Education
Wild Wild Country makes me want to set up my own cult
I have decided to set up a cult, which you are all welcome to join, especially those of you who…
Letters: the very belief that poorer pupils do less well is what limits them
Self-limiting beliefs Sir: As someone who spent much of his working life teaching at Eton and Harrow, it was amusing…
“I’ll eat you alive” – Angela Rayner interview
Angela Rayner is perhaps the only Labour MP who works with a picture of Theresa May hanging above her desk.…
As a trainee teacher, I saw the damage the SNP is inflicting on Scottish education
Once one of the best in the world, Scotland’s education system has been steadily marching backwards for the past ten…
Teach First has turned me into a free speech martyr
I had the unusual experience last Sunday of appearing on a panel to defend free speech having been the victim…
The kids aren’t all right
Our histrionic parenting is making today’s young people mad, unhappy and fat
Sadly, true grit can’t be taught
I am currently wrestling with a dilemma. I have agreed to contribute to a panel discussion on character education at…
Tales out of school
In 1952, the five-year-old Michael Rosen and his brother were taken on holiday along the Thames by their communist parents.…
Don’t let these figures depress you, girls
Are British teenagers suffering from an epidemic of mental illness? Yes, according to a ‘government-funded study’ which found that 24…
Hard lessons
George Tomlinson, the post-war education secretary, declared that politicians should leave exams to the teachers because ‘the minister knows nowt…
As easy as 1, 2, 3…
The amount of nonsense being talked about the new GCSEs in English and maths, whereby exams have been graded 9-1…
London calling
What is the Edinburgh Fringe? It’s a sabbatical, a pit stop, a pause-and-check-the-map opportunity for actors who don’t quite know…
Letters
Technical education Sir: I am grateful to Robert Tombs for highlighting the baleful use of ‘declinism’ as part of the…
Purge of the posh
Should employees be judged by their parents’ income?
The snowflake factory
We’re training our children to be thin-skinned, censorious and belligerently entitled
Diary
Why do we assume all doctors are good? We don’t think there are no bad cooks or bad plumbers. But…
Barometer
A man in full A relic said to contain a fragment of St Thomas à Becket’s elbow arrived from Hungary for…
An Oxford treasure trove
‘What distinguishes Cambridge from Oxford,’ wrote A.A. Milne in 1939, is that nobody who has been to Cambridge feels impelled…
Barometer
Name check 306 business people signed a letter to the Daily Telegraph saying that Britain would be better off outside…
Let’s make assisted dying legal for Brightonians
I am having terrible trouble with my hair at the moment. It is lank, flat and lifeless. There are split…
Middle-class warriors
Tuesday’s protest against Key Stage 1 Sats was moronic on so many levels that it’s hard to know where to…
Barometer
Getting a head Barack Obama dismissed Boris Johnson’s accusations that he shown disdain for Sir Winston Churchill by removing a bust…
The miracle of Michaela
It was like being on the set of an inspirational Hollywood film about a visionary teacher who transforms the lives…
Big heads
Private-school ‘superheads’ are wonderful for publicity.They may not be so good for teaching
Why I now believe in positive discrimination
The Prime Minister no doubt knew he would be fanning the flames when he waded into the argument about the…
