Schools

Why on earth did you do it?’ must be one of the most frequently posed questions to teenagers. The bright, ambitious boy standing before me is perplexed: prompted by a video clip online, he has liberally sprayed aerosol on his torso and then set fire to himself. There is a pause, then, ‘It seemed like a good idea at the time.’ In matters trivial, dramatic or, in this case, painful, teenagers seem to behave in bizarre ways. It is tempting for parents to believe that once our children reach adolescence somehow the huge gulf between childhood and adulthood has been bridged. We tend to believe that we are dealing with

In six months’ time, my son is due to attend an assessment day for a nursery. The details on the nursery’s website are deliberately sketchy — presumably to avoid parents coaching their children — but it seems to involve my son being observed while he plays and graded on the results of his burbling: it sounds very much like an interview. He is going to be two and a half. It is easy to be satirical about a child going for an interview at the age of two and a half — his PowerPoint skills are not up to it; we haven’t arranged a single internship for him; he doesn’t

King’s College London Mathematics School is precisely one year old. And on 13 August it woke up to AS-level results that make it one of the ten best state schools in the country. 97 per cent of students got an A in mathematics. 90 per cent of grades in maths and further maths were As. Students’ grades were, on average, two grades higher, across all their subjects, than would be expected from their GCSE results. As a governor, I bask in reflected glory. Ours is a ‘free school’ sponsored by King’s, and it teaches talented, committed 16- to 18-year-olds. We select for potential, using our own test. But we also

The success of school reform in Britain seem to be worrying the private schools’ spokesmen. They’ve taken the unusual step of releasing a statement in response to my Daily Telegraph column yesterday, where I show that the top state schools outperform top private schools in A-Level league tables. I’m not sure why they’re so upset; I didn’t have a word of criticism for private schools. I think their success is admirable. I just argued that there is, now, just as much excellence in the state sector – and I produced data to back this up. Barnaby Lenon, chairman, Independent Schools Council, didn’t seem to that one bit. He issued a statement with the catchy

A black head teacher told me a story of his early days at a failing inner-city school. The job was a thankless one and everybody was waiting anxiously for the arrival of the new ‘super-head’ (the school had gone through three leaders in two years). In the playground it was leaked that the new head was an old-school type from Jamaica. During his first encounter with the students, they asked him how many children he had. He told them he had one and that she lived with him and his wife. ‘No sir, how many do you have in Jamaica?’ they asked. He replied: ‘None.’ They jeered, ‘Oh sir you’re

Home At least 30 British people were among 38 shot dead at a beach resort at Sousse in Tunisia by Seifeddine Rezgui, aged 23, a Tunisian acting for the Islamic State and said to have been trained in Libya. Soldiers, emergency services and 1,000 police took part in a two-day exercise in London simulating a terrorist attack. A statutory obligation became binding on public bodies, including schools, to prevent people being drawn towards terrorism. Nicky Morgan, the Education Secretary, said that schools should look out for ‘homophobia’ as a symptom of Islamist jihadism. James Brokenshire, the Immigration Minister, said the National Barrier Asset (lengths of nine-foot fencing) would be deployed

Nicky Morgan is taking the fight against radicalisation into the classroom. On the Today programme, the Education Secretary outlined what her department is doing to support schools in tackling, what she called, this ‘very real threat’. The DfE will release new guidance for teachers today, offering ‘examples and support in how they might look for young people who are risk at radicalisation – perhaps changes of behaviour or things they might say’. But Morgan admitted there is a unclear line between what constitutes a ‘healthy debate’ and upholding ‘British values’: ‘Schools should be a safe space for young people to explore all sorts of ideas, but we have since last year been very clear that schools should also be teaching British