George Osborne announced the Tories’ latest attack on higher education in today’s budget, announcing that for some institutions fees will rise in line with inflation, and also that grants will be abolished for the poorest students. Osborne’s budget document states measures will, “include allowing institutions offering high teaching quality to increase their tuition fees in line […]
Posts under ‘Education’
Tory budget announces higher tuition fees and the scrapping of maintenance grants
Jul 9th, 2015 by James Elliott.
Tory education bill will speed up failed academy project
Jul 2nd, 2015 by Naomi Fearon.Last month the Department for Education announced its new Education and Adoption Bill. According to the DfE in their press release the bill will seek to “sweep away bureaucratic and legal loopholes’. Any school found inadequate by Ofsted will be expected to convert to academy status, as well as those schools that are found to […]
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The transforming power of music education
Apr 1st, 2015 by David Pavett.Anyone with doubts about the transformative power of music could not have have come across the work of the Venezuelan Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra or the work done with music education in Soweto, South Africa. It is enough to listen and watch a little of the music made by children, many of whom come from […]
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Poverty is the real difference between school attainment levels
Apr 1st, 2015 by Dave Watson.The Scottish Government’s Parentzone website has published data on the performance of school leavers. The Daily Record highlighted how these figures show a shocking class divide between the wealthiest and least well off areas of Scotland. This is Dave Watson’s opinion piece in the Daily Record that ran alongside the article. In it he argues that the difference […]
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What the general election means for education
Mar 25th, 2015 by Andy Newman.The basic facts behind Labour’s commitment to education are impressive. Between 1997 and 2010 there were 360,00 more teachers, 172,000 more teaching assistants, and 1,100 new schools built. Results improved, with 12% more pupils achieving five good GCSE grades, and 20% more 11 year old achieving expected standards in English and maths. The further education […]
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Tristram Hunt and Churchillian True Grit
Dec 15th, 2014 by David Pavett.After every new speech by Tristram Hunt a friend used to say to me “things can only get better”. Now, he’s not so sure. After the Shadow Education Secretary’s vaunting of Disraeli as a “working class champion”, his refusal to commit to ending selection at eleven and his suggestion that private schools should keep all […]
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Private Schools and Labour’s “Class War”
Nov 27th, 2014 by David Pavett.Tristram Hunt’s speech at Walthamstow school on 25th November has had a hostile reception from the right-wing press. The Daily Mail echoed a private school head’s cry of “Offensive bigotry” and says that the proposals are a “threat to private education”. The Telegraph warns us that “Tristram Hunt has resorted to the politics of […]
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Tristram and Schools – What can we expect in government?
Nov 22nd, 2014 by David Pavett.The People’s Parliament organised by John McDonnell MP recently held a meeting on education under the title Re-thinking schooling: class & education. The panel of speakers included Christine Blower, the General Secretary of the NUT and Diane Reay, a Cambridge university sociologist specialising in questions of class. The contributions were excellent and were followed by […]
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Tory higher education funding farce
Nov 19th, 2014 by Phil Burton-Cartledge.I never set out to be the blogging equivalent of Mystic Meg, but annoyingly I’ve had several predictions turn out to be true. Here’s one of them. Two years ago, almost to the day, I argued that the new funding regime brought in by the LibDem-supported Conservative government would leave Higher Education with a yawning funding […]
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The Gove legacy undermines exams
Oct 28th, 2014 by Trevor Fisher.There is a broad consensus on education policy across the main parties at Westminster, which has only cracked in two areas: (i) Labour is demanding qualified teacher status in state schools and it does so with solid parental support; (ii) less immediately controversial is a split over exam reform. Despite cross party support for exam […]
