A story highlighting the plight of the two-year-old and his displaced Afghan family led to worldwide donations

Fatima beamed broadly as she knelt in the mud outside her tent and filled two-year-old Reza Khan's baby bottle with milk. "Look, he's not crying anymore," she said, as he sucked down the liquid. It had been a month since the little boy had tasted milk.

The mother of eight kept an eye on her son as she lifted the lid on a blackened aluminium pot, her only one, that was bubbling over a campfire and stirred the yellow lentils inside. "Tonight my children will sleep until dawn on full stomachs," she said.

The Guardian first met the displaced Afghan family several days ago, after a photograph of Reza and several of his siblings, covered in flies, featured in the Eyewitness slot. We tracked them down to a roadside camp in Azakhel, 19 miles from Peshawar, capital of Pakistan's insurgency-plagued Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, bordering Afghanistan.

Yesterday a story in the newspaper and on our website highlighted the family's plight: the devastating month-long deluge had driven them from their mud brick home in the nearby Azakhel Afghan refugee camp. Fatima, her husband, Aslam, and their eight children, along with their extended family, were camped in an empty field relying on the charity of passersby.

The response to the Guardian story was immediate and overwhelming. Readers from the UK, North America and Europe contacted us with offers of help. Aijaz Ahmed from the Pakistani group save-humans.org had also offered immediate assistance.

The organisation, which describes itself as a group of Pakistani professionals who have "joined hands to serve humanity", immediately set about buying relief supplies. Today three members of the group rented a truck, loaded it with 500,000 Pakistani rupees (£3,800) of goods, including flour, rice, oil, lentils and milk, and headed north from Islamabad on a two-hour trek to Azakhel.

"The article compelled us to act," said Sufyan Kakakhel, 30, one of the three. "When I read that they were Afghans, I knew that they couldn't get rations from the government because they don't have Pakistani citizenship, and I didn't give a second thought about whether I should come here."

Dozens of men, women and children, many barefoot, rushed towards the vehicles as they stopped near their encampment. "We have brought you some things and are going to distribute them in a very peaceful way," Kakakhel told the crowd. "It will be ordered."

His colleague Abu Bakr Shoaib, a 30-year-old IT professional who works in Dubai but was in Pakistan for Ramadan, went tent to tent, notebook in hand, to record the number of men, women and children in each tent. Bearded men in round, flat caps thrust their small green Afghan identity cards in Shoaib's direction. "Don't worry, we're going to help everybody," he said.

Some 53 Afghan families are living by the railway track and the parallel pools of stagnant water that separate this makeshift tent city from the wasteland on the other side that was once the Azakhel Afghan refugee camp, home to 23,000 people. Now, it is just a pile of muddy rubble, broken timber and straw.

The two men promised to return with fumigation equipment to reduce the vast population of mosquitos and flies. They also promised to study ways to help the family rebuild their home across the railway tracks. Fatima kept her eye on the boiling pot perched on the campfire. She was smiling. Tonight, her children would have dhal for dinner.

To donate to the victims of the Pakistani floods contact the DEC on 0370 60 60 900 or dec.org.uk.

US college knocked off top spot for first time in seven years, while UK institutions 'struggle to compete on funding'

Both of them have earned fistfuls of Nobel prizes, have educated enough statesmen to table a string of international summits, and inspired eminent scientists, philosophers and poets.

But Harvard today forfeits first place to Cambridge in a league table of the world's top universities, the first time in the list's seven year history that the Ivy League institution has been knocked off the number one spot.

British universities made a strong showing, with University College London, Oxford and Imperial all appearing in the top 10, while King's College London and Edinburgh appeared in the top 25.

American institutions dominate the list, however, taking 31 out of the top 100 places in the QS world university rankings. The list also features 15 Asian universities, lead by the University of Hong Kong at 23. The QS table is based on measures of research quality, graduate employability, teaching and how international the faculties and student bodies are.

Harvard, which takes its name from John Harvard, an alumnus of Cambridge who was its first benefactor, was still most popular among the 5,000 employers polled worldwide.

However, Cambridge was voted best for research quality in a survey of 15,000 academics. It has an outstanding pedigree: famous minds who pushed back the frontiers of knowledge there include Newton, Darwin and Wittgenstein. Cambridge took overall first place in the rankings, which also use citation counts from a database of academic publishing.

Professor Steve Young, senior pro-vice-chancellor at the University of Cambridge, said: "While university league tables tend to over-simplify the range of achievements at institutions, it is particularly pleasing to note that the excellence of the transformative research – research that changes people's lives – carried out at Cambridge is so well regarded by fellow academics worldwide."

A Harvard spokesman said: "Harvard University is always honoured to be recognised among such high calibre institutions of higher learning. However, we also continue to believe it is important that students select the college or university that best suits their individual needs."

John O'Leary, executive member of the QS academic advisory board, blamed a hiring freeze for Harvard losing its top spot. "Cambridge has gone top because it has improved its citations. Harvard has taken more students and had a hiring freeze amongst its academics. That's the reason these two have swapped around."

The impressive showing of British and US universities is because English is the favoured language of academia, O'Leary said. "In general terms, UK universities, like American ones, benefit from being English-speaking. If you're publishing in a language most researchers aren't using, you're not going to be picked up and cited ... in the mainstream journals."

However, a report by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) released yesterday shows the UK lagging behind competitors in public investment in higher education. The sector is facing cuts of more than £1bn by the end of 2013. The share of public spending in British higher education is 0.7% of GDP, below the OECD average of 1%, and places Britain behind the US, Canada, Sweden, Germany, Poland and Slovenia.

Announcing the OECD's results in London, Andreas Schleicher, the head of its indicators and analysis division, said Finland, Canada and Japan were now major players in higher education. "For many years the UK was very much at the forefront," he said. "But now you do not see that competitive advantage."

The vice-chancellors' body, Universities UK, questioned how long the country's higher education system could maintain its world-class position in the field given its comparative "under-investment".

The Times Higher Education magazine, which is publishing its own global university rankings next week, is no longer collaborating with QS. It is concerned that the careers advice company's rankings rely too heavily on subjective surveys of scholars and employers, and not enough on hard indicators of excellence. The THE's rankings are expected to contain disappointing news for some prestigious British institutions.

Ben Sowter, head of research at QS, said: "Unlike other rankings systems which rely heavily on statistical indicators of university research, QS also takes into account the most up-to-date views of employers and academics, reflecting the broader interests of students and parents. QS rankings reflect the highly competitive environment of global higher education."

The QS rankings are weighted 40% to academic reputation, 10% to employability, 20% to citations, 20% to the staff-student ratio and give a further 10% weighting to how international the make-up of the faculty and student body is.

Dr Wendy Piatt, the director general of the Russell Group of research-intensive universities, which includes Oxford and Cambridge, said: "We are pleased these latest figures show that Russell Group universities still rank among the world's leading universities. However, two health warnings should be heeded. First, this latest league table, like all others, has its limitations and there can be no single correct way of measuring university performance or quality.

"Second, our world-class status is under threat from other countries who are ploughing billions into their top institutions in a determined bid to overtake the UK in the rankings. Data released by the OECD only yesterday shows once again that UK leading universities are already under-resourced in comparison with their international competitors. But now, while our competitors are investing in their future skills and knowledge base, UK universities are threatened with further cuts which will make it more difficult than ever to maintain their world-class status.

"Not only North America but, increasingly, countries like China and Korea are investing massively in their universities and as a result their best institutions are rising rapidly up international rankings."

How they compare

Cambridge

Founded in 1209 when scholars taking refuge from hostile townspeople in Oxford migrated to Cambridge. King Henry III took the scholars under his protection in 1231. Peterhouse, the first college, was set up by the Bishop of Ely in 1284.

Location Cambridge, England.

Famous alumni Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Milton, Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, Charles Babbage.

In numbers 11,815 students, including 1,257 from overseas, 1,590 academic staff.

Fees This year, the tuition fees for British and EU undergraduates are £3,290 a year on all courses.

Harvard

Founded in 1636 by a vote of the Great and General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the local legislature. Named after first benefactor John Harvard, a minister and Cambridge alumnus who bequeathed his library and half his estate to Harvard.

Location Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Famous alumni TS Eliot, John Updike, Barack Obama, John F Kennedy, Franklin Roosevelt, Alfred Kinsey, Robert Oppenheimer.

In numbers About 6,700 students at Harvard college, 2,100 faculty members and more than 10,000 academic appointments in affiliated teaching hospitals.

Fees For 2009-10, tuition fees were $33,696.

As a new book lays bare the inadequacies of the French education system, Emily Barr relives her own disastrous experience of trying to settle her son into a French primary school: 'I felt sick with recognition'

In his first year at his new primary school in Cornwall, my son Gabe gave a talk to the class about his experience the previous year at school in France. "The teacher shouted all the time," he informed his fellow pupils. "She wrote a 'naughty list' on the board. She waved a bamboo stick around. And the reading book was really boring." To emphasise his point, he ripped up a picture he had printed from the offending book and threw it into the air, concluding: "I like English school."

Seven years ago, James and I were thirtysomething backpackers with two small children, not quite ready to stop the adventures. We moved to France because, as a Tefl teacher and a writer, we could, uprooting a two-year-old and a tiny baby and taking them to live near Europe's best surf. We bought the regulation crumbling house and did it up. We spoke French, went to village functions and drove to the beach every weekend. When Gabe turned three, we sent him to the maternelle (nursery) section of the village school, where he settled happily and became bilingual. Many of our friends in Brighton were mired in panic about getting their children into the right schools, whereas everyone knew that the French education system was among the best in the world. It was academically rigorous, dependable, secular. We may have been slightly smug.

But five years later we returned to the UK, desperate to get our children into a good primary, to send them somewhere without a "get it right or you're rubbish" ethos. By that point, I only wanted Gabe to go to a school at which someone would notice or care whether the children were happy or not.

When I read the interviews that the journalist Peter Gumbel has given to promote his new book, On Achève Bien Les Ecoliers (They Shoot Schoolchildren, Don't They?), published this week in France, I felt sick with recognition. Gumbel is a journalist and lecturer at the elite Institut d'Etudes Politiques (better known as Sciences Po) in Paris, and he has two daughters in the French education system. His book lays bare the system's inadequacies. "French children . . . are more anxious and intimidated in school than their peers in Europe or other developed countries," he writes. "They're so terrified by the idea of making mistakes and being lambasted for them, that they'd rather keep their mouths shut than put their hands up." He found his children and his students stressed, ill and massively lacking in confidence.

I remembered the seven-year-old girl who was so scared of not progressing to the next class that she stopped eating. The 10-year-old who was put up a year because she was bright, and found herself in the first year of secondary school in a class with 14-year-old boys who had been kept back repeatedly and who were frustrated and aggressive.

However, this reality did not hit us for several years. Pre-school provision in France is second to none, and we managed to carry on being smug while Gabe, and his little brother, were happy at maternelle. The younger ones would spend much of the afternoon napping on camp beds. Lunch was a three-course meal, and the children danced, painted and played all day long, learned to write their names on squared paper and to count, but with very little pressure.

We moved to a different village an hour's drive away, for James's work, just as Gabe reached six. When we went to visit the new school, the head showed us around, on a day when no children were present. He seemed to be an "Etre et Avoir" kind of superman, running the school, teaching the last year of primary, and also – did he mention? – he was mayor of the village. Alarm bells should have rung, but I ignored them because I wanted it all to be wonderful.

When the new school year started, it did not take long for it all to fall catastrophically apart. Gabe's class teacher, whom we liked, left three days into the school year. She was replaced by a young supply teacher whose heart was not in the job and who had no idea how to teach.

On his first day, Gabe clung to me. On his second day, he clung harder. I waited for him to settle, but it got worse. He cast around for reasons not to go. He invented headaches, stomach ailments. I sometimes let him stay at home, but often sent him in because I had to work. Once or twice I peeled his arms off me and flung him at the teacher. Although he made friends quickly, and his teacher assured me he was doing well, it was heartbreaking, and I look back on this period now and feel I failed him.

School in France has no assembly, no school plays, no music, no clubs. There is a hastily thrown-together entertainment at Christmas. There is no pastoral care. Children go through the system and emerge with a body of knowledge, and everything else is down to the parents.

In CP (cours primaire, aged six), Gabe and his class sat at individual desks, copying handwriting from the board and taking dictation. They learned by rote, and every child in the class would read the same two pages of the reading book on the same day. Some would be bored and frustrated because it was too easy, others stressed because they didn't understand it. The teacher came down harshly on anyone who did not get to grips with the subject, or did not behave acceptably: there was always a "naughty list" on the board, never a "good list".

Victoria, an English woman with a French husband and two children, lives in north-east France, where her eldest child is at a bilingual secondary school. Her daughter "sees huge differences between her native English-speaking teachers, trained in the UK or US, and her 'normal' French teachers," says Victoria. "The former engage with the class, teach creatively, encourage discussion and mark positively, whereas the latter (with exceptions) tend to lecture rather than teach, and mark with terrifying harshness and negativity." Victoria's daughter cannot bring herself to ask if she does not understand something. "In the past we have encouraged her to speak up in class when she hasn't understood," she says, "but other pupils have been greeted with frosty sarcasm by some teachers and the ridicule of classmates, so she won't do it."

We had known for a long time that we were not going to stay in France for ever, but Gabe's unhappiness propelled us home sooner than we anticipated. Gabe and I came to Cornwall to look at schools. When we stepped into St Francis, his current school, his face lit up. The head showed us around, and I watched Gabe's eyes widen as he looked at the PE equipment, the art room, the playing field. Best of all, he plucked up the courage to tell her that he wanted to be a time lord when he grew up, and she said, "Oh good – can I be your assistant?" This is a school that has an overwhelming pastoral ethos, and is not all about the grades. It has a community choir and a vegetable garden. The school production of Alice in Wonderland was rehearsed to such a high standard that many of the children were performing like professionals. Gabe is happy, and there are no "boring" reading books.

That is not to say, of course, that the British system is perfect. There are good schools, and bad schools, and they are driven by the personality of the head. The unseemly scramble for places at desirable establishments would horrify French observers, and rightly so. As would the pretence at religion that goes on.

Dean Dorrell, a British man with a German wife and three French-educated children, also points out that, "One of the great advantages of the French system is the fact that there are basically no private schools. There is no 'them and us' attitude enforced from a young age, which I believe is endemic in the UK education system and translates into the class system that is still quite evident in UK society."

Now, if French schools could become less rigid, and if British schools could be more consistent, then we might all be on to something.

Promotion of investment arm's supremo to chief executive suggests sector is ignoring government pressure to reform

The business secretary, Vince Cable, today expressed concern that Bob Diamond's appointment as chief executive of Barclays showed the banking sector was not taking the threat of break-up seriously. Cable is overseeing an independent commission considering whether high street banks should be split off from their "casino" investment banking operations.

Sources close to the Liberal Democrat minister said he felt the move to install Diamond, a high-profile investment banker who has taken home £75m in the last five years, at the top of Barclays vindicated the government's decision to set up the commission, which is chaired by Sir John Vickers.

Although Diamond and other members of the Barclays board insisted that they were not pre-empting the outcome of the commission, due to report next year, the bank has previously warned that it is considering whether to move out of the UK because of the Vickers inquiry.

The 59-year-old American, who has been with Barclays for the last 14 years, was described as the "unacceptable face of banking" by Cable's predecessor, Lord Mandelson. He will replace the current chief executive, John Varley, at the end of March.

Tonight he said that although Barclays was committed to the so-called universal banking model – with investment and retail banking in one organisation – he was also "respectful" of the commission.

The commission, which includes a former Barclays chief executive, Martin Taylor, has met twice and later this month is expected to set out an "issues paper," which is intended to form the basis for hearings to be held in public and private about whether breaking up the banks would reduce the risk of another taxpayer bailout of the system.

The Lib Dems were vocal about the break-up of banks such as Barclays, HSBC and Royal Bank of Scotland before the election and the party's treasury spokesman, Lord Oakeshott, kept up the pressure. "Diamond, with his £20m bonuses, is the unacceptable face of this bonus-driven banking," Oakeshott said. "This highlights the need to break-up and de-risk the British banking system."

Meanwhile, HSBC also faced upheaval at the top, when the chairman, Stephen Green, was named by Cable as the next trade minister.

Green has also defended the universal banking model and only last week the head of HSBC's investment bank, Stuart Gulliver, warned that the bank might reconsider its London headquarters if the commission recommended a break-up.

Diamond's appointment prompted fury from union leaders, as the scale of the taxpayer bailout of the banking system has led to lengthening dole queues and severe cuts to public spending.

Paul Kenny, the GMB general secretary, said: "These are the bankers who caused the recession sticking two fingers up at the taxpayers who rescued them. This is about as insulting and divisive as it gets."

Although Barclays survived the banking crisis – sparked two years ago next week when Lehman Brothers collapsed – without direct injections of taxpayer cash, it has admitted it benefited from the general support provided to the sector from central bank liquidity.

The chancellor, George Osborne, was more conciliatory than the Lib Dems. He said he was looking forward to co-operating with the new Barclays chief and voiced scepticism about a "Robin Hood" tax on the big banks, saying that the "practicalities are enormous".

Speaking in Brussels after a meeting of EU finance ministers, Osborne said it was up to Barclays' shareholders to decide who should head the bank.

"I very much look forward to working with Bob Diamond on issues of mutual concern," Osborne said.

"I want London to be a competitive place to do business. I also want to make sure the British taxpayer is protected … from the systemic risk posed by the big banks."

Varley's departure and Green's resignation mean that in the two years since the banking crisis the bosses of all but two of Britain's big banks have been replaced – the exceptions being Peter Sands at Standard Chartered and Eric Daniels, at Lloyds.

Pete Hahn, a former investment banker lecturing in finance at Cass Business School, saw the appointment of Diamond as a challenge to the government: "Diamond has been promoted to stand his corner [against a break-up]."

Barclays' investment banking arm generated more than 80% of the £3.9bn profits the bank reported in the first six months of the year, prompting concern that Barclays had already become a full-blown investment bank after acquiring the Wall Street operations of Lehman a year ago.

The City has been rife with speculation that Barclays is considering splitting off its investment bank to be based in Wall Street, leaving its high street banking business to be based in the UK.

A major shareholder said that the banks' share price was being depressed by the universal business model. "It would be interesting to see what would happen if the investment bank was broken off. The market was never very keen on the valuation of its earnings." Another shareholder, however, insisted Barclays could not operate if it broke up its businesses.