On the face of things, it looks bad that a number of students leaving British universities this year are marginally less happy with their experiences on campus than last year's leavers. But it may be a good thing, because the substantial minority who were not satisfied constitutes a potent force for change.

The entire governing body of a comprehensive school was sacked yesterday by Children's Secretary Ed Balls following a row over bonus payments to its head and senior staff.

New Zealand's crisp white wines are justly famed, particularly those from the South Island's Marlborough region. Now a study has analysed the taste of the country's most popular wine, sauvignon blanc – and those who quaff it might wish they hadn't.

Sophia Buckley, 22, is halfway through the two-year Global Leadership Program offered by Swinburne University in Melbourne, Australia. By the end of the course – which includes time studying at Northeastern University in Boston – students have gained two separate Masters degrees: an MA in business and an MSc in leadership.

After a tumultuous start, life here is beginning to settle down. The frantic jockeying for position in the first few weeks is over, and it's no longer acceptable to introduce yourself to random people or shamelessly ask for names. Socially, the beginning of the year was a slow burn for me – I ended up meeting one potentially good friend a day, until I was able to enter the dining hall on my own and always find someone I wanted to sit with. By then the time for meeting new people had suddenly and mysteriously drawn to a close. Everyone is now pretty much stuck with whatever friends they've made, and I'm left with several moderately good mates and countless acquaintances whose names I can't quite remember. Such is life. The first weeks of university would be a fascinating social experiment if I weren't in the middle of it.

It's a Saturday afternoon and I've been cleaning the kitchen listening to Bonnie Tyler's "Holding out for a Hero". "Where have all the good men gone, and where are all the gods? Where's the streetwise Hercules to fight the rising odds?" My lodger comes in and purses his lips, Mrs Danvers style. He's getting a little fed up of playing the gay best friend. I turn off the music with suitable shame. "You don't need a hero, Joy. You need a nice boy who wears Converse boots and listens to music," says my lodger. "Is it really that difficult?"

I have a day as a Teaching Assistant, supporting an autistic lad whose regular TA is ill. He is due to move house in two weeks, so is already stressed, but he has seen me around before, and seems disposed to accept me with good grace.

As feedback goes it's a bit on the harsh side. "She is very kind and can be helpful but, boy, is she insane. The insanity leads to volatility sometimes which leads to her being not very kind."

Like other education ministers before him, Ed Balls has been badly briefed about tests. Every teacher knows that it's necessary to test pupils. The problems start when they have the wrong kinds of tests, and the results are used for too many purposes – at least 18 in England according to one senior figure. When tests are used for high-stakes targets, things start to go badly wrong.

I think I need to get to know the novels of James Jones better: he provided the source material not only for From Here to Eternity and The Thin Red Line, but this marvellously baroque, overblown drama. Frank Sinatra is a dried-up writer returning to the Midwest town where he spent a miserable boyhood, pursued by a fluff-brained floozy (Shirley MacLaine).

Denis Cosgrove was widely viewed as the pre-eminent cultural and historical geographer of his generation. He was a polymath reminiscent of the Renaissance humanists he admired, and his innovative and sparkling studies immeasurably deepened understanding of how changing Western perceptions have viewed, interpreted and transformed the world around them. His gifted teaching and dedicated supervision, no less than his dozen books and scores of essays, inspired colleagues and students throughout the humanities and the natural and social sciences, well beyond his chosen discipline. Indeed, interdisciplinarity was for him an article of faith.

A blacklist of pupils who have made malicious allegations of sexual abuse or assault against teachers should be compiled and made available to any school to which the pupil subsequently moves, union leaders have demanded.