The Education Secretary, Bridget Phillipson, captured the headlines recently when she spoke about ‘white working-class children’. She warned that four-fifths of children from white working-class backgrounds were falling short in the English and maths skills required to get on in life. However, this headline-grabbing warning is slightly misleading because she is referring only to white…
A quarter of a century after Tony Blair began the process to get half of youngsters into university, the latest Labour government is being lobbied by the education sector to get even more young people into post-school education. Universities UK (UUK) wants 70 per cent of school-leavers to carry on learning after they leave school…
If further evidence were required that the university system is not fit for purpose, then research from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) makes it clear. It has found that one in five bar staff are graduates – up from three per cent 30 years ago. Nearly 20 per cent of waiters are…
When the King recently appeared on the popular TV show The Repair Shop – recorded when he was still the Prince of Wales – he lamented the lack of vocational education in schools. And I agree with him and have been banging this drum for years. I hope because it is Charles III saying it,…
Former Prime Minister Tony Blair, author of the catchphrase ‘education, education, education’, has waded into this debate again as he pauses from his globe-trotting. During his premiership, he made it a policy to have 50 per cent of young people attend university – a wrong-headed ambition in my view. That figure has now been achieved,…