Tim Worstall

Almost six-in-10 teachers reported encountering pupils who are left hungry through lack of food at least once a week, it was revealed. OK, a problem. Research by the union also found that many teachers have seen a rise in the number of children on free meals at their school. So it’s a problem we’ve already [...]

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Hmm. The numbers of pupils in comprehensive schools has steadily increased since the mid-1960s and in that period standards have risen continuously. Around six times as many pupils get five good GCSEs as did in 1968. Given that GCSEs were introduced in 1988 (1986 they started being taught, ’88 was first examination year) I find [...]

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Now the coalition’s devious use of the school admissions code – introduced by Labour to bring more fairness to the system – will allow popular schools to expand without constraint or consultation. Quite. Isn’t it just entirely disgusting that parents might be able to send their children to schools that are popular among parents to [...]

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Pay children to attend top private schools, Government told Dozens of top private schools are calling on the Government to provide state subsidies to allow bright pupils to be admitted irrespective of family background, it emerged today. The actual idea is pretty good, effectively, give them back the tax they’ve paid for the State school [...]

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Dear Polly has long advocated that child care should be a graduate profession. Indeed, she likes the Finnish (?) system where everyone changing nappies in daycare has a Masters degree. We’re getting there slowly: Nursery workers so illiterate they stuggle to read stories aloud The proposed solution? Prof Nutbrown will set out her recommendations in [...]

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Recruitment programmes that filter out candidates who fail gain at least 2:1 degrees run counter to many employers’ duties to hire a “diverse” workforce, it is claimed. Imagine that, discrimination against the thick and or lazy.

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“Schools are being cajoled and bullied out of the maintained sector based on a divisive and false prospectus, when the real English success story is the improvement, especially in deprived areas, of thousands of maintained schools.” Are you quite sure you actually meant to say this? For what you’ve said is that as maintained schools [...]

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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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