Schools
West Heslerton and other villages with one careful owner
Squire power The village of West Heslerton in Yorkshire was put up for sale at £20 million after its owner,…
Private-school ‘superheads’ are a publicity-seeking waste of time
Private-school ‘superheads’ are wonderful for publicity.They may not be so good for teaching
To survive as a Tory teacher, you have to keep quiet
Surviving as a Tory teacher means keeping quiet
It’s dangerous and wrong to tell all children they’re ‘gender fluid’
Children are not all ‘gender fluid’. It’s dangerous and wrong to try to persuade them that they are
Q: What is a good school? A: One that everybody else likes
A few months ago I received a call from someone running a small private school near New York. They believed…
How education jargon hurts children
Schools are becoming addicted to acronyms. It’s not just silly, it’s dangerous
There’s too much bunkum talked about the arts and education
At the last minute, a friend invited me to a ‘Distinguished Speakers Dinner’ at the Oxford and Cambridge Club earlier…
Nicky Morgan's pitch for the Tory leadership
Education Secretary Nicky Morgan thinks a woman should run to be the next Tory leader
The cruellest month
My August-born toddler is being marked out for failure – thank God the rules are changing
What I’ve learned helping to found a specialist free school
Lessons from the first year of our specialist maths school
The lessons of exam results season (and what to do about them)
Every year without fail, as the trees start thinking about losing their leaves, the papers are full of the same…
How to help black boys afraid of ‘acting white’
Black British boys are being held back by fear of betraying their background. Immigrant children know how to deal with that
Portrait of the week
Home At least 30 British people were among 38 shot dead at a beach resort at Sousse in Tunisia by…
The best way to end the ‘poshness test’
There’s a warning buried in the detail of the new report by the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission on…
Peter Oborne’s diary: My Pakistan cricket tour, and what the ‘no’ campaign needs
For the first time since the terrorist attack on the Sri Lankan team six years ago, a Test match side…
Dear Mary: What to do when a dinner guest won’t turn and chat
Q. I felt uncomfortable during a dinner for 20 in a private house. The young man on my left had…
Did Radio 4 have to deal with the Germanwings disaster as it did?
‘You can hear pretty clearly the sound of one of the helicopters and you can see it in the darkness,’…
The Conservatives should be the party of immigrants — and here’s how they can be
For a long while, the Conservatives have been puzzled about their lack of popularity among immigrants. In theory, the Conservative…
A lesson in bias on private schools
What aid experts and academics don’t want to hear about private schools in developing countries
I’m working to make education fairer. But I’m still not sure what ‘fairer’ means
Civitas has just published an interesting book called The Ins and Outs of Selective Secondary Schools. Edited by Anastasia de…
James McAvoy is wrong – the arts are better off without subsidy
The season of cringe-making acceptance speeches at arts awards ceremonies is nearly over, thank heavens. But it hasn’t passed without…
The end of childhood - what we lost when we dropped the age of consent
When the state excuses underage sex, what chance do our children have?
The teachers who (quietly) miss Michael Gove
Meet the teachers who are (quietly) grateful to the former education secretary
Proof that the schools revolution isn’t over
For those who assumed that the removal of Michael Gove as Education Secretary marked the end of the Conservatives’ scholastic…
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. —…
