Andy Burnham has been making waves in the last couple of weeks with the announcement of his MBacc: the creation of “two equal routes — one academic and one technical — to give a clear path to all young people in Greater Manchester, whatever their interests, ambitions and passions”, according…

Last week, seemingly almost as a surprise to them, Labour confirmed one of the worst kept secrets in higher education policy when they formally announced they weren’t going to scrap tuition fees after all if they get into power. …

On Friday, I tweeted a stat I’d heard – that there was a huge spike in absence rates in schools that day. Parents had worked out that between the strike day on Thu, one unauthorised absence on Friday, a 3 day weekend, and then another strike day on Tue, that…

I was facilitating a focus group the other week, when I heard what Labour’s big education idea for the next manifesto could be. It was a group of pretty much EveryBritain — swing voters, in a swing seat, with a mixed age and gender and socio economic group. * And…

I turn this week, slightly reluctantly, to Ofsted. Not really to talk about Ruth Perry. It’s an utterly tragic case and I can’t imagine I have anything useful to say about it beyond the sheer human heartbreak for all involved. There’s a reason that they say hard cases make bad…

Bridget Phillipson’s speech to ASCL conference this weekend was interesting for a number of reasons. It’s a shame we couldn’t contrast it with Gillian Keegan’s, but as she said in her apology, that college visit to Darlington just couldn’t wait. Or maybe she was locked in pay negotiations. I can’t…

This week, slightly unnoticed, a lengthy but important report on school admissions landed from Simon Burgess and colleagues from Bristol. It’s a fascinating report, because it creates for the first time since mass academisation a dataset of how all 3,000 odd secondary schools in England run school admissions. (It’s also…

John Gill’s editorial in this fortnight’s Times Higher sets out the challenges for the new Secretary of State for DSIT (apparently known in Whitehall shorthand as ‘Technology Secretary’, ugh). As opposed to the normal “these are some things you can do”, he’s terribly meanly gone for “things you should not…

This week, the Prime Minister visited one of the new Family Hubs set up around the country and announced an expansion of them to more LAs. Although it was covered by the media, it hasn’t featured in any of the round ups of the PMs Big Political Week, which focused…