Calls for a supposedly humane alternative just reduce the signal produced by results to mere noise, and would leave universities and employers sorting candidates by other means.
Both the wish to improve education and to offer more help to families require more public spending, not less. Such proposals only make sense if government is willing to be tougher in other areas.
The comprehensivisation experiment begun by the Wilson government helped to bring down the curtain on an age of social mobility.
Rishi Sunak’s fighting talk about the “hardworking aspiration of millions of people” will fall on barren ground so long as the middle classes can’t afford fees.
A lower tax burden will be impossible without less supply of government. And for there to be less supply, there must first be less demand.
The debate on social mobility in this leadership contest should be more wide-ranging than a myopic focus on lifting the ban on a particular kind of school.
Sunak and Truss are indicative of an educational world divided between private schools and state comprehensives. Grammars can play a role alongside Gove’s reforms in ending that dichotomy.
She explains why she changed her mind on Brexit, confirms she would change the Bank’s mandate, and says she would be happy to find a place for Sunak in her team.
The backlash against the Schools Bill is just the latest sign that we have let schools slip off the Conservative agenda.
This is too important an issue for too many people for ‘the optics of a fight with Labour’ to be the primary motivation.
Access to better schools is more dependent on one’s finances than it was when we still needed ration books.
Uniform status and mandatory hours seem like a step away from the animating spirit of free schools.
This biography will be found invaluable by anyone seeking to work out what kind of a person the Labour Leader is.
Medway, the unitary authority for my constituency of Gillingham and Rainham, is in the top 22 per cent of the most deprived areas for education in England.
The twenty-third article in a new series on ConHome about how government might be made smaller, taxpayers better off and and society stronger – through strong families, better schools and good jobs.