A headteacher who was praised as a ‘star’ at Tory party conference is forcing ‘isolation’ on students whose parents can’t keep up with lunch payments.
The Tory candidate for Mayor of London Zac Goldsmith says he would let schools promote homophobic views, in a contradictory interview posted today.
One of the Tories’ flagship Free Schools is almost certain to go to the wall — losing its government funding after being put into special measures following a damning Ofsted report. Here’s what Michael Gove had to say about the school back in September 2013: Grahame Morris MP: It has been reported that the Durham free school […]
As the schools watchdog Ofsted launches a consultation on its own inspections, the Guardian has been canvassing views from across the education sector. Jonathan Simons, head of education at Tory think tank Policy Exchange, reckons it is headteachers — and, by extension, their bosses, the governing body — who should determine the criteria on which their own school […]
Readers may remember 28 year-old Conservative Tom Shinner, whose utterly farcical over-promotion to a £105,000 Whitehall director role by Michael Gove was highlighted by Scrapbook back in January. Shinner’s original toehold in the education bureaucracy (prior to catching the Gove gravy train) was as a director/governor of Greenwich Free School, whose recent inspection enables us to evaluate his performance and […]
Michael Gove has belittled one of his own ministers as having “no experience of education”. The comment on Lord Nash was prompted by the peer’s handling of a new Free School — which has been delayed by a year despite his department previously claiming it would go ahead. Relating exchanges in a meeting with Gove, local Tory […]
Attorney General Dominic Grieve isn’t afraid to call out corruption when he sees it — even if it looks a bit racist and he ends up having to apologise: “[Minority communities] come from backgrounds where corruption is endemic. We as politicians have to wake to up to it” “[Many immigrants] come from societies where they have […]
Sun on Sunday columnist Toby Young (@toadmeister) brought his highbrow commentary to PMQs this afternoon, commenting on the apparently “serious cleavage” of Airdrie and Shotts MP, Pamela Nash: Good job he isn’t in charge of a school. Oh, wait …
A primary school teacher with no experience of working with teenagers has been named as the headmaster of the first free secondary school in Essex — despite being behind the school’s proposal and sitting on the selection panel. Andy Scott-Evans, who originally tabled the plan for the Christian free school in March last year, will oversee […]
In a snub to his departmental staff in June, Michael Gove handed the administration of the Conservatives’ flagship “new schools” programme to a charity established only nine months previously. Gifting a public contract worth half a million pounds to an untested body would – by itself – raise eyebrows. But what has really quickened pulses […]
