THE NEW SCHOOL YEAR HAS STARTED with a new education secretary, Kit Malthouse — the fourth since the end of the last summer term. We so far know little about his intent, but a sensible pause has at least been placed on the poorly-drafted Schools Bill.
Parents and campaigners will be particularly interested to see what happens to clauses on transparency of teaching materials, which came in Lords’ amendments just as schools were going on their long break, and offer an incremental but significant counter to the ideological encroachment on classrooms which has gathered pace since the radical summer of 2020.
Take my son’s school, for example. It is an esteemed independent with results consistently around the top of the league tables. Yet it has embraced social justice politics with the competitive fervour once reserved for the rugby pitch and Oxbridge entrance. Within days of George Floyd’s murder, parents received a letter from the junior school head promising to review school practices. This was the only international event over a five-year period that provoked such a response from the school, which was then in Covid lockdown and might have had more immediate concerns, such as getting children back to
