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...

The three Morley High schools are going to get a Policeman dedicated to them. Not that there is a problem with crime or anything, nothing to see here. “Our schools are very safe places to be already and by working even closer together we can ensure that both our schools and the local communities within the

"Selective schools"According to this article, the majority of British people want selective schools, rather like grammar schools in the day.In principle, there is nothing wrong with selective schools. It probably is beneficial for brighter students to be taught together.Still, I would want selective schools to exist within the free market and not be financed by state coercion and force. Sadly, the...

I do not imagine that the government would sanction an edict that allowed, say, Muslim schools to teach hatred against Christians or Christian schools against Jews or Jewish schools against Islam. Yet all such schools are to be permitted to teach hatred of lesbians, gay men, bisexuals and transgender people (Faith schools free to preach about errors of homosexuality, 28 April). Once again we see t...

Labour’s Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families, Ed Balls, has welcomed the new or refurbished schools opening this month. September will see 400 new or refurbished schools opening their doors for a new term &# including the new City Academy in Hackney which the Prime Minister opened this morning. These schools make up part of the almost 4000 schools built, rebuilt or refurbis...

Ed Balls and nine other Labour Ministers have visited 30 schools to mark the new generation of 21st Century schools which have been opened under the Labour Government. More than 180 new or refurbished schools are opening this term &#...

From the FT There is a book called the Good Schools Guide which is used by the 7% of the population who send their children to fee-paying schools, which analyses all the fee-paying schools in Britain. Most of these schools are so eager to be included in the book, that they pay a fee to be listed. However, the guide is now featuring state schools - and the state schools of course don't pay to ...

Michael Gove announced in the Commons’ chamber earlier that 1,100 schools have applied for Academy status since he wrote to all schools asking them if they would be interested in doing so. 626 of these are schools rated outstanding by Ofsted which means they are pre-approved for academy status. One would expect the vast majority of these schools to have become academies by the start of the n...

The schools secretary Ed Balls announced today that teams of behavioural experts would be sent into schools where behaviour is rated merely as "satisfactory", which could include a quarter of all schools.

Do the middle classes dominate the best schools or are they the best schools because they are dominated by the middle classes!?! The introduction of lotteries to determine school admissions will simply destroy the best schools whilst failing to improve other schools.