In his last budget, Gordon Brown pledged to increase public expenditure so as to bring funding per child in state schools into line with the average costs per child in the independent sector. This move would involve increasing annual state spending per child from £5,000 to £8,000. According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, to… [Read More]
The European Court of Auditors have, for the twelfth year running, refused to sign off EU accounts. The Court did, this time around, certify administration, development and some agricultural spending, but found errors elsewhere accounting for around two-thirds of the EU’s £70bn budget. Most significantly the Court found that the EU Commission still has inadequate… [Read More]
Criticism about the education system has been coming in hard and fast for much of New Labour’s time in power – particularly as Blair’s term comes to an end. However, over the last few days the curriculum has received a critical double-whammy. On Friday, new research confirmed what has already been confirmed by a plethora… [Read More]
Incensed no arrests followed a demonstration that took place last year in London against the Danish cartoons of Mohammed, despite one demonstrator having worn a suicide-belt and others having displayed banners calling for the killing of those who insult their prophet, a 35 year old man from Aberporth draped over his garden-fence a sheet on… [Read More]
‘Young minds are free from prejudice and discrimination, so schools are in a unique position to prevent social division. Schools should cross ethnic and religious boundaries, and certainly not increase them, or exacerbate difficulties in sensitive areas.’ Thus argues Education Secretary Alan Johnson, reportedly, in favour of what is widely expected about to become a… [Read More]
Yesterday’s Telegraph carried a frank and unequivocal comment article by the Labour MP and sometime Foreign Office minister Denis MacShane. MacShane says that while Britain’s politicians have been sedated by the opium of multiculturalism and political correctness, radical Islam has been spreading in our midst. He is damning of a leftwing that has aligned itself… [Read More]
An enlightening publication released today by the Centre for European Reform (CER) heavily criticises the EU’s flailing attempts through the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) to advance democracy in the Middle East and North Africa. The ENP, through MEDA (for Mediterranean neighbours), offers greater integration into the EU’s single market and financial assistance in return for,… [Read More]
Following on from the National Audit Office’s conclusions that 13 per cent of the population are being failed by poor schools and preceding a report from the Public Accounts Committee warning the government about the impact of poorly-performing schools, the front of Friday’s Times Education Supplement reported the headline ‘No need to read books: Pupils… [Read More]
For requesting to be transferred to another discussion group because unable to understand the Urdu being spoken in the one in which she had been placed, all its others members being Asian and, with one exception, unable to speak English, a fourteen year old pupil at a school in Worsely, Greater Manchester, was, according to… [Read More]
Well, I never. What’s going on?– to borrow the title of Marvin Gaye’s illustrious soul ballad. You wait forever for a New Labour minister to say something moderately critical about the intransigence of some British Muslims, and then, blow me, in the space of a week no fewer than three of them show up doing… [Read More]