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Following chief advisor Dominic Cummings unprecedented press conference we organise our own press conference, albeit without a garden, fold-out barbecue table or the, er, press.
We will be doing a livestream at 8pm UK time on Sunday 31 March. Keep an eye on our Twitter feeds for more information.
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It is rare for writers to declare all their interests when putting finger to keyboard, but as we are talking private education I feel obliged to confess that I attended a middling private school in South London for the sons of the capital’s better paid white collars.
No such declaration appears in Robert Verkaik’s Posh Boys: How English Public Schools Ruin Britain, and Google can’t tell me where the author went to school either. Although it does not undermine what he says, the question lingers over whether this is the broadside of an angry former pupil or envious outsider.
Continue reading →The cancellation of exams during the lockdown has raised a familiar debate: are we over-testing our kids? Simon Jenkins of the Guardian takes the progressive line that doing without exams for one year might be beneficial.
In the mind of Jenkins, quantifying what students have learned has perverted school and university education, without even giving employers a decent flow of graduates ready to work or a reliable indicator of how well a recruit will perform in the job. “Education lies in the totality of the course, not something that can be written down on paper,” he writes.
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This week we discuss whether the heroic teaching profession should be called on to do their duty for queen and country, rate Sir Keir Starmer’s virtual PMQs banter, and discuss Adele’s new look (Is this right? – Ed).
Joining us is the patented Covid-19 diet, for a leaner, meaner you!
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It is never too early to wonder whether our prime minister will still be in office by the next general election. The Right Dishonourable asked whether Donald Trump would serve his full term as president shortly after his inauguration in 2017, concluding there was only 17% chance he would not do so.
In similar spirit, Guardian pundit Suzanne Moore recently tweeted out, “I predict [Boris] Johnson won’t serve a full term.” Despite the wags in the comment, she presumably was referring to his capacity as prime minister rather than father, fiance or husband.
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