Another Professor

From four years ago.

 

Cambridge had been hoping to just wait out the news cycle

 

Straitjacket

Education secretary vows to undo Gove’s ‘straitjacket’ school reforms

Education Secretary Lucy Powell says schools are stuck in a “straitjacket” of academic prioritisation, hindering children’s potential.

She has announced a review into whether teaching adequately prepares pupils for their futures, signalling a move to undo reforms implemented by Michael Gove.

Writing in The Times, Ms Powell said: “The one-size-fits-all approach simply doesn’t suit all children. For some it’s become a straitjacket. A straitjacket that has left too many being branded a failure — again and again — instead of being able to realise their potential.”

She intends to take a “fresh look at what we are teaching our children and whether we are equipping them for their lives ahead” as part of efforts to reverse Mr Gove’s education policies.


We have a review of course, but we we also have Michael Gove as the Tory to blame. To go with that we have a "one-size-fits-all approach" as the approach to blame even though this has been the Fabian dealing-with-the-plebs approach for over a century.

We also have the Freudian slip, a "straitjacket." That's another clue that more money will be needed, from you, via increased taxes, for the new straitjacket.

Oh yes - we also have a "fresh look at what we are teaching our children and whether we are equipping them for their lives ahead”, but that's just the usual sinister hint about taking a firmer grip on the approved political background to schooling.

Old enough to vote but...

Students excluded from university free speech complaints system

A new freedom of speech complaints system for England’s universities has come under fire for excluding students...

The scheme was proposed in 2023 by the previous Tory government under the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act and was intended to apply to students, as well as staff and visiting speakers.

Key parts of the act – including the complaints scheme – were set to be introduced in August 2024 but were shelved just days before by Bridget Phillipson in one of her first moves in Government.

Although the Education Secretary later revived the act after facing legal action from the Free Speech Union (FSU), several key elements were watered down, including the use of the complaints scheme by students.


Modern education means handing down the customs of the minority, and rooting out the customs of the majority.

G. K. Chesterton - What's Wrong with the World (1910)

Dogma v Education

Damien Phillips has an interesting Centre Write piece on how the Schools Bill reflects Labour ideology of control and centralisation over more effective international approaches achieved via greater autonomy and accountability. 


The Schools Bill ignores international best practice

Labour’s Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill has returned to the House of Lords for final scrutiny before Royal Assent and will soon be inflicted on the country. Eroding both independence of schools and their accountability, this deeply regressive package turns its back on international best practice in favour of parochial interests and dogma...

The whole piece is well worth reading as yet another indication that the current UK government does not understand the limitations of its antique ideology. Or it doesn't care, which seems just as likely.

Indeed, if you look at the countries that have seen the most dramatic turnaround thanks to school autonomy reforms — Estonia, Poland, Portugal and England — it is clear that accountability and consequences for failure are essential for driving up standards. All these now high-performing systems are united by an ability to replace failing school leadership, withdraw contracts or close schools that are letting down their pupils.

Labour would do well to heed the lessons here. Their Schools Bill turns its back on this global education revolution by not only reducing the institutional autonomy and innovation that freedom for schools brings but also weakens the ability to replace failing school leadership quickly. Their Bill will leave England in the worst of all worlds, with schools that are simultaneously more centrally controlled and rule-bound but also less accountable to parents and the pupils that attend them.

Labour often flaunts its internationalist ethos. But, when it comes to education, they have chosen the narrow interests of teaching unions and their ideological opposition to the rigours of competition over changes that have been proven to work wherever in the world they have been tried. England’s pupils will be the poorer for it.

The uncertain promise of a graduate premium

Lawrence Newport has an interesting CAPX piece on official restrictions placed on research into the financial benefit university graduates may or may not gain from their degrees. 

Well worth reading as the government is unwilling to be open about the issue and it only takes a few seconds to see why that might be. 


When will the Government be honest about university?

• Successive governments have concealed the truth about the so-called 'graduate premium'
• It's time to be candid about the true value of an undergraduate degree
• Young people deserve to make an informed decision about their future

Students and parents deserve the truth about Britain’s education system. Successive governments have pushed generations along a single, well-worn track; through primary and secondary school, into college or sixth form and finally to university.

The underlying promise appeared straightforward: if students followed this route and graduated with a degree, higher pay would follow. Politicians of all colours repeatedly spoke of the so-called ‘graduate premium’, often referring to the familiar statistic that graduates earn, on average, £100,000 more over a lifetime than non-graduates. Labour and Conservative education ministers have argued this system is the ‘engine’ of social mobility: some organisations have even linked the role of universities in driving greater upwards mobility with ‘higher levels of employment and pay, better living standards and more‘.

Today, those assurances seem hollow. Millions of graduates are leaving university to find the toughest job market in decades. Today, more than 700,000 are out of work and on benefits. Even the graduates who managed to find a position are struggling: many are making repayments on their student loans, only to find their debt continues to rise every month. In fact, those on a Plan 2 loan must earn £66,000 annually to begin reducing their overall debt, rather than just servicing the interest. It is these circumstances that have made the promise of a ‘graduate premium’ look far from certain.

School Anecdote

One of our grandson’s school friends had to leave school when his parents moved to another part of the country for work-related reasons. The school friend was home schooled for a couple of years before returning to grandson’s school when his parents moved back.

Grandson said that when his friend came back to school, he was at least a year ahead of everyone else in the class. He works hard anyway, but normally there is no opportunity to forge ahead, not to the extent he achieved at home.

Merely an anecdote, but interesting I thought.

Students

 

Breathing space

Free school breakfast clubs will give parents ‘breathing space’, says Starmer

Sir Keir Starmer said: “The rollout of free breakfast clubs is a truly game-changing moment for families in this country.

“They mean parents will no longer be hamstrung by rigid school hours and have the breathing space they need to beat the morning rush, attend work meetings and doctors’ appointments, or run errands. And crucially, it means better life chances for children.”

It isn't free of course, but we wouldn't expect Starmer to admit that. It's an interesting development though. By 'breathing space', Starmer means political breathing space, he doesn't care about parents. 

There is a strong sense of tinkering here, fiddling with a very old, increasingly creaky and intrusive approach to educating children. A sense that politically anxious moves such as this are merely intended to keep state education going for a little longer. 

This pushes it along, at least until the next election when we'll be treated to images of Ministers joining in, sitting with children while they eat their approved breakfast off little plastic trays.

There is more than a whiff of endgame about it.  

Unfortunately, we got her

A piece on the Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill with two contrasting opinions.

Educators are split over the government's proposed Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill, with some saying the move will improve fairness and accountability and others warning it could limit innovation in academy schools.

Opinion 1

Katharine Birbalsingh, headteacher of Michaela School in Wembley, north London, called it "absolutely appalling".

"I'm just really concerned because, at the moment, school leaders have the freedom to do various things that are right for their intake," she told Sky News.

"This bill will take those freedoms away."

Ms Birbalsingh, also known as 'Britain's strictest headteacher', added: "We got unlucky because we could have had Wes Streeting as education secretary, which would have been fine. Unfortunately, we got her [Bridget Phillipson].

"She [Ms Phillipson] is so arrogant. She's just marched in there and gone, 'I know what I'm doing, I'll just do what I want'."


Opinion 2

The founder of Oasis Academies, Steve Chalke, told Sky News: "We're excited about the changes because we feel that education has been in a very, very poor place for the last decade or more.

"Schools have been stripped of resources and there have been giant problems about the recruitment and retention of teachers.

"We feel that this important bill is beginning to address all of those issues."...

He added: "We at Oasis are excited about all of this, but that doesn't mean we don't have questions.

Hmm - one opinion sounds like the hard-nosed voice of experience, one sounds more... well more like jelly.

The stupidification

Malcolm Clark has a useful Critic piece on Scottish education. It is not complimentary.


The stupidification of Scottish schools

Scottish education is being dumbed down in the name of diversity

At the end of last year, Scotland’s education chiefs announced a new list of approved texts for pupils taking English exams at secondary schools. It represents everything that is wrong with Scottish education and the country’s cultural Establishment.

Ten years ago the SNP government decided there would be only one compulsory question asked in Scotland’s equivalent of GCSEs and A levels in English, and it would be about Scottish authors. It was claimed this would encourage pupils to study the great writers Scotland has produced, from Walter Scott and Robert Louis Stevenson to Burns and Lewis Grassic Gibbon.

There was nothing to stop a teacher teaching other great writers like Jane Austen, but this compulsory question would highlight Scotland’s proud literary tradition. Now, with this latest revision of the list of approved texts, it is clear the country’s education chiefs are on a mission to dumb down. The list, we are told, is all about “increased diversity”.


The whole piece is depressing but well worth reading as an indicator of how far down the rabbit hole progressives can go. Even further than this presumably.


That’s why this list perfectly embodies Scotland’s new national culture after 25 wasted years of devolution. It’s no accident the bulk of the list is made up of short texts with simple, sometimes even infantile language that require the least possible effort from pupils. Kids are even reassured they only have to study the first section of Duck Feet. Perish the thought they might have to deal with a whole novel!

There is of course one other terrifying possible explanation for the cultural vandalism this list represents. Might many of Scotland’s teachers now be so lazy and so thick this is all they are capable of teaching?

I feel old

Our granddaughter is with us at the moment as she often sleeps over from Friday to Saturday. We collected her from school yesterday afternoon and when we arrived back at our house she told us she had some homework to do.

I imagined spreading a few books and notebooks across the kitchen table, but Granddaughter told us she’d do her homework online on her phone, which she did. She showed me a few of the questions.

Online homework has probably been going on for some time, especially after the lockdown debacle, but it left me feeling old. I imagined what my mother might have said if I’d told her I was doing my homework on the telephone.

“Are you writing about telephones for your homework?” she might have asked. “Well there’s the phone box on the corner but you can’t do your homework in there, somebody else might want to use it.”

Oh well, times change. After looking at a few questions Granddaughter had to answer, I went back to reading my Kindle.

Educashun, Educashun, Educashun

David James has an interesting Critic piece on Education. Interesting because education is another important area where we see the problem of influential, supposedly intelligent people who cannot live in a world of multiple viewpoints.


Educashun, Educashun, Educashun

The blob is back, and it wants to dumb down the curriculum

As we begin 2025 it is hard to be anything other than pessimistic about what lies in store for schools under this Labour government. The Secretary of State for Education, Bridget Phillipson, will no doubt continue to put ideology before both pragmatism and evidence, and many children will see their education adversely affected, with no amount of time, or “lessons learned” by her successors, able to repair the damage done. Never a fan of independence, in whatever form, Phillipson has already stopped funding promised to free schools by the previous government, and it seems inevitable that responsibility for opening such schools in the future will return to local authorities. So much for freedom: the blob is already regenerating.


The whole piece is well worth reading as a reminder that there is such a thing as intelligent ignorance where clumsy ideology hacks away at an evolved culture until there is no culture left but the ideology. Beyond that there is a failing ability to adapt, which is where we are now.


In 1869 Matthew Arnold published “Culture and Anarchy”. For Arnold the “study of perfection”, or “the best which has been thought and said”, was fundamental to a society’s moral integrity: it is the safeguard against the “anarchy” of materialism, individuality and relativism. Culture unites an otherwise divided society, it elevates it to something finer than it would otherwise be. We have come a long way from the “sweetness and light”, the beauty and truth, that culture fosters, and the values it promotes. Arnold’s armies of ignorance have won, their influence spreads across every position of power that shapes the future of education today. It is a national tragedy.

Education in Oz

Punishing success

David James has a fine CAPX piece on UK Labour party hostility towards private education.


Labour are punishing private schools for their success

Teachers are not usually despised by the government of this country, but if you currently work in an independent school it is hard to escape the conclusion that, if they were allowed to do so, Labour would abolish the sector in a heartbeat. They hate us. The current Secretary of State for Education spent more than two years shadowing the role without visiting any independent schools. The Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner, when she was shadow education secretary, said that Labour would end the ‘privatisation’ of education. The Chancellor Rachel Reeves said in 2018 that she has ‘always and will always oppose’ selective schools, and in 2019 she was quite clear that a Labour government should ‘work to abolish private education’.


A short piece but well reading, especially as this government is not known for its intelligence. It even seems to be envious of anyone who saw through Keir Starmer and co. well before the election.

The world is not driven by greed; it's driven by envy - Charlie Munger


Those international, ambitious parents must be looking on with astonishment as we attack these schools, without any idea of what could replace them when they are gone. Instead, we should be celebrating our independent schools and the success they inject, through the many brilliant young people they educate, into countless areas of British society. If we allow their slow strangulation, Labour’s Left will have won, but we, as a country, will have comprehensively failed.

Fudge Incoming

One-word Ofsted judgments for schools to be scrapped immediately by Government

Previously, Ofsted awarded one of four headline grades to schools it inspects: outstanding, good, requires improvement and inadequate.

Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson

“Single-word headline judgments are dangerous and reductive. They are unpopular with parents and teachers, and their simplistic impact has made the daily job of improving school standards harder for everyone except the bureaucrats.

Dangerous and reductive eh? That's a good summary of politics, so a C for Ms Phillipson. Although she remembered the phrase, she has applied it to the wrong activity.

Presumably she doesn't expect to see much improvement over the next few years, so getting the fudge in early could be an astute move. Or is that a dangerous and reductive conclusion? Probably not.  

We don't need AI to translate that

Labour pledges to create 100,000 extra nursery places in schools

Labour will convert over 3,000 spare classrooms into nurseries, funding the works by ending the tax breaks enjoyed by private schools.

The plans were welcomed by the NAHT teaching union which said there is "certainly a clear logic in using free space in primary schools to expand nursery provision".

But its general secretary Paul Whiteman added: "Having the right space is one part of the picture, and it will be equally important that there is a strong focus on attracting more people into the early years workforce."

We don't need AI to translate that -

"Having the right space is one part of the picture, and it will be equally important that there is a strong focus on attracting more union members into the early years workforce."

Just the Tip of the Iceberg

 

Tell it as it is

 

A long-term decline

Scottish education performance falling, says study

Performance in Scotland's high schools has slipped according to new international research on education.

The Pisa report measures education standards among nearly 700,000 15-year-olds worldwide.

The report shows a long-term decline in Scotland's performance in reading, maths and science.


No great surprises, but there is a pleasantly sarcastic comment -


owl
To be fair there are some hard questions in Scottish exam papers.

If a £100,000 motor home is held outside in a police compound, how much will it be worth by the time the expected 2018 ferry comes into service