Toby Young

Government reports don’t often make scintillating reading. But the Review of Education Capital by Sebastian James is an exception. Colloquially known as the James Review, it’s an investigation into Building Schools for the Future, a programme of capital expenditure on schools overseen by the last government. It also contains various proposals as to how education

On Tuesday I received an invitation from the Women’s Institute asking me if I’d be prepared to participate in a debate at their annual general meeting in Liverpool on 8 June. They want me to speak ‘in opposition to a motion urging central government to maintain support for local libraries’. You have to take your

Last Saturday, I took my six-year-old son and seven-year-old daughter to the gym at a local school so they could take a karate ‘exam’. If they passed, they would be eligible for a white belt with red stripes — the first rung of the ladder in the Shukokai Karate Association. I have to confess to

My son Ludo celebrated his sixth birthday last week and one of his friends gave him a miniature air-hockey game. It’s like the ones you see in amusement arcades, with two pushers, a puck and a goal at either end, but no bigger than a box of Cornflakes. When it was my turn to get

For critics of state education, locked in combat with the teaching unions, it is easy to overlook the fact that some comprehensives do an outstanding job. One example in my neck of the woods is Cardinal Vaughan, a Roman Catholic boys’ school. Last year, 90 per cent of its pupils got five good GCSEs, making

I find it hard not to feel sorry for the Duke of York. Being asked to denounce one’s friends, however unsavoury, can’t be much fun. It must be particularly galling when the politicians insisting on this act of obeisance were themselves hobnobbing with Hosni Mubarak, Zine-al-Abidine and Colonel Gaddafi until about a week ago. In

One of the most important milestones in the course of setting up a taxpayer-funded school is the funding agreement. This is a contract between the Secretary of State for Education and the trustees of the school setting out the terms on which he agrees to finance the school. He can terminate the agreement in certain

You have to take your hat off to Michael Gove. In spite of the Herculean task he has saddled himself with — saving the state education system of this country — he has managed to find time to produce a brilliant piece of satire. I’m referring to a blog on the Local Schools Network entitled

Since the coalition came to power, a consensus seems to have sprung up on the left that tax avoidance is wrong. Not tax evasion — which everyone agrees is wrong — but avoidance. A campaigning organisation called UK Uncut has sprung up that uses social media to organise sit-ins in high street branches of Top

As an iconoclastic journalist, I’m used to being attacked. As an iconoclastic journalist, I’m used to being attacked. It comes with the territory and after 25 years I’ve developed quite a thick skin. But ever since I started leading the efforts of a group of parents and teachers to set up a free school in

Like many of my colleagues in the media, I’m shocked by the News of the World phone-hacking scandal. As the list of those targeted by the newspaper grows longer and longer, my sense of outrage deepens. What were the papers’ executives thinking? Did it not even occur to them to tap my phone? OK, OK,

Fantastic news about The King’s Speech. Its 12 Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor, Best Supporting Actress and Best Original Screenplay, mean it’s just two short of the all-time record. The film has also been a box-office smash, taking over $57 million in America and over £18 million in

I appeared on Radio 4’s PM programme earlier this week as a token male chauvinist pig. The issue under discussion was the government’s proposal to make it possible for fathers to take up to six months’ paternity leave. I argued this was bad news for dads since it means we’ll no longer have a much-needed

It’s becoming increasingly clear that the most militant trade unions have education reformers in their sights. It’s becoming increasingly clear that the most militant trade unions have education reformers in their sights. A month of industrial action is due to begin at the end of March, culminating in a series of demonstrations to coincide with

Like many people, I’ve been following the saga of Joanna Yeates’s murder with rapt attention. Unfortunately, I’m not at all confident that her killer will ever be caught. The Avon and Somerset Police just don’t seem up to the job. To begin with, they neglected to intercept her rubbish and that of her neighbours before

In the current issue of GQ, the writer Michael Wolff has rather an amusing piece about his predilection for feuding with his friends. ‘My longest feud was 15 years,’ he writes. ‘At that point, I met my feuding companion on Madison Avenue and we immediately took up where we left off. Feuds are, in a