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Academies enhance self-government: why not go co-operative?


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I am grateful to everyone who wrote to me over the Government’s potential plans to complete the process of turning all schools into academies by, at the end, forcing schools which do not choose for themselves to convert. Academies are one of the few things Labour got right, blazing the trail for high educational attainment since they were established in 2002. Claims made by those on the left that academisation means privatization are bizarre: these remain state schools. Since 2010, there […]

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Conservative plans for additional school places


The Government has announced an extra £2.35 billion to create more school places. This is in addition to the £5 billion that is already being spent in this Parliament. This means that between 2014 and 2017 schools in Buckinghamshire will receive £16.2m. It is the first time that councils have had 3-year allocations of funding to spend on school places, so Bucks County Council can plan ahead and ensure every child has a school place. This Government has already created […]

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Freedom in Education: the profit motive


NB: this post is by Tim Hewish, my Parliamentary Researcher, and the views expressed are his own. I recently attended the E. G. West Memorial Lecture delivered by Professor James Tooley and sponsored by the IEA on the topic of for-profit schooling. He noted that the word profit is highly politicised and many would not wish to even countenance the notion that profit-making should be implemented in schools.  Professor Tooley prefers the term freedom in education because when we discuss […]

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Durand: A triumph of educational reason


NB: This post is by Tim Hewish, Steve’s researcher. I was delighted to learn that the Durand Academy has been successful in its request to set up a free boarding school for acutely underprivileged children in Stockwell, South London. When Steve and I visited back in January, we were greatly encouraged by the transformational work all the teachers and staff were doing at Durand. Their passion was rooted in traditional principles of hard work, meritocracy and discipline. They were not […]

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My reflections on our visit to Durand Academy


N.B. The author is Tim Hewish – my Parliamentary Researcher. We have just returned this afternoon having visited the Durand Academy in South London. Researchers spend much of their time reading and studying policy, some policies better than others, but we often do not get to see the practical implementations.Therefore, it was a privilege to see firsthand how the Academy system is flourishing under the stewardship of Director, Greg Martin. I was struck initially by the neighbourhood. Let’s not try […]

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