Posts Tagged ‘Campaigns’
Ed Miliband ought to re-start the debate about charitable status for private schools
Which school sector has most reason to feel quietly satisfied as we start 2012? Free schools benefitting from a high profile and capital investment at a time of cuts? Early converter academies with their artificially pumped up budgets? The good fortune of both must surely be trumped by that of the private sector. No mainstream […]
Why we should support the parents at Downhills Primary School
Earlier this week I went to speak at a public meeting at Downhills Primary School in Tottenham. The school is being faced with ‘forced academisation’ by the government even though according to several external indicators (HMI visit and league tables) it is starting to improve. Between 2009 and 2011 the schools KS2 SATs results increasing […]
Why we need a ‘Better Bacc’
Link to original Guardian article When I was 18, I went to America for a gap year. It was the dark ages in terms of modern technology and I spent ten months without speaking to my parents, corresponding intermittently by post. True, I had left school, but this followed teenage years punctuated by equally rare […]
Not so happy in ‘Nappy Valley’
Here is an interesting microcosm of the new education landscape – ‘Nappy Valley’ is an affluent enclave between Wandsworth and Clapham Common in South London. To give you an idea of the residential geography – an online search of house prices suggests not much change from £1million for a two bedroom house. Lots of those […]
Join my campaign for ‘properly accountable’ schools
The Liberal Democrats claim to have won a concession on Tory schools policy. Under the new government schools will apparently have to be ‘properly accountable’. But what does this mean? My suggestion is that all schools, current and future, should be maintained, rather than independent state schools. It is a subtle, but crucial distinction. Maintained […]
