Should state schools be able to make a profit? We asked this of you on our Coffee House poll this week. 71 per cent of you said yes, and with good reason. Profit-seeking companies expand when demand is strong: that’s what you want good schools to do. But successful schools not seeking profit have no incentive to expand: it’s an easier life just to let the waiting list grow and jack up ...

Free schools are all well and good – but what about the schools that remain? Some CoffeeHousers raise this question in response to my earlier blog, and it’s important enough to deserve a post in itself. Because introducing new schools to compete with council schools is the best way of raising standards for all – and studies around the world prove this. The ‘free schoolsR...

At Coffee House, we do our best to serve up robust debate and solid ammo alongside it. So I'm delighted that Matt Cavanagh and Jonathan Portes were able to post their critiques of my posts on immigration. It is, we hope, the first of many high-calibre, well-argued and fact-rich outside replies we will run. Coffee House is, of course, here for the benefit of our customers, so we'd be inte...

Coffee House is offering internships to students and recent graduates.  Successful applicants will be able to write for Coffee House, work on the website, and experience behind-the-scenes life here at The Spectator.  For more information contact phoskin @ spectator.co.uk 

My name is Stuart Sharpe. I am a Coffoholic. Damn, it feels good to type it out loud. Just to clarify, that's coffee I'm addicted to. Not caffeine - I can survive perfectly well on decaffeinated. Just coffee. In my house I have four distinct methods of making coffee. There's the instant stuff, with caffiene or without.

Parents of children who regularly truant face having their benefits cut, David Cameron has warned, as he opened the first wave of the Government's free schools. Here are the free schools opening this year.

Toby Young is a hate figure for lefty educationalists (i.e. 99% of them) because he is a leading figure in setting up one of these "free schools", deregulated state schools on the Swedish model that the coalition government hopes to introduce. In this article he carefully debunks five of the scare stories the left has spread about the free schools. Though like all of us I am sure he has faults, To...

Many smokers I know say they aren't addicted, they just choose not to stop. By the same token, I'm seeing if I can give up Coffee House for a fortnight as I take my summer holidays in Sweden. I was asked by a media reporter for the Sunday Herald newspaper last week if I mind when anonymous people attack my pieces online. On the contrary, I replied, it's why I blog. When James Forsyth got Coffee Ho...

Over at The Spectator Coffee House David Blackburn is conflating best practice with worst practice. Recruiting not-sure-to-vote members of the electorate to Postal Votes is best practice and good for turn out and democracy. Obviously gaming PVs, PV factories and so on would be worst practice. Blackburn's post is sloppy and ignorant, as I comment: This seems to be speculative nonsense. People ...

When you try something, you generally give it a bit of time before heralding it as a success, but nooooo. Free schools, those schools that can be opened by anyone from Old Mother Riley and her cow to Mr Montgomery Burns with public money diverted from other existing schools, have been open a week and