Schools

A badly missed opportunity: How the Middle Classes Ruined Britain reviewed

27 July 2019 9:00 am

BBC2’s How the Middle Classes Ruined Britain (Tuesday) began rather promisingly. ‘I’m a working-class comedian who voted Leave,’ announced presenter…

Scotland and Wales have much to learn from England’s education reforms

6 July 2019 9:00 am

I’ve contributed a chapter to an education book published this week by the Institute of Economic Affairs. I was asked…

The in-tray of horrors that Theresa May has left for her successor

8 June 2019 9:00 am

‘Dear Chief Secretary, I’m afraid there is no money. Kind regards — and good luck!’ Liam Byrne will forever be…

How many people make it up Everest?

1 June 2019 9:00 am

Tears for fears Theresa May welled up while announcing her resignation in Downing Street. How often do leaders cry? —…

The fanatical thinking that’s on its way to British schools

1 June 2019 9:00 am

For anyone who isn’t following the long march of racial self-flagellation through America’s institutions, last week’s revelations about the excesses…

Can you really teach students to solve knife crime?

9 March 2019 9:00 am

Next year the London Interdisciplinary School (LIS) will offer one degree, in design, technology and the humanities, to teach students…

In defence of a liberal education

9 March 2019 9:00 am

A good decade or so ago I wrote a fairly vituperative article in response to a piece by the writer…

Letters: the history of centrist parties does not bode well for the ‘breakaway seven’

23 February 2019 9:00 am

The breakaway seven Sir: ‘In both parties there are fools at one end and crackpots at the other, but the…

An inconvenient truth: white children are underperforming everyone else in UK schools

2 February 2019 9:00 am

The Department for Education (DfE) published its finalised data on the 2018 GCSE results last week, revealing that, for the…

Letters: Brexit’s impact on the Irish border issue has been flagged up all along

1 December 2018 9:00 am

The Irish border Sir: Contrary to the assertion that the Irish border ‘only hit the headlines’ after Leo Varadkar became…

Why are the middle classes so obsessed with schools?

24 November 2018 9:00 am

One thing I love about my adopted country is the widespread cultural contempt for dullness. Unlike North Americans, intelligent British…

Is it ok for Muslim parents to stop their kids having non-Muslim pals?

16 June 2018 9:00 am

Is it all right for the Muslim parents of children at British state schools to prevent their sons and daughters…

aption: Old age has its pitfalls – but it isn’t without its joys (Photo: Getty)

In my illness and old age, children give me hope

2 June 2018 9:00 am

By 74 it is easy to feel that you have seen it all, done it all, that nothing much surprises…

Genetics and the truth about private schools

31 March 2018 9:00 am

A paper published last week in an academic journal called npj Science of Learning attracted an unusual amount of press…

World Book Day is here again. God help us

3 March 2018 9:00 am

For parents of primary school children, the first Thursday in March has got to be the worst day of the…

“I’ll eat you alive” – Angela Rayner interview

6 January 2018 9:00 am

Angela Rayner is perhaps the only Labour MP who works with a picture of Theresa May hanging above her desk.…

Sadly, true grit can’t be taught

21 October 2017 9:00 am

I am currently wrestling with a dilemma. I have agreed to contribute to a panel discussion on character education at…

Hard lessons

26 August 2017 9:00 am

George Tomlinson, the post-war education secretary, declared that politicians should leave exams to the teachers because ‘the minister knows nowt…

Parents, not schools, are key to the knowledge gap

5 August 2017 9:00 am

The Education Policy Institute (EPI) has just published a report looking at the attainment gap between disadvantaged and non-disadvantaged 16-year-olds…

Cameron's sinister purge of the posh

4 June 2016 9:00 am

Should employees be judged by their parents’ income?

Generation Snowflake: how we train our kids to be censorious cry-babies

4 June 2016 9:00 am

We’re training our children to be thin-skinned, censorious and belligerently entitled

300 signatures can be wrong. How about 2 million?

21 May 2016 9:00 am

Name check 306 business people signed a letter to the Daily Telegraph saying that Britain would be better off outside…

If the Sats-strike parents get their way only the poorer kids will suffer

7 May 2016 9:00 am

Tuesday’s protest against Key Stage 1 Sats was moronic on so many levels that it’s hard to know where to…

West Heslerton and other villages with one careful owner

9 April 2016 9:00 am

Squire power The village of West Heslerton in Yorkshire was put up for sale at £20 million after its owner,…

Private-school ‘superheads’ are a publicity-seeking waste of time

20 February 2016 9:00 am

Private-school ‘superheads’ are wonderful for publicity.They may not be so good for teaching