General Discussion

Press Officer Michael Pyke offered the following contribution to The Guardian Letters on the 4th May 2025 The scathing comments of Professor Julia Waters on the government's proposed minor tweaks to the way OFSTED inspects and reports on schools are entirely justified and everything she says is com

Press Officer Michael Pyke's letter was published in The New World on the 19th March 2025. The edited, published version of his contribution can be found here: https://www.thenewworld.co.uk/letters-look-at-the-bigger-numbers-rachel/ Dear Sir, David Handley describes Peter Hyman's proposals for educ

This is a copy of the letter written by Michael Pyke and published by The New European on the 19th of March, 2025: https://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/letters-look-at-the-bigger-numbers-rachel/# David Handley describes Peter Hyman's proposals for education reform as "impressive and radical" (letters,

Founded in 2004, The Mossbourne Community Academy (its current title) in Hackney was one of the first of Andrew Adonis's brainchild "City Academies". Under the leadership of Michael Wilshaw, its swashbuckling and very much "hands on" Headteacher, the school thrived and took just one generation of p

"Hard Times", written by Dickens in 1854, is a patchy novel whose overall quality falls far short of such masterpieces as "Bleak House", "Great Expectations" and "Little Dorrit". Dickens was always at his best when writing instinctively and at his worst when writing didactively and "Hard Times" con

CASE Conference 5 October, 2024 Carl Parsons (This text refers to the talk Dr Parsons gave during the CASE conference: Rebooting Education) Our education system in England is in disarray – not so in Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland, note. The system in England is now many systems. The national

This text was authored by Michael Pyke and can be found in its entirety in CASEnotes 100. Eighty years on from the great 1944 Education Act and with an election imminent, it seems appropriate for this hundredth edition of CASEnotes to begin by taking stock of our education system. What has changed

Press Officer Michael Pyke contributed the following letter to The New Statesman (19/03/2025): Dear Sir, I regularly enjoy Andrew Marr's insights into Westminster politics but his knowledge of state education seems rather limited - as is often the case with the privately educated.  He asserts that

03/02/3035 Press Officer Michael Pyke wrote the following letter to the Guardian: The criticisms being directed against the government's proposals to restrict the "freedoms" of academy schools might carry more weight if they were accompanied by any actual evidence that these "freedoms" have helpe

Below is the original version of Michael's letter, which was edited and published by The New Statesmen on the 19th of March, 2025: https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2025/03/letter-of-the-week-the-state-of-education The State of Education I regularly enjoy Andrew Marr's insights into Westminst

By John Galloway With minor edits by Louise Vincent Despite the assertions of both front benches in the House of Commons recently, any improvement in school standards is not as a direct result of the broadening of the academy schools system since Michael Gove gave it a fresh remit and impetus in 20

Some organisations have fought hard to stem the outward flow of schools from local authority control to academy status, either as stand-alone academies or joining a multi-academy trust (MAT). The hope is that the new administration will acknowledge the absurdity of a national system which is managed

[This text was originally publishes in CASEnotes #100] In March of this year, the shadow education secretary Bridget Phillipson said that school pupils must “learn to challenge” media narratives. Speaking at the annual conference of the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL), Phillipson

Place  planning is a statutory duty of local authorities. Quite simply it means managing the number of school places within its area, both ensuring that there are sufficient for the number of children locally, and reducing them as populations change. Since the 2012 Education Act this has become cons