If you try to put your finger on the education background of someone in a senior position in the government, chances are a few things would spring to mind.
 
Private school education, for starters. An Oxbridge degree would be no surprise.
 
That’s what we’d all expect, right?
 
Well, shadow education secretary Angela Rayner’s background might come as a bit of a shock to you.

​School is no walk in the park. Neither is college, or uni for that matter. Things can be even harder for a lot of us who focus, learn, and engage in different ways. Disorders such as dyslexia, dyspraxia and ADHD are treated far more seriously in the classroom now than they ever have been, but that doesn’t mean that the education system is perfect. Finding things difficult? Not only can you ask your parents, teachers and tutors for extra support, but there are loads of online resources available to you to help you understand your best learning style and how to adapt your studies. 

​As a nation of young people raised on social media and the spotlight surrounding its many “influencers”, it’s no wonder that social celebs have made household names for themselves. They’re trusted. And they know it. So it’s no wonder that social media celebs have come under fire over the past few weeks because of some shady ad endorsements. 

If you read anything in a tabloid newspaper, you'd think that the young people of today are nothing but delicate little "snowflakes" – offended by everything, right down to the ever-rising price of avocados. 

You only have to talk to a real-life young person to know that's not the case. An entire university study has been dedicated to the idea of Generation Snowflake, and you won't be surprised to find that it's an exaggerated, over-generalised load of nonsense. 

Okay, maybe not the avocado part. C'mon, we've got to have some nice things. 

Researches from the University of Leeds' Institute for Teaching interviewed 55 undergrads as part of their study into student resilience, and had another 185 complete survey questionnaires. 

Students were asked what they thought about the snowflake generation - students who were "quick to take offence and too emotionally vulnerable to cope with views that challenge their own", and also the idea of 'trigger-warnings' - where individuals are notified of potentially distressing content before being exposed to it. 

Surprisingly, large numbers of students hadn't even heard of the term 'snowflake generation' or even 'trigger-warnings', and if they were aware of the concept, it wasn't usually in terms of education and more in terms of internet use. 

Rather than the negative associations, where 'trigger-warnings' are viewed as a form of censorship, the participating students largely agreed that the warnings allowed them to be prepared for potentially disturbing content, rather than choosing not to engage with it at all. 

Overall, the participants "were likely to say that they could see some truth in ['snowflake generation'], but that it was an unfair, sweeping label for an eclectic group of people."

We're sure over the past year you’ve heard the abbreviation VR thrown about at just about any announcement of a new tech device. VR stands for Virtual Reality and it’s starting to creep into our lives whether you want it to or not. Now the question is, will virtual reality change how we gain soft skills? 

We've all heard it, right? The dreaded millennial Catch-22: to get experience, you need a job. To get a job, you need experience. 

Unsurprisingly, high numbers of young people in the UK go through long unpaid placements, internships and work experience programmes to gain the experience required for their first full-time job.

This may seem like an inevitable link in the career chain, but for many, unpaid internships are a pretty crappy thing. Primarily, unpaid placements work only on the basis that you have significant savings to support you while you're working for (optimistically) experience, or (pessimistically) nothing.