Wanda Butts dropped the phone and screamed when she heard the news that her son was dead. Josh had drowned(溺亡) while sailing on a lake with friends. The 16-year-old didn’t know how to swim, and he wasn’t wearing a life jacket.

Josh was not alone in the black community. USA Swimming points that 70% of African-American children cannot swim. According to an official survey, African-American children between the ages of 5 and 14 are three times more likely to drown than white children in the same age range.

In 2007, Butts started the Josh Project, a non-profit(非营利组织) that provides low-cost swimming lessons for children in Toledo, Ohio. The swimming lessons take place at a local high school over four Saturdays for a total of 10$. Up to now, the Josh Project has helped more than 1,000 children learn how to swim.

“The public pools near our home are closed, and other places are not affordable,” said Lisa Haynes, whose 14-year-old son, Joshua, is one of 60-plus students in the Josh Project this summer. “I am less worried if Joshua is near water because he has the basics of how to swim,” Haynes said. “And we’re thankful for that.”

Butts is doing much more, however, than just providing swimming lessons.

“She ups the awareness(意识),” said Shaun Anderson, a swimming coach who was so inspired by her story that he created a Josh Project swimming program at Norfolk State University. “Once these communities(群体) learn how to swim, they will pass it down, which results in future generations that know how to swim.

Butts said she has two wishes for the future: One is to change the drowning numbers of African-American children, and the other is to have a swimming center where the children can swim every day instead of just once a week.

After midnight, when the crowds of revellers (饮酒狂欢者) have gone, Choi Young-soo crouches (蹲) in a shabby alley in Seoul’s wealthy Gangnam district. This is the only time that the 35-year-old, a part-time food delivery rider, dare leave his tiny room at a cheap hotel he shares with about 30 other people. The rooms, he says, are “only slightly bigger than coffins(棺材)”.

Choi’s desperate situation is real. He is one of a large and growing number of ordinary South Koreans who find themselves choked by debt. “I feel like other people sense that I’m a failure, so I only come out at night to smoke and watch the lost cats,” says Choi.

Choi’s serious debt came with alarming speed. Just two years ago, he was working as an IT engineer for a firm. Years of punishing overtime and late nights seriously damaged his health. After lengthy discussions and a year spent planning and saving, he and his wife decided to open a pub in Incheon.

After an encouraging start, their business fell victim to the COVID-19 pandemic. After bars and restaurants were ordered to close as early as 9 pm to prevent the virus from spreading, the number of customers reduced to a trickle (细流), and then dried up altogether. After failing to pay their rent for four months, the couple sought help.

Securing a bank loan was surprisingly easy, but the interest rate was a steep 4%. Within months they had taken out loans from all five of South Korea’s high-street banks. Unavoidably, they had to borrow more to pay off existing loans, joining long queues of troubled business owners eager to secure cash from commercial lenders with interest at more than 17%.

Household debt in South Korea has risen in recent years and is now equal to more than 100% of GDP, a level not seen elsewhere in Asia. The rising household debt has gone hand in hand with a dramatically widening income gap worsened by rising youth unemployment and property prices in big cities beyond the means of most ordinary workers.

According to Lee In-cheol, the chief executive of the think tank Real Good Economic Research Institute, the total amount of debt run up by ordinary South Koreans exceeds GDP by 5%. In individual terms, it means that even if you saved every single penny you earned for an entire year, you would still be unable to repay your debt. In response, the country’s financial services commission and financial supervisory service recently decided to prevent more South Koreans from falling into debt. “That is why major banks have acted to limit borrowing,” says Lee.

Girls continue to outperform boys in all subjects by the end of primary school in England, according to the latest key stage 2 test results published by the Department for Education.

Across England, 65% of pupils in state schools achieved the government’s expected standards in the three subjects, a 1% improvement on 2018. The widening of the gender gap was caused mainly by a dip in the proportion of boys reaching the expected standard in reading, which fell from 72% in 2018 to 69%. In maths, boys and girls improved by 3% but girls remained slightly ahead at 79% to 78%.

The latest Sats results are the continuation of trends seen for many years. In Britain, girls consistently outperform boys, with the exception of advanced maths-based subjects. In the most recent GCSE results girls showed improved performances, despite the introduction of more difficult exams.

There were substantial regional variations in the results, with pupils in London generally doing better than in other parts of England. Only 53% of boys in Dudley, in the Midlands, reached the expected standards in the three key subjects, compared with 83% of girls in the wealthy borough of Richmond-upon-Thames.

Also, the gap in performance between disadvantaged pupils and their classmates remains stubbornly wide, suggesting efforts to close it have slowed or been ineffective.

About 51% of children from disadvantaged backgrounds achieved the expected standards in maths, reading and writing, the same as in 2018, while the proportion of non-disadvantaged pupils hitting the standard rose to 71%. That leaves the gap between the two groups little changed for the last three years, with the DfE’s statisticians warning that it might widen slightly when the final figures for 2019 are published.

Paul Whiteman, the general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, said children from disadvantaged families were the victims of austerity (经济紧缩). “Successive governments have failed to invest in those who need it the most, and now we see the result - a sustained long-term gap over many years between disadvantaged pupils and pupils from more affluent families.” In 2019 30%                                        of pupils at the end of key stage 2 were classed as being disadvantaged. Nick Gibb, the minister for school standards, said the gap had noticeably decreased over the last eight years and that government reforms since 2010 have                                        helped “ level the playing field”.