Schools

As metaphors go, calling the alleged plot to take over schools in Birmingham a ‘Trojan Horse’ is a pretty powerful one. This allegedly was a devious attempt by a group of extremists to invade a protected space, ousting headteachers, making false allegations against staff and employing dirty tricks with the aim of imposing a fundamentaist Islamic ideology. I agree with David Cameron when he states: ‘…the issue of alleged Islamic extremism in Birmingham schools demands a robust response.’  So how should we respond? In 2011 I was privileged to chair the independent review into teacher standards, a document that details the minimum requirements for teachers’ practice and conduct.  As part

Do we need to take more action to tackle the Islamist threat in British schools? On this week’s View from 22 podcast, The Spectator’s Douglas Murray and Matthew Parris debate this week’s cover feature on whether the Birmingham ‘Trojan Horse plot’ is the results of years of weak policy and inaction. Should we wait until there is more concrete proof before taking drastic actions? Is the promotion of British values the right solution, and how can the government go about defining and teaching these values? James Forsyth and Isabel Hardman also discuss how the West Lothian Question will be addressed at the next election. Where do all of the parties

Following Freddy Gray’s piece yesterday about the pundits’ efforts to exploit the ‘Trojan Horse’ affair in order discredit ‘faith’ schools, I thought you might be interested in the statement below, from the Catholic Education Service, which pretty well sums up the argument. One person the CES may have in its sights when it talks about the charge of indoctrination is the former Education Secretary, David Blunkett, who observed yesterday that: there was a ‘muddle’ in the heart of government when it comes to religious schooling. ‘Our society does need an open, liberal — small ‘l’ — curriculum that embraces all faiths and no faiths, and teaches children to think for

Liberal secularists don’t like faith schools. Obviously. When confronted with stories of Islamists overtaking state schools in Birmingham, they have no difficulty diagnosing the problem. It’s not an Islam issue, or an extremism issue — it’s faith schools. Faith schooling is where the rot starts, even if these Islamified academies are not actually faith schools. We should therefore oppose all state funding for faith-based education. Catherine Bennett said as much in the Guardian, and lots of social media types seem to agree. Dan Hodges of the Telegraph this morning tweeted: ‘All faith schools are Trojan horses. We need faith based education like we need a hole in the head.’ It

If you want to meet the business leaders of the future, visit a school. The children in classrooms today are the inventors, makers and entrepreneurs of decades to come. If we give them the education they need, that is. Businesses’ demand for skilled people keeps on growing. The world economy is changing, and it rewards the highly skilled as never before. There are huge opportunities for young people who leave school confident about their choices in the adult world. But at the moment, too many are leaving school without the right knowledge or skills to take advantage of those opportunities. Today I will be speaking at SUMMIT: The Future of

Fifteen years ago, Sugata Mitra, a scientist from Calcutta, conceived of an interesting experiment. He went to a slum in Delhi, installed a computer into a public wall in the manner of a cash machine, then he waited to see what would happen. As he had expected, the local children crowded round and began to experiment — but what he had not expected was how very quickly the kids mastered the basics of computing and began to search the internet for new areas of study. Professor Mitra was astonished by how fast the kids learnt, especially given that they hardly spoke English. But as he observed the group, he realised

Home David Cameron, the Prime Minister, appeared in public with George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer — the first time they had been photographed as a couple for four years — to draw attention to infrastructure projects. Mr Cameron mentioned in an article for the Church Times that Britain is a Christian country, which made 55 celebrity atheists write to the Daily Telegraph to deny it. A new Family Court came into being, committed to resolving within 26 weeks cases about the care of children, rather than the average of 56 weeks recorded in 2011. Steve Webb, the Liberal Democrat pensions minister, said that the government could help people

I was delighted to read that my university is apparently over-generous when it comes to awarding top degree classes. Oxford is among 21 universities accused of grade inflation after a Higher Education Funding Council study found ‘significant unexplained variation’ in students’ likelihood of getting a First or Upper-Second. Alongside fellow culprits including Exeter, Brunel, Warwick and Newcastle, Oxford hands out more good degrees than A-Level grades and the university’s entry standards would lead you to predict. So am I on track to an effort-free First? Sadly not. No one would ever accuse a primary school of grade inflation if their cohort of socio-economically disadvantaged five-year-olds went on to receive top marks

In news to warm Michael Gove’s heart, a new survey carried out by the Association of Teachers and Lecturers has found that children as young a four are now routinely finding themselves stuck at school for ten hours a day. Dropped off for breakfast at 8am and not picked up until 6pm, some primary school children never eat with their family during the week. About three-quarters of the 1,332 teachers who took part in the survey reported that families now spend less time together than they did five years ago. The Education Secretary’s dream of giving English school pupils some of the longest school days in Europe is on track

There is a beautiful symmetry to all things, I think, and probably related somehow to the concept of karma. Only two weeks ago, a bunch of researchers at Durham University came up with a report which insisted that dyslexia is a meaningless term. You and I know that, of course, but we dare not say so in public. For decades now dyslexia has been the crutch upon which middle-class parents support themselves when they discover that their children — Oliver, eight, and Poppy, ten — are actually denser than a ton of highly enriched uranium, contrary to their expectations. The fact that these kids cannot spell their own names is