our wide, slow roads and low bungalows, the grey sea mists and blue rinses.

Restaurants and pubs such as Nando’s and Fuller’s will create placements for 18- to 24-year-olds under DWP-backed scheme

Bars, clubs and restaurants will offer up to 100,000 jobs to young people not in employment, education or training (Neet) over the next three years in an effort to give them a first step on the ladder into work.

The move comes before the publication of a report on Neets by the former health secretary Alan Milburn, who has warned that the number of young people not in work or education in the UK could rise to 1.25 million over the next five years unless ministers intervene.

Retailers call on John Healey to raise national insurance contributions threshold in his first budget

Some of the UK’s biggest retailers and hospitality businesses, including Tesco, Costa Coffee and the Co-op, have met John Healey to urge him to cut the cost of employing young people in his first budget.

At the No 11 event on Tuesday morning, the chancellor heard from sector leaders – including the boss of Marks & Spencer, Stuart Machin, and Sainsbury’s chief executive, Simon Roberts – about the impact of the rise in employers’ national insurance contributions (Nics).

Amid worries about children’s relationship to tech, the solution is often spending more time talking openly with each other

We have become obsessed with the idea that screens are destroying human connection.

The evidence seems to be everywhere. Each week headlines warn of teenagers addicted to phones, a loneliness epidemic and the dangers of AI. The release of The Social Reckoning leads us to ask, “How bad were those guys at Meta?” and then ultimately wonder, “How bad am I if I still use Instagram?” In our day-to-day, we observe workers eating lunch alone while scrolling and friends choosing online games over offline gatherings.

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