Schools

Thursday

The Spectator

Letters | 9 March 2017

On Scottish independence Sir: Alex Massie writes of the order permitting a second Scottish independence referendum: ‘Having granted such an order in 2014, it will be difficult to refuse Mrs Sturgeon’s demand for another’ (‘Back into battle’, 4 March). Surely that is precisely why Mrs May should refuse another? It was the SNP who described the 2014 vote as a chance in a lifetime. The only thing way in which Brexit could have changed matters is if it had been a fundamental and unforeseeable upset. Alex Massie, from this and his previous writings, clearly believes it was. But the Conservatives, at the time of the Scottish vote, had promised to

Thursday

Charles Moore

The Spectator’s Notes | 2 March 2017

Chief Constable Simon Bailey, who heads Operation Hydrant, the police investigation of ‘non-recent’ child abuse cases, now says that paedophiles who view images of child abuse should not be prosecuted, because police cannot cope with the numbers involved. Mr Bailey is wedded to the doctrine that someone who says he is an abuse victim must automatically be believed. The result, said Sir Richard Henriques in his scathing report on Operation Midland, is that the criminal justice system totters: ‘Chief Constable Bailey’s argument ignores the consequences of false terminology.’ Another consequence is that the child abuse statistics, unchecked, explode. Mr Bailey will not admit his error and so, in order to

Wednesday

Charles Moore

Is Michael Gove angling for a cabinet return?

I never expected to be writing the following, since Michael Gove is, to me, one of the few heroic figures in modern politics. But he did write a very strange column in the Times last week, inciting the government to ‘Put VAT on school fees and soak the rich’. He seems to be outraged that what he calls ‘the education of the children of plutocrats and oligarchs’ is a charitable activity. Private schools get rate rebates, VAT exemptions and free uniforms, weapons etc for their cadet forces, he says. This is ‘egregious state support’. He also mocks the many bursaries provided by public schools, on the grounds that these have

Thursday

The Spectator

Lost boys | 23 February 2017

For a body supposedly committed to eliminating inequality between the sexes, the Women and Equalities Select Committee don’t exactly lead from the front. Only three of the 11 members are men. To some, this will be a welcome corrective to the still male-dominated House of Commons. To others (such as Philip Davies, one of the three male members), it is a sign of how, in Westminster, the cause of equality is narrowly focused on the interests of white professional women. There is not a single ethnic minority representative on the committee. This week, committee chair Maria Miller announced her ‘deep disappointment’ that the government has not adopted their proposals on

Thursday

Toby Young

GCSEs and the arts of lobbying

For the past six years or so a variety of arts organisations have been campaigning against the English Baccalaureate, or the ‘EBacc’, as it’s known. To meet this standard, schoolchildren have to get grade C or above in seven GCSEs (Eng lang, Eng lit, maths, two sciences, a humanity and a foreign language) and, according to the campaigners, this means students have been turning away from arts GCSE subjects such as music, drama and dance. They claim that since the EBacc’s introduction by Michael Gove, arts education has been decimated. Now, I have some sympathy for the lobby groups making this argument. The first part of their case — that

Thursday

Toby Young

Rebel with a dodgy cause

I feel conflicted about Jon Platt, the parent at the centre of the court case about unauthorised school absences. On the one hand, there’s much to admire. When he was fined £120 by Isle of Wight Council for taking his daughter on a trip to Disneyland during term time, he decided to fight back. He got the decision overturned in magistrates’ court, the council appealed to the High Court, the lower court’s decision was upheld, and the council then appealed to the Supreme Court. Yet in spite of this gruelling legal process, Mr Platt hasn’t backed down. When interviewed on television, he seems genuinely angry about being told when he

Thursday

Simon Barnes

Save our stables!

There are plans in place to tax horses out of British life. Proposed adjustments in business rates for non–residential properties — increases of up to eight times — could make vast swaths of the horsey world unviable. Life will be tough for top-end enterprises like racing yards and stud farms; it will be the end for the many riding schools and livery yards that exist on the far edge of the possible. This is a disastrous way to carry on. The horsey life should have vast and sweeping tax exemption because it helps people to enjoy life more fully and to endure it more steadfastly. It keeps the blues away

Thursday

Toby Young

A myth that keeps growing and growing

I had lunch recently with an assistant head of a leading independent school and he told me about their ‘growth mindset’ work. He was excited about this and he’s by no means exceptional. Eton, Wellington and Stowe have all enthusiastically embraced it, as have thousands of state schools. Highgate Wood, a comprehensive in north London, says on its website that ‘growth mindset is the cornerstone of our learning ethos’. I hesitate to call growth mindset a ‘fad’ because that implies it lacks the imprimatur of academic respectability when the opposite is true. The term was coined by Carol Dweck, a professor of psychology at Stanford, who made a startling discovery

Thursday

Toby Young

A new path to the top of the teaching tree

A few months ago I joined forces with Sir Anthony Seldon, the vice-chancellor of Buckingham University, to run an idea up the flagpole. Why not make it possible for senior managers from outside the teaching profession to retrain as heads? Anthony, who was a successful head himself, is in the process of setting up the Buckingham Institute of School Leadership to train the heads of the future. He proposed creating a mid-career and late-career entry track into this programme so successful managers in their thirties, forties and fifties can retrain as school leaders. This idea was met with some scepticism by teachers and I can’t say I blame them. It

Thursday

Ysenda Maxtone Graham

Hope, fights and grammar schools

A typical Kentish town, with its grammar school at one end and its secondary school at the other, is a throwback to the Bad Old Days, or the Good Old Days, depending on what your views are on academically selective state education. If Theresa May’s plans go ahead, the whole country might look something like this. In my childhood home town of Sandwich, Kent, the two schools, Sir Roger Manwood’s grammar school and the Sandwich Technology School, have staggered going-home times to avoid the fights on the station platform that used to happen every afternoon. Their uniforms are tellingly different: the Manwood’s students wear smart blazers and ties, the Tech

Thursday

Toby Young

Sorry, Shami, but you’re wasting your money

I’ve been thinking about poor Shami Chakrabarti and the drubbing she’s suffered since it was revealed she’s sending her son to Dulwich College. She joins a long line of Labour hypocrites who are opposed to grammar schools but choose to send their own children to selective schools. The list includes Harold Wilson, James Callaghan, Tony Crosland, Polly Toynbee, Diane Abbott, Harriet Harman and Seumus Milne. My issue with these Labour grandees is not so much the double standards, although that does stick in the craw, obviously, but the stupidity. Why risk their political credibility and, for those that go private, beggar themselves, when there’s little reason to suppose that their

Monday

Rod Liddle

Shami Chakrabarti joins the ranks of lefty hypocrites

Congratulations to Shami – sorry Baroness! – Chakrabarti for joining the exciting, ever-growing pantheon of ultra-left wing metropolitan Labour hypocrites. Her dameship was appearing on the Godawful Peston on Sunday show. Asked why she opposed selection and grammar schools while at the same time sending her brat to the selective, £18,000 per year, Dulwich College, she said: ‘I live in a nice big house, and eat nice food, and my neighbours are homeless, and go to food banks. Des that make me a hypocrite, or does it make me someone who is trying to do best, not just for my own family, but for other people’s families too?’ Yes, of course

Thursday

Toby Young

What’s right about Momentum Kids

Forgive me if I don’t get too worked up about Momentum Kids. For those who haven’t been following Labour’s internal politics too closely, Momentum is a Trotskyist faction within the party that was instrumental in getting Jeremy Corbyn elected last year and, barring an upset, re-elected this weekend. Momentum claims the main purpose of its new kiddie wing, will cater to three-year-olds and upwards, is to offer childcare facilities to women so they can get more involved in campaigning. But it also acknowledges that Momentum Kids will play an ‘educational’ role. ‘Let’s create a space for questioning, curious children where we can listen to them and give them a voice,’

Yuan Ren

Importing the gentleman

 Beijing Gerard Manley Hopkins said that if the English had done nothing but ‘left the world the notion of a gentleman, they would have done a great service to mankind’. He was right. Yet in Britain today, you’re so very embarrassed by what we regard as your greatest single industry — turning out polished young people. Here in China, we look at the education statistics you view with horror — the ones that show how independent schools teach just 7 per cent of the population and yet their alumni account for 51 per cent of solicitors, 61 per cent of senior doctors, 67 per cent of Oscar winners and 74 per cent

Friday

Nick Hilton

Coffee House shots: Is Theresa May right to expand grammar schools?

With her first major speech since standing on the steps of No. 10, Theresa May has set out plans to radically reform the education system. Introduced by new Education Secretary Justine Greening, May outlined overhauls to the grammar school system, offering expansion to existing ones and giving state schools the opportunity to select. Her policy ambitions also touched on allowing faith schools to be filled entirely on grounds of religion. And she wants to make private schools justify their charitable status. But how revolutionary are these plans? And are selective schools really the way to go? On today’s edition of the Coffee House shots podcast, Fraser Nelson is joined by James Forsyth who says: ‘Following the reforms

Thursday

Laura Mcinerney

Technical hitch

Godwin’s law says that the longer an internet discussion continues, the more likely it is that a Nazism analogy will be used. Grammar school debates have their own law. At some point someone will say: ‘Grammars are fine, but do you also want more secondary moderns?’ It’s a fair point. At the height of their popularity, grammars gave an elite education to around 25 per cent of the population who passed the 11+ exam. Secondary moderns took in the remaining 75 per cent and typically struggled for it. Highly qualified teachers flock to schools with the smartest children. Poorer children, meanwhile, congregate in secondary moderns, and come with a higher

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Tory backbenchers toe the line on grammar schools – for now

There were two striking things about today’s urgent question on grammar schools. The first was that MPs were told far less by Education Secretary Justine Greening than the 1922 Committee of backbench Conservative MPs was told by the Prime Minister last night. As James revealed yesterday, Theresa May explained the policymaking process for new grammars to her MPs, but today Greening would merely say that: ‘We are looking at a range of options, and I expect any new proposals to focus on what we can do to help everyone go as far as their individual talents and capacity for hard work can take them. Education policy to that end will

Tom Goodenough Tom Goodenough

Theresa May’s grammar school plans provoke a mixed reaction

Theresa May has told Tory MPs she won’t ‘turn back the clock’ on grammar schools. But she also didn’t rule out some expansion in the system of selective schools. How those two thoughts reconcile with each together will become clearer when the Government reveals its plans for school reform soon (this being Theresa May, we won’t be expecting a running commentary). Yet even the scant details which have emerged so far have provoked a predictably mixed reaction. Shadow Education Secretary Angela Rayner said the plans were ‘shambolic’. You can listen to her criticism here: And Alan Milburn, who chairs the government’s social mobility commission, is perhaps the most outspoken voice this

Camilla Swift Camilla Swift

Editor’s Letter

In August the papers were full of smiling pupils clutching their exam results. Now we’re in September, when children and teenagers across the country are taking the next steps in their academic lives, be that starting school, switching to a new one, or moving on to university or college. Navigating today’s education system can be mind-bogglingly complex for parents, so I hope this magazine will help to stimulate debate and shed light on new developments. For this issue we have given Spectator Schools a light facelift, introducing some new columns. In Talking Heads we meet Keith Budge, headmaster of Bedales. And in My School Trip Katy Balls tells of her

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Out but not down

No group of the population voted to remain in the EU more enthusiastically than students. According to the polling organisation YouthSight, 85 per cent of them voted to remain, and among the 15 per cent who voted leave, 17 per cent say they now regret it. Moreover, the idea that students were too lazy or drunk to turn out to vote is a gross calumny on the young, according to the survey. It found that 87 per cent of eligible students turned out to vote — compared with 72 per cent of the general population. What it didn’t reveal is how many students voted more than once. My biggest shock