When Education Secretary Michael Gove presented the coalition’s White Paper The Importance of Teaching he declared that ‘head teachers had to be captains of their ship’. Rhetorically it was the climax of a four-decade process of change initiated by the Black Paper pamphlets that from 1969 protested against comprehensive education. They contributed to a change in national education discourse, from comprehensive education being seen as a positive to the view that it led to an ‘erosion of standards’. Furthermore, in the 1970s they...
A review of:Francis Beckett (ed.): The Prime Ministers Who Never Were Biteback 2011 £14.99Counter-factual history has been popular for some time, possibly because there is less history being taught and because we all like to fantasise. This collection of fourteen highly entertaining essays is the latest in that genre and to my certain knowledge there is at least one more in the pipeline. Counter-factuals are useful in many ways; they are the equivalent...
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