The single most important thing in a child’s performance is the quality of the teacher. Making sure a child spends the maximum amount of time with inspirational teachers is the most important thing.
Learning a foreign language, and the culture that goes with it, is one of the most useful things we can do to broaden the empathy and imaginative sympathy and cultural outlook of children.
For a few spotty years, I was that tragic geek.
I’m a decentralizer. I believe in trusting professionals.
As long as there are people in education making excuses for failure, cursing future generations with a culture of low expectations, denying children access to the best that has been thought and written, because Nemo and the Mister Men are more relevant, the battle needs to be joined.
The reason I entered politics was a belief that the people of this country – having achieved so much that was good and noble in our past – had the potential to do amazing things in the future.
It’s often the case that successful people invite criticism.
Proper history teaching is being crushed under the weight of play-based pedagogy which infantilises children, teachers and our culture.
The common fisheries policy unfortunately led to the devastation of fishing in Scotland. My dad had to close his business. As a result something that he been built up by by grandfather and maintained by my dad disappeared. So my dad suffered.
Let me first of all congratulate both of the candidates who have made it through – both Theresa May and Andrea Leadsom are formidable politicians and they have fought great campaigns and they deserve to be in the final two.
You come home to find your 17-year-old daughter engrossed in a book. Which would delight you more – if it were ‘Twilight’ or ‘Middlemarch?’
You know, you don’t see hospital consultants going on strike, and I don’t believe that teachers and headteachers should. It’s within their rights, it’s a civil right, but I think it is wrong in terms of the reputation of the profession.