A schoolboy rugby player died on the final whistle just minutes after he was seen holding his head following an earlier challenge, an inquest in Northern Ireland has heard.

Growing numbers of independent school pupils are topping up their A-levels in an effort to secure university places, it can be revealed today.

Anyone who knows anything about prisons will suspect a link between criminal behaviour and illiteracy. I'm a keen student of the work of Noel "Razor" Smith, armed robber-turned-writer and public speaker. He has been in and out of prison all his life. There is no doubt that he found liberation through language. And again and again in his accounts of prison life, we find that a large proportion of his fellow inmates cannot read or write.

Kisses on emails to business contacts are Britain's biggest office bugbear, according to a new survey.

More than one in seven schools and colleges is failing to send any pupils to the UK's top universities, new figures show.

As an atheist with no desire to upset believers, Professor Peter Higgs has always hated the idea of a God particle. He has never been keen on the nomenclature of the Higgs boson either – referring to it as "the particle named after me" on the rare occasions he gives an interview.

On Question Time week Andy Burnham made the latest in a series of digs about what he perceives to be the irrelevance of Latin. Speaking of Michael Gove's English baccalaureate, he expressed dismay that Gove had "found room for Latin and ancient Hebrew, but not for engineering or ICT. "How," he asked, "can that be the answer to the challenges we face in the modern world?"

Notebook: Quite aside from how useful Latin is in the jobs market, it is also good for your soul

How did it go?" I ask brightly. The response is a grunt. This is my lot as the mother of a child sitting GCSEs.

Notebook

Both friends and foes of grammar schools will be watching closely to see what signals emerge from the office of the Education Secretary, Michael Gove, following our report on how some leading grammar school heads wish to rejoin the state sector if they can carry on selecting.

Asked if he was in favour of expanding selective education in areas where parents wanted it, Michael Gove famously said: "My foot is hovering over the pedal: I'll have to see what my co-driver Nick Clegg has to say."

Some of the country's best-known independent grammar schools are ready to join the state sector – provided that they can continue to select their pupils.