Key Stage 2 results published yesterday by the government don’t stand up to scrutiny. Instead, teachers have been compelled to generate artificial results, at horrifying costs to pupils. Results released by the DCSF show that 80 per cent and 77 per cent of pupils have reached the government’s expected standard, Level 4, in literacy and… [Read More]
Cameron gave a much publicised – as well as much satirised by the newspapers’ cartoonists – speech on Tuesday. School discipline was the theme in, as the Times Education Supplement puts it, ‘a speech designed to appeal to traditional Tory values’. Appealing to Conservative values was something more than one commentator considered rather urgent, with… [Read More]
Reports released this week by the King’s Fund on Agenda for Change, by the
Passing a lesser-known London park this morning, it was pleasing to see a neat phalanx of young men raising the Union Jack – writes Peter Smith. Rather than joining their peers for a ‘night on the tiles’ to mark the end of school, these young men – teenage boys, if you will – are members… [Read More]
To mark next month’s sixtieth anniversary of the independence of India and Pakistan, earlier this month the BBC Asian Network commissioned a poll of 500 young British citizens of south Asian extraction, aged between 16 and 34. A control group was also polled about the same matters made up of 235 young whites of comparable… [Read More]
Although only just out of the spotlight of the endless reports on the recent ICG mandate (and no, this is not yet another spiel on the dry subject of the EU constitution), Jaroslaw Kaczynski’s nationalist Polish government is again railing against the rulings of EU authorities. While a dispute over the construction of a bypass… [Read More]
The call to scrap GCSE coursework takes on a new resonance in light of the most recent evidence. An investigation for BBC Radio Five Live, conducted by the Teacher Support Network, has shown that the pressures on schools to raise results has led to widespread cheating.
nhs, targets, theory x, theory y
The National Trust is to celebrate reaching a 3.5 million-membership landmark by changing its focus. No longer will it just look after the buildings and artefacts that constitute our national heritage. Now it will “advise people how to adapt their lifestyles to climate change and challenge government to be more ecologically aware.” How is it… [Read More]
‘The noble Lord Hannay … will understand better than most the importance of a united position around the UN principles. Our policy has not changed. We expect Hamas to adhere to the principles set by the Quartet in January 2006. These are to renounce violence, recognise Israel and accept all previous agreements and obligations, as… [Read More]