Undergraduates at different universities are being awarded degrees in the same subjects after spending wildly varying times in lectures, seminars and private study, report reveals.

Liz Lightfoot answers your education worries.

British students are missing out on foreign study, says Helen Hague.

How can the government champion integration while cutting funding for migrants, refugees and asylum seekers to learn English, asks Jane Ward.

With more than 13 per cent of under-11s in England now judged to be obese, up from 9.6 per cent in 1995, it is clear that such youngsters’ lifestyles have to change. So, the drive by the Fitness Industry Association to link leisure centres with schools has to be welcomed. The scheme aims to transform the waistlines of youngsters who have been uninspired by PE lessons but who may be fired with enthusiasm for exercise classes or the gym. However, this cannot be the sole solution to a much wider problem. Children only spend a fraction of their waking lives at school. Parents also need to take responsibility for the lifestyle lessons their children are learning at home.

The progress of the long-awaited Charities Bill has undoubtedly helped propel the issue of scholarships and bursaries towards the top of the agenda for those independent schools that have no policy on the subject.

Hilary’s advice

The children of St Joseph’s Catholic Primary School, in Kingston, are doing a new exercise programme at their local leisure centre. Their head teacher, Merryl Roberson, knows it is working because they’ve only been doing it for three weeks and already they can walk over to the centre from the school without getting out of breath. So how long is the walk they have to do? She considers. “Oh, I’d say about seven or eight minutes.”

Any parent who has ever picked up a newspaper will be aware that paedophiles use the internet to groom potential victims. It is the stuff of lurid tabloid headlines and parental nightmares. There are no reliable statistics about the extent of this problem but it is reckoned “several hundred” children have been assaulted or raped as a result of an initial contact made via the internet. This is a tiny fraction of the online youth population but, as John Carr, new technology adviser at leading children’s charity NCH, points out, the fact that it’s a statistical rarity is no consolation if it’s your child.

The readers’ forum that helps to make life happier for families

When pressure-cooker schooling failed her son, Fiona Longsdon turned to Steiner.