Last year, I found myself at two very different cultural events, just a few weeks apart. One was held in the awe-inspiring surroundings of the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square. There, I found myself surrounded by the great and the good of the British cultural establishment, attending the launch of a new government report, “Culture […]
The question about whether grammar schools help or hinder social mobility has, thanks to today’s news that the government is giving selective schools the chance to expand, sparked a great deal of debate. This is obviously an important issue and people are right to be concerned about it. Education really does have the ability to […]
A studio school in Plymouth has closed, having failed, and this is held up as proof that the underlying idea of free schools has itself failed. This is a mistake, for allowing error is the very point of experimentation. Indeed, not just allowing it but insisting upon it, even it means catastrophic failure leading to […]
You probably don’t understand the world very well. At least you didn’t before reading Factfulness, a rather wonderful little book by the late doctor, educator and public health guru Hans Rosling. If you are among the 35m or so people who have watched the Swede’s lectures on YouTube, you may be familiar with his natty […]
The British government is responsible for the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal in Salisbury, then falsely accusing the Kremlin of the crime and killing two guinea pigs in order to cover up the damning evidence. Meanwhile, a purported chemical attack on civilians in the Syrian city of Douma was a hoax concocted by British […]
Colleges and universities are increasingly relying on adult learners, students from corporate partnerships, online learners, and first-generation higher education participants to fill their enrolment needs. Yet, much of the academic fare is still traditional — or structured for a novice scholar. A recent Wall Street Journal article, “More Companies Teach Workers What Colleges Don’t” points out […]
Today’s youth are increasingly unhappy with the way their elders are running the world. Their ire was most recently expressed when thousands of teenagers and others across the country marched on March 24 demanding more gun control, a little over a month after more than a dozen of their peers were shot and killed at […]
The battle for free speech on university campuses in the UK is well underway. At King’s College London, two separate violent incidents impinging on the free speech of visiting speakers and the safety of students and staff have occurred over recent years. At both of these events, Safe Space policies and marshals were in place […]
I don’t come from a deprived background, I didn’t have a difficult childhood, and I’m well aware that I had a comfortable, if not flashy, upbringing while attending my West Midlands state comprehensive school. Both my parents were working professionals, and because they were the first in their respective families to go to university, I […]
Fake news is the term that everyone uses, but no one really knows what to do about it. Collins Dictionary defines fake news as “false, often sensational, information disseminated under the guise of news reporting” and, for the purposes of this article, can be distinguished from political tools used to undermine unappealing, but true, reporting […]
We have never had a proper integration strategy in Britain. In an era of growing polarisation, we might all agree that this feels a much more anxious and fragmented society than any of us would want. Yet an action plan to change that has remained elusive. Making this happen now falls to Cabinet minister Sajid […]
James Purnell, the BBC’s Director of Radio and Education and a former Labour Cabinet Minister, announced the other day that the Corporation’s primary educational “mission” was to be on “improving social mobility across the UK”. “We want to work with partners to have a positive impact on people’s lives,” he said, “especially those from disadvantaged […]
Happy International Women’s Day! You may have heard that today is, as The Guardian once put it, “an important day in the socialist calendar,” its history intertwined with that of the Soviet Union. Today, socialist feminism enjoys a surprising popularity in many universities’ Women’s Studies departments. Self-identifying socialist feminists hope to fight what they call […]
There is an alarmist belief that western economies are careering towards an era of mass unemployment as robots, AI and Fourth Industrial Revolution technology replaces workers. Dr Carl Frey and Professor Michael Osborne from Oxford University used an algorithm to predict the computerisation of different roles within an economy and forecasted that almost half of […]
For a week now all of my lectures have been cancelled, as my professors are on strike. Despite the fact that I may graduate with a £50,000 student debt, I will probably not be refunded for the missed classes. So, are my lecturers justified in striking? On the January 22 the University and College Union […]
The same party in power for two decades. Life expectancy in some areas barely scrapes past 60. A subsidy-addicted society haemorrhaging its best and brightest. This is not some impoverished post-Communist banana republic. It is the reality of Labour Wales – lauded by Jeremy Corbyn as an example for a future UK Labour government to follow – […]
Watch or listen to CapX’s weekly podcast ‘The Capitalist’ wherever you get your podcasts.
