So, last Friday the school in Newham, a borough in east London with a large Asian and Somali Muslim presence, which had introduced a ban on girls under age 8 wearing the hijab or fasting during Ramadan at school, backed … Continue reading
Petition · Lyn Brown MP: Make Neena Lall remove the hijab and fasting ban at St Stephens in Newham! · Change.org This is a petition to the local MP in Newham, east London, against a ban on the hijab for … Continue reading
In the past week the ‘issue’ of primary school age Muslim girls wearing hijab to school has been on the front pages of some newspapers as the chief inspector of schools announced that her inspectors would be asking young girls … Continue reading
The Sunday Times reported today (gleefully as you might expect) that Alexandra Spelman, the head of Ofsted, the British schools inspectorate, had announced a plan for her inspectors to ask primary school-age girls who wear hijab to school about who … Continue reading
400 years on from Guy Fawkes, Britain’s Catholics still face prejudice | Catherine Pepinster, the Guardian Currently on the BBC there’s a serial about the Gunpowder Plot, in which a group of Catholics in 17th-century England tried to kill the … Continue reading
Last week a man who had been studying for a social work degree at Sheffield University lost his appeal against the university’s decision to expel him for remarks he made on Facebook in a discussion about homosexuality. Felix Ngole, a … Continue reading
Hot on the heels of the Tower Hamlets Muslim foster care hoax, the Times today printed a story (behind firewall) claiming that home schooling was part of “a breeding ground for extremists and future terrorists”, a claim made by Metropolitan … Continue reading
Over the weekend I saw a touching story about an elderly Moroccan lady who completed the first grade of her country’s school system after having been illiterate all her life and having spent three years, in her 80s, studying for … Continue reading
Last Sunday I saw a Facebook and blog post by a mother who said her son would not be accepting his award for 100% from his school, which would have meant a trip to a soft-play centre with classmates who … Continue reading
Last Sunday Mariella Frostrup answered a letter from a father whose son wanted to drop out of school and become a rock star. He complained: Our son has given up on study. He has never really enjoyed school. He complains … Continue reading
Earlier this week Jeremy Corbyn announced that if Labour wins the election next month, they will abolish university tuition fees, which were brought in under Labour in 1998 and were increased dramatically by the Coalition. This is expected to shore … Continue reading
BBC iPlayer - Party Election Broadcasts: Labour - English Local Elections: 21/04/2017 I just saw the Labour Party Election broadcast, which is intended as being for the local elections next month (4th May), although it makes a nod to the … Continue reading
The other day I saw an exchange on Twitter between some Labour activists in which Jeremy Corbyn got the blame for Theresa May’s announcement that the ban on new grammar schools was to be lifted. The logic was that Corbyn … Continue reading
The other day I came across a discussion on the forum MumsNet about a boy at primary school who had been, for the umpteenth time, given a trivial role in his school play while the same children who always got … Continue reading
In today’s Guardian, there is a piece by Giles Fraser about what might be the significance of the book Watership Down, whose author Richard Adams died earlier this week. Focusing on the part of the story where the migrant rabbits … Continue reading
Back to school bill: pencil case, pens, rubber … and a £785 iPad (from today’s Guardian) This is about how state schools (private schools have been doing this for a while) have started asking parents to send children into school … Continue reading
Experience: I paid to have my daughter kidnapped | Life and style | The Guardian This article was published today and appears to be due for publication in the “Experience” slot in the Weekend supplement of tomorrow’s Guardian. It allows … Continue reading
A week or so ago, I found a link that Karen Ingala-Smith, a prominent British campaigner against violence against women, posted about an ‘experiment’ in Harrow, north-west London, in which victims of domestic violence will discuss their abuse “face-to-face with … Continue reading
I saw a graphic that was presented next to an article for childminders on how to teach ‘British values’, as now required by the government, and the schools inspectorate Ofsted (which also governs children’s homes and childminders) will demand evidence … Continue reading
The Goldfish last week posted an entry in which she examined the complaints of ‘silencing’ and ‘censorship’ regarding the petition to prevent Germaine Greer from speaking at Cardiff University on the grounds of having transphobic views, as well as picking … Continue reading