Published on
4 April 2012
Posted in Culture, Education, Social Commentary
Last week Kent County Council approved plans for a grammar school to establish a satellite school in Sevenoaks. The satellite would share the name of the founding school and come under the same executive oversight. It will be, as it were, a new branch of the existing school with the same educational ethos. Note that […]
Published on
8 February 2012
Posted in British Politics, Culture, Education, Social Commentary
The latest issue of the Sunday Times carried the following headline: ‘School Chief: 5,000 Heads are no good’. The recently appointed Chief Inspector of Ofsted, the regulatory body charged with school performance, had been interviewed. Sir Michael Wilshaw had been Headmaster of an institution fêted as an exemplary Academy-status school. The Mossbourne School is in […]
Published on
30 January 2012
Posted in Culture, Education, Europe, Freedom, Human Rights, Moral Philosophy, Music & Art, Philosophy, Religion
From a guest blogger: What is it that St. Peter’s Basilica, Climate Change, the Euro Crisis and Beethoven’s Ode to Joy have in common? I shall not keep you guessing. All four demonstrate that humans are not only special, but also without doubt the most special of creatures on Planet Earth. Consider for a moment […]
Published on
2 November 2011
The failings of inner-city schools have long provided commentators and policy makers with subject-matter. They have been productive of guilt-ridden attempts at solutions. Last week, in The Times we read an article of interest on this topic. Greg Martin, Head of the Durand Academy, a primary school, has purchased a former boarding school in the […]
Published on
17 June 2011
Posted in Big Society, British Politics, Education, Public Policy
A question for readers: what is the difference between a Free School, an Academy, and a Swedish School? No, it is not that the latter boasts clog-shod teachers trained in ABBA dance routines, but that they are simply different names for what is essentially the same idea, introduced by the previous Labour Government, and extended […]
Published on
23 May 2011
Posted in Education, Moral Philosophy, Understanding Science
Historian David Starkey has opined in a speech to a Headmasters’ Conference that the moribund state of British education is our ‘greatest national crisis’. The ‘missing ingredient’, he argued, ‘is simply what we call discipline’, which is all too often substituted by an ‘indulgence of individual misbehaviour’. But why this indulgence? Could it be because […]
Published on
28 March 2011
Posted in Christianity, Conscience, Education, Europe, Human Rights, Legal Affairs, Liberty, Moral Philosophy, Philosophy, Religion, Social Commentary
It was with surprise that many people heard last week of the decision of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), by a majority of 15-2, to overturn its own much-criticised decision in 2009 to forbid the display of crucifixes in Italian schoolrooms. Perhaps it would be kinder not to point out to the hapless […]
Published on
18 February 2011
Posted in Culture, Education, Recommended Links, Social Commentary
Is it the end of the world as we know it? Not quite, but it might be the end of ‘coherent speech’. Clark Whelton, writing in City Journal, chronicles the rise of ‘Vagueness’, ‘the linguistic virus that infected spoken language in the late twentieth century’. Read the article here. (Article © The Manhattan Institute, New […]