Schools
Textbook warfare
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…
Academic arguments
The teachers putting principles before children
The Wiki Man
Our local Sainsbury’s, though admirable in every other way, has a slightly inflated estimate of the disabled population of Seven-oaks,…
Learning on the job
Sir Tony Blair’s Tone-deaf suggestion that Stem subjects should dominate the curriculum of all schools would paradoxically take education back…
How to run a school
Taking a short break from persecuting Roman Catholic faith schools for ideological reasons, Ofsted has stuck the boot into the…
Quite an education
Ukrainian schools are starting to re-open, but will they be safe?
Grade expectations
When A-level results are published next week, we will find out if the government has made any progress in stemming…
Diary
It feels like the end, but we’ve been here before. The past months of Boris Johnson’s teetering administration have felt…
The courage of Katharine Birbalsingh
Five years ago, I put my friend Nell Butler in touch with Katharine Birbalsingh, Britain’s most outspoken headmistress. I was…
Carbon paper
The new GCSE in global warming
Keep the faith
Whatever advantages money may have brought Rishi Sunak as he rose to become Chancellor of the Exchequer, his wealth has…
Masks in schools: how convincing is the government’s evidence?
Why has the government changed its mind and asked children to wear masks in school? When Plan B was announced…
Virtue signalling is really status signalling
A £19,000-a-year London day school was in the news this week because it has started instructing its pupils about ‘white…
Letters
Out of practice Sir: GPs are not ‘hiding behind their telephones’ (Leading article, 4 September). In-person appointments are the core…
Lack of personality cult
How ‘Xi Jinping Thought’ took over China’s classrooms
Will Knowland, Eton and the problem with the teaching misconduct panel
When Eton master Will Knowland was sacked last year over anti-feminist views contained in a YouTube video which he refused…
When will exams get back to normal?
It wouldn’t be credible to say that this year’s A-Levels grades are comparable with 2019’s: almost 45 per cent of entries…
Letters
Treading the boards Sir: As a teacher, I was sorry Lloyd Evans did not include school productions in his excellent…
Teach first
Aswitch of personnel at the Department of Health this week has brought a welcome change in the government’s tone. No…
Dartington, the utopian experiment
I spent last weekend in south Devon at Dartington, the former estate of Dorothy and Leonard Elmhirst, and now a…
Teen spirit
Schools and the problem of ‘rape culture’
The facts about race and education
Judging from the reaction to last week’s Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities report, you’d think it had been written…
