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labour says there is a "strong case" for offering all 12—15—year—olds covid vaccinations, to prevent "further disruption" to their learning. the government's scientific advisors are not supporting it. this decision or this advice is not clear—cut, there is equipoise here, and i think it's quite reasonable for the government to seek further advice. the head of pakistan's intelligence agency arrives in kabul, as taliban leaders continue to meet representatives from foreign governments. gps in the uk are forced to delay flu jabs because of a shortage of hgv drivers, which has disrupted supplies. and wheelchair racer hannah cockroft wins her seventh paralympic title in the t34 800m. now on bbc news...click.

this week, we're going back to school — so pay attention, class. today we have robotics... ..archaeology. .. ..and...cookery? hey, welcome to click! we are back after a summer of silliness. i hope you managed to have some kind of break yourself. i tell you, the best thing about being back on this sofa for me is i get to see my good mate, back in her box! it's been weeks since we've done it like this, isn't it? how's your summer been? how are you? oh, it's good to be back and it's lovely to see you too.

and my summer has been good, thank you. i've spent two hours a day working out, which is my idea of a break. i know, i've seen your instagram. you've been hitting it hard! hmm. what have you been up to? i've been exercising my brain. i've been trying these, um, interactive puzzle books, which i've become a bit of a fan of. on each page there's some sort of weird puzzle here and once you've worked out what's going on, you scan the qr code and it takes you to a website and tells you whether you're right or not. and that, ladies and gentlemen, is my idea of fun. goodness, and you must be cleverer than ever now? dangerously intelligent, that's me. but, anyway, it's back to business now — and september means back to school. and hopefully the kids are going to get a whole year in the classroom. yeah, but because the last 18 months have been so disrupted, schools and kids now face a big challenge — and that's the fact that every child has had a different level of schooling and has different gaps in their education. but, it looks like machine learning might be able to help with the children's learning.

four years ago we visited a school which had started using century alto bolster their teaching. this is software that assesses students as they learn, finding where the gaps are, and prompting them with teaching materials that suit their needs. what it will do is we track all your behaviours, and your mouse movements and how you learn. have they paused, are they scrolling up or down, what words are they looking at, how long are the words, you know, has the child been guessing? have they been skipping? are they hesitating? have they taken longer to answer this question versus another one? well, you know if you know how long it takes for them to read across different subjects. so it's trying to analyse and learn how the student is behaving across the content. the really clever part is that it tracks learning is that it tracks learning across subjects,

so it can differentiate between a student who is struggling with a mathematical equation, and one who's struggling with how the maths question is posed. in that case it may suggest more literacy tasks. when the pandemic hit, software like this became increasingly important as students were forced to learn from home. and during the first lockdown, united learning, one of the largest groups of schools in england, introduced another adaptive learning platform to 46 of their secondary schools. sparx maths has thousands and thousands of questions and thousands and thousands of hours of exemplification as well — videos explaining how to do certain operations. now, that means that no teacher ever has to sit down and work out a specific set of questions for specific children to do, cos the software understands at what point of learning those children are at. also, it marks those questions so the teacher doesn't have to sit for hours marking them in a book and correcting them as well, which i know from personal experience can consume your entire life.

over the last 18 months we've all needed as much help as we could get as our kids have flipped between school and home learning and we've flopped into bed each night exhausted after being parents, teachers and workers. for some children, learning at home has helped them to blossom — but, for many, tech will never beat the teacher. earlier in the year, i met andria zafirakou, the best teacher in the universe — and that's not just according to her pupils, mind. she won the global teacher prize in 2018. the one thing that we have to bear in mind is that you know, by using technology in assessing young people, it's not as good as that one—to—one teacher experience, and having that one—to—one knowledge with a teacher willjust open up their mind a little bit more, and push them a little bit more to thinking about things which they've never thought about. there is no doubt that technology can be extremely beneficial in the classroom, but choices made by ai

could set a direction for the rest of a child's life. and ultimately tech can only augment teachers and free up time so that they can do what they do best — teach. of course, nothing can beat physically being in the classroom, but even pre—pandemic, some students weren't able to be at school — for example, those with serious illnesses. but now, thanks to the help of some robots, some of these children might able to attend classes remotely. jen copestake's been finding out more. and can you blink your eyes? that's so cool. qasim is a student at seven kings school in east london. he has a serious medical condition which means he hasn't been able to go out since the beginning of the covid pandemic, but comes to class instead in a robot avatar.

how long have you been going to school like this, qasim? well originally, it was to do with the lockdown and everything. also, i had a surgery, so that was also one reason. are you recovering from the surgery now? yeah. i have the impression qasim is a brave person. you come across very well, qasim. oh, thank you. laughs. is this your first time working with a robot in this way, or have you done it before? oh, it has been several months already, isn't it qasim? so, did theyjust say you're going to be working with a robot instead of a child? everybody was excited. there are 500 av! robots going to school in this way across the uk and more than 1,500 in europe. it's controlled from a child's home via an app. where are you talking to us from? like, from my ipad at home. oh wow. they can control the movement of the robot on the table, change facial expressions, raise hands, and even sleep. is the blue meaning you're asleep?

yes. do you ever put that on in the class? no. laughter. qasim, i'm just going to carry you to the next classroom. sure. at the end of the day, qasim is put away to charge. he's occasionally had to call his teachers to remind them to switch him on for class. there's something real about it — it's got a head, it moves, it talks. it's almost like qasim is embodied in the robot so it's brilliant! it feels absolutely fine actually. so we get quite used to it and we call the robots actually by the child's name, and because the child's voice is coming out of the robot, and they're quite often laughing and joking with us, it feels like a perfectly natural relationship — it's normal. so it's the first time i'd seen a robot interacting in this way in a classroom, and it was quite unexpected. it really did feel like qasim's presence was coming through that robot, and the children in the classroom seemed to enjoy it too. the first prototype avi,

3d print, first prototype comp, which is a computer screen with a robot body. the idea of interacting with robots as avatars rather than video screens came from karen dolva and her team at no isolation in oslo. raspberry pi in there. camera, microphone. so if a child raises a hand, these lights will light up. these are tiny led lights. then you have the antenna for good reception. you have the ag module in here, you have the camera board so this is what will sit in the forehead of the robot and let you actually stream. karen found her experience at university to be isolating, and difficult to make new friends. this led to a period of loneliness and depression. i at least isolated myself. i don't think i realised how much i'd pulled away from everyone else until people

started literally trying to get me back, which i'm very gratefulfor today. karen started looking at isolation and loneliness in pensioners before redirecting attention to children in hospitals who couldn't get to class. they were using video conferencing to get lessons, but she wanted to make a more private way. we were out observing and actually saw a reaction where a kid logged on and everyone in class is saying, like, "you're looking ill", then the kid logs off again which is heartbreaking. like, you don't want that to be the experience you have when you show up in class. qasim is now looking forward to getting back to class in person, and should be able to start again this autumn. how long have you been away from school, qasim? i left some time in february, i think. january, february sometime. then i stopped again. i haven't been

in quite a long time. what's that been like to shield for such a long time? eventually, just, it's like, quite annoying i guess because you can't do anything. since the pandemic, we've really been amazed by the broad range of use cases that we've seen, but also we've seen an extreme rise in the level of anxiety amongst students. and just by having that window into the classroom, they gain more confidence, they're able to speak with their peers and their teachers, and the idea of returning to school becomes less daunting. what do you guys think, having qasim interacting like this? i think that it's good from his point of view. he's able to ask the teacher for questions if he needs help. if we didn't have this robot. then i don't think he would be getting the same education that he's getting now. - hello and welcome to the week in tech. this week we learned that apple boss, tim cook, recently received 5 million shares in the company

that he has now sold for over $750 million. google yet again postponed a full return to the office, announcing that its employees can work remotely until at least 2022. and vauxhall�*s managing director said that the global shortage of computer chips will continue to be a problem for the auto industry for the rest of the year. staying with transport, toyota has restarted operations of its autonomous vehicles at the paralympic village in tokyo. services were halted after vehicle hit a visually impaired athlete last week. big news for gamers in china. the country's video games regulator has said gamers under the age of 18 will be only allowed to play for an hour each day on fridays, weekends and holidays. the move is part of a recent crackdown by the chinese government on the pastime, with a state media outlet calling online games "spiritual opium".

and, finally, if you're worried about robots taking all of ourjobs, look away right now. agility robotics have showed off their latest bipedal creation, digit. the company claim that the weirdly headless automaton is well suited to highly repetitive tasks and is meant to allow us humans to concentrate more on creative endeavours. i just hope someone told the robots that. insects are a sustainable, protein—rich food source, and i've already seen them grown vertically to feed chickens — although i am not sure i was that thrilled about it. oh my god, there's millions of them in here! but this, much smaller, smart insect farm has been designed to work in schools. it can fit on a kitchen counter and filters mealworms by life stage. this is one that is, kind of, in use right now. they lay their eggs through these holes and once they are big enough,

then they will be able to actually crawl out of here. a heating pad warms from underneath. there's a sensor below that aluminium plate. while other sensors keep humidity in check. it will turn a fan on so it draws off any excess. as well as leftover veg, mealworms can eat things like stale bread, old coffee grounds, and even polystyrene. even their waste is not wasted. you can use it like this for putting it in your plants. these students in hong kong are some of the first to use the device to grow edible insects. they've been making bug burgers, and learning that larvae can become lunch. what's your favourite thing about the worms? my favourite thing is eating them. because the flavour of the mealworms are very funny. it is crispy and the flavour is like peanuts.

like peanuts! wow. has it made you think about the environment and about animals more? yes, because the mealworms use less land than cows or pigs. given that animal agriculture is behind 87% of greenhouse gas emissions, insect cooking lessons could be the education we all need. i think in the world, or in hong kong, we have to promote this idea of green eating habits. but there are other curricula benefits too. all types of students can be involved. so that makes them more, just like, a popular and more general education for all the kids. schools around the world are already experimenting with different projects. nordic students have been coding the device, complete with light—up alerts. green, blue... kids in quebec dug

into mealworm treats, as did gontrand, the blue dragon lizard. of course, there's nothing stopping people using these kits at home, either. you just have to have space in the kitchen — and, well, the stomach for it. that was paul. i actually ate roasted mealworms from a prototype insect farm when i was in china a few years ago. what did they taste like? crispy, meaty and not that bad, really. oh, but still! now it's time for a lesson in can you guess the gadget! what do you think this is? insect toaster. what do you take me for? no, it does this. he has knobbly knees! and turned—out toes! and a poisonous wart at the end of his nose! it's my dating profile. it's also a well—known children's story. of course it is the gruffalo — love the gruffalo. this is yoto, an audiobook playerfor kids, which you just pop these cards into.

it's hands—on for the kids to use solo but also it has an app that lets parents play content from their phones, or send stories to play from the device. but with so much free content out there, you do wonder why people may want another platform or another subscription service. a lot of it comes down to the actual user interface, so we built yoto from the ground up for children, and there really was nothing else available without a screen that parents could reallyjust trust their children with. the child is fully in control of the player, they put in the cards that they want, they can change the volume, they can do everything without the parent intervening. and the parent at the same time knows that it's a safe and secure environment. the yoto player has 400 cards already but it can also play radio, be used as a bluetooth speaker, or be programmed to help with sleep training. of course, there are other devices that do similar things, as well as the streaming giants

which have their own offerings. like spotify kids, an app which is just for kid—friendly music and stories. there's also amazon kids plus, which has books, movies, tv shows, educational apps and games. bell rings. that is the school bell, which means we're moving onto our final lesson of the day. and. . . it's history. oh, no! i was always a bit scared of my history teacher. oh, no. it's really interesting isn't it, how the teacher makes a definite difference as to whether you enjoy the subject or not. but no, this is a historical mystery — with technology doing its bit to help. sound good ? yes, sir. laughs. 0k. simon hancock picks up the trail. the town of warwick in the heart of england. i actually grew up near here, and let me tell you, it is absolutely dripping in history. from its famous castle to the market square, everywhere you look, there it is.

small wonder then, that it's pored over by historians, amateur and pro alike, who all try to take these visual clues and reconjure the stories that happened here in the past. but, today, i've been asked to help with an historical mystery deep underground. through this very small hole, through which the fire brigade are going to winch me. so...oh my goodness. 0k. are you afraid? afraid of what? you know, i'm not brilliant with enclosed spaces, shall we say. but...yeah. you didn't mention that before. well, you didn't mention it was, like, this small, that's why. under here, going metres down, there is a well which near the bottom has an entrance to an unexpected and unexplained tunnel — one which some think could be part of a wider network of tunnels under warwick's streets. there have always been whispers

around here about the existence of tunnels, butjust how many are there, and what were they used for? it's these questions which have hooked the harvey brothers. it is like a little puzzle. it's like a puzzle with bricks in and rocks in and a well, and a lot of people in warwick are like, theyjust want to talk about tunnels and never really want to investigate, they prefer to have the myth. so, i don't want to have the myth — i want to know the facts. alex and joe bring more than their passion to this quest, though. they also run a vr company called rivr, and they think vr can help figure out why this tunnel is here. the fire brigade can't always be on hand, and so today after my safety briefing i will be helping to capture images from the tunnel to build up a photogrammetric 3d model of it. i am in good hands here, but at the end of the day you are being winched down a very small hole. here we go, all right. wow.

you can see on the sides of these tunnels, the hack marks which are obviously from when it was made. no—one really knows when that was, but you just get a sense that it must have been hundreds of years ago. it really is very tight, but the fire brigade are a reassuring presence. they'll pump air down here to keep it safe — and, wow, it really is something. imagine the effort it took to hack through all this sandstone. you know, whoever made these tunnels really wanted to do it. but nobody knows what they were for. this is the section i'm to take images of. it's really hard to pick up, but on the ceiling someone has used a burning candle to graffiti their name. 20 metres down the tunnel, it's blocked by rubble — so frustrating. just what lies beyond? some think it may lead to the church cryptjust 100 metres away,

but one local historian thinks there may have been a more prosaic use for it. i think we'd all like to believe, and we'd all like to imagine that these are secret tunnels that connect a kind of murky underworld of residents from times gone by. i think the reality is traditionally that tunnels that have been discovered in and around warwick have had a very functional purpose, and that is principally as culverts to move waste and water out of the town, out of the roads, out of houses, into wells and into waste. whoa. laughs. you know, you still get the feeling, don't you? the next day i'm checking out my work at the vr studio. it really does feel like i am back underground. it's a very lifelike experience. and there's that graffiti we couldn't see yesterday. you can see on the roof here, the graffiti was made by candlelight. it says o.tibbits, 1894. could this reallyjust

be a waste tunnel? well, our historian has never been down himself, but now it's been scanned, he can. what do you make of it? yeah so my first impressions, really, of seeing it is, of course, the two different types of construction in here. ifind it quite interesting, up above we've got this red brick. you know, large parts of warwick were completely gutted by fire in 1694—95, and so this would certainly correlate to this being built, maybe, when the houses up above were demolished and rebuilt after the fire. of course, what really interests me is down below, this sandstone tunnel, because this looks like it has been really carved quite aggressively and quite vigorously into the rock. if this is just a waste tunnel, why is it so big? you know what, it's a very, very good question. my instinct before coming down here was that it was carved quite large because, of course, people would be coming down

here, so they're not going to, kind of, crawl around carving, they'll need space to really kind of chip in. it's far larger than i expected, and i think that does question whether this was solely and indeed originally only for waste. so, the mystery continues, but the harvey brothers are in this for the long game. i see this project going on quite a long time. i feel like i couldn't really put it to bed until we've scanned the whole of warwick, above and below ground. it's fascinating seeing the correlation, for me, fascinating when i see the models, where you see the tunnel underneath the ground, and now we can determine where the buildings on top of the ground are in relation to the below ground. alex and joe are already using their vr tunnel to bring history alive for local schoolchildren. still, for some, vr can never quite beat the real thing. that's a tourist attraction, isn't it? i can see people doing that. anyway, that's it from us for this week. as ever you can find the team on social media,

on youtube, instagram, facebook and twitter at @bbcclick. thanks for watching, class dismissed! bye— bye. hello. if you have been holding out for a bit of sunshine and some warmer weather, particularly in the areas that have been quite cool and cloudy recently, you'll probably be pleased to hear that we have got some sunnier and some warmer weather on the cards over the next few days. for today, it is looking mostly dry and there will be spells of sunshine for some of us. still some cloud lingering, particularly for northern and eastern parts of the uk. high pressure still in charge of our weather, but that's clearing off towards the east, allowing south—easterly winds to move in.

there is going to be a weather front pushing into the north—west of the uk tomorrow, so that will bring a bit of rain to parts of western scotland and northern ireland tomorrow afternoon. but, for the rest of today, then, looks a little bit like this, and sunshine for parts of southern england, wales, northern ireland also seeing sunny spells. also some brightness coming through around the moray firth into cumbria, for instance, as well. less windy than recent days, particularly for the likes of east anglia, and the south—east too. but still a breeze coming in off the north sea across parts of north—east england and eastern scotland, sojust 14 degrees or so for aberdeen, perhaps the odd spot of drizzle here, but 23 in cardiff in the sunshine. quite a bit of sunshine into the evening hours as well, and then overnight things remaining largely dry. the odd spot of drizzle once again continuing across north—east england and eastern scotland, too, so quite cloudy here. even though we've got clearer skies further south it won't be a cold night because there's milder air moving in, so temperatures first thing tomorrow between about 11—15 degrees. so, through sunday, then, not a bad day.

most places seeing a good deal of sunshine, perhaps a little bit more stubborn cloud for a time across parts of southern england and east anglia, too. there will be some rain arriving across northern ireland and western scotland later on in the afternoon, but before it gets there, a warmer day to come for the likes of aberdeen towards newcastle — 20 degrees or so here and 25 likely for southern england and wales. so, that warming trend continues into the new working week, too. heading on into monday, we start the day with this weak weather front. it could just bring a few showers to central parts of the uk, but they'll tend to fizzle out quite quickly, i think, so a largely dry day, i think, in most areas. light winds on monday, some blue sky and some sunshine and you'll certainly notice those higher temperatures, especially in the south, up to about 26 or 27 degrees for south—east england, round about 20 or 21 for scotland and northern ireland. so, a warm few days to start the new working week and then things turn more unsettled later in the week. bye— bye.

good afternoon. labour says there's a strong case to vaccinate children aged between 12 and 15 against covid to prevent any further disruption to learning. ministers have asked the chief medical officers of the uk's four nations to consider the broader implications after the uk's vaccines advisory body decided yesterday not to recommend jabs for all youngsters in that age group. james reynolds reports. for many young teenagers in america, the highlight of a travel free

pandemic