• Ofsted data has shown that 11,000 nursery and childminder places have been lost over the last two years, as proprietors are forced out of business due to the recession and rising government regulations. A new funding formula designed to address such concerns among all providers was due to be introduced next month but has been delayed for a year. Telegraph
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• The author of Your Left-Handed Child outlines how 'right bias' holds back as many as one in ten children in the UK as left handed children underperform in cookery, design and technology, English, science and computing due to a lack of specialist equipment and teacher ignorance of left-handedness. Telegraph

• The NUS report that 1,500 prospective parliamentary candidates and MPs have signed their Votes For Students pledge which campaigns against a rise in tuition fees. This includes 500 Lib Dem, 260 Labour and just 17 Conservative candidates. Telegraph


• London universities are under pressure from students and community groups to pay cleaners at their institutions a 'living wage'. Six universities now pay all staff above £7.60 an hour; Kings College has talks with campaigners next week, but UCL has 'no plans' to adopt the wage. BBC

• A study published in an epidemiology journal has shown that Scottish men between 15 and 44 in manual jobs were 12 times as likely to die from a knife assault as those in managerial roles. The homicide rate has increased by 83% since 1982, but the number of young men killed in violent incidents has increased by 164%. BBC


• Reforms to the family courts, which last year opened courts to the press, have failed to make them more open to public scrutiny. The editor of journal Media Law commented that the reforms now 'surround attempts to report cases with a complex series of caveats and conditions' and left press uncertain about what could be reported. Times
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• Olympic organisers have staged a u-turn of original plans to bar those under-18 volunteering within the games, apart from as ball girls/boys. The mayor of Newham had called for the organisers to rethink and give thousands of local young people the chance of a lifetime. BBC


• The Edlington boys, who were sentenced in January for the torture of two other young boys, have lost their appeal to have their indeterminate sentences reduced. Times

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