Today’s cheap, short and ‘sharp’ inspection is by definition restricted to a superficial one-size-fits-all snapshot of school provision. Ofsted’s tick-box criteria, drop-in mentality and frequently poorly-trained inspectors prevent the inspectorate from truly gauging the quality of schools. This collection of essays by educational insiders, including a practising Ofsted inspector, sets out the weaknesses in the… [Read More]
Expenditure on the police force is at record levels but there is widespread public dissatisfaction, while the police complain of being short of resources. They are not intended to be servants of the state, but of the communities they serve. Their powers are personal and derived from the crown, but this essential feature of British… [Read More]
What we can learn from the experience of Sweden, a country with strong egalitarian values that has successfully incorporated the mechanism of choice into its educational provision? “As a primer for serious debate, it really is one of the best and more thought-provoking pieces of work you’ll read in a very long time.” Sunny Hundal,… [Read More]
The premise of both New Labour and Conservative policy is that people not living in married two-parent families are choosing not to. This signifies positive diversity to Labour and a decline in family values to the Conservatives. Both miss a critical reality.
With political interference in the NHS showing no sign of abating, there is a case for considering more radical options than those under review by Lord Darzi: to look to Europe for less centralised ways of providing universal and comprehensive health care. The recent reforms in the Netherlands provide a particularly interesting case.
Described in a foreword by the former President of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, Bernard Ribeiro, as ‘an excellent analysis’, Seddon argues it is out respect for the very founding principles of the NHS – universal and comprehensive care – that it must embrace its consumers and open up to real choice and… [Read More]
Subjects in the school curriculum used to be regarded as discrete areas of knowledge which would be imparted to pupils by teachers motivated by a love of learning. The contributors to this book argue that we need to return to the traditional view of education as a means of transmitting a body of knowledge from… [Read More]
In an age of big government and unbridled consumerism, people are searching for the local and particular, for a politics beyond power and money. Fraternity is sustained not by private will or state coercion, but by social authority, the culture of persuasion which operates in a family or a community. It exists in the neighbourhood… [Read More]
David Conway takes issue with those who minimise the threat posed by mass immigration. He argues that from the time England can be considered to have become a nation, immigration has never risen above very low levels and had no serious demographic impact until the last part of the 20th century. Since 1997, however, Tony… [Read More]
A comparison of family policy and its implications for human happiness and the raising of children in Britain, Italy and Sweden.