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Thursday

Sophie Winkleman

My fight to get screens out of schools

It was gratifying to see the recent Unesco report recommending moderation on the topic of tech in the classroom. I do hope the Department for Education, Ofsted and every school head in the country has read it. Britain seems to have submitted to the tidal wave of digital learning without so much as a minnow of doubt. The switch to online lessons during the lockdowns should have been temporary, an emergency measure – not something we then accepted wholesale. Personally, I find the sight of 26 bright faces glued to 26 bright screens for lesson after lesson indefensible. The argument that these platforms are ‘adaptive’ is unpersuasive – a good

Matthew Lynn

Can private schools survive Labour’s tax grab?

The latest headmaster of Eton has been recruited from a major private equity firm to help drive the brand’s growth in China. The consortium of hedge funds that own Winchester has been involved in a bitter takeover battle with Rugby, centred mainly on the redevelopment value of its playing fields. Westminster has been acquired by Meta, the owner of Facebook and WhatsApp, to develop campuses in the Metaverse, Netflix has acquired Marlborough to use as a set for romcoms, while Elon Musk has taken control of Ampleforth, sacked most of the teachers and rebranded it as ‘W’ for reasons that no one can quite fathom. Forcing schools to turn themselves

The Spectator

The Oxbridge Files: which schools get the most pupils in?

Oxford and Cambridge have released figures showing how many offers they gave to pupils from schools in the 2022 Ucas application cycle. We have combined the figures in this table. It shows how well state grammars and sixth-form colleges compete with independent schools. Over the years, both universities have increased the proportion of acceptances from state schools: 69 per cent, up from 52 per cent in 2000. Of the 80 schools, 33 are independent, 26 grammar or partially-selective, 18 sixth-form colleges and three are comprehensives or academies. (Schools are ranked by offers received, then by offer-to-application ratio. If schools received fewer than three offers from one university, this number has

Emma Thompson

The hidden private school fees

Are you totting up the cost of school fees? Are you turning your piggy bank upside down, white-faced? Yes, the cost of private education is the ultimate first-world problem. But even among the ‘haves’, some are luckier than others. The global super-rich pay school fees from lavish earnings or trust funds. The rest of us, having failed to take the elementary precaution of being (or marrying) a hedge-fund manager, must save up. The financial pressures on middle-class families can be gruelling.  ‘Overseas trips are crippling. Why can’t they tour to Ipswich?’ fumes a father As a rough starting figure, a recent newspaper investment advice column told a young couple to

Clare Page

The sex education scandal

This summer an independent panel of experts assembled by the Department for Education will assess the state of Relationships and Sex Education (RSE). And what a state it is. Another lesson plan asks children to consider whether ‘virginity is made up by society’ Now compulsory for all secondary-school pupils, RSE is authorised by recklessly loose government guidance, delivered by an unregulated industry and influenced by radical gender studies academia. There are worrying cases of third-party sex education providers handing schools lesson plans on wildly age–inappropriate topics or pushing controversial ideas about gender. More worrying still, as I discovered first hand, concerned parents do not always have full access to what

Harry Mount

What’s in a school nickname?

‘Have you met Sperm?’ a friend from Westminster School asked me at a teenage party once. Sperm was a charming, pretty, confident girl but, still, I didn’t feel quite ready to use her startling nickname on our first meeting.   My own nickname – Mons, Latin for Mountain or Mount – seemed unadventurously fogeyish by comparison. I didn’t pass it on to Sperm.   Old school nicknames can be fantastically rude – but the ruder they are, the more affectionate Old school nicknames can be fantastically rude – but the ruder they are, the more affectionate. Sperm happily responded to the nickname – and her friends used it in an utterly friendly

Ysenda Maxtone Graham

Why are cathedrals cutting ties with choral schools?

There’s worrying news for all who care about the incomparable cultural phenomenon that is the singing of choral evensong in British cathedrals every day of the week. Canterbury cathedral announced in March that it’s cutting ties with its local independent choir school, St Edmund’s, ending a happy relationship that has lasted for 50 years. St Edmund’s was only informed about the end of the contract a few days before the public announcement.  If these small powerhouses of excellence are lost, the nation will be culturally the poorer for it From now on, Canterbury’s choristers will be drawn from any and all local schools, and they will sing just three services

Lisa Haseldine Lisa Haseldine

The crisis in language teaching

The British are, on the whole, rather rubbish at languages. We all know people who live up to P.G. Wodehouse’s description of the ‘shifty hangdog look which announces that an Englishman is about to talk French’. As more of the world speaks English, our monolingualism is getting worse. According to the British Council, only one in three of us speaks a second language. But it’s not entirely our fault – we’ve been set up to fail by our education system. The national struggle with languages starts young. The first time most of us will encounter a modern language – usually French – is at primary school, where its teaching is patchy

Melanie McDonagh Melanie McDonagh

Teaching children mindfulness is a waste of time

A friend from Lewisham, south London, reports occasionally on her children’s state school, which has a reputation for being strife- and strike-prone. However, the children themselves – nursery and reception – are engaged in more calming activities. They are doing mindfulness. ‘My son loves it,’ she says. They sit down cross-legged at least once a week to take in the sounds around them (‘listen to the birds!’), concentrate on their breathing and focus on the present moment. My friend did ask the teachers whether it was possible to get five-year-olds to sit still for that long. ‘Yes,’ she was told. ‘In fact, some fall asleep.’ On the plus side, it

Greg Ashman

Is Labour right about the power of oracy?

It is no surprise that a speechwriter and a barrister-turned-politician would think the art of speech-making should be taught in schools. It’s like pig farmers at a barbecue eulogising the nutritional value and superior flavour of pork.  The speechwriter in question is Peter Hyman and the former barrister is Sir Keir Starmer, Britain’s presumptive next PM. In serious fields of scholarly inquiry, the goal is to make the complex appear simple. Unfortunately, the field of education sits under the social sciences, which try to make the commonplace sound complicated. This is why making speeches and discussing ideas are dubbed ‘oracy’ and are the Labour party’s new big education idea.  Is

The Spectator

School portraits: snapshots of four notable schools

Hurstpierpoint College, West Sussex Hurstpierpoint College – or ‘Hurst’ – aims to provide an ‘excellent all-round education’ that enables every child to ‘achieve their own personal bests’. The school is located in the West Sussex countryside, is co-educational and for pupils aged four to 18 years. Its 140-acre campus is impressive and, having abandoned full boarding in 2019, it offers flexible and weekly boarding from Year 9, along with a chaperoned weekly train service from Clapham Junction. The college was established in 1849, and claims to have the oldest Shakespeare society in existence and the oldest school magazine in the country. It says increasing numbers of pupils now transfer from

Rory Sutherland Rory Sutherland

You won’t know it, but a school trip will be the best day of your life

‘We need 800 words on a memorial school trip by next Friday. And Taki’s already written one.’ As soon as I agreed to this commission, I started to worry. What if Taki’s childhood involved countless trips to Penscynor Wildlife Park, St Fagans Museum of Welsh Things or Wookey Hole? There would be a risk of repetition. After some reflection, I decided this was unlikely. I had even gingerly lowered the rear step of the minibus to maximise the resulting damage Unlike Longstanton Spice Museum, which is an Alan Partridge invention, Penscynor Wildlife Park, though now defunct, actually existed. It is surprising that it failed financially, since it must have made

Wednesday