Opinion

Here I comment on a wide range of issues from education to politics, the arts and more. I welcome lively and opinionated debate, so please leave your comments.

  • Are truants overwhelmingly from poor backgrounds?

    Recent research completed by the Tories suggests what we’ve known for a long time that kids from socially deprived backgrounds are much more likely to bunk off school than their middle class peers. I appeared on BBC Breakfast talking about the issue. I categorised children who bunk off into three categories: the arrogant, the alienated […]

  • One of the most important books of the Noughties

    It’s getting to that point when we’re all looking back at the decade and thinking about what are the really important books. My vote goes to Sathnam Sanghera’s The Boy With A Top Knot, a brilliant memoir about Sathnam’s quest to find the truth about his father’s madness. Satnam grew up in Wolverhampton in the […]

  • Abu Dhabi — The only city thriving in this recession

    Abu Dhabi is not suffering like Dubai because this Emirate has cash reserves of billions, built up over the years by storing the profits from its oil. Now it’s beginning to spend it, building Dubai-style malls and hotels. I’m here visiting a friend who is the Business Editor of the National, a new newspaper set […]

  • Why have we gone so wrong with the way we educate our children?

    The Cambridge Review of Primary Education is speaking sense to me. We have constructed a curriculum that fundamentally alienates our children with its emphasis upon attainment and its lack of thought on how we intrinsically motivate our children. Document 1 Document 2

  • Should parents take their children out of school during school time?

    I argued on BBC Breakfast that they should not. I cited the example of ‘Katie’ (not the pupils’ real name) who had missed weeks of school because her parents were taking her out regularly of school during term time, going on cheap holidays. They lied to the school and said that she was ill. There […]

  • 🎓 Should You Hire a Solicitor to Help You Get Your Child Into the Right School?

    The truth about lawyers, school admissions, and what really works in 2025 Every year in England, thousands of parents are disappointed when their child doesn’t get into their first-choice school. It’s stressful, emotional — and confusing. One question often comes up immediately: 👉 Should I hire a solicitor or education consultant to help win my […]

  • Are Blair’s children better educated than previous generations?

    So the first set of GCSE results have come through of children entirely educated under New Labour. Has Blair’s mantra of ‘education, education, education’ worked? I think not. The GCSE results are just now trust-worthy; they are effectively rigged. Proper analyses, such as the OECD rankings, where countries are compared for their pupils’ attainment in […]

  • The uses and abuses of jargon

    Have we gone mad with the way we use jargon? A sentence used by the police in this article suggests so. I appeared on the Steve Nolan show, talking about this, partly defending jargon. In some cases, it can be helpful. For example, the label “Special Educational Needs” is jargony, but it’s far better than […]

  • Should parents be banned from sports’s days?

    This is a tricky one. Sports’ days are about children doing their best on track and field and not about parents soaking up reflected glory. One headteacher has done exactly this though: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1197284/Schools-bar-parents-sports-day–paedophiles.html?ITO=1490 I appeared on BBC Breakfast explaining why the head had good reasons to do this, given the horrific climate that the internet […]

  • Should schools ban short skirts?

    I think they should. At the moment, there’s a bit of an epidemic of short skirts sweeping through the land far faster than the swine-flu virus. Some of this attire doesn’t actually deserve the name of ‘skirt’, ‘belt’ would be more appropriate! Quite frankly, I don’t think that the girls wearing them are aware of the negative […]

  • Is 1984 the most influential novel ever written?

    Emphatically not! Orwell’s last novel has not survived the test of time. I know this through the hard graft of having to teach the dreary novel to reluctant Year 10 and 11 students. There are a number of serious flaws with the book. First and foremost, the plot is predictable and relatively undramatic: a miserable […]

  • Is passion all that matters in education?

    Is stirring a pupil’s passion all that matters in edcation? Ken Robinson’s new book, The Element, suggests that this is at the heart of getting the best out of children. I appeared on Radio 3’s Nightwaves arguing a little differently. I said that if teachers just tell pupils to follow their passions then they could […]

  • Do thirty-something men need their mothers more than ever?

    I found Sutcliffe’s novel very easy to read, skipping through it in a day. I particularly enjoyed the way Matt, the features editor of a lad’s magazine, was depicted. The scenes where his mother gate-crashes a launch party he’s at, bosses him around in his warehouse flat, sets him up with a girl are funny, […]

  • Too many tests?

    Emphatically not! I think schools need to test and assess children more; more often, in shorter and sharper ways. At the moment, we have these clunking assessments for children at 7 years, 11 years and 16 years. These exams fail to assess children properly because they are so unwieldy, and the test papers are so […]

  • Is journalism about humiliation

    A powerful piece by Jill Parkin highlighted the issues connected with writing personality based journalism — especially if you are a woman. They are increasingly being asked to write about very humiliating subjects: weight loss, their sex lives, their troubled children and so on. Is the new journalism about humiliation? Have the values of reality […]

  • Life on a Refrigerator Door — the first post-it note novel

  • Are A-Levels still the gold standard they used to be?

    My answer is a resounding “No!” Several things have made it a lot easier to get an A grade: The Assessment Objectives: if pupils tick the right boxes, they’ll get a good grade Re-takes Less stringent marking. The old English A Level was a difficult exam to get an A grade in. Overwhelmingly, you had to write […]

  • The horrors of Ecstasy

    Very troubling article about Ecstasy in the Guardian today – it’s had a good day.

  • Dealing with grief

    An amazing article on a wife’s grief after the death of her husband for sixty years.

  • Are we the same as the war generation?

    Just finished reading One Fine Day by Mollie Panter-Downes, a rather wonderful short novel published just after the Second World War. The novel largely describes in lyrical, humorous and incisive detail one hot summer’s day in the life of a housewife living in a rural village just after the war. For me, the book was […]