Discover our amazing collection of William Shakespeare resources for primary and secondary pupils to use to celebrate this year's Shakespeare week, taking place from yesterday (18) to March 24.

Shakespeare Week is an annual national celebration of William Shakespeare, giving pupils the chance to encounter his characters, stories and language.

Highlights from these resources include:

• An exploration of the role of the supernatural in Shakespeare's plays.
• An introduction to The Tempest told via eight video clips.
• A documentary exploring the world in which Shakespeare lived.
• The retelling of some of the Bards most famous pieces by modern day writers.

There will be a plethora of new online resources (all free) to ensure children of all economic backgrounds across the world get an exciting first experience of Shakespeare. This includes a new Kids’ Zone on the Shakespeare Week website, which will have a series of interactive resources and videos for children to engage with online. 

Shakespeare Week 2019 has also recruited a new patron! William Shakespaw is a trainee therapy dog, who will be meeting children in Warwickshire and Essex to share Shakespeare’s story and sniff out some forgotten words. Illustrator Marcia Williams has been specially commissioned to produce a series of Shakespeare-inspired postcards featuring William, which will go on sale in the Birthplace shop in time for the start of Shakespeare Week.

After the success of the Big Shakespeare Book Hunt last year (with 26,642 children taking part), the wild books will be returning in 2019. 154 schools (from Glasgow to the Channel Islands) will be receiving a wild book to set free into their local communities. Each Wild Book will also contain one of Shakespeare’s Forgotten Words for the children to learn about and share!

Shakespeare Week 2019 promises to be another magical and fun-filled week for children across the UK.

Articulate John Willmott School students made history last week by securing the secondary’s first victory in the Sutton Coldfield Schools’ Parliamentary Debating Competition.

The popular event – now in its 17^th year – took place at Fairfax Academy last Thursday (7 March) and featured schools from the Royal town. Year 12 John Willmott students, Aria Torkpour and Josh Barry, were awarded second place overall, pipped to first place by fellow ATLP school, Arthur Terry.

The pair had to oppose the motion that parents should be able to pick the sex of their babies. They won their first round resoundingly and were then handed the challenging motion 'this house believes that fox hunting should be reintroduced’. Despite this difficult task, they lost by a whisker telling the story of Josh's pet chickens that were slaughtered by a fox and the impact that this had on him as a young child. This story moved the audience who heard about the fate of Bella, Freya and Daisy his chickens! They also shared the impact of the fox on the livelihoods of farmers and smallholders to gin the sympathy and votes of the audience.

John Willmott School has not been placed previously in the competition and ambitious staff and students are looking forward to next year when they try to go one better and bring home the silverware. Both students wanted to thank Mr Banks their English teacher who had guided them through developing their debating skills over the last few months as well as Mrs Sharp, head of sixth form, for her ongoing support and encouragement.

Will Banks said: “It’s been rewarding to watch the students develop their debating skills over the last few months and perfect their style of delivery. It was an added bonus to be placed in this prestigious competition.'

Aria plans to study medicine and Josh wants to study English at university before becoming a teacher. The experience has proved both challenging and enjoyable for both students who are keen to continue debating in their enrichment lessons, which are part of the sixth form PSHE programme.

Tracey Peters, headteacher of John Willmott School, said: “Everybody at John Willmottl is extremely proud of both our students who represented their school so well. They spent many hours preparing and engaged the audience with their knowledge, delivery and humour.

Congratulations to everybody who took part at to fellow ATLP’s Arthur Terry School. We are looking forward to next year’s competition.”

Kellogg’s is doubling the number of grants it offers to school breakfast clubs across the UK.

The scheme will help to provide breakfast to more than 600 schools in the communities that need them the most.

Local schools can apply for £1000 grants to help give their school children the best start to the day so they can go into the classroom ready to learn. Schools in can apply by visiting: www.kelloggs.co.uk/breakfastclubs. 

Since 1998, the Kellogg’s Breakfast Clubs programme has supported over 3,000 breakfast clubs by providing training, grants and more than 70 million bowls of cereal.

The increase in grants available to schools has been enabled by new range of cereals, WK Kellogg, that donate 10p to good causes for every pack sold. The wheats and granola range is named after the cereal giant’s founder, who was a well-known philanthropist and left his entire fortune to charity back in the 1950’s.

Oli Morton, managing director for Kellogg’s UK and Ireland, said: “Kellogg’s has supported breakfast clubs in the UK for 20 years and we are delighted to be able to support significantly more clubs through our grants programme in 2019.

“We are proud to have established many breakfast clubs up and down the country that contribute vastly to improving children’s attendance and attainment as well as alleviating hunger in some cases. It’s not just the children that benefit – it’s a lifeline for parents too.”

Breakfast clubs are critical for many schools, as 68 per cent of teachers believe pupils would struggle to concentrate in class without their breakfast club, according to a report by Kellogg’s.

Kellogg’s currently has 3000 schools signed up to its network, offering them a range of resources and provisions to help them operate sustainable and effective breakfast clubs.

If university students didn’t have enough to worry about with tuition fees at a high of £9,250, post-graduation employment holds even more uncertainty. The amount of British students seeking Sugar Daddies and Mommies to help alleviate some of that stress grew to 475,320 in 2018.

The value of an education is undeniable, but students aiming for first-class degrees have been overwhelmed in recent years by continuous tuition increases. Furthermore, new legislation now allows universities to raise fees annually until 2020. It’s easy to see why 475,320 students in the UK are seeking wealthy benefactors to help offset education costs—bringing the worldwide total to four million.

SeekingArrangement, the world’s largest Sugar Daddy dating site, releases today its annual findings on the Fastest Growing Sugar Baby Schools. These are the universities in the UK where the most students registered for the website during 2018. Dropout rates for UK students have risen for the third year in a row.

Meanwhile students are struggling to find careers that are appropriate for their education and skill level, with over five percent of new graduates failing to gain employment within six months of graduating.

Sugar Baby students receive an average monthly allowance of £2910, which is Ranking University New Sign-up 2018 Student Total 2018 1 University of Arts London 218 845 2 University of Manchester 180 937 3 University College London 169 314 4 King’s College London 139 450 5 University of Westminster 158 959 6 Cardiff University 153 201 7 Manchester Metropolitan University 152 518 8 University of Cambridge 145 1019 9 University of Leeds 127 728 10 University of Nottingham 126 819 11 University of Kent 106 1056 12 University of Oxford 101 340 13 Glasgow Calendonian University 99 700 14 University of Liverpool 92 197 15 University of Exeter 90 682 16 University of Portsmouth 83 749 17 University of St. Andrews 82 749 18 University of Edinburgh 81 334 19 Queens University of Belfast 80 582 20 University of Bimingham 78 214 Seeking.com Mutually Beneficial Relationships® double the potential amount one can earn working a part-time job at the national minimum wage.

“With little regard from the institutions of the student’s inability to pay increasing tuition and living costs in the UK, university students are being forced to find alternative methods to fund their educations,” says founder and CEO of SeekingArrangement Brandon Wade. “Young people understand the importance of a degree and want to achieve their educational goals, but they can no longer depend on traditional means to get through school.”

Children’s author Juliet Clare Bell helped pupils at The Olive School, Birmingham learn how to work wonders with words during their World Book Day celebrations.

The writer visited the Court Road school as part of its celebration of storytelling and reading. Held annually on the first Thursday in March in the UK, World Book Day sees schoolchildren and teachers alike dress up as their favourite characters from well-known tales, and share stories they love.

The author of ‘Don’t Panic, Annika, and ‘Two Brothers and a Chocolate Factory’ ran storytelling workshops with pupils aimed at helping to inspire a love of books and reading. She also signed copies of her books for pupils.

Pupils and the school’s Parent Council also held a book sale which made £828, which was used as an opportunity to enrich the pupils’ learning in areas such as maths, leadership, budgeting, sales and pricing strategy, and developing confidence.

The students also dressed up as their favourite literary characters such as XXXXXX to highlight the joys of reading.

Rifat Batool, Principal of The Olive School, Birmingham, said: “Good reading habits start early and children who share books with others are more likely to develop language skills and advanced reading levels. We want to engender in our pupils a lifelong love of reading and literacy to fire up their creativity and imaginations.

“Our World Book Day celebrations have provided a wonderful learning opportunity for our pupils. Above all it’s been a really fun week in school, for pupils and staff alike.”

The Olive School, Birmingham is a primary free school for pupils aged from 4 to 11 years. The school is part of Star Academies, one of the UK’s leading multi-academy trusts and opened in September 2016.

A soldier from Solihull, in the West Midlands, has won a prestigious award in this Army Apprentice of the Year Awards.

Sapper (Spr) Luke Hudson of 54 Commando Squadron 24 Commando Royal Engineers (54 Cdo 24 Cdo RE) based at Barnstaple, North Devon, walked away with the top prize in the intermediate section of the competition with his citation stating that he was ‘an outstanding apprentice in both his military and trade skills’.

20-year-old Luke, from Marston Green, who always dreamt of joining the Army, is a carpenter and joiner by trade and provides combat engineer support to 3 Commando Brigade Royal Marines. He has deployed to the Falkland Islands and in 2017 was part of the Defence response to Hurricane Irma in the Caribbean where he helped rebuild roofs on homes, hospitals and schools on the Turks and Caicos Islands.

Luke’s apprenticeship assessor Tom Conway said: “Luke’s success within his Army Apprenticeship has been led by his continual desire for professional development and to be the best carpenter he can.

His continued enthusiasm and attention to detail has produced the highest quality work that should be seen as a credit to Luke and Army Apprenticeships.”

Officer Commanding 54 Cdo Sqn, Major Michael Richardson RE said: “Spr Hudson has demonstrated real passion for his trade and his work is of the highest quality. He has been a real asset to 24 Cdo RE, working above what would normally be expected of his rank.”

Luke, who attended City Technology College in Kingshurst, Birmingham, said: “I really want to progress through my apprenticeship stages and keep the momentum going. I am really into my trade and have been working towards this for some time. It is a really proud moment.”