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23 May 2026

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Opinion

There’s more to worry about than grammars

Spending the summer worrying about the return of grammar schools is like worrying the NHS is about to reintroduce frontal lobotomies. Lobotomies, like grammars, were a miracle cure of the 1940s. At their peak more than 1,000 people a year had metal spikes pushed into their skulls, swished around, and withdrawn, in the belief that […]

Theresa May should take a look in the mirror on grammar schools

Theresa May’s policy to expand academic selection by allowing grammar schools to expand and other schools to select some of their pupils is an exercise in Orwellian double think. On the Radio 4 Today programme this morning Justine Greening tied herself up in knots trying to argue that grammar schools represented increased choice, an argument […]

Our LA is quite ‘hands-off’ anyway, so what freedoms would academy conversion bring?

We don’t currently understand the freedoms that converting might give us – what additional freedoms are there? We’re pretty much left to do what we want at the moment anyway as our local authority is quite ‘hands-off’, so what will the difference be? Christine says: I’m not surprised you don’t understand the ‘freedoms’ that converting might bring, […]

Can church schools become stand-alone academies?

Question: Is the memorandum of understanding between the Department for Education and the Church of England/Catholic Church a legally binding document?  Can church schools become stand-alone academies or do they have to become part of a diocesan-led trust? Victoria says: In order to answer the above, we need to look first at how a church school […]

How worrying is the drop in Science results?

GCSE results out. Ofqual have released numbers showing the dips and rises in school numbers. It shows a quirk with science. Each year on results day Ofqual produce boring-sounding ‘variability charts’. Dull name, but important data. These charts show how many ‘centres’ (schools or colleges) dropped or increased their results compared to the previous year. […]

To halt the decline in arts A-levels, government needs to change its story

There has been a steep decline in A-Level entries to arts subjects this year. Lorenza Antonucci has a hypothesis about why this might be While a record number of students have been accepted onto degree courses in the UK this year, the recent A-level results also reveal that labour market returns play a large part […]

What we can, and cannot tell, from A-Level and GCSE results this year

A tricky part of reporting A-level and GCSE results this year is that school leaders will want different information than we, in the media, will have available. Editor Laura McInerney looks at what we will be able to say from the data. Previously, for GCSE, schools were focused on how many of their pupils passed […]

A-level results 2016: How Schools Week will report the day and why

Last year we canvassed opinion on what people dislike about coverage of results days – A-level and GCSE – and what they would like to see instead. Editor Laura McInerney explains how Schools Week will be covering the day.   People really dislike: – Stories focused on kids getting billions of A*s – Kids sobbing […]

Forget opening more grammars, get PRIVATE schools to open up instead

There are more imaginative ways to improve social mobility than opening more grammar schools, explains former political advisor Adam McNicholas I’m 30. In the not too distant future, I might have kids. Friends of mine are starting. Soon, when we get together, discussions will shift from plans for weekends away to plans for dealing with […]