Tuesday, May 4th, 2010 I’m not used to starting an article with the kind of headline you see above. Education journalists are (or at least, should be, in my view…) accustomed to dealing in nuance, caveat and complexity, and not in the unequivocal enthusiasm which those six words suggest. But I feel they are justified in the case of Diane Ravitch’s “The Death and Life of the Great American School System”. For me, her book has performed an invaluable task, showing up the connections between debates in the US about school accountability, choice, testing and corporate involvement in education, and what has been going onRead More →

  Tuesday, May 4th The more time I spend in education journalism, the more regularly I find myself surprised by the amount of misinformation which flies around in support of particular views. The latest example can be found in yesterday’s Guardian, in an article by Peter Preston, its former editor, in which he criticised members of the National Association of Head Teachers for the  union’s forthcoming boycott of this year’s key stage 2 tests. I have already written a reply to a previous piece by Mr Preston, in which he pledged support for the national tests in a piece defending targets across the public sector. ThisRead More →