Category: Education

Business, Education

Teach Teenagers to Be Creative, Not Just Take Tests

BY CHARLES ALDOUS I was thirteen when the entrepreneur Phoebe Gormley (photographed) visited my prep school to discuss her career. Fresh from dropping out of university to focus on building her Savile Row tailoring business for women, she told a room full of blazered children and parents something our teachers would never say: think beyond academics. The staff smiled politely. We were meant to be inspired. Instead, … Continue reading Teach Teenagers to Be Creative, Not Just Take Tests

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Education

School Levers

BY JOE NUTT It has to stop. Some situations are so fundamentally detrimental to healthy human families, which are after all, all that really matters when you can genuinely see the wood, they simply cannot be tolerated. Listening to a series of well-informed, often passionate debates about the current state of State education recently, has brought me to this conclusion. Our schools must be freed … Continue reading School Levers

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Education, Long Reads

English and the Law

BY JOE NUTT It’s difficult to avoid the sensation as a commonplace citizen, that more and more equally commonplace citizens have become openly prepared to defy the law. Flags have nothing to do with this. Unless of course they’re ornamenting terrorism. Lawlessness began quietly booming some years ago. In world famous galleries, paint is thrown at great paintings, statues are defaced or toppled and at … Continue reading English and the Law

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Education

Old College, New Guilt

BY ROGER WATSON How to decolonise a university without returning the money The University of Edinburgh’s comedy show—aptly performed while the Fringe Festival is underway—continues. First, in June, they brought us the highest-paid Scottish vice-chancellor who does not know how much he is paid. Now they present us with a recently published report, Decolonised Transformations: Confronting the University of Edinburgh’s History and Legacies of Enslavement and … Continue reading Old College, New Guilt

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Education

Language in Chains

BY JOE NUTT The English language needs its English teachers more than ever Whether they realise it or not yet, English teachers in this, the first quarter of the twenty-first century, have been burdened with the most daunting, and arguably unique, cultural responsibility in the entire history of the language. It is up to them to restore a tongue not just “listless” and “supine”, as … Continue reading Language in Chains

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Education

A Conservative Student’s Struggle

BY JACK WATSON Holding Conservative Views in a Woke Education System At sixteen, most students look forward to sixth form college for the freedom, new friendships, and fresh academic challenges. For me, there’s another reason: the hope of escaping the suffocating political bias and social backlash that comes with being a young conservative in modern Britain. Under a Labour government that seems more interested in … Continue reading A Conservative Student’s Struggle

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Education

The GCSE Gauntlet: A Sixteen-Year-Old’s Lament

BY JACK WATSON The GCSE season—that great, grinding machine of stress and sleeplessness—has finally shuddered to a halt. For two years, we have been its fuel. Now, hollow-eyed and frayed at the edges, we sixteen year olds emerge, blinking, into the light. We are told these exams are our first real credentials, the golden tickets to college, the gatekeepers of our futures. But one must … Continue reading The GCSE Gauntlet: A Sixteen-Year-Old’s Lament

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Education

Reforming Schooling

BY JOE NUTT When Bridget Phillipson’s excruciatingly embarrassing Reign of Error comes to its inevitably ignominious end, all those seriously and professionally involved in thinking about policy relating to schools in the UK, need to grasp the opportunity her failure has dramatically exposed. She will have left a bomb site behind her. Her only achievement has been to dramatically confirm the reality that schools are … Continue reading Reforming Schooling

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Education

Stop Exploiting Schools

BY JOE NUTT Professionals who have to know these things to do their job, know that Wales has quickly followed Scotland in becoming an international educational basket case. The worrying question now is, are England’s schools about to follow them into the trash? Scotland’s Curriculum for Excellence started the rot. I was there at the birth, physically in the same offices, and watched the monster … Continue reading Stop Exploiting Schools

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Education

The Breakfast Club Dilemma

BY NICK PEARCE In British education, the tug-of-war between governmental initiatives and corporate sponsorship has long been a contentious issue. The recent announcement by the Labour government to delay the rollout of free breakfast clubs in primary schools until at least 2026 is a stark reminder of the complexities and challenges that lie at the intersection of education and corporate influence. The idea of breakfast … Continue reading The Breakfast Club Dilemma

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Education

The Value of Latin Best Appreciated Sub Specie Aeternitatis  

BY SEAN WALSH Trigger warning: contains references to Catholicism.  No politician does casual spite quite like Bridget Phillipson. In a Seasonal message to the struggling but aspirational middle-class family she has decided to cancel the Latin Excellence Programme. This, you may know, is a provision introduced in 2022 to around 40 non-selective state schools. From February the resource will no longer be available to the … Continue reading The Value of Latin Best Appreciated Sub Specie Aeternitatis  

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Education

Sacrificing the Best for Spite

BY JOE NUTT Centuries of Accumulated Soft Power is Being Trashed by a Single Spite-Fuelled Politician. In 1964 a Labour Party minister for education whose name is largely forgotten and truly deserves to be, so he’ll remain nameless here, instructed local education authorities to reorganise secondary schooling along comprehensive lines. Like dutiful sheep, they mostly did. Our current minister for education, Bridget Phillipson, is now … Continue reading Sacrificing the Best for Spite

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Education

Labour’s Anti-Education Policy

BY JOE NUTT About a month before Keir Starmer’s now self-evidently delinquent version of the Labour Party secured the mother of all Pyrrhic victories in the general election, I published an essay in The Critic explaining how they would immediately dedicate their energy to attacking private schooling, just as Blair had done with fox hunting. I predicted that they would face a legal challenge rooted … Continue reading Labour’s Anti-Education Policy

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Education

Australia’s Next Export Success – Private Education?

BY RICHARD TAYLOR Labour’s plans to implement 20% VAT on private education may have even wider unintended consequences for UK PLC than already well set out in multiple reports. First, let me say that I think this new tax is Keir Starmer’s equivalent of Tony Blair’s fox hunting legislation – ill-conceived, transactional and damaging to the UK. For anyone who supports it, I am still … Continue reading Australia’s Next Export Success – Private Education?

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Education

Understanding the Challenges and Opportunities in UK Education

The United Kingdom’s education system has long been regarded as one of the world’s finest, producing generations of skilled professionals, innovative thinkers, and global leaders. However, like any complex system, it faces a range of challenges while also presenting numerous opportunities for growth and improvement. Funding and Resource Allocation Funding remains a persistent challenge in UK education. Many schools, particularly in less affluent areas, struggle … Continue reading Understanding the Challenges and Opportunities in UK Education

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Education

In Defence of Classics

BY STEWART SLATER I am a member of an oppressed minority. Unlike other groups which claim that label, however, I have no legal protections to defend me from bigotry. No-one touts their “allyship” with me. Nor are there well-funded campaigns telling people to be nice to me. I just have to suck up my status as a second-class citizen, content to be openly mocked in … Continue reading In Defence of Classics

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Education

Bomb Hoaxes in Britain’s Schools

BY JACK WATSON First it was lockdown, then it was strikes and now it appears that English school students just can’t get a break. That old chestnut is back: the hoax bomb call During my first day of the new academic year, things almost started with a bang. On September 5th, Year 7 students were supposed to have an induction day. However, a couple of … Continue reading Bomb Hoaxes in Britain’s Schools

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Education

Smartphone Addiction Not So Smart

BY JACK WATSON A UN report has suggested smartphones should be banned in schools across the world to protect the mental health of children, to improve learning and to eradicate any distractions in the classroom. This report comes after the agency wrote that less than one in four nations across the world have banned smartphones in schools.   I am still at school and the … Continue reading Smartphone Addiction Not So Smart

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Education

Hey Teachers, Leave Those Kids Alone

BY JACK WATSON Last month, GB News stated that the teaching unions were demanding more freedom to ‘educate’ children on their gender identity. Well, given that the genders are male or female, this would have to be one of the easiest lessons for them to teach (I know that I am walking on what some would say is thin ice, but it is the truth). … Continue reading Hey Teachers, Leave Those Kids Alone

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Education

Looking Back on British Universities

BY ROGER WATSON Welsh poet and playwright Dylan Thomas began ‘at the beginning’ in his famous play Under Milkwood. But when it comes to the present situation in British universities, it is very hard to know either where to start or how it all started. However, we know where we are. In the final months of 2021, we have had the terrible resignation from the … Continue reading Looking Back on British Universities

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