Scrapping GCSE maths doesn't add up
One-third of students reach 16 without a good pass in maths. As Simon Jenkins points out, most will endure a cycle of unsuccessful post-16 resits (GCSEs harm our young people. Ministers should have the guts to abolish them – and start again, 20 March). But it is wrong to call maths obsolete – financial literacy is impossible without a solid foundation in maths, to say nothing of the skills needed in a tech-driven economy.
Rather than abandoning GCSE maths, we need to do more to support the so-called 'forgotten third'. Improving early secondary education in the subject and introducing a short course GCSE focusing on the fundamentals would be a good start. Jenkins' suggestion of abolishing GCSEs is neither desirable nor practical. Enacting such a change would eat up capacity in a system with little to spare.
However, reform is needed. As the OCR exam board noted last year, there is an overreliance on exams at 16, and much of the curriculum is overloaded and outdated. OCR has called for fewer exams – alongside a streamlining of the curriculum in places and more subjects such as digital literacy and climate education. We were pleased to see the curriculum and assessment review's interim report reflect these calls. The most effective way to make things better for students is by improving and building on the solid system we already have.Jill DuffyChief executive, OCR exam board
I took my GCSEs in 2018. I was a capable student, getting the highest grades in my comprehensive school. I went on to a first-class Oxford degree and now a PhD. GCSEs should have been made for me – someone who loved learning and had high academic ambitions, who could think on the spot and learn lots by rote. However, I spent my GCSE year with constant nausea and emetophobia. From a neurodevelopmental perspective, GCSEs come at the worst time for students, a time when there are so many competing pressures, and students are at higher risk of mental illness. The exams don't even have any purpose any more given that education is compulsory up to 18.
Nothing in my academic career – Oxford interviews, finals at Oxford, the gruelling process of applying for PhDs – has ever been as hard as GCSEs were. If they didn't work for me, who do they work for?Name and address supplied
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Pembrokeshire Herald
9 hours ago
- Pembrokeshire Herald
Cabinet approves transport strategy wish list
PEMBROKESHIRE COUNTY COUNCIL'S Cabinet has endorsed a Regional Transport Strategy that relies on Welsh Government funding of £125m over the next five years. However, the plan also relies on the Council spending other money allocated to it by the Welsh Government to pay for the delivery of Welsh Government as well as local priorities. Based on comparisons between similar projects, the low end of the cost of delivering the Pembrokeshire-only projects will be at least £66m. That suggests that not only will all the projects not come to fruition in the plan period but also indicates that the Welsh Government funding allocation to them underestimates the cost of delivering the majority, if not all, of the projects. If the strategy's budget is fantasy, the prospects of delivering all of it are even more fanciful. The projects in the strategy read like a Guardian reader's wishlist instead of something grounded in local needs. ACTIVE TRAVEL SCHEMES DOMINATE The thirty-plus projects located solely in Pembrokeshire include fifteen schemes solely dedicated to active travel or which incorporate active travel as part of them. In context, and based on the cost of delivering similar schemes, the low-end estimate for 'active travel' schemes alone is around £22m. 'Active Travel' under the Welsh Government's Active Travel Act refers to efforts to reduce the use of cars for everyday journeys, such as commuting and education. Active travel schemes create infrastructure which supports walking, cycling, and wheeling (e.g., wheelchairs, mobility scooters). Those schemes work well in urban areas. However, in rural areas with dispersed working populations, such as Pembrokeshire, their impact is less beneficial. The now-former Welsh Government minister Lee Waters got an earful from Plaid Cymru and fringe environmental groups (mostly funded by the Welsh Government) when he dared say that cars would continue to be the primary mode of transportation in rural Wales. If an MS from Dolgellau can use an e-scooter to get the mile and a half from their taxpayer-funded flat in Cardiff to the Senedd, there's evidently no reason why commuters between Fishguard and Haverfordwest can't do the same. The active travel schemes planned for Pembrokeshire include a Multi-User Route from Narberth to Haverfordwest, an active travel route from Pembroke Dock to Pennar, one from Pembroke to Angle, six schemes in and around Tenby, and an expansion of the County Council's e-bike scheme. BIG TICKET SPENDING The big spending item is the relocation of the A487 at Newgale. That project has been on the cards for fourteen years, if not longer. It forms part of the Welsh Government's regional transport strategy as a permanent solution to the challenge of coastal erosion and the increased risks of tidal and pluvial flooding, standing against less certain and temporary interventions to hold the existing line. As it is part of the Regional Strategy, it will be predominantly funded by the Welsh Government through project-specific grants, in the same way as the preliminary investigations and public engagement. The plan will funnel transport funding towards supporting the Celtic Sea Freeport. Its backers hope the Freeport's economic impact will be positive and spread across the Freeport area. However, the existing transport infrastructure for it is a bad joke. Addressing its shortcomings is a major component of the Regional Transport Strategy. Setting aside projects scheduled for Neath Port Talbot, millions of pounds are projected to be spent on hydrogen fuel infrastructure and green/blue energy grid improvements. However, one project guaranteed to cause controversy seeks to increase road capacity and flow through Pembroke to support increased traffic from the Celtic Freeport development in the Angle Peninsula. Bearing in mind obvious geographical and logistical constraints and its need to cross conservation areas and sensitive landscapes within the National Park, any road expansion (there's also an active travel route planned) will likely cause uproar and cost tens of millions to deliver. That is, however, a long-term project. MORE TRANSPORT HUBS In the medium term, the Regional Strategy looks at a multi-million-pound project to improve roads between Haverfordwest and Milford Haven. That scheme looks to address congestion between the county town and the centre of Freeport operations in Pembrokeshire. Again, geographical and logistical issues suggest that the project will find it difficult to do much more than put lipstick on a pig. If, however, the scheme manages to resolve the congestion hotspots at Cartlett, Salutation Square (subject to a separate congestion-easing plan), Freemen's Way, and Johnston as far as the Sunnycroft Roundabout, it will doubtless be welcomed by commuters. And, if you thought one transport hub was a bad idea, there's more to come – from the Milford Haven transport interchange to one planned for Pembroke Dock, improved access to Fishguard's ferry port, and a host of other projects that will connect Pembrokeshire's public transport network, as the plan puts it poetically 'ensuring better multimodal connectivity'. Given the almost certain budget problems which these projects will encounter and, therefore, cause the County Council when it comes to setting its budgets, ensuring Pembrokeshire gets what it needs to improve the local economy instead of what the Welsh Government thinks it ought to have will be a major source of tension and contention. If half of the plan is delivered on time, on budget, and within the Welsh Government's funding envelope, its effects will be limited – as we will all have pigs to fly around on.
Telegraph
a day ago
- Telegraph
The middle-class student activists motivated by ‘privilege guilt'
From chants to 'Globalise the Intifada' on the leafy campuses of New England to anti-colonial vandalism in 700-year-old Oxbridge colleges, the more prestigious the university, the more amenable it seems to anti-West radicalism. Last week, Sciences Po – the Paris university that serves as a finishing school for France's elite – was accused of being 'ruined by woke radicals' in a book by a Le Figaro journalist. Similar accusations are made against Harvard, Yale and Columbia in the United States and Oxford and Cambridge in Britain. Trans rights, climate change, and Black Lives Matter have all been sources of fierce student protest in recent years. But nothing appears to have radicalised elite students more than the war in Gaza. Israel's response to the attack by Hamas on October 7 has emerged as the principal motivation for protests by some of the highest-status students in the world – those who supposedly work to the highest standards and expect to reap the rewards of their privilege as future, highly-paid leaders in business, politics, and law. A disproportionate number of students at elite universities are also from middle-class backgrounds. In 2023, one in three successful Oxford applicants and a quarter of successful Cambridge applicants came from private schools. 'There is a paradox at the heart of this,' says historian and former Oxford professor David Abulafia, who has criticised the excesses of woke ideology in our culture. 'The protesters are obsessed with entitlement and ideas like how evil whiteness is, but of course, most of them are entitled and the vast majority are white. The positions they take are full of contradictions.' It is not a coincidence that some of the most privileged students are adopting these positions, says Abulafia. 'There is an embarrassment about being in a privileged situation. People want to appear to reject characteristics they themselves have and the only way they seem to be able to deal with these characteristics is to side with those who are critical of them.' Columbia University in New York has become the epicentre of student radicalism over the Gaza conflict, with the tents of the 'Gaza Solidarity Encampment' appearing in April last year. This climaxed with the occupation of Hamilton Hall, brought to an end by riot police and the arrest of more than 100 people. Last month, police in helmets streamed into the university to remove a group of mask-clad protesters, some of whom had written 'Columbia will burn' across pictures. Four days after the Hamas attack on Israel, the Harvard Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee released a statement that students 'hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence'. It was co-signed by 33 student groups. Protests have flared at Harvard and fellow Ivy League giant Yale ever since. In April this year at Yale, some 200 keffiyeh-wearing protesters chanted, 'We will honour all our martyrs.' With the protests have come complaints by Jewish students that they have been made to feel unsafe and intimidated by rising anti-Semitism. This pattern of radical protest by students at elite universities is mirrored in Britain. One of the Just Stop Oil activists accused of defacing Stonehenge last April, Niamh Lynch, 22, was an Oxford student. Lynch denies the charges against her and, at a hearing in January, asked for her trial not to clash with her university exams this summer. It has been set for October. In 2023, Daniel Knorr, a 21-year-old biochemistry undergraduate, allegedly sprayed the Radcliffe Camera Building in Oxford with orange paint in protest at the university's links with fossil fuel companies. He has pleaded not guilty and his trial will take place in August. Chiara Sarti, a PhD student at King's College, Cambridge, sprayed her own college building with orange paint in 2023 and in March last year, an unidentified member of Palestine Action (it's still not known whether they attended the university) knifed and defaced a painting of Lord Balfour in Trinity College, Cambridge, for his part in the creation of the state of Israel. In January, members of Oxford Action for Palestine seized the Radcliffe Camera Building. The group said it had renamed it the Khalida Jarrar Library, after the leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a proscribed terror group. Meanwhile, Phoebe Plummer – who was convicted of defacing Van Gogh's Sunflowers at the National Gallery in 2022 – studied at Manchester University having attended a £50,000-a-year boarding school in Ascot. Douglas Headley, a professor of philosophy of religion, has worked at Cambridge's divinity faculty for almost three decades, since 1996. In that time, the university has seen protests ranging from large-scale demonstrations on the Iraq War and student fees, to the recent acts of vandalism by Just Stop Oil and pro-Palestinian activists. In March, the High Court granted Cambridge an injunction preventing protesters from disrupting graduation events. On Friday Trinity and St John's Colleges sought fresh injunctions against pro-Palestinian demonstrators as a result of an encampment set up on their land over the previous weekend. 'For young people, a cocktail of radicalism within a secure environment is unbelievably attractive,' says Hedley. 'The ideologically driven self-hatred and hatred of the country is the core of this problem.' Is it possible that the privilege actually increases the students' urge to be more radical? What motivates their keenness to rubbish the heritage from which they have benefitted more than anyone, and where does their moral certainty come from? 'Some privileged young people understand they have had access to things that others do not,' explains Paul Glynn, clinical director at Klearminds therapy group, who has worked with students on issues of privilege. 'The key emotions are guilt and shame. Guilt is an activating emotion – it's about making amends or a correction. Shame can be isolating. A student can often deny or avoid exposing their privilege to others.' 'Privilege can result in 'overcompensation', where students experiencing guilt align themselves with causes that make them feel like they have a less privileged identity,' adds Glynn. When students chant 'Globalise the Intifada' on campus, it's an expression of an overtly binary view of the world, an expression that can be linked to their privilege. 'Certainty is attractive,' says Glynn. 'Most of these issues are complex, but we don't like that so let's make it good or evil.' 'What strikes me is the lack of knowledge among students,' says Abulafia. 'With the Gaza/Israel example there is a complete ignorance about the historical context. They don't really seem to be interested.' The anti-Vietnam marches of the 1960s were an attempt to stop a war which had direct consequences for American students, with a chance that you, your friends or family members could be drafted to fight and die on the other side of the world. The current protests have grown in a hothouse of identity politics – in which protesters' views on Gaza are part of a broader world view that tends to encompass critical race theory, extreme trans rights and anti-capitalist activism. Through this lens, Israel is perceived to be a white colonising state and therefore bears the sins of all colonialists, with its associations of racism, apartheid and exploitation. As Abulafia highlights, in many cases, the students appear to be rejecting the world that got them to such colleges in the first place. If they are told the system is bad, they must be bad too. Assumptions about colonialism in higher education that sprang from Edward Said's 1978 book Orientalism and the influence of French intellectuals such as Michel Foucault have contributed to the notion of a hierarchy of oppression, from which students can judge who and what deserves the most sympathy. Katharine Birbalsingh, a leading headteacher who advocates for freedom of speech, suggests that the problem starts at school – specifically private school classrooms – where the connection between privilege and guilt is first made. 'It seems obvious there is a relationship between what you might call 'woke' culture and privilege,' says Birbalsingh. 'By that I include mainly white, middle-class people. Woke ideas like 'decolonisation' and criticism of Western values are everywhere in the most exclusive private school classrooms and that feeds into universities. 'One example is outside speakers who come into private schools and imply that there is something wrong with being privileged and they point towards absolving themselves by embracing Black Lives Matter or the trans movement.' Birbalsingh recently claimed that transgender children are more likely to be 'white and privileged' and that many were searching for 'victimhood narratives', which are 'admired' in modern society. Deferring to your less privileged peers A key part of the dynamic between privilege and protest is how some students react to their less socially advantaged peers. Psychologists suggest students who are perceived to be 'marginalised' are more likely to be listened to, especially when it comes to theories around race and history. 'We have found that students from less privileged backgrounds are deferred to by more privileged ones, because the privileged students believe that the opinions and beliefs of others must be more authentic,' says Dr Helena Bunn, a member of the British Psychological Society and a director of a doctorate programme that explores social justice, oppression and privilege with students at the University of East London. 'The privileged students feel compelled to become advocates for a cause they have little personal connection to. If there is guilt about privilege, that can lead to less critical thinking. 'There can also be a sense of 'I feel I have to do something' so they follow the opinions of others who are seen to be less privileged. It can be as simple as just thinking 'something is wrong here' like a war for example, but the emotional priority is to belong to the cause.' Perhaps the most infamous example of student entitlement was recorded during the Columbia tent encampment, with the appearance of Johannah King-Slutzky as its spokesperson. King-Slutzky, a PhD English student and the daughter of psychologists, warned that students illegally occupying university property could 'die of dehydration and starvation' if they were not given supplies. The protests have raised the ire of the Trump administration, which sees the demonstrations as evidence that universities such as Columbia and Harvard are gripped by a 'woke' elite complicit in the radicalisation of their students. The US president threatened to redirect $3 billion in Harvard research grants last week, following a decision to suspend foreign students from enrolling. 'Harvard is treating our country with great disrespect,' he said. 'Globalise the Intifada' may be cosplay rebellion for some privileged students and a way of expiating guilt for others, but sceptics argue the increasing prevalence of the chant has real-world consequences. The former New York Times columnist Bari Weiss pointed to recent attacks on Jews in New York and Colorado, saying: 'It was dismissed as a metaphor and not what it always was: a demand for open season on Jewish people worldwide.' 'The elite institutions have been ideologically captured,' says Hedley. 'When I worked in the US, I noticed the universities you would assume to be the best weren't because their departments and academics were taken over by a gender and race ideology. Once you turn a university into an ideological arena, it encourages the students to express their outrage and their virtue in ways the average person outside is not going to be very impressed with.'
New Statesman
a day ago
- New Statesman
James Cleverly's shadow Tory leadership bid heats up
Photo byIs James Cleverly making another bid for the Conservative leadership? That's certainly how his speech at the Conservative Environment Network's Sam Barker Memorial Lecture on Wednesday night, in which he talked about 'rejecting both the Luddite left and the Luddite right', has been interpreted by Tory watchers. 'James Cleverly takes on Kemi Badenoch over decision to ditch net zero targets', read the Guardian headline. The Mail went with 'Kemi Badenoch faces Net Zero revolt as Tory big beast James Cleverly warns her to ignore climate change 'luddites''. The Telegraph, meanwhile, wrote it up as 'Former home secretary directly challenges Kemi Badenoch on net zero'. Cleverly himself has pushed back hard against the suggestion that his speech was in any way a rebuke of the current Tory leader, calling it 'fake news'. In a punchy Twitter thread, he pointed out that he never once mentioned the term 'net zero' in the speech (he also didn't mention Badenoch), and claimed protecting the environment ('like Margaret Thatcher once did') was 'in our economic and security interests'. Indeed, the text of the speech itself was far more about foreign policy (in particular the threat of Chinese dominance and mass migration caused by climate change) than it was about carbon emission targets. But the fractured state of the Conservative party is such that any intervention from a high-profile figure will be read as a tacit (or not so tacit) criticism of Kemi Badenoch's leadership and attempt at positioning to be her successor. That applies to Cleverly's environmental speech just as much as it applies to Robert Jenrick's viral videos on confronting fare-dodgers on the London Underground. It is the latter who has drawn the most attention in the seven months since Badenoch became leader. Partly, this is due to the fact that Jenrick was the runner-up, after a mix-up over vote-swapping meant Cleverly was knocked up before he had the chance to face the membership. Partly it's down to Jenrick's place in the shadow cabinet, whereas Cleverly has taken a break from frontbench politics. And partly it's to do with visibility – once dubbed 'a very ambitious blur' by Andrew Marr, no one watching Jenrick's frenetic activity in opposition has any doubt that he still covets the top job. Jenrick's stance, in the leadership contest and since, has been to shift rightwards and attempt to neutralise Nigel Farage by moving onto Reform's turf. But as the Tory party grapples with having to rebuild from an election calamity that saw it lose hundreds of seats to Labour and the Liberal Democrats, Cleverly's name is increasingly being whispered by moderate Conservatives anxious about both the polls and the Reform-wards tilt. Cleverly's positioning as the 'One Nation' candidate in the 2024 leadership race came as something of a surprise to those close to him. A Brexit-backer first appointed to the role of foreign secretary by Liz Truss, he assumed the role of the moderates' champion almost by default, with both Jenrick and Badenoch running from the right. One friend in the party described his politics as 'to the left of Kemi, but not by much – his heroes are Thatcher and Regan', and called the One Nation label 'grossly simplistic'. Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe But it is true that Cleverly saw himself as a unifier, someone who could bring different strands of the party together after its worst ever defeat and who understood that parties can only win by building a broad coalition of support. Another ally said his pitch to the membership, had he got to that stage, would have been to argue there is more mileage in listening to voters who abandoned the Conservatives over concerns about competence and values rather than chasing people who have found a new home in Reform. At the time, the received consensus was that Tory members always pick the more right-wing candidate of the pair offered to them and would do again. That consensus is the reason Jenrick is the now bookies' favourite, seen as the likeliest successor to Badenoch. But something interesting may be happening to the Conservative membership. Tory members are notoriously hard to poll (we don't even know how many there are), but Reform now claims to have over 200,000. A substantial chunk of these are understood to be former Tories who have quit the party since the 2024 election. That will inevitably have shifted the internal dynamics among those who remain, perhaps to the extent that more moderate members – those repelled by Farage who find Jenrick's talk of some kind of pact with Reform anathema – now hold the majority. A Cleverly candidacy now, I was told by an active member in one local association, would have a much higher chance of success than in autumn 2024. (Others have different perspectives.) The parliamentary party too is more nuanced than current narratives about the Tories' rightwards tilt suggest. In the penultimate round of MP voting, the two candidates coded as more centrist – Cleverly and Tom Tugendhat – received 59 votes together; Jenrick and Badenoch got a combined 61. (On the environmental front, the Conservative climate caucus in parliament boasts 49 MPs.) A former Tory MP referred to the remaining One Nation cohort as the 'sleeping giant' of the Conservative party – a group that, were it to band together, could be a serious force in parliament. It will not have escaped their notice that the Tories are spiralling situation under Badenoch. A poll last month put the Conservatives fourth – below Reform, Labour and the Lib Dems – on a popularity level not seen since 2019 and Theresa May's Brexit deadlock. One Tory insider called the figures 'extinction-level'. Some Conservatives are getting desperate: rumours are swirling of various plots to oust Badenoch, possibly even before her year's grace period as leader is up in November. A Survation poll last week suggested 60 per cent of 2024 Conservative voters thought bringing back Boris Johnson would be better than keeping Badenoch as leader. Against this backdrop, any signs of dissent are being seized upon. Earlier this week, eight Tory MPs (including Father of the House Edward Leigh) wrote to Keir Starmer saying they would support him if the government were to move to recognise a Palestinian state – another move interpreted as an attempt to 'defy' Badenoch. Cleverly gave his Conservative Environment Network speech the following day, and was similarly read as a rebuke. The rumour persists that a coup is just around the corner, and every intervention plays into that narrative. Any hint of a Cleverly revival, however, should be tempered with a few caveats, both personal and political. His wife Susie, who is herself much loved in Conservative circles, came through a difficult battle with an aggressive form of breast cancer two years ago, which would caution anyone considering what's widely considered one of the worst jobs in politics to think twice. 'I'm not sure he's really been able to be in that headspace,' was the assessment of one friend. More generally, while frustration with Badenoch is growing, even her fiercest critics acknowledge that changing leaders yet again would do 'irreparable damage' to the already wounded party and be 'a colossal act of self-harm'. And that's without taking into considering how difficult it is to rebuild so soon after an election. One former MP who lost their seat in July put it bluntly: 'She's doing an impossible job badly.' Even Jenrick, for all his obvious ambition, doesn't want a leadership challenge now. His video efforts are aimed firmly at attacking Labour figures (Keir Starmer, Richard Hermer, Sadiq Khan). Yes they can be viewed obliquely as presenting an alternative pattern for leadership, but it isn't Badenoch in the direct crosshairs. Axing a leader so soon would fuel Labour and Reform narratives that the Tory party is too dysfunctional to be taken seriously, and the new leader – whether Jenrick, Cleverly, or someone else entirely – would be facing the exact same challenges and the same uphill battle. Boris Johnson has in past years likened himself to Cincinnatus, the Roman statesman who 'returned to his plough' after leading the state at a time of crisis and was then called back to assume power a second time. But years before that the then London mayor described his ambition to be PM with the line that 'Obviously, if the ball came loose from the back of a scrum – which it won't – it would be a great, great thing to have a crack at.' A passionate rugby fan himself, this was the comparison made by several people close to Cleverly about his leadership hopes. That doesn't mean that the former home secretary was clueless as to how his speech might be interpreted. One of the major criticisms of Badenoch is not merely the direction in which she seems to be taking the Tories, but the fact this seems to be down to 'drift' as opposed to a conscious and deliberate strategy, leaving the party undefined and chaotic. 'The first stage of surviving is defining yourself,' one centrist Tory put it. They then quoted the line from the musical Les Miserables: 'It is time for us all to decide who we are.' Cleverly's bold defence of a Conservative environmental agenda – one that takes in both economic and national security concerns – should be read, they argued, as a reminder that there is another way of doing leadership, one that isn't afraid of taking stances that come with trade-offs, 'and someone has to be a flag-bearer for it'. Finally, there is the personality issue. While Badenoch's management style veers towards abrasive and her media appearances lack cut-through, Cleverly is respected from all wings of the party as a strong media performer who can bring people together. 'James was pointing out that charismatic leaders are available,' one Tory insider quipped. 'He can't help being likeable and human.' What the speech does reveal is how far perceptions of the Tory party have travelled in a very short space of time. When Badenoch announced the party's U-turn on net zero in March, Sam Hall, director of the Conservative Environment Network, noted the decision 'undermines the significant environmental legacy of successive Conservative governments'. Six years ago Theresa May was signing the UK's net zero commitments into law; three and a half years ago Boris Johnson was championing Britain's climate leadership at the Cop26 summit in Glasgow. Back then, Cleverly's insistence that 'the idea that we must choose between a strong economy and protecting our environment is outdated and wrong' or support of climate commitments as 'defences against energy shocks and geopolitical instability' would not have been considered remotely controversial in Tory circles. Now, it's interpreted as a leadership challenge. And until the situation improves the Conservatives, so will everything else. [See also: Kemi Badenoch is in a hole – and she keeps digging] Related
