Education

Peering over my son’s shoulder as he forced himself through a pile of practice IGCSE maths papers in readiness for this week’s exams, I was shocked both by the absence of pounds sterling and by the ardently international imaginary first names dreamed up by the question-setters. That ‘I’ stands for ‘international’ — and goodness, you’re not allowed to forget it. ‘Nyali paid $62 for a bicycle.’ ‘Alejandro goes to Europe for a holiday. He changes 500 pesos into euros at an exchange rate of…’ ‘Abdul invested $240…’ ‘At 05 06 Mr Ho bought 850 fish at a market for $2.62 each…’ ‘On 1 January 2000 Ashraf was x years old.

I like to tease my friend Wei about being a tiger mother. She once told me of an incident where her daughter Shu was making an artwork for a friend as a birthday present. Shu doodled for a few minutes, then showed her mother a sketch of a funny face. ‘I told her to knuckle down, spend more time, and come back with a far better drawing,’ said Wei. ‘It just wasn’t good enough.’ I said that was a bit harsh on her eight-year-old, especially since it was not schoolwork but part of Shu’s leisure time. Wei snorted. ‘It was a gift for her best mate, yet she hadn’t put

The combined endowments of the three top US universities alone is more than Britain’s entire defence budget. Luckily the risk of American invasion is still one of graduate students seeking a cheaper option, with old-world charm and brand name. But the days of Oxbridge and the Russell Group holding ranks with the ‘new money’ Ivy League are numbered. Not just because more money funds more, and better, research. But because US universities also use that money to do a better job finding, investing in and nurturing potential – potential often still excluded in the UK. They show that excellence need not mean elitism, and that’s a lesson the British academe

One of the better policies of this government is its offering massive databases up for public scrutiny. Sunlight is the best disinfectant, argues David Cameron, and outsiders can scrutinise what the government is doing and point to flaws. With commendable openness the Department for Education asked Deloitte to look at its massive pupil database last year, which has records on half a million kids factoring in exam results, postcode, ethnicity and poverty. And also the bizarre variation in English spending-per-pupil figures which vary from £4,500 to £10,000 per pupil (odd, given that teachers operate on national pay bargaining). Crucially, Deloitte was also asked to look at spending. The coalition is

James is 15 years old, coming up to his GCSEs; and the researcher he is talking to is clueless about girls. Yes, he tells her, girls at his school, underage girls, do indeed have sex. With guys in their class, like him. The researcher is surprised. Haven’t girls gone studious; aren’t they collecting the top grades, leaving the boys behind? James states the obvious. ‘It’s not girls with As or A*s,’ he explains. ‘Girls with As are virgins.’ Today, almost a quarter of girls report having underage sex. But there are almost as many girls waiting till they’re 20 or more. This isn’t random, a question of whether and when

There’s an interesting battle shaping up on university campuses over Islamic societies segregating their events. Today’s Guardian highlights the most recent example of this at the University of Leicester where men and women were directed to separate entrances for a lecture entitled ‘Does God exist?’ The speaker, Hamza Tzortis, is a member of the Islamic Education and Research Academy, a group which was itself banned from UCL last month after trying to segregate an event. This trend of segregating events in this country is a bizarre one. Even at Islam’s most holy site, the Grand Mosque in Makkah, entrances are not segregated nor is the pilgrimage performed inside. Indeed, all

There’s a BBC website where you can find out what class you are, according to new criteria drawn up by some bloke at the LSE and a babe from Manchester University. There are apparently seven new classes – which I suppose is designed to replace the old registrar General’s Scale – ranging from ‘Elite’ to something called ‘Precariat’, this latter comprising people with pit bull terriers but no money to feed them. It is a chimera, in my opinion. There are two classes in this country. There is the ruling class, which is privately educated and has inherited wealth and agreeable contacts and which comprises between 60 to 80 per

Matt Hancock, the business and skills minister, addressed the Resolution Foundation’s low pay debate this morning, an indication of how seriously the Tories are taking the rising cost of living. He delivered a resounding defence of the minimum wage. He said that the evidence was overwhelming: the minimum wage did not harm employment levels: and declared that the Conservatives should ‘strengthen’ the minimum wage. He said that the minimum wage should be enforced, and hinted that the Low Pay Commission might be reinforced. He said that working more hours was not necessarily the right answer, contrary to those who hold that Britain needs to harder and longer. Beyond that, Hancock proposed