Schools
In my illness and old age, children give me hope
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
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
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
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
I am currently wrestling with a dilemma. I have agreed to contribute to a panel discussion on character education at…
Hard lessons
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
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
Should employees be judged by their parents’ income?
If the Sats-strike parents get their way only the poorer kids will suffer
Tuesday’s protest against Key Stage 1 Sats was moronic on so many levels that it’s hard to know where to…
Private-school ‘superheads’ are a publicity-seeking waste of time
Private-school ‘superheads’ are wonderful for publicity.They may not be so good for teaching
To survive as a Tory teacher, you have to keep quiet
Surviving as a Tory teacher means keeping quiet
It’s dangerous and wrong to tell all children they’re ‘gender fluid’
Children are not all ‘gender fluid’. It’s dangerous and wrong to try to persuade them that they are
Q: What is a good school? A: One that everybody else likes
A few months ago I received a call from someone running a small private school near New York. They believed…
How education jargon hurts children
Schools are becoming addicted to acronyms. It’s not just silly, it’s dangerous
There’s too much bunkum talked about the arts and education
At the last minute, a friend invited me to a ‘Distinguished Speakers Dinner’ at the Oxford and Cambridge Club earlier…
Nicky Morgan's pitch for the Tory leadership
Education Secretary Nicky Morgan thinks a woman should run to be the next Tory leader
At age two, my August-born son is already being marked out for failure
My August-born toddler is being marked out for failure – thank God the rules are changing
What I’ve learned helping to found a specialist free school
Lessons from the first year of our specialist maths school
The lessons of exam results season (and what to do about them)
Every year without fail, as the trees start thinking about losing their leaves, the papers are full of the same…
The best way to end the ‘poshness test’
There’s a warning buried in the detail of the new report by the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission on…