Agreat perk of being an academic in an "old" university, established before 1992, is that you join a Rolls Royce pension called the Universities Superannuation Scheme. This gives you a comfortable final salary pension when you come to retire. For this reason the scheme is hugely valued by lecturers and seen as a kind of reward for not having been very well paid during their careers.

"I couldn't read or write until I was 27 years old"

Eight years ago this month, a 12-year-old girl from a broken home claimed a teacher had run his fingers between her breasts during a lesson. Her mother was about to give birth at the time and if it was a plea for attention it succeeded, because she persuaded a friend to back up her story. The teacher was arrested and suspended for two years until the case came to court.

It's lunchtime at Broad Oak Sports College, a comprehensive on a tightly knit 1930s housing estate in Bury, eight miles north-west of central Manchester, and two 13-year-olds are squaring up to each other for a fight. As the bigger of the two boys raises a fist, the other instinctively holds up his arms to protect his face.

Katy Salmon explains why a foreign family is "adopting" her nine-year-old son for six months