Private schools

Thursday

James Tooley

A lesson in bias on private schools

What’s wrong with low-cost education in poor countries? Quite a lot, you might think, if you read a new report from the Department for International Development. Low-cost private schools serve around 70 per cent of children in poor urban areas and nearly a third of rural children too. But the issue raises controversy among academics and experts, not least because it goes against 65 years of development dogma that the only way to help the poor is through government education, with big dollops of aid thrown in. Every aid agency and government has gone along with that. The only fly in the ointment is that poor parents disagree, which is

Thursday

Sebastian Payne

Seb Payne’s schooldays

The 17th of December 1999, nothing more than an ordinary school day close to the Christmas break. But to my family, it was a devastating moment. That morning a letter dropped on to the doormat informing us that I would not be attending Emmanuel College for my secondary education. Places at Emmanuel, one of the original city technology colleges, were the most coveted in Gateshead. It’s easy to see why: a school with no fees offering a top-notch education. It was such a successful venture that it inspired Andrew Adonis to start the academies programme during his time as schools minister. Five years later, the Paynes were waiting for another

Eleanor Doughty

Diamond schools: the best of both worlds

Imagine a school that you could send your son and daughter to. A single school that fitted your ideal for both single-sex and co-ed education, operating from nursery to sixth form, covering all bases. One school — not three or four. A school that, for the final two years, allowed young adults of both genders to share lessons and facilities. But imagine no more, for these schools exist, and they’re called diamond schools. (So-called because of the shape of the structure: genders together at the beginning and end, but apart in the middle.) There are just 13 of them in the country. Blending single-sex and co-ed teaching in the same

Lara Prendergast

Tribal uniforms explained

There’s no better way to improve character and cure self-consciousness than to insist your child dress like a fool during their formative years. Distinct fashion tribes exist at some of Britain’s top schools and a boring old blazer simply won’t do. You can never be overdressed or overeducated, suggested Oscar Wilde. But why not at least aim for both by using this guide to school style? The Boaters Harrow insists their students wear boaters at all times while outdoors. Flouting this is cause for punishment. Entrepreneurial types make a quick bob by flogging their hats to Chinese tourists, before buying new ones at a cheaper rate from the school shop.

Ross Clark

Now more than ever the ‘I’ in IGCSE is for ‘independent’

I always thought that rugby was invented so that there was no chance of public schoolboys having to meet grotty kids from football-playing state schools on the playing fields. But until recently all children, whether in the state or independent sector, did at least take the same exams. Until, that is, there emerged a great divide between GCSE and IGCSE. In January, Education Secretary Nicky Morgan confirmed that international GCSEs, or IGCSEs, will no longer be counted in school performance tables once the first reformed GCSEs start to be taken in 2017. The new courses, like IGCSEs, will be examined at the end of the course, not in modular instalments.

Ysenda Maxtone Graham

The truth about private school admissions

In recent years I’ve started putting the verb ‘to get in’ (when it refers to the action of being offered a place at a sought-after school) into capital letters: ‘To Get In’. It seems to merit capitals, so much has it become the defining verb of one’s child’s success and therefore future happiness, as perceived by the desperate parent. ‘He Got In to Eton.’ ‘She Got In to Latymer.’ Or (whispered only to one’s most trusted friends), ‘He didn’t Get In to St Paul’s.’ I suppose it’s quite amusing that being able to Get your child In to the private school of your dreams is the one prized item that

Thursday

The Spectator

Female bishops are very, very old news

Female bishops The Reverend Libby Lane was ordained as Bishop of Stockport, the Church of England’s first female bishop. — By the time the first 32 female C of E vicars were ordained in 1994, the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts had had a female bishop, Barbara Harris, for five years. — Yet the first Anglican woman priest was ordained half a century earlier. Florence Li Tim-Oi had been deacon at Macao Protestant Chapel in the early 1940s. When the war prevented a priest travelling from Japanese-occupied territory to administer communion, Li Tim-Oi was ordained by the Bishop of Victoria on 25 January 1944. Cash or card? The managing director of Visa

Thursday

Hugo Rifkind

Maybe it’s a problem when all artists are like James Blunt. But it’s worse when Labour MPs are like Chris Bryant

What should we do with James Blunt? This is what I have been asking myself. And I am not looking for comedy answers here, such as ‘Lock him in a shipping container and force him to listen to songs by James Blunt’ or ‘Allow him to become a properly recognised bit of Cockney rhyming slang’. No. It’s a genuine question. I refer, of course, to the enjoyable spat conducted this week via open letters to the Guardian, between the singer (private school and Bristol University), and the shadow culture secretary, Chris Bryant (private school and Oxford), over whether people in the arts are too posh. I don’t know why, even