Schools
Letters: The brilliant uselessness of art
Wonderfully useless Sir: Michael Simmons overlooks some scandalous examples of frivolous funding right under his nose (‘Waste land’, 15 February).…
Letters: The real value of independent schools
Strength of service Sir: Matthew Lynn and Steven Bailey (Letters, 1 February) are quite wrong to deplore the decline of…
What I learned from my meeting with the Education Secretary
Dear Secretary of State, thank you for meeting me and one of my deputies on Monday. You will have noticed…
What Bridget Phillipson has in common with Plato
One does not like to disagree with one’s editor, but while the image of Rome salting the earth of its…
Must try harder, Education Secretary
The headmaster of one of the best comprehensives in the country was once asked the following question by Tony Blair:…
The 38 candidates to be Oxford’s chancellor
Being Cambridge, I thank God that we have no nonsense about electing our chancellor. We have had a blameless, unchallenged…
Did Michael Gove mean what he said?
I thought the Spectator dinner for Michael Gove hosted by Fraser Nelson would be cancelled. To be clear, this wasn’t…
The ancients knew the value of practical education
The welfare state was designed to serve everyone’s needs. But those needs were defined by the state. So schools teach…
What are the most ‘unsettling’ artworks to hang in 10 Downing Street?
The art of politics Keir Starmer moved a portrait of Lady Thatcher from one room at 10 Downing Street to…
Why is no one marching against VAT on school fees?
How passively we respond to revelations of Labour’s real direction of travel. As millions of pensioners brace for the confiscation…
The real crisis in our school system
For years, each school in England has been put in one of four categories: ‘outstanding’, ‘good’, ‘requires improvement’ and ‘inadequate’.…
In defence of strict teachers
Labour have become alarmed by the strict, ‘cruel’ approach to discipline in schools and the rise in the number of…
The cult of Bedales
Another of my ageing Bedales school cohort has died and so there’s an ad hoc reunion in his honour at…
Letters: Why marriage matters
Pretender to the crown Sir: Kate Andrews combines detail and analysis with a sprinkling of satire to devastating effect in…
The vanity of Gavin Newsom
Not long before Joe Biden finally accepted defeat, Gavin Newsom, the 56-year-old governor of California, was on the stump for…
The intersectional feminist rewriting the national curriculum
The appointment of Becky Francis CBE to lead the Department for Education’s shake-up of the national curriculum is typical of…
Have you had the school gate VAT chat?
Another day closer to the general election and I’m at my daughter’s prep school in Oxfordshire. As has come to…
Labour’s plans to rewrite the National Curriculum
Michael Gove’s decision to stand down in this election was a reminder that the one really bright spot in the…
The triumph of Katharine Birbalsingh
There are two questions that need to be asked of any society: what is it that is going wrong; and…
Stop worrying if your child is a picky eater
One parent in our class WhatsApp chat raised a pressing concern: her daughter was coming home every day with a…
From ABC to AK-47: Russia’s new wartime curriculum
The Ukraine conflict has spread to Russia’s classrooms
The politics of exam results
August always means an anxious wait for results days, but this year pupils will be feeling particularly apprehensive. England’s exams…
Britain’s schools are facing an epidemic of bad behaviour
Something troubling is happening in Britain’s schools. This week, the government released its findings from the first national survey into pupil behaviour in…
Why are my son’s teachers putting abstract principles before children’s education?
The teachers putting principles before children
