Iain Mansfield is Director of Research and Head of Education at Policy Exchange, and a former Special Adviser at the Department for Education.
Half a billion pounds of taxpayers’ money will be spent on rejoining the EU’s Erasmus+ student exchange programme. With libraries closing, criminals being let out of jail early and funding for maths and classics in schools slashed, it is the clearest indication yet of where this government’s priorities lie. Rejoining Erasmus+ simply means that working
Last week, the government made two major announcements on science and innovation. With backing from the Prime Minister and Chancellor, Science Secretary Peter Kyle laid out a detailed plan to ‘turbocharge AI’. The new ‘AI Opportunities Action Plan’ set out how the government will support AI to boost the economy and improve the productivity of
Wales has long been an embarrassment for any aspiring Labour education secretary. While the Conservative government’s school reforms shot England up the international league tables – in the PISA rankings it rose from 25th to 13th in reading and 27th to 11th in maths between 2009 and 2022 – performance in Labour-run Wales and in SNP-run Scotland has
The Prime Minister has summoned the vice chancellors of several universities to Downing Street to read them the riot act over pro-Palestine protests taking place on their campuses. But this meeting will need to have more impact than Rishi Sunak’s ineffectual gathering of police chiefs in February over public order – which has led to
The National Education Union’s (NEU) mask slipped last month when four of the organisation’s senior figures published a new book, Lessons in Organising: What Trade Unionists Can Learn from the War on Teachers. It was endorsed by the NEU’s general secretary, Kevin Courtney, who called it ‘an excellent review of the attack on teachers and their unions,
