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15 July 2026

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Opinion

Battle of the schools: which one gets closed?

In the summer of 2013, the health secretary was stopped in his tracks. Jeremy Hunt’s decision to close the emergency department at Lewisham Hospital was ruled unlawful. It was a victory for local campaigners but it would also become a parable for the situation in which academies would one day find themselves. I fear that […]

How can we better support EAL pupils?

EAL pupils are not a remotely homogeneous group, and we’re foolish to treat them as such, writes Jo Hutchinson One of the top stories from the recent 2017 GCSE results was the extraordinary rise of children with English as an Additional Language (EAL) over the last 15 years. Here, it was reported that on average, such […]

16 to 18-year-olds need funding too!

If 16-to-18 participation is “compulsory” then it should be funded at the same level as other compulsory phases, argues John Widdowson Ten years ago, Alan Johnson MP, then Secretary of State for Education and Science, announced that all young people should be obliged to remain in education, an apprenticeship or employment with training until their […]

Trustees beware: know your legal duties!

If there is a single part of the academy system that needs our urgent attention, it is trusteeship, argues Leora Cruddas There is still much that is misunderstood about the differences between governing a local authority-maintained school, governing a single academy trust and governing a multi-academy trust. At its most extreme, this lack of understanding […]

Free schools can’t be judged as a homogenous group

Tom Richmond is wrong on one thing, argues Thomas Byrne. There already are numerous free school successes – and more than a few that have gone wrong It’s true that it’s too early to tell whether the free schools programme has lived up to its champions’ claims; the former DfE advisor Tom Richmond was correct […]

Schools: you must tell pupils about apprenticeships!

After news broke that only two of the 10 largest multi-academy trusts are actually implementing the so-called Baker Clause, which requires schools to allow technical education providers access to their pupils, the man who fought for the clause in the first place explains why it is so vital that every school complies A recent survey […]

How school leaders can be sucked into dodgy dealings

Before I became a teacher I briefly worked for KPMG, one of the world’s largest auditors. It was shortly after the fall of Enron, itself one of the world’s largest accountancy firms, after its senior leaders were discovered up to their necks in fraud, money laundering, and conspiracy, among other things. The fall of Enron […]

Free schools: do their outcomes justify the cost?

There’s not enough evidence yet to see whether free schools have worked, says Tom Richmond, but what we do now know is quite how expensive the project has been When Toby Young, the director of the New Schools Network, said last summer that free schools were “the most successful education policy of the post-war period”, […]

The reception year isn’t all about learning to read

The UK’s dogmatic approach to teaching reading does a disservice to the different ways and speeds at which young children learn, writes Jan Dubiel Ofsted’s recent Bold Beginnings report was controversial for several reasons, not least because it appeared to suggest that the core purpose of the reception year is learning how to read. Literacy […]