How best to challenge the status quo? A week after an election result that surprised just about everyone, today’s best free thinkers descended on Church House, Westminster, to put forward their ideas to change the world.
As Jo Coburn took a night off from BBC politics to chair Spectator Event’s ‘5 ideas to change the world’ in association with Quilter Cheviot, the first speaker Toby Young spoke of his relief to be welcomed on a friendly footing by Coburn – rather than the Daily Politics interrogation he had become accustomed to.
Young’s big idea related to education. The associate editor of The Spectator – and cofounder of three free schools – said its charter schools that hold the secret sauce to successful education. He pointed to the success of ‘no excuses’ charter schools across the pond. These schools receive government funding but operate independently with a formal discipline system. Young said that studies proved that disadvantaged students at these schools, in cities like Boston and Chicago, do as well as their advantaged counterparts.
In the UK, the free school movement is beginning to show signs of the same level of success.
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