This last week I have spent away from the Lords in the USA, first at a global education conference at Stanford University and then in Tennessee seeing how education innovation is rolling out on the ground. It was an inspiring week that reinforced my view that English education is in real danger of being left…
Over the weekend we have had the steady drip of stories spun out of the Department for Education on the outcome of Michael Gove’s curriculum review. Sadly the Secretary of State is no longer listening to his instincts not to dictate from Whitehall, instead he is dictating times tables, compulsory languages and poetry recitals. This…
Sorry, but just ocassionally I need to have a bit of a moan. Parliamentarians aren’t supposed to complain, it is our job to listen and respond to other people’s complaints. And anyway we’re alright so what have we got to moan about. Despite all that, like everyone else, I sometimes want to sound off about…
Yesterday morning I turned up at Westfield Community Technology College in Watford to teach Year 10 English. The school is a non-selective secondary school, in the partially selective environment of South Hertfordshire. First impression was that the school building investment programme that is now running six months late is still desperately needed in areas like…
Yesterday was a depressing day on the economy. Unlike the constant gloom from the Eurozone, the latest unemployment figures felt very immediate and close to home. An extra 63,000 unemployed young people aged 18-25 was a worse increase than I had feared and raises the worries that once again we will have a generation scarred…
