1 . The majority of Britons are educated in state schools, making up around 60% of those admitted to Oxford and Cambridge in 2013. Admissions at other leading universities were also weighted towards teenagers educated privately.

Then began a quiet revolution. The number of state-schooled pupils getting Oxbridge places has risen yearly; the number from private schools has fallen. The Russell Group of 24 leading universities says its members aim to admit more students from disadvantaged backgrounds.

A few things lie behind this change. The government has given cash to universities to reach underrepresented students and, since 2018, required them to publish plans showing how they are doing this. One report in 2018 showed that eight schools, six of which were private, accounted for more Oxbridge places than 2,900 other secondary schools combined.

Teach First, a scheme that sends clever graduates into tough schools for a couple of years, has also helped raise pupils, eagerness. It began in London, where the highest- performing state schools are concentrated.

All this has fueled a joint effort by schools and universities to make pupils consider the distinguished universities. For those state-school kids getting into top universities, extra help is needed. “You need to provide extra tutoring in the first year,” says Professor Smith from Oxford, who made efforts to admit state-school students before it became fashionable. She says they often do worse in exams at the end of the first year, but clean up in final exams.

That would seem to rebut one of the criticisms made of universities’ efforts to correct the state-private imbalance: that letting in more state-school students means standards will slip. “If you bring in people with diverse experiences and ways of thinking, who challenge one another’s assumptions, it promotes intellectual creativity and academic success,” says Helen, the principal of Mansfield College, Oxford.

“All this adds up to an important change,” says Lawrence. “Increasing numbers of state-school children are applying to universities in America and getting full scholarships.”

3 . Stories of immigrants attract me a lot, especially the life stories of Italians who have come to America since the 1700s. In each of these stories I see elements of my own story, that of leaving my birthplace and family and creating a new life in a different culture and in a different language.

The child of Italian immigrants and an award-winning scholar of Italian literature, in the book My Two Italies Joseph Luzzi struggled to create or find his own identity from an early age. Even more problematic for him was “which” Italy to “choose,” the one he inherited(继承) from his family, poor and linked to old traditions and customs he finds rude and somewhat cruel, or the one he finds in literature and art books that show him a country with a modern literary culture.

The choice becomes even sadder as in his professional life he becomes a scholar of Italian literature and culture. He describes episodes of his youth that show the clash between the first and the second generation immigrants that are both funny and tragicomic(悲喜剧式的). These episodes highlight the daily customs his parents brought from their hometown that are in conflict with Joseph’s desire to “fit in” the American culture. Joseph’s visits to Italy as a student and then as a scholar deepen the divide between his two Italies and highlight his quest for identity.

The author’s personal changes are full of quotes and comments on the cultural and political landscape of Italy. I find that his insights on contemporary Italian cultural and political phenomena are particularly interesting. In this book, Joseph touches or comments in depth about several issues concerning Italian life, such as the relationship between dialects(方言) and the official “Italian” language, and the Southern “question” or the uneasy interaction between Northern and Southern Italians.

I enjoyed reading this book. It is personal, moving, educational and entertaining. I hope you will enioy it too!

5 . On Mondays, two of my children get ready for school in an unusual way. Each packs plenty of food and water, a pair of rubber boots and sometimes a cup of hot chocolate. Then, I drop them off at a nearby park where they spend the entire day outside at a certified forest school.

When I first signed them up for forest school program, I loved the idea, but as a mum, I was concerned about a few things: Would they be comfortable outside for that long? Would they stay engaged for that many hours? Then I asked them if time ever seemed to move slowly, they stared at me in confusion. They didn’t understand my question, which fittingly removed it.

In this program, kids direct their own play, climbing tall trees or testing ice on the frozen lake. They are never told their play is too high or too sharp, but are rather trusted to self- adjust. Something else my sons appreciate about forest school is not being told to move on to the next activity, but being left to stay in a particular spot for as long as their curiosity allows. :

“What about all the things they’re missing in real school?” concerned parents have asked me. Neither of their classroom teachers thinks it’s a problem, but most significantly, my kids are learning new and different skills that a classroom cannot teach. They are learning to sit silently and observe nature up close-a skill that’s virtually impossible to develop in a noisy and overcrowded classroom setting. They are making social connections across a broader range of age groups. They cooperate together, using their different sizes and strengths to fulfill various roles within their games.

I appreciate it that forest school is shaping my boys’ relationship with the outdoors. They’re learning how to spend extended periods of time in nature, what to do to pass the time, and developing knowledge that will get them much closer to nature in the coming decades.

6 . Egyptian table tennis player Ibrahim Hamadtou didn’t win a medal, or even score a victory. But he has become one of the most_________stories at the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games.

Hamadtou lost his_________ in a train accident when he was just 10 years old. But that did not_________his love of sports. He used to play both football and table tennis. After the accident, he felt lost and stayed _________at home for three years. Then he went back to football, but football was too_________ for him. With no arms, he couldn’t protect himself when he fell!

After several _________, he found that he could play table tennis with his mouth. It took him nearly a year of_________to hold the racket (球拍) with his mouth and make the _________with his feet.

He first competed at the Rio Paralympics, and was finally able to fulfill his lifelong _________of competing in Paralympics. He lost his first two matches, but did _________ the respect of other players like David Wetherill. “He’s a legend in table tennis,” said Wetherill. “I know I won today but I think he has_________ far more skills than I have.

In Tokyo, he lost to a Chinese player and a player from South Korea,_________all the competitions at his second Paralympics. However, he has a(n)_________ for the world about what disability really means, in his eyes.

“I want to tell everybody that nothing is _________, and everybody should work hard for what you love and what you think is good for yourself,” he said. “The _________ is not in arms or legs; it is not to stick to whatever you would like to do.”

7 . When it comes to making lunch for their kids, moms and dads have usual favorites. For some parents in the US, those favorites are peanut butter and jelly sandwiches-also known as PB&.Js. Fruit like apples and bananas are also popular.

But one mother has an unusual go-to ingredient for her children’s lunches. Jenny Mollen uses funny-looking candy eyes. She has learned that her children will eat any healthy food if it has edible eyeballs attached. The “eyeballs” are really pieces of candy.

Her children laugh while they eat healthy foods like bell peppers, kiwis, or dates. Mollen says candy “eyes” make lunch more fun.

“Honestly, first of all, just buy yourself some candy googly eyes. They are tried-and-true,” she said. She admits that “you lose something nutritionally” by giving children candy. But she thinks that getting children to eat healthy food by putting candy on it is worth it.

Mollen’s lunch tricks bring together food and craft. She uses tricks because her two sons hate to eat different kinds of foods. So, she decorates their food to resemble animals or even their favorite Pokémon characters. She makes edible “bugs” made from dates, pretzel sticks for the legs, and, of course, candy “eyes”. She also uses leftover Chinese food to make panda bears from rice and seaweed.

Mollen says her lunch projects are easy to do. And her sons think they have won a big prize at their midday meal. Mollen says making fun-looking, artful lunches for her children helps ease her guilt as she is a working mom. Her artful lunches are her way of reminding her children that she is thinking of them.

Mollen says she also wants to teach them healthy eating habits. She says that by getting kids to eat vegetables at a young age, they will grow up to eat healthy foods later in life. She also says it is a good way to get children to try foods from other cultures. If they need to be “tricked” sometimes, that is okay.

10 . Everyone knows what makes a good story. Our hero starts their journey as a flawed being. In scene after scene, they face challenges that push them down new paths. By the end of the talc, they overcome setbacks and become a better person in the process.

We love these plots in the novels we read but the principles of a good story offer much more than entertainment. Recent research shows that the narratives we tell ourselves about our lives can powerfully help us recover from stress. People who generate tales of struggling and turning over a new leaf from their own lives appear to have much better mental health. Professor Dan McAdams put forward this idea and discovered that whether someone can describe having had some control over events in their past is an important predictor of mental health. Another key theme involved is finding some kind of positive meaning after stressful events.

McAdams invited 14 and 15-year-olds to join in an experiment to write about their experiences of failure and success. Half of them were then given extra instructions to describe the ways they had made their success a reality and how the failure had changed them for the better. Eight weeks later, members of this group reported greater persistence and better grades in their schoolwork.

Exciting as these results are, some experts sound a few notes of caution. They worry that, hearing about the power of self-narratives, many people may feel they have to find a positive turning point in life. If they can’t, they could end up feeling guilty about having somehow “failed”.

Clearly, self-narratives aren’t the panacea. Nevertheless, if you hope for self-improvement, you can use the findings to good effect. By recognizing ourselves as the hero at the center of our own struggles, we can all become the author of our own destiny and change ourselves for the better.