Education

According to the university’s own statistics, Oxford is one of the worst places in the country to be a female student if you’re hoping for a First Class degree. In all three of Oxford’s academic divisions, men were more likely to get a First in 2013 than women: there was a gender gap of 5% in the humanities, 10% in mathematical, physical and life sciences and 8% in medical sciences. As a Historian, I’m 10% less likely to get a First than one of my male counterparts. Nationally, there’s virtually no discrepancy at all - in 2013, 18.3% of women got Firsts compared to 18.5% of men. But it’s odd that there’s any male bias at all, since girls have long been getting more top grades at A-Level. What it is about university that suits boys better?

I was delighted to read that my university is apparently over-generous when it comes to awarding top degree classes. Oxford is among 21 universities accused of grade inflation after a Higher Education Funding Council study found ‘significant unexplained variation’ in students’ likelihood of getting a First or Upper-Second. Alongside fellow culprits including Exeter, Brunel, Warwick and Newcastle, Oxford hands out more good degrees than A-Level grades and the university’s entry standards would lead you to predict. So am I on track to an effort-free First? Sadly not.

In news to warm Michael Gove’s heart, a new survey carried out by the Association of Teachers and Lecturers has found that children as young a four are now routinely finding themselves stuck at school for ten hours a day. Dropped off for breakfast at 8am and not picked up until 6pm, some primary school children never eat with their family during the week. About three-quarters of the 1,332 teachers who took part in the survey reported that families now spend less time together than they did five years ago. The Education Secretary’s dream of giving English school pupils some of the longest school days in Europe is on track for realisation. It’s goodbye to playing outside, daydreaming and homemade meals; hello homework club, forced collage-making and alphabetti spaghetti.

[audioplayer src="http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_10_April_2014_v4.mp3" title="James Delingpole and Peter Robins discuss the Vikings exhibition" startat=1656] Listen [/audioplayer]Have you managed to book tickets to the Viking exhibition at the British Museum yet? If you haven’t, my advice is: don’t bother. I know what the critics have been saying: that it’s an unmissable treat. But it’s only an unmissable treat if you visit under the privileged conditions of a previewing journalist. Go as an ordinary punter on the other hand — as the Delingpole family discovered to their cost last week — and you’ll find it about as much fun as being pillaged, raped and having your ribcage torn open to form a ‘spread eagle’.

It’s scarcely possible to open a newspaper or magazine these days without reading an article about how the latest technological gizmo has rendered traditional education obsolete. According to Justin Webb, a presenter on the Today programme, it’s no longer necessary to commit any facts to memory thanks to the never-ending miracle that is Google. ‘Knowing things is hopelessly 20th-century,’ he wrote in the Radio Times. ‘The reason is that everything you need to know — things you may previously have memorised from books — is (or soon will be) instantly available on a handheld device in your pocket.’ The same view was expressed by Ian Livingstone CBE, one of the pioneers of the UK games industry.

[audioplayer src="http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_27_March_2014.mp3" title="Liam Mullone and Freddy Gray debate whether it's a good idea to let children learn French" startat=1467] Listen [/audioplayer]My children won’t learn French. If their school tries to force the issue, I’ll fight tooth and nail. There’ll be the mother of all Agincourts before I let it happen. It’s not that I have any problem with the language, even though it has too many vowels and you have to say 99 as ‘four-twenty-ten-nine’, making it impossible (I imagine) to sing that song about red balloons. It’s just that I want my children to be successful, and learning French makes no business sense.

The press love a bit of Oxbridge competition, but Oxford is embroiled in a far older and more ruthless rivalry: town vs. gown. It was in a dispute between the university and city of Oxford that Cambridge University has its foundations. In 1209, according to Roger of Wendover’s chronicle, an Oxford liberal arts scholar accidentally killed a woman. The Mayor led a group of townspeople to the killer’s house, only to find that he had fled - instead, they seized the three innocent scholars with whom he rented the house and hanged them. Fearing future tyranny and terrified of their fellow citizens, an exodus of Oxonians left the dreaming spires for a provincial backwater on the river Cam.  History repeated itself in 1355. A pub fight escalated into the two-day Battle of St.

To start on a glamorous note: subsidised bus fares for those in full-time education outside London. I turned 16 in the same year my dad turned 60, and just as I had to pay full (and, in Oxford, whopping) bus fares, he got a free bus pass. At 16 you’re now obliged by law to be in full-time education, so it’s not possible to be earning as much as an adult - why should you pay as much? Public transport is a great thing for young people, enabling them to be independent in an environmentally and traffic-friendly way: let’s make it affordable.

[audioplayer src="http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_13_March_2014_v4.mp3" title="James Forsyth discusses Gove vs Boris" startat=722] Listen [/audioplayer]From the moment he took his job, Michael Gove knew that he would make energetic and determined enemies. The teachers’ unions, local councillors and even his own department all stood to lose from his reforms — and all could be expected to resist them. What the Education Secretary did not expect was hostile fire from those who should be his friends. At the start of the coalition, Gove and Nick Clegg were allies. With a moral passion rarely seen in British politics, they used to argue that social mobility should be the centrepiece of the government’s reform agenda.