We're losing education journalism just as we need it most
I understand the Independent is to stop publishing its Thursday education pages. Their last appearance will be on July 1.
Education - real education, that is, not training in the skills required for work - is in greater danger than it's been in my lifetime. Education journalists, who a decade ago would have been sounding the alarm, don't have access to their platforms any more.
Read more: We're losing education journalism just as we need it most
Bullied and hustled into the academy solution
Another call this morning from Sian Thomas-Cutts, the South Dorset parent who is fighting the extraordinarily Stalinist academy proposal on the Isle of Portland.
As usual with academies, it’s all hustle, hustle, so no one has time to think.
Sleeping with the enemy
I like Diane Abbott. She’s clever, and fun, and I think she actually believes something. But what she’s just done is to allow David Milliband to step in from on high and select which candidate the left should put up for Labour leader.
The history concierge
Press trips are a trap for a freelance. You get to go to nice or interesting places, and it costs you nothing, but if you can’t write about them, or you don’t want to, you’ve wasted precious working hours, and your hosts think you’re just another freeloader.
So I turn them down unless there’s something a bit different about them. What this weekend’s trip to Somerset had to offer was a hotel with a “history concierge.”
The wrong quango, Mr Gove
Like most of the things Michael Gove wants to do, abolishing the General Teaching Council for England is something New Labour thought of first. All New Labour’s instincts were to abolish it, even though they had invented it. And like most of the things New Labour thought of first, it misses the point.
There are wasteful quangoes in education – I’ll come to that in a moment, and name names – but the GTC isn’t one of them.