John Bald reviews the Channel 4 series Educating Yorkshire After Vic Goddard's tolerant approach to pupils' negative attitudes in Educating Essex, we have Jonny Mitchell trying to deal with what look like much more difficult problems at Thornhill Academy in Dewsbury, Yorkshire. Educating Yorkshire will remain on C4 for eight episodes, on Thursdays at 9pm.. […]
Today we focus on Northamptonshire and Cambridgeshire – with the tremendous contribution to driving up school standards by the Brooke Weston Trust. In 1991 the landowner, Hugh de Capell Brooke, and Garry Weston, the owner of Associated British Foods founded a City Technology College, now called the Brooke Weston Academy. The school was officially opened […]
Like many higher education establishments, the University of Liberia holds an annual entrance exam. This year the results came as a bit of a shock – the pass rate was precisely zero. Out of 25,000 people who sat the exam not one made the grade. For most media outlets around the world this was a […]
Barry Day, the chief executive of the Greenwood Academies Trust, is a heroic figure in British education who deserves to be much better known than he is. His particular role has been to help children from deprived backgrounds in Nottingham achieve outstanding academic results. Last week Michael Gove included in his list of the attacks […]
The challenge of starting a new school with its own distinctive character has been met by some remarkable pioneering social entrepreneurs in the free school movement. Another 93 free schools opened last week. However, it is also a great challenge, perhaps an even greater challenge, to take over a failing school and turn it around. […]
By Harry PhibbsFollow Harry on Twitter Last week Michael Gove gave a speech which, among other things, differentiated between opposing trade union leaders and trade union members. In another speech this morning he praised teachers while attacking the teaching unions. Mr Gove told his audience at Policy Exchange: It is because the teaching profession is so […]
John Bald says a grade D in English is a "near miss" – Gove is right not to give up on the young but to make them persist Three years on, we are moving from sorting out Labour's mess to building the foundations of Conservative success. The phonics check for six year olds, that attracted […]
By Paul GoodmanFollow Paul on Twitter. Andrew Gimson has correctly fingered David Cameron's temperament as Anglican, which makes it very different from Michael Gove's Manichean-flavoured one – of which the latter's view of foreign affairs is a reminder. This helps to explain why, although the Prime Minister and Education Secretary are friends, Gove almost certainly […]
One of the many fantastic schools in my borough of Hammersmith and Fulham is the London Oratory, a Roman Catholic boys secondary school. It has been much sought after, not just by local parents but those elsewhere. Nick Clegg's son starts there next month. Tony Blair, Harriet Harman, and Ruth Kelly are among the Labour […]
After a mixed result with last week's A levels, which showed a rise in entries for maths, physics and chemistry (up around 20 per cent overall since 2010), but a serious fall in languages, with German down to just over 4000 entries, there is much better news in yesterday's GCSE results. Single science entries are […]
By Mark WallaceFollow Mark on Twitter. Today's A-Level results provide further evidence that the simplistic grade-is-good analysis is being replaced by an appreciation for a more rigorous exam system. For the second year in a row, the proportion of A or A* grades awarded has fallen (by 0.3 per cent to 26.3 per cent). Interestingly, it seems […]
By Peter HoskinFollow Peter on Twitter Bongos, Gibraltar and Mark Carney – all three have set the printing presses roaring today. But there’s another significant story in the newspapers that is altogether less conspicuous. It’s this one in the Independent about a new profit-making university. According to the paper, David Willetts has welcomed it as “an […]
John Bald says Boris Johnson and his deputy Munira Murza have assembled an impressive team Boris Johnson's education enquiry and delivery plan are perhaps the first sign that the government is managing to move beyond sorting out Labour's mess to construct a positive Conservative alternative. There are several reasons why this is difficult, most connected […]
Labour's stance on free schools is as confused as ever. Officially its position has thawed – provided that new schools have a different name. But in practice they usually snipe whenever a group of parents get together to try and achieve more choice and a better start for their children. Recently we had Labour seizing […]
By Mark WallaceFollow Mark on Twitter. The left wing leanings of parts of the educational establishment have long been obvious – and plenty more have been drawn out by the hysterical opposition to Michael Gove's Free School reforms. The nature of the politics curriculum itself hasn't yet been explored, though. Today, the Telegraph features a must-read piece […]