Monday will be the day of high drama (or anti-climax) at party conference
Monday, 20th September: nuclear power, free schools and Nick Clegg’s conference speech. Drama, protest and dissension or quiet compromise, careful management and enthusiastic standing ovation? It’s no...
View ArticleSo how was it for you?
Well fellow Lib Dems, Bloggers and Tweeps… what did you make of conference then? Having been granted the honour of being “Guest Editor” (quaking in me boots it has to be said!) I thought, given the...
View ArticleLibLink | Sarah Teather: Q&A on special needs provision
Children’s Minister Sarah Teather recently took part in an interview followed by a readers’ Question and Answer session for the Guardian about special needs provision: Sarah Teather, the children’s...
View ArticleLibLink: Julian Astle – The report every school reformer should read
Over on his blog at The Telegraph, former director of the Centre Forum think tank, Julian Astle, highlights a report by researchers at the London School of Economics looking into the effect of...
View ArticleOpinion: It shouldn’t just be about the NHS
As an education campaigner and someone who believes in the principles behind the NHS, I have been following the news about the changes we have managed to make to the health bill with interest, and,...
View ArticleOpinion: Academies overspend revealed!
Figures in a Government consultation paper on the funding of academies have revealed that Michael Gove’s policy of getting schools to convert to academies is expected to cost nearly £600 million more...
View ArticleOpinion: Don’t believe everything you read in the papers…
I’ve learnt again this week that it’s not a good idea to believe everything you read in the papers. In this case, it was a story in the Sunday Telegraph suggesting that the Government were changing the...
View ArticleOpinion: We have let neoliberals devastate state education, we must not let...
To believe the Government’s hype, we are currently experiencing a liberal revolution in England’s education system – powers are being decentralised, with schools given more autonomy to innovate, while...
View ArticleOpinion: Gove’s message –“vocational” = “worthless”
Secretary of State for Education, Conservative Michael Gove, has downgraded the value of nearly all 14-16 vocational qualifications at a stroke. I felt angry when I heard this. However, it did little...
View ArticleAcademisation: Is this the equivalent of the FE sector’s 1993 moment?
Academies are opening at an exponential rate. But there’s nothing new under the sun, as the saying goes—we have been here before, if we would all but look. A useful lesson can be learned from the FE...
View ArticleWhat Lib Dem members think about EBacc, academies and free schools
Lib Dem Voice polled our members-only forum before conference to discover what Lib Dem members think of various political issues, the Coalition, and the performance of key party figures. More than 550...
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Opinion: Pity Gove’s 400?
You may have seen the list of the 400 “worst primaries in England”, according to M. Gove. If not, you can download it here: Primaries. I am not about to re-visit the bone of contention that is academy...
View ArticleNick (finally) makes his education speech and launches the Coalition’s own...
Five days after it was pre-briefed, Nick Clegg finally made his speech on A Liberal Vision for Education at Morpeth School in Tower Hamlets. (Morpeth is, by the way, a fantastic school. I visited it...
View ArticleEducation: 47% of Lib Dems want grammar schools opened up, while clear...
Lib Dem Voice has polled our members-only forum to discover what Lib Dem members think of various political issues, the Coalition, and the performance of key party figures. Some 750 party members...
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The Independent View: Keep academy freedoms – and extend them to all schools
The question whether to curtail or extend academy freedoms to state-funded schools was resurrected last October in a speech by Nick Clegg. The answer he put forward was to extend academy freedoms to...
View ArticleAvoiding the Tory disaster in Education
Embed from Getty Images Last week, as a governor, I spent my morning at my local primary school completing an annual return and reviewing our budget for the next financial year (as an accountant, I...
View ArticleWhat is Nicky Morgan doing to school governance?
I’d love to know who is advising the Tories and Nicky Morgan with respect to much of what is contained in the education white paper. What I sense overall is panic. They are terrified that we will not...
View ArticleThe Government finally “nationalises” all our schools
So the government has finally decided to nationalise our nation’s schools. At least we now know where we stand. So, if an academy fails under the new system, the buck goes straight to the Secretary of...
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John Pugh writes: Our vision for Education
In 2010 Michael Gove, acting before the ink was dry on the Coalition agreement, rushed the Academies Bill through Parliament. Governors were free to turn their school into an Academy Trust, without...
View ArticleEnforced academisation plan is “bonkers”
Embed from Getty Images The chairman of the Conservative 1922 backbench committee and Tory councillors are reported to be angry with the government’s plan to force 17,000 schools in England to become...
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