Adults in England have a very unequal spread of basic skills – some are highly skilled while others do poorly at literacy and numeracy tests. It’s likely that entrenched inequality in our education system…
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Education – Articles, Analysis, Comment
Displaying 1776 - 1800 of 1816 articles
You can be forgiven for assuming that gender is not an issue any more in higher education. There are more young women entering universities than ever before and they are graduating each year in their hundreds…
Proposals to allow schools to start looking after two-year-olds go to the heart of a long-standing tension in education policy: is early childhood provision about childcare for working parents or is it…
It is not very often that an education story is the lead item on the BBC’s Today programme, but the apparent sacking of Baroness Sally Morgan as chair of schools inspectorate Ofsted and comments by its…
There is a tired old mantra that periodically echoes along the corridors of Whitehall. It goes something like: “The UK is great at science but poor at turning it into innovation”. Yet since the Conservative…
Computing is an important subject, but it is only one of many that schools have to teach, and few would argue that it is more important than English, maths, or science. But as a high-profile debate continues…
Are you a teacher? When you are at a party, a wedding or in the pub, and asked: “What do you do for a living?” – what do you say? Why might you lie? Is it too boring? Too complicated? Much too likely to…
Some children arrive at school already able to read. They have enjoyed books with their parents and understand the exciting route that reading takes them into the wonderful world of stories. They may well…
When the International Studies Association attempted to regulate the blogging activities of some of its members, the reaction was unsurprisingly hostile. The row has prompted coverage in academic outlets…
As the old saying goes, there is only one thing more useful in politics than having the right friends. That’s having the right enemies. The education secretary, Michael Gove, has been highly skilled in…
The social sciences can now be seen as substantial UK industry, worth £23.4bn a year in broad economic terms according to my research. But subjects such as politics, economics, business, law and sociology…
In 2008, I was full of hope that Barack Obama would change the American approach to education. I volunteered for his campaign’s educational policy committee and was selected as an Obama delegate for the…
During the run up to Kenya’s 2002 general elections, presidential candidate Mwai Kibaki promised to make primary education free for all Kenyans. True to his word, when his coalition won the election and…
Michael Gove is ploughing ahead with plans to gather an elite team of computer science experts to help bring coding into schools. He has rightly acknowledged that teaching programming in schools is vital…
Yeshpal Singh is in his early thirties, his hair already streaked with grey. He sits in a university in the north Indian city of Meerut. Catch him on a good day, and he’ll tell you that he is a PhD physics…
Cumbria University is to allow some students to pay their tuition fees in bitcoin, the digital currency hitherto more associated with drugs and guns. But target students probably don’t already have ready…
In a recent article in Times Higher Education, it was argued that crowdfunding could threaten government investment in science and research. Joe Cox, an economist from the University of Portsmouth suggested…
The global crash of 2008 kicked off a furious debate in the UK about whether or not the City of London is a real asset to the economy. There was huge anger about the multi-billion bail-out of failed banks…
These days it is heresy to suggest some teenagers may sometimes exaggerate – but when it comes to accusations of sexual abuse or misconduct, teachers who are falsely accused have little hope of salvaging…
When your classroom is a global one, filled with well-informed online learners, they don’t cut you much slack. Hundreds of people pore over every element of your course, making well-informed and sometime…
The triennial jamboree that is the publication of the OECD PISA tests kicked off with the usual round of blaming and name calling among politicians. Both sides of the political debate naturally found ammunition…
I don’t like to take off my shoes in the house. Where I grew up, this was considered “uncultured”. These days, with clean, fragrant carpeting and super-polished hard wood floors, or for reasons of culture…
Having floated ideas about return to O-level style examinations and an English baccalaureate certificate, education secretary Michael Gove has given in to opposition and stuck with the GCSE. But the reforms…
Guardian columnist Simon Jenkins has turned his gracious attentions to the state of higher education in an opinion piece. His views on the balance between teaching and research have been greeted frostily…
Each new administration tends to try to improve compulsory education by introducing a new and purportedly better type of school. The current government has at least three, and is pushing vocational schools…