Listen to an interview with Melissa Benn on the website of poet and writer James Nash……………….and later this month, on November 21st at 8pm, Melissa is one of a number of contributors to a special programme on Radio Four, written and presented by Mark Lawson, on the representation of politics in fiction and the arts.… Continue Reading
Category Archives: Writings
How forgiveness really works
Read here the extraordinary story of Mary Foley, a forty six year old mother of three whose fifteen year old daughter Charlotte was stabbed at a party in 2005 and who went on to forgive her daughter’s killer. Mary came to speak to a year 11 group at QPCS, our local secondary school yesterday. A… Continue Reading
Brief encounter with a sixth former
I had an interesting and instructive encounter with a wonderfully enthusiastic sixth former last night. Looking round state sixth forms, largely out of curiosity, with my year 11 daughter we went to the Government and Politics stand at one of London’s bigger sixth form colleges. My daughter will almost certainly be taking this A level… Continue Reading
Check out Event 29!
Below, the latest link to one of Melissa’s December book events. Continue Reading
Now more Kent heads speak out against selection…
Take a look at this very interesting link. Continue Reading
Is the 11-plus a form of child cruelty?
One Kent head teacher thinks so. Although other heads in selective areas cannot speak so openly about the divisive effects of the grammar/secondary modern divide, many share this view. Continue Reading
Ending rejection: news from Labour Party Conference
Spoke last night at full and very lively fringe meeting at Labour Party conference on the importance of ending selection or, as we in Comprehensive Future call it, rejection at 11 plus.The other speakers were Vanessa Everett, the head of both a comprehensive school and a small secondary modern in Kent, and Aaron Porter, Vice… Continue Reading
A tough conference call
The party conference season is as much a fixture in the national autumn calendar as the new school term and Guy Fawkes night. It briefly takes the spotlight off Parliament and the TV studios and for a few heady days illuminates both top and bottom of the political parties that claim the right to govern… Continue Reading
Answering Conor Ryan on the academies
Read Melissa Benn’s blog post answer, on the Public Finance website, to a piece by Conor Ryan, former adviser to Tony Blair and David Blunkett, concerning the academies: In his last PF blog, Conor Ryan suggests that union opposition to academies is based largely on uncertainty about performance; oh, and just a smidgen of carping… Continue Reading
The grammar conundrum
We are at a strange crossroads on selective education in this country. At no time have the main political parties been more united that selection should play no part in any future development of English schools. Yet neither party has concrete proposals for how they might eliminate selection in the many places it still exists.… 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…
