Education

Wednesday

Toby Young

White working-class boys are being left behind

This week marks the fifth anniversary of the publication of the report of Lord Sewell’s Commission on Racial and Ethnic Disparities (CRED). In spite of a suitably diverse group of commissioners (or perhaps because of that), it refused to blame ‘systemic racism’ for the underachievement of certain ethnic minorities. It didn’t dismiss that hypothesis entirely, but concluded that other factors, particularly class, geography and family background, were more important. This analysis – supported by lots of data – did little to protect the commissioners from the fury of the woke left, who denounced them for ignoring historical injustices. Exhibit A in the report’s argument was the poor educational performance of

Wednesday

Lara Brown

The hidden truth about our failing universities

Is it worth going to university? Since 1999, when Tony Blair declared higher education the answer to all society’s problems, it has been a question Britain prefers not to ask. Every September, hundreds of thousands of school leavers pack their bags, wait for their maintenance loan to arrive and head off to their chosen city to drink, go clubbing and occasionally hand in an essay. Does this well-trodden path leave young people better off? It’s almost impossible to find out, not because the information isn’t available but because the government won’t let us see it. The Department for Education knows very well what graduates can expect when they start looking

Thursday

Lloyd Evans

My burning ambition for my old school

Every boy longs to see his school burn down and for me the dream came true twice. In February 1977, I was walking to Sunday Mass when I spotted a cluster of teachers at the school gates. The old Victorian hall had caught fire overnight and collapsed. I couldn’t believe it. This was my personal Towering Inferno and I’d missed the whole thing. In my mind’s eye I could see it all: the leaping flames, the burning joists, the black columns of ash rising over south London, and the thunderous roar as the roof crashed to the ground. Nothing was left but a few pathetic wisps of smoke rising from

Wednesday

Flora Watkins

A literary guide to how to pay your school fees

Another day, another report on how many children have had to leave their private schools, thanks to Labour’s VAT raid on fees. This particular survey, by wealth management firm, Saltus, found that almost one in ten parents have had to take their children out of the independent sector altogether while 65 per cent of those questioned admitted to making ‘significant changes’ to their circumstances to keep their children in private education.    When belts can only be tightened so far, parents need to get creative. Frankly, the only affordable ways of educating your children privately today are either: a) access to masses of inter-generational wealth (which presumably you don’t enjoy, or you wouldn’t have read this far) or b) being

Wednesday

Mary Wakefield

Screens in schools have been a catastrophic failure

About a decade ago, the people I dreaded meeting most at parties were the ed tech evangelists – men and women who lit up with zealous excitement about bringing screens into schools. If only every schoolchild had a laptop, they thought, then humanity could flourish, nurtured by the great river of the internet and by an exciting stream of educational apps. It was as if a school laptop was a Mary Poppins bag out of which whatever they most wanted was sure to appear. For the ed tech utopians of the right, what they dreamt of was a great stream of savvy little Einsteins, liberated from turgid teachers. For those

The Spectator

Letters: There’s no defending Robert Maxwell

Bring back wisdom Sir: Douglas Murray is right that reducing the educational attainment of politicians is not the answer to people’s demand for change (‘The perils of idiocracy’, 28 February). But we do have an educational divide driven by disrespect, which graduates have caused and need to fix. Historically, non-graduates associated those of higher education with values like wisdom, curiosity and insight, thereby qualifying educated people to fix complex problems and make big decisions affecting everyone else. Now, people see insufficient evidence of such qualities among those in charge. The less that higher education imparts genuine wisdom and expertise, the more it relies on looking down on ‘respectable’ people and

Wednesday

The Spectator

Who has been removed from the line of succession?

Out of line Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor may be removed from the line of succession. When was the last time this happened? — The Abdication Act of 1936 not only removed Edward VIII from the throne; it also removed his heirs from the line of succession. In the event, however, he didn’t have any. The last alteration to the line of succession came as a result of the Perth Agreement of 2011, when the prime ministers of the 16 Commonwealth realms agreed that in future females would be treated the same as males, and that the latter would not leap over the former as the then Prince Andrew had done when, on

Tuesday

Suzi Feay

Adventures in the City of Light: Rousseau’s Lost Children, by Gavin McCrea, reviewed

What biographer would pass up a time-travelling opportunity to meet their subject face to face? This novel’s protagonist, Gavin Mulvany, an academic specialising in Jean-Jacques Rousseau, is somehow able to slip back in time to 1777, a year before the fractious French writer died. He turns from irritating fan to close companion, accompanying Jean-Jacques on long philosophical rambles and coach journeys around Paris. They attend the premiere of Voltaire’s last play (as does Marie Antoinette), call on Benjamin Franklin and visit the Marquis de Sade in a lunatic asylum. Gavin’s long-delayed book about Rousseau is concerned to solve the puzzle of why a passionate theorist on children’s education could dispatch

Wednesday

Lara Brown

The Chinese takeover of Britain’s public schools

Roedean is now known as ‘Beijing High’. Cheltenham Ladies’ College is ‘Hong Kong College’. In the country’s most elite boarding schools, pupils say that they are one of just a handful of English children. Others note that Chinese has become the dominant language in hallways and dormitories. Many English parents can no longer afford a boarding school education for their children. And the pressure of recently introduced VAT on fees, as well as above-inflation rises year on year, means the number able to cough up will dwindle further. By contrast, China and Hong Kong’s growing economy and cultural obsession with education provides a surfeit of parents with the cash needed

John Campbell

The five Haldanean principles that could reshape Britain

If Reform get into government, there is one man they seem likely to turn to for guidance. He is an obscure figure, unknown to many, yet has acolytes across the political spectrum – from Dominic Cummings to Gordon Brown. His name is Richard Burdon Haldane and he died almost a century ago. It was recently reported in this magazine that Danny Kruger had been seen carrying ‘a well-thumbed copy’ of the most recent biography of Haldane. I wrote that book. In it, I describe how Haldane reshaped Britain in the early 20th century – and how, should others choose to follow his example, he might help to transform it again

Wednesday

Andrew Watts

The joyless reading app being forced on my son

It was only recently that I fully appreciated how the books I read as a child formed me. A pregnant friend asked me about my parenting philosophy and I realised it amounted to ensuring my son would survive a tour of Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. I never had the money of Veruca Salt’s daddy to indulge his every desire, but I came down hard on chewing gum, gorging on chocolate and, above all, staring at a screen.  Despite my son’s complaints that I was acting like a father from Victorian times, it seemed to have worked, and, as the Oompa–Loompas predicted, not being glued to a screen encouraged him to

Wednesday

James Heale

Labour’s next rebellion

When Bridget Phillipson arrived at the Department for Education, she knew which issue would define her tenure. Within days, she was facing dozens of new Labour MPs grilling her about how she planned to overhaul the system for special educational needs and disabilities (SEND). ‘From the outset we have gone out there to speak to the parliamentary Labour party,’ says an ally. ‘We know that this is a key postbag issue.’ Over the past ten years, the number of claims for special needs has exploded. A fifth of all children in England are now reported to have SEND; in Scotland, 43 per cent of pupils have some sort of additional

Friday

Kristina Murkett

In praise of learning German

The University of Nottingham, one of the most prestigious Russell Group universities, is preparing to close its languages department, as well as 48 undergraduate courses across music, nursing, agriculture, theology, microbiology and education. It seems strange that at an institution which claims to be a ‘global university without borders’, students will no longer be able to study French, German, Spanish, Chinese or Russian. My reaction to this news is one of head vs heart. My head tells me that in order to survive and provide high-quality education, universities need to be solvent, and so perhaps this is a pragmatic decision – a hard one, but one that reflects our hard times. 

Thursday

Andreas Roth

The catastrophic dumbing down of German education

German teachers are a privileged species. Most of us enjoy the status of a Beamter, a tenured civil servant. We can be dismissed only after a serious criminal conviction, we are exempt from social insurance contributions, and even our mortgage rates are lower. Such comfort discourages dissent. Yet, after more than 25 years as a pampered Beamter, I find myself overwhelmed, not by the teaching load or the students, but by the accelerating erosion of academic standards. Having taught English, history and Latin at four different Gymnasien, the equivalent of a grammar school, I have learned that challenging students is frowned upon by both bureaucrats and politicians. Nearly all my

Tuesday

Andrew Irwin

The pedant’s progress through history

No one likes a pedant. But over the past few millennia, people have shunned pedants, bores and know-it-alls for a wide range of different, often conflicting, reasons. They have been accused of obscuring the path to true philosophical knowledge and of putting learning on too high a pedestal; they’ve been regarded as unfit to be democratic leaders; too unskilled in the aristocratic virtues; too keen to rise above their natural class; and as stubborn impediments to a true comprehension of the divine. At times they’ve been deemed too unmanly and too feeble; at others, far too boorish, charmless, unable to think for themselves and probably horrible at parties. Arnoud S.Q.

Monday

Will Yates

How to make universities appeal to the working class

‘Long Eaton is dying a death. I was born and bred here, so I’ve seen it go downhill quite quickly. There’s not a lot here. We’ve got two supermarkets, bad road infrastructure, it’s dying.’ Listening to a mum from the outskirts of Nottingham describe her frustrations with her community in a recent focus group, the other participants, all local to the area, nodded along in agreement. The mood was one of resignation. All the members of this group had cast their vote for Labour in 2024 hoping to arrest the pervasive feeling of decline and decay this woman described. But barely a year into Labour’s term, and with things seeming

Wednesday

Michael Gove

BBC bias & Bridget ‘Philistine’s’ war on education

50 min listen

This week: a crisis at the BBC – and a crisis of standards in our schools. Following the shock resignations of Tim Davie and Deborah Turness, Michael and Maddie ask whether the corporation has finally been undone by its own bias, and discuss how it can correct the leftward lurch in its editorial line. Then: Labour’s new education reforms come under the microscope. As Ofsted scraps single-word judgements in favour of ‘report cards’, could this ‘definitive backward step’ result in a ‘dumbing down’ that will rob the next generation of rigour and ambition? And will ‘Bridget Philistine’s’ war on education undo the positive legacy of the Conservatives on education? And

Thursday

Theodore Dalrymple

The folly of psychology

A young Chinese girl, at school in an English-speaking country, approached me after I gave a talk at a conference and asked for my advice about what she should study. I knew nothing of her, except that she was pretty, with beautiful dark eyes, and was almost certainly of high intelligence. I was touched by her naive assumption that I would answer benevolently and in her best interests. It suggested that she had not yet encountered much of human malignity. ‘What are you interested in?’ I asked. ‘I was thinking of history and psychology.’ ‘Ah,’ I said, ‘definitely not psychology, at all costs not psychology.’ My answer emerged spontaneously, without

Thursday

The Spectator

The failure of Britain’s elite universities

Politicians, authors, priests and the occasional Spectator editor have all served as the Oxford Union’s president over its 200-year history. Few among them would know what to make of George Abaraonye. The debating society’s president-elect faces disciplinary proceedings for celebrating the killing of Charlie Kirk. Upon hearing of the conservative activist’s assassination – some four months after the pair had debated in person – Abaraonye posted ‘Charlie Kirk got shot loool’ on social media, along with other excited expletives in a WhatsApp group chat. He deleted the remarks but defended making them. Something is rotten in the state of Oxford when its chief debater celebrates the murder of a free

Thursday

Gus Carter

The false economy of cutting the Combined Cadet Force

What could be more fun for a 14-year-old boy than messing about in the woods with a gun? My school’s Combined Cadet Force offered precisely that, marching us through the Brecon Beacons and organising mock skirmishes with SA80 rifles (albeit using blanks). When we weren’t trying to shoot each other, we were fighting over OS maps and compasses, trying to find which bit of woodland we were supposed to be sleeping in. One group found a dead body on the side of a Welsh mountain. Another spent an evening drinking vodka and smoking cigarettes with a strange man in a caravan. At some point in the small hours, he got