The Chancellor is due to announce his Autumn Statement on November 22. Truss will apparently also announce her own so-called ‘Budget for Growth’. This is an open letter to the Economics Editors of our major newspapers and broadcast media setting out a few suggestions for how to analyse the Budget(s) in a way which accurately […]
It was a surprise when one of the big new announcements made by a desperate Rishi Sunak at the Conservative Party Conference was a reform of further education. It was less of a surprise that the proposal was hastily conceived and not thought through. Calling a qualification designed for England an Advanced British Standard illustrates […]
Since Labour announced their plans to either remove the charitable status of private schools, or add VAT to school fees, social media and right-wing outlets have been awash with people claiming it wouldn’t raise any money in reality, or it would cause untold private schools failing and ‘flooding’ the state sector with students. I thought […]
Dear Editor, I have sent this response to the BBC, after their wholly inadequate response to my complaint about the lack of coverage of the big rejoin march in London on September 23: I am incensed and insulted by the generic, risible, unsubstantiated and facile response to my original complaint. “BBC News is unable to […]
On Saturday 23 September, tens of thousands of people marched from Hyde Park to Parliament Square to listen to speakers including former prime minister of Belgium, Guy Verhofstadt and Gina Miller, who has repeatedly stepped up to defend democracy and the rule of law. The BBC did not cover the march or rally, choosing instead […]
Dear Editor, The British Science Festival is running in Exeter from September 7 – 10, co-hosted by the University with events happening across the weekend both on campus and in the city centre. This celebration of science links quite neatly to today’s announcement on the UK finally reaching agreement on membership of the EU’s Horizon […]
So here we are again. In the middle of yet another ‘how long have they known and why did they do nothing about it’ saga. The RAAC (reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete) scandal demonstrates the same callous disregard for the lives outside the circles of the privileged few as did the care home tragedy during Covid. […]
Dozens of UK councils face bankruptcy in 2026. In response, the government is forcing them to slash their Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) budgets. This will needlessly put at risk thousands of SEND children. The plan won’t work. But there’s a simple way out. How did this crisis arise? Since 2010, local authorities have […]
Rishi Sunk has said that this year’s public sector pay awards have been agreed in full but with no new or additional funding to cover them. There is literally no economic sense in this whatsoever. Pay rises of around 6 per cent for education and health have been announced – with there being no room […]
Dear Editor, I am appalled by the Phillip Schofield scandal. Not (absolutely not) by the behaviour of Schofield himself – who seems to have done nothing worse than what innumerable other men in positions of power have done, and continue to do, usually without any reckoning – but by the behaviour of the media, in […]
The head teacher of a Devon primary school wrote to us as follows: Since the first lockdown in March 2020, leaders and governors in our school have prioritised the mental health and emotional wellbeing of children, staff and families, recognising the far-reaching consequences of the pandemic for all members of our school community. We have […]
Colleen Bower has a mission. With her background in education, she is concerned that young people in South Somerset – a largely rural population – are missing out on experience of, and access to, Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths (STEM subjects). Over time, she has got together with local councillors and many organisations and businesses […]
The social media platform has become a fully weaponised promotional tool for far-right content, toxic conspiracy theories and cryptocurrency scams. And Putin’s regime is loving it, writes Tom Scott. Like millions of other Twitter users, I logged on to my account a couple of days ago to find that the familiar blue bird logo on […]
Dear Editor, I got an email from the Secretary of State for Education today (Gillian Keegan) basically saying that if we don’t agree what they’ve proposed, the offer is withdrawn and the £1000 one-off payment (which is in lieu of an award for this year) won’t be on the table. (Incidentally, that one-off payment is […]
Dear Editor, Once again, I find myself in complete agreement with the analysis of one of your contributors (Jim Grace, writing about the Conservatives’ capture of the BBC). Although I don’t watch Match of the Day, following the Lineker debacle I made a formal complaint to the BBC about long-term right-wing bias within that organisation. […]
Dear Tobias Ellwood, I was a social worker before I had to resign to care for my son, who has additional needs and high anxiety, and I’m currently on Income Support and Carer’s Allowance, as he struggles with school attendance. I have encountered parent blame, particularly prior to my son’s diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder […]
Somerset’s politicians can’t sneak anything past Mick Fletcher when it comes to further and adult education… Tucked away at chapter 12, in a document only of interest to specialists in further education, is evidence of another quiet failure of Tory dogma. In a routine administrative update from the Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA) two […]
Mick Fletcher on another back-of-the-envelope policy. There are some huge issues in the Prime Minister’s in-tray. The health service is facing its worst ever crisis; the economic cost of Brexit is increasingly evident and falling living standards are driving mounting social unrest. In a rational world it would make no sense at all for Rishi […]
Dear Editor Our exports are falling, farmers are discouraged from farming, fishermen from fishing, miners from mining, windfarms are blocked, and the London Stock Exchange has been overtaken by Paris. There is, however, still one profitable sector where the UK is genuinely a world leader – and Bournemouth is its second most important base. Publishing, entertainment, tourism, hospitality, […]
Good companies know that they are most successful when they invest in their people. Ditto good countries. Back in the 1990s the then Tory government, under the premiership of John Major, developed a plan to encourage businesses in Britain to invest in their people. It was the start of the new Investors in People accreditation, that companies […]
We have become resigned to the fact that many of the policies pursued by the present administration are inhumane, whether they relate to desperate people seeking asylum or poor children denied free school meals. We have also become accustomed to administrative incompetence – there is no need to think further than the Truss-Kwarteng budget for […]
A few months ago, doing my daily trawl through the headlines of the Spanish newspaper El Mundo online, I spotted among the front-page headlines: “Xavier Gisbert: “Las leyes educativas llevan años sin aportar nada a la enseñanza de idiomas“. (‘For years the education laws have contributed nothing to language teaching.’) I’ve known Xavier since the […]
Lecturers started a three-day strike today against the use of a subsidiary company to hire staff outside national agreements that underwrite pension, pay and working conditions. This morning I was on a picket line at the entrance to Falmouth University as part of a three-strike with my fellow lecturers there. In the scheme of things, […]
Wow! It’s our second birthday on 23 July. We started out as West Country Bylines and now we’ve completed nearly 7 months as West Country Voices and all thanks to the same great team of editors and proof readers, excellent writers – some new, some longstanding contributors – and a growing band of loyal readers […]
In any sane context the car crash that is Conservative education policy would be enough to bring down a government by itself. The schools bill before Parliament has been so savaged in the House of Lords that ministers have stripped out 18 of the key clauses, leaving it bereft of its original purpose, yet doing […]
The government’s trashing of arts education will do great harm to the UK’s ‘soft power’. But as Tom Scott explains, the damage will go deeper than that. A few days ago, I was at a meeting of University and College Union (UCU) delegates from around the country. Hearing from other delegates about the swathe of […]
With our oceans quickly filling up with plastic and fish stocks dwindling, it’s time to start talking about the massive whale in the room: ghost gear. An enormous environmental problem caused by commercial fishing and fuelled by our ever-growing appetite for seafood. Kristy Westlake talks to some of the heroes on the ocean’s frontline and […]
To my surprise, I find myself agreeing with Katharine Birbalsingh, who tweets under the slightly eccentric name of “Miss Snuffy”. Birbalsingh is regularly referred to in the less serious type of newspaper as “Britain’s strictest headmistress” and her views go down well with the Conservative rank and file. I suspect that it is her strong […]
After successive changes to the student loan regime in England it is difficult to remember that it started out as a reasonable idea. Graduates benefit considerably from gaining a degree, despite the nonsense about ‘Mickey Mouse’ subjects that regularly surfaces in the right-wing press. It was not irrational to ask them to meet some of […]
The battle in the UK is not the traditional competition between parties, but a much more dangerous struggle between a small number of billionaires and the bulk of the UK population. On 5 May, much of the country went to the polls: most for local and mayoral elections, and Northern Ireland for the Assembly. The results […]