Harry's Place

Cross-posted from Roland Dodds at But, I Am A Liberal
The newest PISA scores have been released, and surprise, the US and Britain are trailing most of their Asian and European counterparts in both reading and mathematics. When these scores are released every three years, the same regrettable headlines are brought to head and we are [...]

This is a guest post by Ismet Inonu

A Turkish group called ‘Mentora Academies Trust’ which has no website and whose Chairman speaks no English, has declared it will receive £6-7 million pounds from the British government to run three schools in Oxfordshire on 500 acres of land. Enver Yucel, Chairman of the Turkey-based group, has [...]

Cross-posted from Roland Dodds at But I Am A Liberal
A measured retort to the top-down, corporate-centered education reform is gaining momentum in liberal opinion circles. With the likes of Michelle Rhee finding fewer allies on the left now that she has spent the last few years working almost exclusively to vitiate teacher unions, even policy [...]

Cross-posted from Roland Dodds at But I Am A Liberal
I rarely find much to agree with when it comes to Utah state senators, but recent comments made to the Senate Site by Aaron Osmond (yes, those Osmonds), have received a decent amount of unfair scorn by the expected parties. The scores of comments at the [...]

After Barack Obama’s reelection last November, Louisiana’s Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal declared that the GOP needed to “stop being the stupid party.”
“… It’s time for a new Republican Party that talks like adults,” he said. “We had a number of Republicans damage the brand this year with offensive and bizarre comments. I’m here to say [...]

Ishtiaq Hussain, a Whitehall civil servant and counter extremism expert, has been nominated for a British Muslim Award 2013 in the “Best Civil Servant” category.  This entry is based on votes from the public as part of a three month campaign operating and encouraging people to send in their votes. As well as his full-time [...]

Cross-posted from James Bloodworth at Obliged to Offend
One of the first political epiphanies I had occurred when I was ten years old. I was sat on the carpet in my Grandmother’s house as a speech by Mother Teresa was broadcast on the evening news. “Let us promise”, the saintly patron of Calcutta’s Convents told Ireland, [...]

I admit I am having difficulty seeing the objection to not permitting unmoderated taking of photographs in schools, but a synthetic outrage Twitter storm has started in response to nine year old Martha Payne doing so.
In May, Payne – or, more accurately, her father – launched a blog Never Seconds which carried a photo-diary of [...]

It’s not really the equivalent of reading “Lolita” in Tehran, but still…
Col. Gordon Ball, professor of English and fine arts at [Virginia Military Institute], will read from his new memoir, East Hill Farm: Seasons with Allen Ginsberg, Wednesday, April 25, at 7:45 p.m. in the Turman Room of VMI’s Preston Library. Ball will also show [...]

Writing for Left Foot Forward, Kim Allen (Academies Commission) and Henry Stewart (of Local Schools Network) argue for and against continued promotion of the academy programme respectively.
(This refers only to England, specifically not Wales. Individual Scottish schools may be referred nominally to as academies, but this dates from years past and includes primaries as [...]