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The article will consider the challenges that pastoral care in education faces to ensure that it continues to make a positive contribution to the learning experience of children and young people living in the 21st century. It will discuss how in recent years the purpose of education has been questioned by writers and the implications this may have for developing effective pastoral structures and systems and for the priorities of staff in their pastoral roles in the future. It will reflect on why there has been a need for pastoral care in education and why it is needed to support the academic achievement and personal development of children and young people in the future. The article will examine the important contribution pastoral care makes to the socialisation process and how this has been highlighted by the experience of the pandemic. In conclusion, four recommendations are made about how pastoral care in education can respond to the challenges of the 21st century and ensure that children and young people are provided with the support they need to succeed in their education, face the challenges of the modern workplace and in their future lives and make a positive contribution to society.

In regions experiencing severe cold, inadequate ventilation during winter months often leads to increased concentrations of indoor pollutants. While there have been several studies on indoor particulate matter and inorganic pollutants in such regions, bioaerosol pollution has not been as extensively investigated. This study examines the indoor bioaerosol situation in a university located in one of the severe cold regions in China, focusing on bacteria as a representative pollutant. It investigated random samples of an office and a dormitory (including washrooms) and spanned heating and nonheating periods. The findings indicated that bacterial abundance in the dormitory and office was approximately equivalent. The predominant airborne bacterial communities identified were Proteobacteria, Bacteroidota, Actinobacteriota, Firmicutes, and Myxococcota. Opening windows effectively reduced bacterial concentrations during both heating and nonheating periods. When windows remained closed, bacterial concentrations exceeded the standard by 9.1% during the nonheating period and by 14.3% during the heating period. Furthermore, temperature and relative humidity influenced bacterial particle size, activity, and consequently, aerosol concentrations. In the office, the highest percentage of bioaerosols was observed in particle sizes <1.1 and 1.1–2.1 μm, with smaller percentages observed in other particle sizes. Conversely, the percentage of particle sizes 2.1–3.3 μm in the dormitory was higher. The highest bacterial aerosol concentrations were detected in the morning in both the dormitory and office, during heating and nonheating periods. Bacterial concentrations in the office were lower on weekends than on weekdays, whereas in the dormitory, concentrations were higher on weekends than on weekdays. The above results indicate that indoor bacterial aerosol pollution is serious in winter in severe cold regions, which needs more attention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The construction of sub‐daily pressure series is described for the cities of London (GB) and Paris (FR). The series extend back 1692 and 1748, respectively, and as such they represent two of the longest sub‐daily series of barometric pressure available. These series are updated from the previously documented London and Paris daily series and offer more homogeneous series, and in the case of the London series a more temporally complete sequence of data. A pairwise homogenization procedure has been applied to the two series alongside the long series of pressure that exists for De Bilt (NL). The De Bilt series has been available for some time in the International Surface Pressure Dataset (ISPD), but further quality control and homogeneity‐checking procedures have been applied to the data in this paper and therefore the three series are released together in this dataset. The series are of immediate interest for understanding changes to storm activity across the English Channel and North Atlantic region over an extended timeframe but may also be assimilated into reanalysis datasets such as the 20th‐century reanalysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The National Awards for Pastoral Care in Education were organised by the National Association for Pastoral Care in Education (NAPCE) for the first time in 2020. The purpose was to give work in pastoral care the recognition that it deserves. A respected group of judges had the difficult task of deciding who the winners would be in each category, from the very impressive and high quality nominations that NAPCE received. The article provides some of the winners, with an opportunity to share this good practice and to raise awareness of the positive difference that is being made, by effective pastoral care, to the learning experience and lives of young people. Included is information about a school that is supporting bereaved learners and their families. other examples of good practice include, a project to motivate girls, the work of a special school to meet the additional needs of its pupils, the work of a pastoral leader to implement strategies to improve behaviour foe learning and academic achievement and a case study in the use of Educational Transactional Analysis to support a learner with social, emotional and mental health difficulties.

The determination of Pass/Fail decisions over Borderline grades, (i.e., grades which do not clearly distinguish between the competent and incompetent examinees) has been an ongoing challenge for academic institutions. This study utilises the Objective Borderline Method (OBM) to determine examinee ability and item difficulty, and from that reclassifying each Borderline grade as a Pass or Fail. Using the OBM, examinees' Borderline grades from a clinical examination were reclassified into Pass or Fail. The predictive validity of this method was estimated by comparing the examination original and reclassified grades to each other and to subsequent clinical examination results. The new model appeared as more stringent (p<0.0001) than the original decisions. Implications for educators and policy makers are discussed. The OBM2 is found to provide a plausible solution for decision making over borderline grades in non-compensatory assessment systems.