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Thursday 17th May 2012
Parenting classes are not the answerWhen the government announced it’s new £5 million parenting project last week I thought I should offer to help. I have four children, after all, so know a thing or two about the subject. I sent a message via Twitter to the owner of the Parent Gym, one of the organisations involved in the scheme. “I’d be happy to donate all my Spectator columns on parenting,” I said. “You could reproduce them as an example of what not to do.” It was a joke, obviously. Middle-class dads trade anecdotes in the park on Saturday mornings about what crap parents they are, but the fact that they’re in the park with their children – usually playing football or cricket – demonstrates that they’re actually doing a pretty good job. (To read more, click here.)
Sunday 13th May 2012
Today's column in the SunThe English class system is a bit like Freddy Kruger – everyone agrees that it’s a terrible thing, but it’s proving impossible to get rid of. Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, gave a brilliant speech on Thursday in which he pointed out that in Britain a person’s life chances are more closely linked to the circumstances of their birth than almost anywhere else in the developed world. If you’re born poor, you’re more likely to remain poor than in every other Western country apart from America and Brazil. If you’re born with a silver spoon in your mouth, by contrast, a dazzling array of glittering prizes awaits you. (To read more, click here.)
Thursday 10th May 2012
Hamster-gate continuesHamster-gate continues. Last Saturday, Caroline and I went out to dinner, leaving the children playing with Roxy in the company of a babysitter. I told them to put her back in her cage before they went to bed, making sure that all doors, etc. were securely fastened. In order to make sure they complied, I stressed that the consequence of her escaping would be certain death – just as I had before we lost Roxy Mark I. (To read more, click here.)
Sunday 6th May 2012
My column in today's SunIf Thursday’s local election results were repeated in a general election tomorrow, 25 per cent of Conservative MPs would lose their seats. Hardly surprising, then, that Tory backbenchers have begun to think hard about how to boost the Party’s standing in the polls. (To read more, click here.)
Friday 4th May 2012
Can Boris ever be Prime Minister?It's squeaky bum time for those of us who want Boris to win in London. I was out tramping the streets of Hammersmith yesterday, doing whatever I could to get out the vote. Like most Conservative Party members in London, I was nervous that Boris’s strong showing in the polls might lead to complacency – and so it has proven to be. Ken Livingstone may be a weak candidate in many respects, but he’s a formidable machine politician. Every last drop of effort needed to be expended to secure Boris's re-election. (To read more, click here.)
Sunday 29th April 2012
Today's column in the SunIs the Milibot beginning to malfunction? The Labour leader was interviewed on Radio 4’s Today programme on Wednesday and repeatedly told us he was saying something without actually saying anything. “What I say is this,” he said. He went on in the same vein: “I do say”, “I do believe”, “I do think”, “let me speak to that point”, etc. It was as if the person being interviewed was a tiny alien living inside the head of the Leader of the Opposition giving a running commentary on what his host was doing. Even by his own robotic standards, it was weird. At the conclusion of the interview, I half expected him to start muttering to himself: “What I get up to do is this”, “I do get up”, “I do walk to the door”, “Let me open the door”, and so on. Labour may be on course to win hundreds of seats in next week’s local elections, but it’s no thanks to Ed Milibot. (To read more, click here.)
Thursday 26th April 2012
The biblical plague infesting our schools that is "eduspeak"As a relative newcomer to the field of education, I’ve only just discovered the online forums of the Times Educational Supplement. Forget the TES, which is to the educational establishment what the Church Times is to Church of England. The forums are the place to go. It’s like being a fly-on-the-wall in the staffroom of a large, inner city comprehensive after the headteacher has departed. Above stairs, the writers are focused on highfalutin things like policy and research, but below stairs the posters are more concerned with day-to-day matters. I suspect that quite a few of them are English teachers because one of their favourite themes is the misuse of language. (To read more, click here.)
Sunday 22nd April 2012
Today's column in The SunThere’s trouble brewing in the Coalition. No, I’m not talking about the conservatory tax – even the environmental whackos in the Lib Dems have agreed to ditch that. The issue is constitutional reform. On the face of it, Nick Clegg’s proposals to reform the House of Lords are quite sensible. Better to have an elected second chamber than rely on political appointees like Lord Ahmed, the Labour peer who was suspended earlier this week for offering a £10m “reward” for anyone who brought Tony Blair to justice for “war crimes”. And it looks as though Clegg has the backing of the Prime Minister. Downing Street confirmed on Friday that House of Lords reform will be the centrepiece of the Queen’s speech next month. So what’s the problem? (To read more, click here.)
Thursday 19th April 2012
Will audiobooks stop my kids fighting on the trip to Cornwall?Following my recent column about the horrors of travelling with my four children, I got a sweet letter from a 17-year-old called Tara Vivian-Neal recommending the wheeze that her parents came up with to keep her and her brother quiet on long car journeys: audiobooks. “Black Ships Before Troy, The Iliad and Tales of William Shakespeare have forever been drummed into my head,” she wrote. “When a story as captivating as King Lear or Macbeth is read aloud you totally immerse yourself and bickering and fighting is forgotten.” Now, I’m not so naïve as to think that my children’s attention could be captured by Tales of William Shakespeare. Gnomeo and Juliet is about their level – and even that was considered a bit highbrow by seven-year-old Ludo who still struggles with SpongeBob SquarePants. But before our trip to Cornwall over the Easter break I decided to give it a whirl and made a few purchases. (To read more, click here.)
Thursday 19th April 2012
A reply to Lisa Nandy's attack on free schools in the New StatesmanI was slightly disappointed that Lisa Nandy saw fit to attack the West London Free School in the course of making her case against free schools in general in the New Statesman. One of the courtesies that both sides of this argument generally observe is not to single out individual schools for criticism. She claimed that the proportion of children on Free School Meals at the WLFS is 23%, compared to an average of 32% at the five neighbouring schools. I don't know how she’s defining "neighbouring schools", but the five closest schools to the West London Free School as the crow flies are Godolphin & Latymer, Ravenscourt Prep, Latymer Upper, Sacred Heart and Flora Gardens. Since the first three of these are independent schools and the proportion of children on FSM at Sacred heart is 7%, I can assure her the average proportion of children on FSM across all five is not 32%. (To read more, click here.)
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