Education

Like most foreigners who move to Britain, I was struck when I first arrived by how much people worry about which school their children go to. Even couples who don’t have kids seem to fret about where to send them. But now, working in the field of education reform, it makes sense to me. The disparity between a bad state school and a good one is huge, which in turn produces an enormous difference to the life chances of children attending them. It’s linked to money. To get into the good state schools here, you need to afford to live next to them. And if you live in a sink

Every September teachers up and down the land welcome new classes of children. Each child they see in front of them is visibly unique and will present them with different challenges as the year progresses. Some will learn easily and well while others will find learning new skills difficult and need additional support. Some, especially the youngest ones, will need the adults in the classroom to help them with reading and numbers, others with concentrating and sitting still, and still others with making friends. Particularly vulnerable children may need help in all of these areas. Children differ and it is important therefore that schools provide equal but different opportunities for

I’m starting to get the impression that the Guardian isn’t very keen on Michael Gove, and may not give him the benefit of the doubt in their reporting. The latest offering was this, ‘Genetics outweighs teaching, Gove adviser tells his boss’, which was presumably designed to infuriate teachers, about an essay written by Dominic Cummings. This was followed up by a Polly Toynbee piece denying the role of hereditary factors in intelligence and claiming that it was all part of some government plan to keep the poor in their place. Others have waded in, raising the spectre of eugenics, and I imagine someone is right now composing a comment piece

When you started your first job, did you arrive on time on your first day? Did you come dressed in the right clothing, show willingness to help with any and every task, ask questions when they were necessary and take advice even if you privately disagreed? You might think such behaviour would be obvious, but plenty of employers say that today’s young people don’t have a clue what to expect when they join the working world. According to an OECD study published last week, there is a shrinking talent pool of skilled young people entering the UK workforce, while British young adults trail behind their international peers on numeracy and

The conference is over but the mystery continues: are the Tories trying to help hardworking people or hard-working people? This, I assure you, has been the talk of the town, which is covered in slogans about ‘hardworking people’. Mr Steerpike was unsure; so, having left his trusty copy of Chambers in London, he asked the education secretary, who he found skulking in the media centre after the PM’s speech, to adjudicate. Michael Gove was an unequivocal; an error had been made. ‘Austerity! We cannot even afford a hyphen,’ he quipped. Your correspondent thought that settled it. ‘You can trust Gove with spelling,’ he believed. But, alas, on returning home Mr S found that Chambers

When I took my O Levels in 1983, I was nervous enough taking each exam once. But this year, increasing numbers of teenagers will take their GCSE exams in the same subject more than once. Some took their maths GCSE more than seven times. Michael Gove will be familiar with this – he took his driving test seven times in total before he passed. Today, he needs to get a grip on multiple entry at GCSE. More and more pupils are sitting exams in the same subject with more than one exam board. Many are also being entered for alternative ‘IGCSEs’, originally designed for international students, alongside a GCSE in

In the modern political firmament, is there any creature more ridiculous than the agitating intern? Interns are rising up. These one-time coffee-makers have reimagined themselves as history-makers, fancying that they are latter-day Wilberforces striking a blow against the ‘internship slave trade’. They’re demanding back pay, retrospective remuneration for all that hard graft in air-conditioned offices with nothing but a usually paid-for Pret sandwich to sustain them. Groups such as Intern Aware, Internocracy and Interns Anonymous are rebelling against the ‘tyranny’ of unpaid or expenses-only internships. It’s naked exploitation to be asked to work for nowt, they claim. It’s ‘modern-day  slavery’, says the website of Interns Anonymous, driving the point home