BY RICHARD TAYLOR Compare and contrast the UK’s recent 20% tax on private education with the approach of US billionaire Joe Liemandt (pictured). His new Founders School in New York, with fees of $150k/£113.25k p.a., promises parents their money back if their offspring haven’t hit $1m/£760k in profit by graduation after four years minimum and $600k in fees. Founders School’s own FAQ is unambiguous about it: “What … Continue reading $1M Or Your Money Back
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
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
BY JOE NUTT I’ve been a sports participant and a fan all my life. So one of very few things I can hand-on-heart thank the world of television for, besides Basil Fawlty and Noggin the Nog, is its near magical ability to gift me the joy of spectating, even when I can’t be there. I’ve been known to watch an entire stage of a cycling … Continue reading Lift Music Journalism
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
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
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
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
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
BY JOE NUTT We are living in the age of the charlatan. Plenty of others have drawn attention to how little credible or relevant professional experience, so many members of his Majesty’s current government possess. Whether it’s Rachel from accounts or Bridget from…well nowhere really, if you don’t count mum as your employer; many of those currently exerting considerable power over all our lives appear … Continue reading The Age of the Charlatan
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
BY RICHARD TAYLOR For someone with zero classical education, the ideas of the French philosopher Voltaire, such as Le mieux est l’ennemi du bien, can seem rather abstruse. I know a little about Winston Churchill, such as his quote, ‘Perfection is the enemy of progress’. The ideas of both Voltaire and Churchill are relevant in the world of education as it grapples with the impact of artificial … Continue reading How Perfect is the Enemy of Good?
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?
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
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
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
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
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
BY STEPHEN PAX LEONARD The sky was tawny; the late afternoon frosty and brittle. The fields crunched as the shooting party of Byronic heroes walked across the spines of the hills enjoying some light-hearted repartee. Percy cum-Banter had spent the day on a shoot on the Scottish borders. Not one of those ghastly commercial shoots with appalling practices of burying birds at the end of … Continue reading In the Company of Gentlemen
BY QUENTIN PIGG Being British and having an appreciation for sound journalism, much of the New York Times’ recent output has mercifully passed me by. But a tweet from one of their writers asserting that baby gender reveals are violence compelled me to visit their site. Much of what I found on there was awful but the absurdity of the Trump derangement articles never quite … Continue reading The Absurdity of the New York Times
