• The 'summer slide' in children's educational knowledge during lazy summer months spent away from school is well documented, with the drop in reading aptitude thought to be the most severe. One school with a relatively deprived intake has sought to reverse the trend of children not seeing a book for months. They have set up the Summer Fun Learning Challenge, uploading pages to the school's internet learning platform, creating scrapbook projects and rewarding summer activity. Times


• An Ofsted survey of 15 urban and rural Local Education Authorities has found that none said they felt comfortable that they knew about all the children living in their area. The report described how children disappeared because schools weren't fully aware of policies and procedures for informing the local authority and exchanging information about children moving between areas was difficult. Guardian


• Tutors from the Bright Young Things agency are more used to boosting clever youngsters into top private schools. A new collaboration with charity Only Connect, dedicated to the rehabilitation of prisoners, sees the tutors spend a weekly session with these ex-offenders to earn qualifications and skills for employment. Guardian


• The cost of buying a school uniform has halved over the last six years, as retailers compete to offer better deals than their rivals. Supermarkets dominate 26% of the market. School uniforms for children aged 7-13 are now commonly bought for below £35. Telegraph


• Mary Riddell predicts that the new A Level results will prove that Britain is pulling itself apart. The Sutton Trust has said that its task to improve the chances of those from lower socio-economic backgrounds has just got more difficult. Britain, she says, is 'no country for the young' or northern or poor. In anticipation of Nick Clegg's speech on the subject tomorrow, she reminds herself that 'the road to social division is paved with platitudes'. Telegraph


• Unlike universities, private schools and church schools, academies have virtually no independent resources and are dependent on the educational centre. Tom Clark fears that under an education secretary with a more prescriptive agenda than Gove, the Academies Act will seem to have 'given the centre all the power it needs to tell teachers how to teach.' Guardian


• A father of a child whose own interest in technology is being quashed by her school argues that the abolition of BECTA may open doors for more innovative - and cheap - procurement and use of computers and technology in schools. The governor of one school describes the procurement process for the technology contracts overseen by BECTA as 'insanely protracted, anti-competitive by design and actually pointless'. Guardian

• Swathes of top universities are imposing 'bans' on A Level re-sits or demanding students perform significantly better than the standard entry grade. The comments come amid a rise in the number of pupils expected to re-sit their A Levels after missing out on preferred university places. The body which represents many colleges specialising in A Level re-sit courses said the number of website enquiries were up two-thirds on last year. Telegraph


• Clearing 2010: a step-by-step guide. Guardian

• The Times investigates the health problems which arise when cousins marry cousins. In Bradford alone, 75% of British Pakistanis are wedded to their cousins; many of whom will be brought over from Pakistan and married to keep relations with South Asia close. In one GP practice in Birmingham, doctors at the surgery have been campaigning heavily against the practice. Times


• The country's most senior midwife has dismissed the criticism of women who choose to have home births as 'shocking hype' created by a 'misogynistic' campaign based on flawed evidence. She claimed there was a 'concerted and calculated campaign' by influential doctors and academics who saw pregnancy as a 'medical problem and not a natural process'. Telegraph


• The Guardian Editorial muses on Alan Milburn's appointment as Nick Clegg's social mobility tsar. Guardian

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