Originally in the Independent, 7th July 2012 Michael Gove has referred to the teaching unions as a “drag on the profession”. What is your response to that? The best arguments usually win and union leaders, like others, tend to want to be on the right side of the argument. The two most radical reforms [...]
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 [...]
First published at the Labour Lords blog In the last two months, Peers have spent 25 hours debating House of Lords reform. Today they will spend two and half hours debating youth unemployment, and only one backbench Conservative is taking part. That doesn’t say much about the Government’s priorities, particularly in tackling what Nick [...]
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 Huffington Post Universities across England will today find out how much they will be allowed to charge students to study for degree courses. There is no getting away from the fact that fees approaching £9,000 a year will be off-putting to teenagers from poorer families. And this against a background where even now [...]
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 [...]
Lord Salisbury was Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary. William Gladstone was his own Chancellor. If Tony Blair enters Downing Street, he should appoint himself Education Secretary Tony Blair should take two posts in the next Labour government: prime minister and Secretary of State for Education. This may sound nonsensical. After all, education is only one [...]