As another teachers’ strike looms on July 10 it is worth setting out the reasons that teachers are unhappy with their profession. It’s not just because of conditions of service, pay, and pensions. Teaching…
It would take a “bold secretary of state” to argue for more faith schools in Britain, wrote Newsnight’s policy editor Chris Cook commenting on the so-called Trojan Horse storm about Islamist extremists…
Subjects need to be seen once again for what they are. They are divisions of human knowledge made in order to advance knowledge in universities or to teach existing knowledge in schools. Academics and…
The stabbing to death by a 15-year-old pupil of Anne Maguire, a much loved teacher who had worked at Corpus Christi Catholic College in Leeds for more than 40 years, has attracted much attention across…
Ever-envious of Singapore’s much-heralded success in teaching maths, politicians are keen to see its methodology arriving in UK classrooms. Education minister Elizabeth Truss explained some of the background…
I have often argued that I would not let any teacher into a school unless – as a minimum – they had read, carefully and well, the three great books on education: Plato’s Republic, Rousseau’s Émile and…
Who should teach the teachers? The answer seems obvious. The best teachers should teach the teachers in the way that the best cooks teach the cooks. That’s the apprenticeship, the craft or “sitting with…
The closure of the secondary section of the Al-Madinah free school in Derby will be celebrated by those who oppose free schools and what are euphemistically labelled “faith” schools. Whatever the stated…
Philosophy was always dangerous, as the life and death of Socrates taught us. He was, need I remind you, executed not by an authoritarian regime but by a caring democracy. Times have changed however, and…