Yesterday was the first day of the month in which children return to school after the summer holidays. (Cue for cheers or boos depending on age.) Along with the start of the new school year, yesterday also saw the launch of a new anti-faith school initiative. Named the Accord Coalition, what distinguishes this new organisation… [Read More]
Chris Heaton-Harris, Conservative MEP and member of the Audit Committee of the European Parliament, has published a ‘rough guide to the EU budget’. The brief guide tries to make sense of the draft budgets for both the European Commission and European Parliament in 2009 and queries how MEPs can be expected to ‘tame the beast’,… [Read More]
Dr Ruth Lupton of the Institute of Education has taken the Conservative’s recent education report, A Failed Generation, to task for using dodgy statistics to claim that the education gap between rich and poor has widened on New Labour’s watch. Her criticisms are powerful but not exactly an overwhelming indictment of the report. One of… [Read More]
To claim, as some leading Tories recently have, that ours is a broken society involves their making two tacit assertions. One is about human societies in general; the other about ours in particular.
Nicolas Sarkozy, President of France and current holder of the EU Presidency, is finally in the press for the right reasons. He was credited with ‘brokering’ a ceasefire between Russia and Georgia last week; a ceasefire which Russia seems to have no intention of honouring. Nevertheless, Sarkozy seems keen to capitalise on his role in… [Read More]
So much is wrong with the present state education system. Falling standards masked by ever-rising examination grades. Ever more ‘teaching to the test’ leading to an ever more constricted curriculum, and, in consequence, duller lessons. These in turn, perhaps, are a major contributory factor behind the very real recent large increase in bullying at school… [Read More]
The Register, the online IT magazine, has a detailed report on the case of John Pinnington, a deputy head teacher who was fired from his job when an enhanced criminal records background (CRB) check registered allegations of abuse, allegations that were demonstrably weak. Pinnington took his case for judicial review, arguing that mere accusations should… [Read More]
This morning on Radio 4’s Today, Barry Sheerman MP and the author Ian Rankin discussed the problem that one in five 14-year-old boys have reading ages below that expected of 11 year-olds. The discussion is well worth listening to but there are a few talking points worth tackling. The first is that, while the widening… [Read More]
This week has been the first week at secondary school for some – how will they have coped in a new secondary environment? Gathering from the an article in today’s Times Education Supplement magazine, many will find the adjustment hard. Why? Because of the large size of many secondaries. Statistics show that since 1997, the… [Read More]
Yesterday saw the publication of two conflicting accounts of how educational standards have fared under the present Labour administration. According to one account, standards had risen; according to the other, they had fallen. One account was that of Government ministers responsible for education. The other account was that of employers and university admissions tutors. Test… [Read More]