Written for The Times, 26th June 2012 Yesterday’s announcement that Liverpool College is to become an academy is perhaps the single biggest breach in the Berlin Wall between the private and state sectors of education in recent decades. It opens the way for many more private schools to join the state-funded system – giving [...]
Originally posted in The Spectator’s Coffee House blog Last year Mossbourne Academy in Hackney celebrated one of the most remarkable achievements ever recorded by a state comprehensive school with a largely low-income intake. It got eight students into Cambridge and another 70 into Russell Group universities. If every comprehensive was in this league, social [...]
Originally published in the New Statesman The party will get back into government by having a better plan for the future, not by opposing changes that are working well. Free schools are Labour’s invention. They were a crucial part of our drive to promote equality of opportunity and social mobility, particularly in disadvantaged communities with [...]
For Progress New Labour’s ‘investment and reform’ of schools was turning the tide on social mobility A recent spate of studies provide big lessons for Labour’s future. In particular: don’t trash Labour’s record, but learn from past success and adopt the same radical New Labour mindset in addressing the challenges ahead, especially the challenge of [...]
Originally published in The Independent Andrew Adonis offers to make a cup of tea or coffee in his swanky offices just off Piccadilly Circus. It is, perhaps, a sign of the changed times since he had ministerial flunkies to perform that task for him. Not a bit of it, he argues. “I used to do [...]
For the SSA Trust The 15th Specialist Schools and Academies Trust Annual Lecture, 28 June 2011 You can listen to the address here, and to answers to questions from the audience here. There is no point being in public life unless you seek, as honestly as you can, to address the big problems facing [...]
Lunar Society Annual Lecture, Birmingham, 15 March 2011 As an Arsenal supporter, I know never to underestimate Birmingham City. Not only because of the Carling Cup, but also because, living in Highbury, I am conscious that when Joseph Chamberlain – in many ways the creator of modern Birmingham – was sent from London to Birmingham [...]