Education

Thursday

Toby Young

I’m working to make education fairer. But I’m still not sure what ‘fairer’ means

Civitas has just published an interesting book called The Ins and Outs of Selective Secondary Schools. Edited by Anastasia de Waal, it’s a collection of essays by the usual suspects in the never-ending argument about grammar schools. De Waal points out that the two sides have more in common than you’d think. In particular, they share a common goal, which is to sever the link between a child’s socio-economic status and attainment. In 2009, according to the OECD, the variance in the scores of British children in the Pisa international tests in maths, reading and science that could be explained by their backgrounds was 13.8 per cent. By this measure,

James Tooley

A lesson in bias on private schools

What’s wrong with low-cost education in poor countries? Quite a lot, you might think, if you read a new report from the Department for International Development. Low-cost private schools serve around 70 per cent of children in poor urban areas and nearly a third of rural children too. But the issue raises controversy among academics and experts, not least because it goes against 65 years of development dogma that the only way to help the poor is through government education, with big dollops of aid thrown in. Every aid agency and government has gone along with that. The only fly in the ointment is that poor parents disagree, which is

Thursday

The Spectator

James McAvoy is wrong – the arts are better off without subsidy

The season of cringe-making acceptance speeches at arts awards ceremonies is nearly over, thank heavens. But it hasn’t passed without a most fatuous contribution from James McAvoy as he accepted a nomination for best actor at the Olivier Awards this week. He should have stuck to sobbing and thanking his agent. Instead, he launched a feeble and trite attack on the government for supposedly thwarting social mobility by failing to fund the arts. According to McAvoy’s thesis, ‘Art is one the first things you take away from society if you want to keep [people] down.’ It’s true that several of the British stars in prominent recent films attended private schools

Emily Hill Emily Hill

The teachers who (quietly) miss Michael Gove

‘Michael Gove,’ the joke goes, ‘you either loathe him or hate him.’ According to one poll (by Ipsos Mori) the former education secretary is by far the most unpopular politician in Parliament, with a net likeability rating of minus 32. A video of him falling over has been watched 487,000 times on YouTube, you can buy crocheted pin cushions of his head for £25 and teaching groups loudly accuse him of ‘doing to children what Thatcher did to the miners’. So why does my mother love him? It’s pretty simple. She’s been a primary school teacher for more than 20 years, and she says her pupils are producing better work than

Daisy Dunn

Reading about your school is always a terrible idea

Tom Brown’s Schooldays is a depressing book. It’s hard to see why anyone would encourage their child to read it before starting school, particularly Rugby, where the story is set. Tom Brown’s peers stand in the window near the school gates, surveying the town as if they own it. They fight behind the chapel, where the masters cannot see them, and bully and fag, day and night. Writing in The Spectator in 1956, Richard Usborne, the great scholar of P.G. Wodehouse, cursed the novel for inspiring fear in young boys. A present from his father, he read it shortly before starting prep school and, needless to say, understood why he’d

Lydia Hansell

The rise of the ‘super-tutor’

‘Will Isis really use migrants as a weapon of mass destruction?’ asked one Common Entrance pupil in a tutoring session. Where such a profound question emerged from is anyone’s guess. Perhaps it was a cunning ruse to avoid analysing an especially tedious Wordsworth poem. But for a 13-year-old to feel comfortable enough to initiate a discussion about so politically sensitive a topic is becoming a rarity. We desperately encourage our children to ask such questions and then, when they do, tend to answer them with vague platitudes. It would be easy to blame ‘time-starved’ parents, or vilify the ‘pushy parent’ brigade stereotyped so brilliantly in Amy Chua’s Battle Hymn of

Constance Watson

The pros and cons of a computerised education

Is internet technology turning our brains to mush? For those born after 1990, it is a constant fear. Most of us struggle to read a poster, let alone a book. We’ve overstimulated our prefrontal cortexes to near death through incessant multi-screening. Our brains aren’t wired to do anything except be wired. But technology fans tell us to be positive. We should embrace the new world and its limitless possibility. In education, in particular, there is a sense of optimism. When I started secondary school at the turn of the millennium, we had just one interactive whiteboard. It immediately became the epicentre of the school. By the time I graduated from

Wednesday

Isabel Hardman

Do we really need more physics teachers?

The government has today announced a drive to get more physics and maths graduates into teaching. It’s a good idea, given the struggle that many headteachers report in recruiting teachers with those backgrounds. The package includes £15,000 for students to help with their university costs in return for them teaching for three years post-graduation; fast-track retraining for professionals already working in medicine and engineering; and one-to-one support for those who have already trained as teachers and are considering returning to the job. The reason it is becoming even more important to encourage more numerate people to become teachers is that by 2030, the science-based industries are expected to employ more than

Wednesday

Steerpike

Tories detect Alastair Campbell’s hand in latest education attacks on PM

Angry Conservative Party officials have hit back at attacks from the left on the education of the Prime Minister’s children. On Monday the PM’s spokesman claimed: ‘Like tens of thousands of other parents, the prime minister and Mrs Cameron expect to hear which secondary schools have offered a place to their daughter Nancy. If she gets more than one offer they will make a decision in due course.’ It is thought Nancy Cameron will attend a central London comprehensive, which would make Cameron the first Tory PM to send his child to a state comp. This has not stopped education campaigners weighing in. Fiona Millar, who lest we forget is Alastair Campbell’s partner,

Geoffrey Alderman

If ‘non-violent extremists’ can’t express their views at universities, where can they?

Last month, the government’s Counter-Terrorism & Security Bill became law. One provision is the legal obligation it places upon ‘specified authorities’ to ‘prevent people from being drawn into terrorism’. ‘Specified authorities’ includes universities, whose vice-chancellors made several interventions as the legislation made its way through Parliament. The Education (No.2) Act of 1996 places a duty on universities and colleges to ‘ensure that freedom of speech within the law is secured for members, students and employees of the establishment and for visiting speakers’. University professors (myself included) pointed out very publicly that the Counter-Terrorism Bill, as originally drafted, seemed not to take account of this obligation. We were grateful that the House of

Friday

James Tooley

E.G. West showed a way for ‘free schools’ to be truly free

Nicky Morgan, Secretary of State for Education, has announced the closure of the Durham Free School, following scandalously one-sided Ofsted reporting about the school.  Closure would lead to less choice for parents in disadvantaged ex-mining villages here in the north-east. Local Labour MP, Mrs Blackman-Woods, says that there are surplus places available, so no free schools are required. There are surplus places, but only in schools that are perceived by poor parents as undesirable, low in academic standards and rife with bullying. There are great schools in Durham too, but these are oversubscribed. ‘Distance-based’ admissions criteria mean they’re accessible mainly to the sons and daughters of those in the best postcodes,

Friday

Molly Guinness

The tragedy of these sex education plans is that five year olds might miss the joke

Most people look back fondly at their sex education classes, remembering the stammering, red faced teachers, the very silly jokes and the endless, irrepressible giggles. The real tragedy about this week’s proposals to teach five-year-olds about sex is that children that small may not see the funny side of it. Generations of policy makers, teachers and journalists have spent years agonising over the question, while generations of schoolchildren have spent the happy hours of the PSHE classes passing notes, thinking up absurd innuendoes and flirting outrageously, eyes shining with laughter. But perhaps the privilege of having whole lessons given over to such cheerful pastimes was only ever to be a

Thursday

Toby Young

Immigration, not money, will improve Scotland’s most deprived schools

I suppose we should be thankful that Nicola Sturgeon has acknowledged there’s a problem with Scotland’s public education system, even if she’s hit upon the wrong solution. Earlier this week, the First Minister announced that the Scottish -government would be trying out its version of ‘the London challenge’, a programme carried out by the last government, to address the chronic underachievement of Scotland’s most deprived children. In the past, the SNP has deflected criticisms of its education record by pointing out that Scottish 15-year-olds did marginally better than their English counterparts in the 2012 Pisa tests. But the difference between the two groups is minuscule and both have declined dramatically

Miles Goslett

The trouble with Kids Company

In 2006, when David Cameron was leader of the opposition, he made an infamous speech that is remembered as an exhortation to hug a hoodie. Feral youth, he said, should be helped rather than demonised. He was reaching towards what he hoped would be a new, ‘compassionate’ conservatism inspired in part by the charismatic social activist Camila Batmanghelidjh. She was the perfect lodestar for the young Tory leader. She began her drop-in centre — the Kids Company — in 1996 and within a few years, was helping thousands of disadvantaged inner-city children. She’s colourful, powerful but also a former Sherborne girl with whom Cameron and other members of the establishment

Friday

Dennis Sewell

Could this be the solution to the Durham Free School dilemma?

A highly respected academic has stepped forward pointing education ministers towards a potentially face-saving solution to the Durham Free School dilemma. James Tooley, professor of education policy at Newcastle University has written to schools minister Lord Nash with a proposal that he should become a governor of the school, bringing with him the expertise of other colleagues from the university’s education department to beef up DFS’s leadership and governance capacity. Campaigners hope the minister will re-think the decision to close the school if he can be persuaded the school now has the necessary skills and resources on hand to improve its performance. In his letter, Professor Tooley is also critical

Thursday

Steerpike

The Enigma Gove?

Chief Whip Michael Gove has given his first keynote speech since being politically assassinated last summer. Plucked from the frontline of reform, the former Education Secretary concluded his speech to Policy Exchange tonight, thus: ‘It is often the case in history that individuals fail to appreciate the stability, the security and the steady progress they enjoy until it’s gone. It’s often the case that effective democratic institutions and progressive reforming Governments are taken for granted until they are subject to mistaken change. It is, sadly, all too often the case in politics that the urge to criticise what is in front of us rather than appreciate the risks of the

James Forsyth James Forsyth

One of Gove’s most important education reforms is in danger

One of this week’s most important stories is tucked away in the Times’ Higher Education supplement today. It appears that one of Michael Gove’s most important reforms, putting universities—not Whitehall—in charge of A-levels, is being reversed. The article reports that the A Level Content Advisory Board (ALCAB), which was meant to check on A-levels annually, ‘is to be registered as a dormant company after it was informed by the Department for Education that it would not receive any more substantive work until at least 2017, when the first students will sit the reformed A-levels.’ Now, the Department for Education is claiming that the ALCAB has simply completed its work for the moment. A DfE spokesman

Wednesday

Isabel Hardman

Exclusive: Nicky Morgan to approve more than 50 new free schools

Nicky Morgan will announce more than 50 new free schools by the end of this month, Coffee House has learned. I understand that a protracted battle has been taking place in the Education department between the Lib Dems and the Tories, which has not been helped by a desire from some civil servants to slow down the announcement of the new schools. But I hear that Morgan has managed to secure funding from the Treasury for 54 new free schools, although fewer may appear on the approved list. Free schools are announced in three waves each year, and these 54 new free school approvals, if replicated in the second two

Dennis Sewell

Will Nicky Morgan admit she may have been wrong about Durham Free School?

The education secretary gave Durham Free School (DFS) until 3 February to make representations showing why it should not have its funding agreement ended. Nicky Morgan now has the school’s response: a detailed explanation of why the DfE’s threat to close the school is unfair, disproportionate and wrongheaded. The academy trust has also served notice that it may apply for judicial review.  A critique of Ofsted’s behaviour throughout this affair has also been drawn up, saying that the chief inspector, Sir Michael Wilshaw, may have misled a commons committee. When MPs raised concerns about Ofsted inspectors asking children inappropriate questions about what lesbians ‘did’ or whether they had ever felt they might

Monday

Fraser Nelson

Freezing the education budget won’t hurt pupils. Here’s why

David Cameron has today been refreshingly honest about his plans for school funding in England: budgets will be flat, which (when you factor in inflation) will mean a drop of 7 per cent over the next parliament. Cue much mockery from Labour. But what will this mean for the future of education quality? Not very much, if the experience of the Labour years is anything to go by. Under Blair and Brown, school spending more than doubled while England hurtled down the world education performance tables. So if doubling the budget didn’t help, then why should freezing it hurt? The strange thing about education is that it’s not so responsive to cash. A brilliant teacher