Schools

Another week, another spate of barmy campus bans and ‘safe space’ shenanigans by a new breed of hyper–sensitive censorious youth. At Oxford University, law students are now officially notified when the content of a lecture might upset them. In Cambridge, there were calls for an Africa-themed end-of-term dinner to be cancelled just in case it caused offence to someone somewhere. It all seems beyond parody. ‘What is wrong with these thin-skinned little emperors?’ we cry. But while we can harrumph and sneer at Generation Snowflake’s antics, we miss a crucial point: we created them. First, it is important to note that young people who cry offence are not feigning hurt

Apparently, there are secret Jewish schools in Britain where children are taught nothing but the Jewish faith, where they are exposed to homophobic literature, where all music and the arts are banned and where they are indoctrinated by extremists. How do we know? Because Ofsted chief Sir Michael Wilshaw has told us. Admittedly he didn’t quite say so in those terms but that is what he ended up implying on Radio 4’s PM programme earlier this week. Interviewed by Eddie Mair about the 100 or so illegal schools reported to be operating behind the backs of education inspectors, Sir Michael described the problem. Parents abuse the law providing the right for home education

Tuesday’s protest against Key Stage 1 Sats was moronic on so many levels that it’s hard to know where to start. For one thing, it wasn’t a ‘kids’ strike’. Did a national committee of six- and seven-year-olds get together and decide on a day of action? Even in Brighton, the centre of the boycott, that seems a bit far-fetched. The grown-up organisers of the protest clearly believed that was a cute way of packaging it for media consumption, but the thought of such young children engaging in political activism is actually a bit sinister. It’s like something out of a dystopian satire — a cross between Brave New World and

As someone who believes in limited government, I feel conflicted about universal academisation. I’m a fan of the academies policy because it reduces the involvement of politicians and bureaucrats in taxpayer-funded education, but there’s something a little Stalinist about the state forcing all local-authority schools to become academies. It’s using socialist methods to bring about a conservative goal. It reminds me of that paradox first-year philosophy students struggle with — is it right to force a slave to be free? Jeremy Corbyn and the teaching unions have decided that this is a good issue for them and are planning a national campaign against ‘forced academisation’. But the emphasis on the

In part of his Budget manspreading this week, George Osborne stole Nicky Morgan’s announcement that councils will be forced to relinquish control of all schools, so every single one is an Academy. As Philip Collins says in the Times today, this doesn’t mean they’ll all get better – he rather scorns the idea. But his old boss, Tony Blair, had precisely the same idea: to (in effect) privatise every single state school, so each one is independent of the council and has a direct financial relationship with Whitehall, cutting out local authorities entirely. Blair was vetoed by Brown and had to settle for a few hundred Academies. But in this,