Today

10 Nov 2022
My pilgrimage on the Western Front Way

Daunt Books in Marylebone was full last Tuesday evening for the launch of The Path of Peace, my book about walking from Switzerland to the North Sea, to help realise the vision of a young subaltern, Douglas Gillespie, killed in September 1915 shortly after unveiling his idea in a letter to his headmaster at Winchester College. He envisaged after the war a ‘via sacra’ being created along the entire Western Front and he wanted every man, woman and child to walk the trail as a reminder of where war leads ‘from the silent witnesses’ on both sides. A ‘brilliant idea’ was how The Spectator described the suggestion during the war. But the vision lay buried for 100 years. My walk last summer was 1,000 km and took one million steps through soil where ten million bled to death or were severely wounded in body or mind.

My pilgrimage on the Western Front Way

Saturday

3 Sep 2022

Saturday

18 Jun 2022

Thursday

2 Sep 2021
Have we let exams become too important in shaping schools?

I was working in my study at Brighton College one summer term afternoon when my PA banged on the door: someone at The Spectator wanted to speak to me urgently. An animated editor burst on the line, audibly back from a very good lunch, barking: ‘What’s all this you’re saying about exams and tests squeezing scholarship and rounded learning out of schools?’ ‘Sitting exams in rows in sports halls has little bearing on what school pupils will ever do later in life,’ I spluttered, my fumbled response sufficient for him to commission an article ‘by tomorrow’. Teaching for tests, I wrote in that piece, was damaging schooling because teachers, robbed of their professionalism, were teaching physics GCSE, rather than physics, and Spanish A-level, rather than Spanish.

Have we let exams become too important in shaping schools?

Saturday

19 Jun 2021
Will Boris Johnson be one of the great prime ministers?

Boris Johnson may have been unable to work his magic on the burghers of Chesham as he did on fellow G7 leaders last weekend at Carbis Bay. But as he approaches his second anniversary in power next month, it is worth asking whether he is on track to become one of the landmark prime ministers in British history. Since the office was created 300 years ago this April, just nine prime ministers have emerged as giants. These eight men and one woman changed the course of history, and had successors who tried to emulate them, or distance themselves – but none could escape their shadow. Of the remaining 46 PMs, the majority departed Downing Street leaving little or no trace. No landmark PM has held office since Margaret Thatcher in 1979.

Will Boris Johnson be one of the great prime ministers?

Saturday

30 Jan 2021

Thursday

28 Jan 2021
After three centuries, we need a museum of British premiership

Thursday 3 April 1721 was an unremarkable day in political London. No fanfare or ceremony surrounded King George I’s appointment of Robert Walpole as First Lord of the Treasury (Prime Minister), merely a paragraph buried in the press: ‘We are informed that a Commiffion is preparing appointing Mr Walpole Firft Lord…’ Yet here was the start of what has become the longest-lasting head of government job in the democratic world — and its 300th anniversary falls on 3 April this year. Expect no fanfare or drone pyrotechnics in political London to mark the occasion. Our leaders will, inevitably, be attending to the pandemic and other pressing concerns. But that does not mean that we should let the moment pass. Many countries make much of the history of their heads of government and state — including the United States, which has museums and research centres for every president.

After three centuries, we need a museum of British premiership

Thursday

30 Jan 2014
Liberal arts education has been under attack – we need to rediscover its profound wisdom

England did so deplorably in the Ashes in part because of an obsession with data, including minutely detailed plans on diet and exercise. Excessive bureaucracy can squeeze the lifeblood out of sport, the arts, and indeed education. Bureaucracy gone mad. Michael Gove, aided by Michael Wilshaw, has massively improved the standards of schooling in Britain. Their insistence on top quality teaching for all, and a will to smash the mediocre, lies at the heart of all they have achieved. They will go down in history as great education secretaries and chief inspectors respectively. But for all that, they do not sit comfortably in the same railway carriage as the principle of a liberal education. They are on a crusade, relentlessly driving our schools forward.

Liberal arts education has been under attack – we need to rediscover its profound wisdom

Thursday

5 Sep 2013
Sixth-formers are now questioning whether university is right for them

The traditional edifice of sixth form, university in Britain, and a job for life is still the norm for many, but major cracks are beginning to appear in the infrastructure. As the father of three children, two of whom have been through university and one who is still there, as well as headmaster of a school which sends more than 200 young -people to university each year, I have to say that I am neither surprised, nor indeed sorry, that the traditional model is beginning to implode. Increasing numbers are beginning to question whether higher education is right for them at all. Too few ask themselves the question, ‘Why am I going to university?’ Too many sleepwalk their way through the experience, without making the most of it as a result.

Sixth-formers are now questioning whether university is right for them

Wednesday

12 Dec 2012
Those who can, teach

This book shouldn’t work. A memoir written by a 40-year-old, who has never written a book before, hardly sounds promising. The topic, education, moreover is death to good literature: barely has a book been written about the subject that is not dull beyond belief. Yet, against all the odds, this book turns out to be an enthralling read. Teach First is one of the most inspiring ideas around in 21st-century Britain. The book tells the story of its first decade, from 2002-12. Rising from nowhere, it has become one of the top graduate employers in Britain and is slowly achieving its mission of transforming opportunities for socially disadvantaged young people. The idea is simple: inspire top graduates with the challenge of spending a minimum of two years teaching in Britain’s most socially disadvantaged schools, motivating their students to transform their lives through educational achievement.

Thursday

2 Aug 2012
Training does not make the best teachers

None of us would accept being treated by a doctor or by a nurse who hadn’t had extensive training, nor would we want legal advice from someone who hadn’t been through law school. Nor would we be comfortable with our company accounts being managed or audited by anyone not trained to a high level in accountancy. So why should we accept teachers coming into our schools who haven’t been properly professionally taught how to teach in a college or university? Schooling is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and poor teachers, as research shows, destroy life chances. How can we play dice with our children’s lives? Well, as someone who has been head of a school for over 15 years, I can comfortably say I am not remotely troubled by employing someone who doesn’t have a teaching qualification.

Training does not make the best teachers

Saturday

18 Jun 2005