Topic: Education

I have a post on the subject of student loans for higher education on the IEA blog, under the heading Academic interest: the free-market case against subsidised student loans.

The following is one key point of the Queen's Speech proposals, from the front of today's Telegraph: Academy schools introduced in England and Wales under plans to free outstanding primaries and secondaries from local authority control. So…

Ed Balls has finally admitted that the government has got it wrong on education over the past ten years and that their pledge to have their three main priorities as education, education, education has been a total failure.  At least, he…

Education, education, education.  I wonder how many blog entries I have started with those three words over the past year?  Incredible as it is to believe, but it was education that was the single biggest issue the Labour government was…

The education debate has rumbled on longer than usual it seems this year in the aftermath of the annual GCSE/A level dumbing down standards debate.  One of the reasons, I suspect, is that the mass investment from the Labour government is…

The Daily Mash has really hit the nail on the head today. Yesterday I wrote about the incredibly stupid idea of encouraging more people to take up science at GCSE by making the exams easier. Today the Daily Mash reports: -Brain surgery…

As the education dumbing down debate continues where one side argues that exams are getting easier while the other suggests that teaching is getting better, it seems that the Joint Council for Qualifications is looking to resolve the debate…

The FT reports today: -Students at UK grammar schools outperformed their private-sector counterparts for the first time this year, grabbing a higher proportion of top GCSE grades, results revealed on Thursday.- Yet further proof that…

How do you fancy an outdoor adventure with Philosophy?  How about some fashion buying?  Some Aromatherapy and Therapeutic Bodywork?  A bit of lifestyle management?  Not got a clue what I'm on about?  Believe it or not you can do all these…

It's that time of year where we mock the students who have worked hard for the past 12 months for being handed A grades on plate.  Gradually over the years, there is more and more truth in the accusations that standards have slipped with…

In another example of the government seemingly having more money to spend than sense, private nurseries are being forced out of business due to an oversupply of places created by state-funded nurseries and day care centres. The Government…

Private Funding Initiatives (PFIs) - the best way to finance a major project at the same time as keeping the risk away from the taxpayer.  In theory.  The latest example of where the taxpayer always gets shafted in the end is the new build…

A lot of commentary today on the results of Key Stage 2 tests of 11-year-olds' abilities at the "Three Rs" (Reading, Writing, Maths and Science). As a statistical observation, the problem appears to lie particularly with the Writing part of…

In just a couple days the nation's sixteen year olds will be receiving news of how they have done in their GCSEs and the following week it will be the turn of A-level students.  It is traditional, therefore, this time of year to tell all…

Economists from the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) have slammed the government’s new grant system to be introduced next year to university students. The reforms are aimed at attracting the poorest students to university by handing out…

Yesterday bgprior asked, in the comments to my post about scrapping targets, why did this announcement come from Treasury? And well he might, it seems the department it concerns is playing a different tune. Ed Balls (Secretary of State for…

This isn't new or amusing, but it is important. We hear all the time about the lowering of educational standards (JG posted on it only yesterday), but it is rare to find it set out so clearly and chillingly as in an open letter to the AQA…

Education, education, education. In ten years the Labour government has managed to erode away the reputation of the top British universities so much so that, according to Professor Alison Richard, vice-chancellor of Cambridge, Britain's…

Why is this government obsessed with educating everyone to first class honours degree standard?  Apart from it being of little use to the nation as a whole if everyone was educated to nuclear physicist standard, have they actually sat back…

The Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA) - they really do have a quango for everything -  recommended this year in a letter to the former Education Secretary, Alan Johnson, that the A* grade should only go to students who get 9…

The Department for Education and Skills are interfering again.  This time they are handing out one size fits all advice on how to teach our young children.  They have produced a whopping 208 page document telling professional teachers how…

Education. Education. Education. The opening lines of ten years of spin, let downs and failed policy from New Labour. A report published by Civitas today confirms that whilst this government has talked about education and pumped a load of…

The debate over David Willetts' accidentally controversial speech on education continues to rumble on. As Willetts and Cameron have themselves kept the debate alive, through Willetts' appearance on Sunday AM, and David Cameron's…

The Willetts speech on education is causing waves in Tory circles, as they vie with each other for who has the best idea for the standard (or perhaps two-model) offering that should be provided to other people's children. It's yet another…

And so to another story of exceptional financial waste and total incompetence of management that only a government oversee.  Back in 2000 one of the many, many legacies that Blair wanted to set in place was the city academy programme.  So…

JG has been highlighting the MTAS fiasco. Besides the fine illustration it provides of this Government's incompetence and refusal to take responsibility for their mistakes, it also sheds an interesting sidelight on another bad Labour policy…

What makes governments and local councils think they know best about just about everything?  If I have a leak in the bathroom, I'll call the plumber not Councillor Jones or my local MP.  If I want finacial advice I am highly unlikely to ask…

Or your children will suffer. Headline in The Times today: University squeeze on children of graduates. Is there any need to say anything more? Can't get a much more obvious example of government picking losers. It's us. All of us (rich and…

Education. Education. Education. Remember that? What actually has Tony Blair done though to back up the sound bites? There was the city academies idea - 21 semi-independent schools that are largely funded by the tax payer and cost £2…

How can Mr Blair confuse the redistribution on taxpayers’ money to elite universities as “embedding a culture of charitable giving?” It is not charitable on the part of the government, that’s for sure - merely a smokescreen method for the…

Almost no one now pretends that Labour has achieved its ambitions for education. Government ministers continue to trot out their stale statistics about how much they have spent and how much the average grades have improved, but very few are…

Gordon Brown revealed in a speech at the Government Leaders' Forum yesterday (31 January) that "one of the priorities of his premiership would be legislation to compel all youngsters to remain in full-time education (The Times)." This is…

Gordon Brown promised in successive budget speeches to rebuild or refurbish all 3,500 secondary schools before 2020 to spend £3bn a year on rebuilding or refurbishing to complete 100 schools by this year and 200 the next to sign 10…

Today's papers report that many schools are now achieving the government's target of five good GCSE's but the figures are much lower when maths and English are taken into account. Some schoolmasters encourage pupils to take easier subjects…

David Willetts, the shadow education secretary, has revealed through a number of parlimentary questions that the Learning and Skills Council (LSC) - one of the government's biggest education quangos - has "wasted" more than £100m on staff…

The Institute for Public Policy Research, the Government's favourite think-tank of the "Third Way" (by their own lights, the "UK’s leading progressive think tank", using "progressive" in the sense that has been coopted by the soft-left to…

Tony Blair is planning to double the number of new city academies from 200 to 400 by 2010. The PM is pointing to the improved exam results to justify the move. But only a month a ago, an Ofsted report found that a few of the small number of…

Yesterday's Ofsted report reveals that more than half of secondary schools are still failing to deliver a decent standard of education. And this is almost 10 years after Tony Blair came to power with a priority of "education, education…

First the Government announced that parents that don't read and sing for their children will be helped to do so in new parenting centres and today's (21 Nov) papers are reporting that £4 million will be spent on "super nannys" (=child…

The children's minister Beverley Hughes announced today that parents that do not read and sing for their children will be helped to do so. New parenting centres will be opening from next year to give parents advice. The minister says that…

The Government has promised £75 million to universities to prevent further closure of chemistry and physics departments. The subjects are vital to the economy but it cannot be economically viable to sustain (such expensive) courses that do…

The HSE announced today (03 November 2006) the new workplace hazard awareness course and qualifications for young people. According to the the Chief Executive of HSE it is a "great example of how HSE, government and industry can work…

So peers have decided that head teachers will be required to promote "community cohesion" and that this will be assessed by inspectors (Guardian). Schools work best where teachers are left to get on with the business of running schools, not…

Islam is causing particular problems in the world at the moment. But other religions have also been the excuse for destruction and torment, for example in Europe at the time of the Inquisition, or more recently in Northern Ireland, North…