A staggering 2,000 primary school children are poised and ready to take part in the West Midlands biggest ever week-long reading challenge. The challenge, called One Million Minutes, is run by award-winning education charity Achievement for All, and is making its way around the country to encourage children to read, following research that reading for just ten minutes a day can have a huge impact on a child’s education.

Always respected and always observed but many people of non-British extraction was said to have felt ignored with their very minimum – at best – presence during Remembrance Sunday. With it almost common knowledge that up to one third of British troops fighting in the trenches during the first world war said to have come from the Caribbean, Africa and India that didn’t translate to the faces marching down the Mall during the last ceremony – or, indeed, any previously.

For the third year running Walsall College will be part of the Premier Colleges group of lead sponsors for The Skills Show, the nation’s largest skills and careers event that helps to shape the future of a new generation. Designed to inspire the fashion designers, web developers and engineers of tomorrow, the event will be taking place from 19-21 November 2015 at the NEC Birmingham.

Just over 166,000 people in the West Midlands who are blind or partially sighted are being invited to join RNIB's Talking Books service. The service which provides 4,000 audio books every single day to people with sight loss, is now entirely free for all blind and partially sighted people. RNIB (Royal National Institute of Blind People), the sight loss charity which runs the service, made the announcement on the 80th anniversary of Talking Books.

A poll of a cross-section of UK residents found more people would encourage a young person to become an engineer than a doctor, accountant or banker. A new Institution of Mechanical Engineers’ poll of a representative cross-section of 1,000 members of the public found that 86% would encourage a young person to become an engineer.