Professor Julian Le Grand has a radical strategy for tackling the supposed problems of ill health in the UK: smoking permits (which might require a doctor’s note), an ‘exercise hour’ for company employees, a ban on additional salt in foods, more free fruit in general and more stern notes sent to the homes of children… [Read More]
In quest of Muslim votes, David Cameron has turned for policy advice to a group of Muslim party members known as the Conservative Muslim Forum (CMF). Last week, that group gave David Cameron the benefit of its collective wisdom on what policies his party should adopt to make itself of greater appeal to Muslim voters.… [Read More]
Now that the EU Reform Treaty has been agreed by the member states, speculation has turned to who will be appointed the first permanent “President of Europe”, writes Cem Suleyman. The Reform Treaty proposes that the President of the European Council replaces the existing six month rotating presidency. The President of the European Council will… [Read More]
The frustrations of being a teacher in the state sector are neatly encapsulated in the pages of today’s Times Education Supplement (TES). There is the usual medley of difficulties faced daily in schools: the weekly discussion about issues with testing and exam arrangements, the independence of schools jeopardised by central control and of course the… [Read More]
One of Lord Darzi’s key recommendations in his interim report released today is the creation of a Health Innovation Unit – with a budget of £100m ‘to help the NHS develop and deploy hi-tech health care such as medical devices and diagnostics’. But it is wholly unclear that a new central body is what is… [Read More]
Civitas has marked the start of Children’s Book Week (www.booktrusted.co.uk/cbw/) by making available for the first time in a commercial edition a phonics-based reading course that has achieved sensational results with children from all backgrounds, including the most deprived. Irina Tyk wrote The Butterfly Book in 1993 to make available to other teachers and parents… [Read More]
‘Blackburn, in common with many northern towns, is experiencing a huge upsurge in pimping, and it is an unpalatable truth … that many of the newest wave of pimps come from within the Asian community.’ So claimed a truly stomach-churning report in last week’s Sunday Times. The report exposed the large scale of organised sex… [Read More]
In August we published a report questioning the value of higher national achievement at A-level. We were interested in examining whether yet another year of rising grades were a useful indicator of achievement and in particular, how these record grades were being obtained. One of the main ways that A-level grades have been increased has… [Read More]
The ambiguous messages coming out of the government on the NHS have the potential to be highly damaging. Happily munching my cereal yesterday morning, the Today programme introduced a discussion with the Health Secretary, Alan Johnson, and I confess my initial reaction was, oh no, ‘here we go again’. But, while there was the compulsory… [Read More]
Ed Balls, Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families has just announced that the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority will be overhauled into an independent watchdog equivalent to the Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of England or the Food Standards Agency. This rather raises the question of what exactly the QCA is at the… [Read More]