Tim Worstall

UK trails Poland and Bulgaria on adults educated to A-level standard Lecturers’ union says European data shows Britain risks languishing in ‘mid-table obscurity’ due to rising cost of learning We should therefore reduce the cost of learning by paying lecturers less and having fewer of them. There, job done. Not quite what I’d expect the [...]

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In a paper published last year in the British Journal of Psychotherapy, Dr Joy Schaverien identifies a set of symptoms common among early boarders that she calls boarding school syndrome. Her research suggests that the act of separation, regardless of what might follow it, “can cause profound developmental damage”, as “early rupture with home has a [...]

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A MONK who used to teach at one of England’s premier Roman Catholic boys’ schools has been jailed for five years after being found guilty of abusing pupils under his charge in the late 1980s. Richard White, now 66, was a geography teacher at Downside School near Bath when he was identified as a possible [...]

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Parents will be stripped of the right to object to the expansion of grammar schools, under a new school admissions code laid before parliament. Campaigners against academic selection say this could force some schools into a battle for survival as grammars expand to take on their neighbours’ best-performing pupils. The education secretary, Michael Gove, is [...]

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It is claimed that giving profit-making companies access to state funding will create a system in which institutions pursue short-term financial gains at the expense of a decent education. In a letter to The Daily Telegraph today, professors say that proposals spelt out in a recent higher education White Paper will “condemn generations of students” [...]

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How about we keep those to whom it is a vocation and fire all of those to whom it is a job?

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One set of data shows children’s average vocabulary scores at the age of five – when pupils start compulsory education – and ranks them from one to 100. Children with highly educated parents in Britain – those who had at least a degree – ranked 67 on average, while those whose mothers and fathers left [...]

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the woman quoted just below is a student at Harvard University, one of several of whom recently walked out of Greg Mankiw’s EC10 course: “I’m someone who lives below the poverty line, my family’s extremely poor.  And having a class like this that promotes gaining at the expense of millions of people disturbs me and [...]

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Taxpayers are spending more than necessary on training new teachers because “out-of-date” heads avoid hiring mothers who want to return to work while still having time to care for their families, it was claimed. Stephen Hillier, chief executive of the Training and Development Agency, said some school leaders had told him that part-time and job-share [...]

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Many young people find it almost impossible to find stable work, thanks to a massive increase in the flexible nature of the labour market, something that has been pushed by governments of both the left and right in the 1990s and 2000s. Dear Lord……the increase in flexibility was to overcome the previous inflexible structure which [...]

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So, a walk out from Greg Mankiw’s class at Harvard. One point made is that: A legitimate academic study of economics must include a critical discussion of both the benefits and flaws of different economic simplifying models. As your class does not include primary sources and rarely features articles from academic journals, we have very [...]

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Much of what he says is true. However, he’s missed the great point about the American education system. It is a local education system. It’s bugger all to do with the Federal Government. ocal school boards decide what should and will be taught locally. Sure, you may not like the results but that was the [...]

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Government is keen to emphasise that the studio and technical schools will not limit general learning. But a good education is about more than functional literacy and numeracy or a smattering of science and languages. Young people need not just efficient instruction but the opportunity for exploration – of ideas, history, literature, poetry, music, art, [...]

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Research conducted by the Resolution Foundation, and endorsed by Willetts, shows that the importance of having a degree has increased over time, in defiance of the assumption that the more highly educated people there are, the less valuable their qualifications. In the noughties, the fewer qualifications you had, the harder it was to maintain good [...]

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They’re getting this the wrong way around again. Admittedly, these potential saviours are not unruly British adolescents but the 283 million girls aged between 10 and 20 who live in poverty in the countryside of the developing world. Study after study has shown that when they are given a better chance – above all, a [...]

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Every graduate in England and Wales will pay 9% of their income above £21,000, for up to 30 years, just as they would a graduate tax; below that, they will pay nothing. Irrationally from the government’s point of view these income-contingent loans are much less efficient than a proper graduate tax; at best, 70% of [...]

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So she’s raging about how because “free schools” and academies and the like aren’t all the same, are not some grey, uniform, controlled by the bureaucrats monstrosity, this is a bad idea. And then she lets this slip out: Free schools and academies enjoy a range of greater freedoms that will help them to pull ahead [...]

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Apparently there were some crusty student types camping out in part of Glasgow University. Ho hum, hadn’t heard a peep. Anyway, they’re claiming they’ve won and that this is wonderful for all. One of the things they claim to have proven is: From day one, our occupation sought to be more than just a protest. [...]

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It’s The Guardian, of all places, who actually managed to get this story correct in its opening lines. The value of holding a degree has been eroded as the share of the population with a university education has more than doubled over two decades, a study shows. Glory be, that straight old supply and demand [...]

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The number of degree students ending up in low to lower-skilled jobs has grown from 9pc to 17pc over the past 18 years, a fresh analysis by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) has revealed. The increase is largely due to the number of people with a degree rising at a faster rate than the [...]

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