Education
Our research seeks out an objective view of standards of education in Britain. By doing so, we aim to offer an improved perspective on how best to deliver equitable and high standards of education for all.
We aim in particular to generate evidence-based policy, with realisable strategies for implementation. This includes a commitment to giving parents greater control over how government invests in their child’s education, as well as supporting independent teaching combined with a flexible curriculum.
This complements the practical education projects we run: Civitas Schools, for children who want out-of-hours support but do not have access to expensive private tuition, and Core Knowledge UK, our curriculum project which is being developed in partnership with a number of English primary schools.
Social Mobility Truths
Peter Saunders, November 2019
Politicians of all parties repeatedly tell us that Britain’s social mobility rate is very low, much worse than in other advanced western countries, and that very few children from working class backgrounds succeed in landing good jobs. They claim the professions and our top universities are largely closed to people from humble origins, that opportunities for bright working class children are even worse today… [Full Details]
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Why Academic Freedom Matters: A response to current challenges
Cheryl Hudson and Joanna Williams (Eds.), September 2016
The issues of freedom of speech on campuses and academic freedom have become major talking points. Student politics, once something people left behind upon graduation, is now the daily fare of national, and even international, news coverage. Terms like ‘microaggression’, ‘trigger warning’, and ‘safe space’, virtually unheard of a decade ago, have entered mainstream vocabulary. Campus bans on everything from tabloid newspapers and fancy dress… [Full Details]
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The Ins and Outs of Selective Secondary Schools: A Debate
Anastasia de Waal (ed.), March 2015
Should secondary schools be allowed to select, and if so, on what basis? These questions have long been a battleground of the English education system and have too often yielded answers that reduce the issue to oversimplified dichotomies. The Ins and Outs of Selective Secondary Schools: A Debate gathers a diverse range of key thinkers to evaluate the modern scope of secondary school selection in… [Full Details]
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Progressively Worse: The burden of bad ideas in British schools
Robert Peal, April 2014
Since 1953, education spending in Britain has increased by nine times in real terms but levels of numeracy and literacy among school leavers have hardly changed. Today, Britain is the only country in the developed world where literacy and numeracy levels amongst 16 to 24-year-olds are no higher than amongst 55 to 65-year-olds. In this historical analysis, Robert Peal argues that… [Full Details]
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Prisoners of The Blob: Why most education experts are wrong about nearly everything
Toby Young, April 2014
What is "The Blob" and what has a 1950s sci-fi movie got to do with education policy? In this hard-hitting pamphlet, the journalist and free school founder Toby Young explains how the education establishment has been sucked into a thoughtworld which will not permit reasonable discussion of the best ways to school our children. The adherence of teaching unions, local education authorities and… [Full Details]
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Boxing Clever
Tom Ogg, September 2012
Boxing Clever is Tom Ogg’s account of teaching teenagers who had been expelled from school at the London Boxing Academy Community Project (LBACP) in Tottenham, North London. The aim of the project was to make use of the strong relationships that boxing coaches have with wayward young men. "The prose is strong, the story compelling and the political implications profound... Tom Ogg has made… [Full Details]
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Liberal Education and the National Curriculum
David Conway, January 2010
Professor David Conway traces the history of proposed school curricula from the liberal reformers of the 1860s to modern times. All children, whatever their backgrounds, should be introduced to 'the best that has been thought and said… [Full Details]
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From Two Cultures to No Culture: C. P. Snow's 'Two Cultures' Lecture Fifty Years On
Robert Whelan, March 2009
In 1959, C.P. Snow delivered a lecture in Cambridge entitled 'The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution'. Snow warned of a gap that had opened up between scientists and literary intellectuals. The latter were not only ignorant of science, but contemptuous of it - as if scientific knowledge were unnecessary for a good education. In 1962, an influential literary critic, F.R. Leavis, launched an… [Full Details]
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The Butterfly Book
December 2008
The Key to Early Reading Success 'The Butterfly Book' offers a self-contained course in reading and writing that introduces the 44 sounds of the English language and teaches children how to blend them into syllables and words. By the end of this course, a child will not just have learnt an essential vocabulary but will also have all the keys to unlocking the whole… [Full Details]
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Inspecting the Inspectorate: Ofsted under scrutiny
Anastasia de Waal (ed.), November 2008
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 current school… [Full Details]
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Swedish Lessons: How schools with more freedom can deliver better education
Nick Cowen, June 2008
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, Liberal Conspiracy… [Full Details]
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The Corruption of the Curriculum
Robert Whelan (ed.), June 2007
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 one generation to the next, and that academic rigour and… [Full Details]
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Inspection, Inspection, Inspection!: How Ofsted crushes independent schools and independent teachers
Anastasia de Waal, December 2006
Since 2003 Ofsted has been tasked with inspecting many independent schools. Although private schools are theoretically free to devise their own curriculum and teaching methods, Ofsted can and does pressure these schools into conforming to a standardised template. Looking into the way independent schools inspected by Ofsted are penalised for operating outside the Ofsted box, Inspection, Inspection, Inspection exposes the inspectorate's inability to truly… [Full Details]
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The Student as Consumer: The hidden dangers
Karín Lesnik-Oberstein, December 2017
A student-centered analysis of ethnic segregation in London's schools
Peter Mitchell, November 2017
Playing the Game: The enduring influence of the preferred Ofsted teaching style
Robert Peal, July 2014
Articles for the Media
Britain's education establishment persists in 'dumbing down' for our kids
Robert Peal, Breitbart, May 2014
Islington: Children As Guinea Pigs of the Left
Robert Peal, Standpoint, May 2014
The return of school discipline with no excuses
Robert Peal, Yorkshire Post, April 2014