Schools
The fanatical thinking that’s on its way to British schools
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?
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
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’
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
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
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?
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?
Is it all right for the Muslim parents of children at British state schools to prevent their sons and daughters…
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…
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
Barometer
Name check 306 business people signed a letter to the Daily Telegraph saying that Britain would be better off outside…
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
Squire power The village of West Heslerton in Yorkshire was put up for sale at £20 million after its owner,…
Big heads
Private-school ‘superheads’ are wonderful for publicity.They may not be so good for teaching
A lesson in self-censorship
Surviving as a Tory teacher means keeping quiet
In defence of gender
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 other people like
A few months ago I received a call from someone running a small private school near New York. They believed…
Lessons in jargon
Schools are becoming addicted to acronyms. It’s not just silly, it’s dangerous
