Today is World Aids Day (#worldaidsday) and campaigners have arranged for 14 young people to visit the House of Commons, meet members of parliament and tell them what they think should happen next in the fight against HIV and Aids.
Find out more about what they're up to on the Guardian Teacher Network - which also has a excellent range of resources for teaching pupils about Aids.
• The Guardian datablog has mapped 20 years of HIV to show how the prevalence of the disease has been reduced in some areas while others are suffering more.
• Our Global Development site has a live blog on Aids, with experts to answer your questions.
• And Sarah Boseley warns that on World Aids Day, the Global Fund is collapsing. No fund means millions in sub-Saharan Africa and beyond are at greater risk than ever.
Strike roundup
There's a lot of quibbling going on about just how many went on strike yesterday. David Cameron was accused of putting out "wildly inaccurate" figures. Mike White says the event certainly wasn't a damp squib, and John Harris watched a strike that he found a lot more thoughtful than most:
"What was fascinating was that the day's abiding spirit was much more complicated than the usual blasts and counter-blasts suggested: defiant, for sure; occasionally celebratory, as people took heart from the fact that a labour movement long said to be on its uppers could still mount such a protest; but also slightly sad.
Contrary to Michael Gove's characterisation of the strike's motivating instincts being reducible to militancy and the desire for a scrap, few people I spoke to seemed to be joyously withdrawing their labour, let alone glorying in any kind of seditious fight. But their essential complaint seemed unanswerable enough: the simple unfairness of suddenly being required to 'work longer, pay more, and get less'."
Not everyone took such a nuanced few of proceedings. In a shameless bid to come up with something more nauseatingly provocative than Richard Hammond's Mexican diatribe, Jeremy Clarkson's managed to grab himself some pre-Christmas publicity with a call for strikers to be shot:
"I would have them taken outside and executed them in front of their families."
Guardian web news editor @JonathanHaynes tweets:
"Cameron on Clarkson 'It was obviously a silly thing to say and I am sure he didn't mean that … I didn't see the remark but I'm sure.'"
On the Liberal Conspiracy site, @sunny_hundal points out that the the Daily Mail has managed to blame striking teachers for an accident involving a six-year-old boy.
"This isn't the first time either the Daily Mail has tried this trick. In July the Mail tried to blame striking teachers for the death of a girl because a tree branch fell on her.
But the Mail faced a backlash from its own commenters then and was forced to change the article's headline. It seems they haven't learnt anything."
In the Independent, Oliver Wright believes that the government is trying to drive a wedge between teachers and other public sector workers, and is likely to make further concessions on pensions to reach an early deal.
Education news from the Guardian
• The Foreign Office lobbied Oxford university to accept Muammar Gaddafi's son Saif al-Islam as a student in the hope of encouraging a rapprochement with Libya, Lord Woolf's inquiry has found. It underlines the way the British government supported the dictator's son as it scented opportunities to do business with Libya.
• One of the north of England's best-known independent girls' schools is to apply to become a free school, which would end fee-paying and widen admission. Bradford girls' grammar school, whose past pupils include the radical Labour politician Barbara Castle, says that the time is right to "return to its community roots".
• Northern Ireland teaches us the dangers of segregated schools: Peter Robinson has called for the end of separate state-funded Protestant and Catholic schools. Michael Gove should listen, writes teacher Dave Pavett.
Education news from around the web
• A US private education firm's UK arm has been officially approved to sell services to groups setting up free schools and academies in the UK, the BBC reports. Edison Learning, a for-profit education business, has been given approved status by the Department for Education. In the US, Edison Learning is a major for-profit education business, managing schools in the state system, independent charter schools and also online "virtual" charter schools.
• Anthony Seldon, head of the independent Wellington College, predicts that within four years, a quarter of its sixth formers will be heading for universities in the United States, according to a BBC report.
• Academics shouldn't have to be promising students "employability" and "value for money" but should advocate higher education for its own sake, the THE quotes Baroness Kennedy, principal of Mansfield College, Oxford, as saying. Arguing for universities' economic value means "bowing down" before a flawed conception of education:
"The whole business of learning is about something greater - it's not just about having jobs."
• Should the embryonic for-profit sector of higher education in this country be given the same access to public funds as other universities, and what would happen if they were? asks Salford vice-chancellor Martin Hall (@VCSalford) in a blog for wonkhe.com (@wonkhe).
• Universities UK (@universitiesUK) has put out a report with brightly illustrated data on how universities drive growth.
On the Guardian Higher Education network
Hierarchy in universities: academics should support their peers who move into leadership roles or risk external intervention, says Professor Edward Peck.
Writing competition for students
Ones to Watch, the site that brings together the best writing in student newspapers, has teamed up with educationguardian.co.uk to bring you a unique competition.
Want a Guardian byline in your portfolio? You could see your work published on one of the Guardian's most prestigious online comment sections: the Mortarboard blog.
All you need to do is write a blog of no more than 600 words on the following question:
With fees tripling to £9,000 a year at most universities, is it inevitable that the student will become a consumer?
We're open to any interpretation of the question that you choose but are looking for something original, engaging and well-researched, that is written clearly and accurately. The competition is open to any undergraduate or postgraduate student at UK universities.
Closing date: Dec 4 at 5pm.
University Guide 2013
As we prepare the next Guardian University Guide, we invite universities and colleges to check that we are on the right track when it comes to matching subjects with cost centres and Jacs codes – the subject categories used by the Higher Education Statistics Agency (Hesa). Please enter your university's details via our dedicated website.
Education seminars from Guardian Professional
The Guardian Teacher Network runs training sessions for teachers throughout the year in Yorkshire and London. Upcoming courses include:
Preparing for inspection under the new Ofsted framework
Are you ready for the new Ofsted framework due to take effect in January 2012? Led by a highly experienced inspector, this seminar will explain the new framework in detail and provide step-by-step guidance to help you plan for the next inspectors' visit.
January 24 in Yorkshire. March 6 in London.
• For a full list visit the Guardian Teacher Network
The Guardian's education centre
The Guardian runs a range of free workshops for primary and secondary children as well as adult learners and further and higher education students. Visitors to the centre can become reporters and editors and will create their own newspaper. History workshops that draw upon the newspaper archive are also available, as well as science and environment lessons.
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