The Spectator

Thursday

The Spectator

School portraits: snapshots of three notable schools

From our UK edition

Trinity School, Croydon Headmaster Alasdair Kennedy says he wants students to leave the school ‘without any sense of entitlement, but with a humility that acknowledges the fact there is always more to learn and others to learn from’. The former grammar school, which accepts boys from the age of ten, now offers a co-educational Sixth Form, in a state-of-the-art building opened by Boris Johnson in 2012. More than half of parents do not pay the full fees of £20,437 per year due to scholarships and bursaries. This summer, 84 per cent of students got into their first choice university, with almost half of all grades awarded being A*s.

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What would you make all children learn? A Spectator curriculum

From our UK edition

Matthew Parris My father was an engineer. As a child I enjoyed ‘creative’ writing: stories, poems and so on. Dad said: ‘Try writing something useful. You know how to mend a bicycle puncture. Write for me, on one page, instructions for mending a puncture, to be read by someone who knows what a bike is, and what things like “spanner” and “puncture repair outfit” mean, but has never tried to do the job themselves.’ To my own and Dad’s surprise, I really enjoyed this exercise, which demands not just an ability to write clearly, but the mental exercise of putting yourself into a different person’s place, so you can explain. It is really an exercise of the imagination.

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

From our UK edition

Oxford and Cambridge have released figures showing how many offers they gave to pupils from schools in the 2021 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, 35 are independent, 21 grammar, ten sixth-form colleges, seven selective sixth-form colleges, six comprehensives or academies, and one is a further education college. (Schools are ranked by offers received, then by offer-to-application ratio.

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Letters: Lockdown saved lives

From our UK edition

Lockdown saved lives Sir: Rishi Sunak presents an alarming picture of what happened during lockdown (‘The lockdown files’, 27 August) – and one echoed by lockdown sceptics who claim that Covid policy was a disaster, stoked by fear and based on questionable scientific advice. Worst of all, they cry, the trade-offs were not even discussed. But none of this is true. I know because I sat around the cabinet table as politicians, scientists, economists and epidemiologists agonised over the extent to which lockdown would devastate lives and livelihoods. It was not an easy decision for anyone. Looking back, it’s clear that the biggest mistake we made wasn’t locking down, but doing so too late.

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Portrait of the week: Gorbachev dies, Gibraltar becomes a city (again) and Meghan’s Mandela moment

From our UK edition

Home Liz Truss, the contender for the Conservative party leadership who is expected to become prime minister next Tuesday, resisted temptations to say what she would do about the national energy price crisis. But she was said to have in her pocket licences for new drilling in the North Sea. Nadhim Zahawi, the Chancellor of the Exchequer for the time being, said that even people earning £45,000 a year would need help with their energy bills this winter. The price cap for energy set by the regulator Ofgem will rise by 80 per cent in October, with electricity going up from 28p per kilowatt hour to 52p and gas from 7p to 15p, making a typical annual energy bill currently £1,971 rise to £3,549.

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What did Nasa achieve last time it visited the Moon?

From our UK edition

Of mice and Moon What did Nasa achieve last time it visited the Moon? Apollo 17, in December 1972, involved putting two astronauts, Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt, there for 75 hours. They used a lunar roving vehicle to collect 254lb of rock and dust samples from areas up to 4.7 miles from the landing site. Among them was some orange dust believed to have originated in a volcanic eruption 3.5bn years ago. Experiments were also conducted into the flow of heat from the centre of the Moon to the surface, into minor changes in gravitational force, and the effect of cosmic rays on mice. At the end, Cernan said that he thought humans would return ‘not too long into the future’. North Sea hopes Can the North Sea avert the energy crisis?

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Russia, Ukraine and the legacy of Gorbachev

From our UK edition

In her memoirs, Raisa Gorbacheva recalls the moment when her husband turned from bureaucrat into reformer. ‘I’m in my seventh year of working in Moscow,’ he told her as they were walking together one evening. ‘Yet it’s been impossible to do anything important, large-scale, properly prepared. It’s like a brick wall – but life demands action. No, we can’t go on living like this any more.’ It was the first time, she wrote, she heard him say such words. ‘That night, a new stage began that brought big changes.’ Mikhail Gorbachev’s death this week has led to much analysis of his legacy. He is admired more in the West than in Russia.

Thursday

The Spectator

What’s Helsinki’s nightlife like?

From our UK edition

Finnish lines Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin said she had taken a test for illegal drugs after being filmed at a party at which some people were shouting ‘flour’ – Finnish slang for cocaine. What’s Helsinki’s nightlife like? — The Hostelworld website identifies a Helsinki venue, Kaiku, as one of its 20 top clubs in the world. — Insider.com names Helsinki as the second best city in the world for socialising. — However, Finder.com rated Helsinki as the 16th most expensive city in the world in which to buy a pint, although it did come out cheaper than Oslo and Stockholm. Screen out Cineworld was reported to be on the verge of filing for bankruptcy, following Covid and what it said was a lack of blockbusters this year.

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Letters: How to reform the GMC

From our UK edition

Overhaul the GMC Sir: Max Pemberton’s cogent criticism of the GMC (‘Unfit for purpose’, 20 August). is one of the more nuanced and on the nose of those that I have read. A client of mine was reprimanded and subjected to a fitness-to-practise investigation after an attempted suicide following a financial crisis. The experience worsened his mental health, which then prolonged the investigation. Other clients have been forced to sell their homes or relocate. Some initial steps I implore the GMC to take include limiting the length of investigations, improving mental health reporting, providing more support for doctors about fitness-to-practise issues, and overhauling how evidence is handled.

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Portrait of the week: Drought in Europe, property crisis in China and barristers and binmen strike

From our UK edition

Home Inflation would reach 18.6 per cent by January and the energy price cap £5,816 in April, according to a forecast by Citi, the investment bank. An annual National Grid exercise simulating a gas supply emergency has been extended from two days to four in September. Workers at Felixstowe, Suffolk, Britain’s biggest container port, handling 48 per cent of traffic, went on strike for eight days. Strikes by Scottish dustmen spread from Edinburgh. Barristers belonging to the Criminal Bar Association voted to go on an indefinite strike in England and Wales after their demand for a 25 per cent increase in pay for legal aid work was denied. A man was charged with the murder of Rico Burton (a cousin of the boxer Tyson Fury), who was stabbed to death in Altrincham at 3 a.m.

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What the Tory leadership rivals haven’t discussed

From our UK edition

In just over a week, Britain will have a new prime minister. No one can say that the 160,000 or so Conservative party members who will have made the choice have been deprived of exposure to the two candidates. The leadership race has dragged on for longer than a general election campaign, with endless televised hustings and public appearances. The process is supposed to be a training ground, testing candidates on their answers to all the toughest questions that will confront them in government. But in this respect it has failed. High tax is a symptom of a wider problem: big spending. Unless spending changes, any tax cut will be temporary. Yet there has been very little acknowledgment from the candidates that government has grown out of all proportion to its usefulness.

Thursday

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Letters: Blame the regulators, not the water companies

From our UK edition

No competition Sir: Ross Clark’s compelling critique of the water companies comes to the wrong conclusion (‘Water isn’t working’, 13 August). He is right to say that water privatisation has been a failure, but this was inevitable given the nature of the industry – a monopoly providing an essential public service. Clark’s suggestion that there should be more competition is unworkable for the simple reason that there is too much fixed investment stretching back to the 19th century and we all have only one pipe into our homes. There are parallels with the rail industry, where a quarter of a century of trying to introduce competition has resulted in a handful of open access services and vastly higher costs.

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Portrait of the week: Inflation soars as Boris moves out of No. 10

From our UK edition

Home The annual rate of inflation rose to 10.1 per cent, its highest since 1982. Average wages rose by 4.7 per cent between April and June, but inflation in that quarter left average workers 3 per cent less well-off than before. The supermarket Iceland was to offer customers interest-free loans of between £25 and £100, repayable at £10 a week, to help them buy food. Sir Keir Starmer, the leader of the Labour party, called for £29 billion to be spent on freezing energy prices for six months for all consumers, rich and poor, partly to be paid for by extending the windfall tax on oil and gas. Railway workers belonging to the RMT union went on strike for another two days.

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Somewhere XII – Solution

From our UK edition

30 July is Independence Day in Vanuatu in MELANESIA (23D). Its capital city is PORT VILA (39/16), one of its volcanoes is LOPEVI (30), an indigenous reptile is the FLOWERPOT SNAKE (11/36) and its national anthem is YUMI YUMI YUMI (4/43A/43D). Its former name was THE NEW HEBRIDES (diagonally from 1) which must be shaded.

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Don’t blame Brexit for our lack of workers

From our UK edition

It has become received wisdom that Brexit has condemned Britain to chronic labour shortages. Many of the migrant workers who used to staff our hotels and restaurants, install our bathrooms and look after our children, returned home during lockdown and never returned. Sometimes that is blamed on the end of free movement, other times more generally on Brexit Britain somehow having become less attractive in the global competition for people. It is a notion which is easily disproved, however, by a simple figure published this week by the Office for National Statistics which went woefully under-reported. There has been no drop in migrant workers in Britain. On the contrary, there were 6.3 million foreign-born workers at the last count – a record high.

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Do Brits take as many holidays as Boris?

From our UK edition

Testing, testing When were A levels first sat? They can be traced back to the Oxford Local, an external examination for schools instigated by Oxford University in 1858. Out of 401 candidates only 150 passed, with the Educational Times complaining that the questions were more searching than those on Oxford’s BA exam two decades earlier. – The first standardised national exam designed to be taken at 18 was the Higher School Certificate introduced by the Board of Education in 1917. In order to pass, candidates had to satisfy the examiners in a minimum of five subjects. The certificate was replaced by A levels in 1951. Bone-dry Britain How unusual is the drought?

Thursday

The Spectator

A-level results: has government reversed grade inflation?

From our UK edition

As A-level results come out today, we will find out if the government has made any progress in stemming exam grade inflation. As always, some candidates will celebrate while others will be disappointed. This year, though, the latter group is expected to be more numerous because exam boards are supposed to be clamping down on the implausibly high grades awarded during the two years when school exams were suspended due to lockdowns. Anyone looking solely at exam grades without other information to hand might wonder: what was it about Covid that appeared to boost the educational attainment of so many 18-year-olds? In 2019, the last normal year, 76 per cent of A-level entries were awarded grades A* to C.

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Letters: The Tavistock is a national health scandal

From our UK edition

The race isn’t run Sir: Bravo Fiona Unwin (‘Rooting for Rishi’, 6 August) for the best piece I have read on the grassroots take on the Conservative party’s leadership election. Having attended several such hustings both this time and over the years, this one does remind me of 2005: David Davis vs David Cameron. Lots of career-focused senior MPs backing an early front-runner, and then quiet reflection from the life-experienced sensible grassroots membership. Few predicted the 2005 winner until that electric party conference speech. This time, with dozens of events like the one the vice-president of West Suffolk describes, the typical Spectator reader rather than the Westminster hack will select the next prime minister. It’s all to play for.