Education
Vocational schools are not to be sneered at
When I was 16 I failed all my O-levels, bar a grade C in English Literature, and concluded I wasn’t…
![Pupils at Ampleforth in 1952 [Getty]](https://www.spectator.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/pupils.jpg?w=410&h=275&crop=1)
The sorry demise of Benedictine education
Twenty years ago, Douai, a monastic boarding school in West Berkshire, shocked parents with an announcement that it was ‘no…
What the education system needs is more marketisation, not less
Towards the end of 2009, shortly after I announced my intention to set up England’s first free school, I debated…
Letters: Rod Liddle is right, Toby Young is wrong and Bruce Anderson must stop
Campaign for real cricket Sir: Geoffrey Wheatcroft’s splendid article ‘Cricket, unlovely cricket’ (28 April) remonstrated against the threat to Test…
Why do British charities want to shut down private schools in Africa?
Why would anyone who claims to care about the world’s poorest children try to shut down their schools? It’s strange…
Low-cost private schools are transforming lives in the third world
Private schools in the United Kingdom are affordable only to those on the highest incomes. But surprisingly to many, this…
How to get your child into the best state school: an insider’s tips
Monday was ‘national offer day’, which means that more than half a million parents across England were notified about which…
Wild Wild Country makes me want to set up my own cult
I have decided to set up a cult, which you are all welcome to join, especially those of you who…
Letters: the very belief that poorer pupils do less well is what limits them
Self-limiting beliefs Sir: As someone who spent much of his working life teaching at Eton and Harrow, it was amusing…
“I’ll eat you alive” – Angela Rayner interview
Angela Rayner is perhaps the only Labour MP who works with a picture of Theresa May hanging above her desk.…
As a trainee teacher, I saw the damage the SNP is inflicting on Scottish education
Once one of the best in the world, Scotland’s education system has been steadily marching backwards for the past ten…
Teach First has turned me into a free speech martyr
I had the unusual experience last Sunday of appearing on a panel to defend free speech having been the victim…
The kids aren’t all right
Our histrionic parenting is making today’s young people mad, unhappy and fat
Sadly, true grit can’t be taught
I am currently wrestling with a dilemma. I have agreed to contribute to a panel discussion on character education at…
Tales out of school
In 1952, the five-year-old Michael Rosen and his brother were taken on holiday along the Thames by their communist parents.…
Don’t let these figures depress you, girls
Are British teenagers suffering from an epidemic of mental illness? Yes, according to a ‘government-funded study’ which found that 24…
Hard lessons
George Tomlinson, the post-war education secretary, declared that politicians should leave exams to the teachers because ‘the minister knows nowt…
As easy as 1, 2, 3…
The amount of nonsense being talked about the new GCSEs in English and maths, whereby exams have been graded 9-1…
London calling
What is the Edinburgh Fringe? It’s a sabbatical, a pit stop, a pause-and-check-the-map opportunity for actors who don’t quite know…
Letters
Technical education Sir: I am grateful to Robert Tombs for highlighting the baleful use of ‘declinism’ as part of the…
Cameron's sinister purge of the posh
Should employees be judged by their parents’ income?
Generation Snowflake: how we train our kids to be censorious cry-babies
We’re training our children to be thin-skinned, censorious and belligerently entitled
Prue Leith: British hotels still serve filthy food
Why do we assume all doctors are good? We don’t think there are no bad cooks or bad plumbers. But…
The many, many resting places of St Thomas à Becket
A man in full A relic said to contain a fragment of St Thomas à Becket’s elbow arrived from Hungary for…
Equipped for life with a copy of Thucydides
‘What distinguishes Cambridge from Oxford,’ wrote A.A. Milne in 1939, is that nobody who has been to Cambridge feels impelled…
