• Recession-hit families looking for cheap holiday deals has led to soaring primary school truancy rates. 0.74 of lesson time was lost due to truancy between January and April, compared with just 0.56 in 2008, a rise of around a third. In secondary schools alone, the unauthorised absence rate fell slightly. Around one in four missed school sessions are unauthorised. Telegraph
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• Cassandra Jardine explains why the declining study of modern foreign languages is so devastating. She finds that only 11 of 31 Cambridge colleges have a majority of language students from state schools, despite them representing 93% of pupils overall, and the damage starts early: pupils at state primary schools must be offered a language option though they don't have to take it. Telegraph
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• David Blunkett calls for pride in Labour's educational heritage as GCSE results in Sheffield constituency improve. Guardian
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• The BBC has been accused of turning 'Oxbridge' into a term of abuse. An Editorial in Country Life claims that the BBC has acquired 'a new lexicon of abuse, the only one it still permits itself'. It claimed that while terms such as 'Old Etonian', 'public school', 'upper class' and 'posh' 'look harmless enough, listen to the animus with which they're used. [They are] cue[s] for bigotry of a kind no longer acceptable in any other area of British life'. Parts of the broadcaster also came under fire for focusing on David Cameron's background during the run-up to the election. Mail

• Nick Clegg has commented that a report by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) which said the Budget had hit the poorest families the hardest was, 'by definition partial' and 'does not include the things we want to do to get people off benefits and into work'. The analysis, in a report commissioned and part-funded by the End Child Poverty Campaign, suggests low-income families with children are set to lose the most - around 5% of net income. BBC
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