Listen: Bristol Unpacked with Neil Maggs

Listen: Bristol Unpacked, with councillor Christine Townsend on taking on the Merchant Venturers over educational inequality

Green councillor and education rights campaigner Christine Townsend on fighting discriminatory school selection practices and the prospect of taking power in Bristol.

Funding reinstated for SEND charity at heart of council social media spying row

Listen: Bristol Unpacked on raising the next generation through a nursery crisis, with local head teacher Sam Williams

Image of the 2021 UCU Bristol strike

Voices

‘Academic and support staff are suffering – it’s time for universities to dip into their rainy day funds’

University of Bristol staff deserve a pay rise after years of real-terms cuts, so why won’t it lift salaries? Recent growth is unsustainable, and investing in pay could help not just workers but local businesses and the city.

Reports

Progress on Bristol’s SEND failings but relationships with parents still troubled, inspectors find

Voices

‘Childcare costs prevent countless ambitious women from fulfilling their potential’

As the childcare crisis fuels inequality for women and children, mums are demanding action

The childcare system is at breaking point both in Bristol and nationally, with mothers being forced out of the workforce as costs rise and provision shrinks.

Charities distance themselves from council review into ‘spying’ on SEND parents’ social media

As councillors prepare to vote on an independent inquiry into alleged online surveillance of parents of children with special educational needs, third parties named in an internal report have challenged the council's narrative.

‘We don’t want children leaving school illiterate’: how schools need to step up for dyslexic students

Mike Jones was bullied at school in the 1970s because he couldn't spell his name. Almost four decades later, he developed a program that now helps thousands of dyslexic children learn.

Listen: Bristol Unpacked on stopping the ‘school to prison pipeline’, and why teachers may be on the picket lines soon, with educator Lana Crosbie

Lana Crosbie is a senior school leader, race specialist and equality campaigner with over 20 years’ experience teaching in schools.

‘Zero-tolerance behaviour policy may be contributing to exclusion of Bristol’s most vulnerable students’

Michal Grant has worked with many kids excluded from mainstream education who say the Ready to Learn behavioural system is failing them.

Lost learning: ‘My grandson’s being failed by a broken education system’

The grandmother of a boy repeatedly removed from Bristol primary schools speaks out, as the city's mayor backs a zero-exclusions policy.