Excellent piece by Simon Jenkins this morning on the many many wrong turnings of governments and politicians on education, localism, fairness etc over the years. There is now a real opportunity for the new Labour leader, if he or she is brave enough, to suggest something quite radical and rational on the schools front. It… Continue Reading
Author Archives: Melissa Benn
……….and this………….
And another excellent piece on unchristian practices in successful faith schools……. Continue Reading
I wish I’d said that ( 2)
Great piece in today’s Guardian about exactly what’s wrong with the government’s education agenda. It is in fact part of a speech by Huntingdon headmaster Peter Downes, in favour of his anti free school motion that was carried overwhelmingly at yesterday’s Lib Dem conference. The argument is put with utter lucidity; hence its inclusion in… Continue Reading
Thought for the day
On a recent discussion on pensions and retirement, Newsnight chose, rather ingeniously, to flag up the age of every speaker in brackets after their name. A joke? A way of putting content in context? Both, perhaps. It certainly made me think, if I am ever involved in an education discussion on that same programme, I… Continue Reading
The trouble they’ve (not yet) seen
Read Melissa Benn’s latest piece in Public Finance magazine on the looming protests against Coalition policies. Continue Reading
Selling off the schools system
Michael Gove says his education policies will help Britain’s poorest pupils, but will they just compound the social divide? Read Melissa Benn’s latest feature in this week’s New Statesman. Continue Reading
Better late than never: the great Theodore Dreiser
Below, a piece I wrote about eighteen months ago, for an ongoing series on normblog and which I never put up on my own site. So here it is: It is not always easy to write about a favourite book or even to understand why some works are so much more meaningful to us than… Continue Reading
Spoil sport
I suspect Queen Polly is right on this one. History may well judge David Miliband to have lost the leadership election at exactly this point, with Mandelson foolishly attacking Ed Miliband and Blair almost certain to come out in support of David, although I suspect Blair will be rather more subtle in his approach in… Continue Reading
The Miller’s Tale
The opening sentence of Jane Miller’s new book is stark. “I am old and I feel and look old.” In person, however, she seems anything but. As we saunter along Kings Road in London, she in her light grey Converse trainers and short black coat, I am struck by how raffishly youthful she appears. A… Continue Reading
Free Schools: not for turning.
Below, an amended version of Melissa Benn’s latest blog on the Public Finance website So it looks like only a handful of Free Schools will be opening in 2011, and some high profile projects like Toby Young’s West London Free School might be delayed for a year or two. Following on from the PR disasters… Continue Reading
Latest writing
THE CRISIS OF THE MERITOCRACY
The crisis of the meritocracy: Britain’s transition to mass education since the Second World War PETER MANDLER, 2020 Oxford: Oxford University Press 361pp, hardback, £25, ISBN 9780198840145 Cambridge historian Peter Mandler has a fundamentally optimistic story to tell about the growth of universal education in Britain over the last seventy years and one can sense… Continue reading…
Latest news & events
A Cold War Tragedy
Melissa will be in conversation with Anne Sebba about her new book, ‘Ethel Rosenberg – A Cold War Tragedy.’ Weds 15th September 2021, 5-6pm, in the Robert Graves Tent at the Wimbledon Book Festival. More information here. Continue reading…
