While inspectors found that 70 per cent of lessons were good or outstanding, they also found something depressing. For many young people, English is feeling leaden and confusing and, frankly, a bit irrelevant. Many of them are set tedious tasks with little connection to the kinds of reading and writing they might do in their real lives - stuff along the lines of "write a letter to your best friend telling her about your summer holiday".

Major exams taken five years into secondary school have been rendered useless by the Government’s drive to keep pupils in education until 19, it was claimed.

Baroness Morris, who quit as education secretary in 2002, suggested that the tests - taken by some 600,000 teenagers every year – should be moved to 14 under a major shake-up of the National Curriculum.

If you are a parent, you will have noticed a phenomenon of modern education: the amount of paper accompanying your child out of the school gate. Backpacks groan with homework, spelling lists, zoo-visit disclaimers and memorandums from the head teacher, weighing down their tired little owners. Bureaucracy reigns in all areas of school life, it seems. Never have our schools been so thoroughly managed.

Only a fool would deny that public spending must be cut to relieve our economic mess: but only a fool, equally, would cut it as the Government is doing. All over the public sector there are overpaid bureaucrats doing pointless jobs who should be invited to test their skills in the private sector without delay. Our welfare system haemorrhages money on the undeserving poor and encourages young, able-bodied people not to look for work.

British system of education is failing to give boys the help they need and has become too focused on girls, the headmaster of Eton warned today.

Tony Little said GCSEs favour girls far more than boys and few teachers understand that boys are "more emotional" than girls, despite girls being able to "turn on the waterworks".

Boys require a much more physical and active style of learning but too often schools believe the same lessons will serve both sexes equally well, he said.

What was the most common reaction to comments made by Professor David Woods about the "innate and uninformed prejudices" of some middle-class parents towards their local secondary schools, over the new year?

Relief that someone had finally said it out loud? Anger that yet again the London school scene was being used to illustrate a point that has much less relevance outside the capital? A nagging anxiety that parents were being blamed for acting in the way demanded of them by the government that employs him?

In reducing the number of exams, the consequences of heavy snow are pointing education policy in the right direction

As excuses go, it certainly has legitimacy on its side. Tens of thousands of schoolchildren, many of whom will have spent the Christmas break cramming and fretting over the new year exams, look likely to be given a reprieve by the snow. With about half the UK's schools closed, there is increasing uncertainty about the GCSEs and A levels that are scheduled to begin on Monday. The exam scripts may well be left as white as the British countryside.

Happy New Year. Here, in this shiny just-born world of 2010, it's that word "new" that looks most enticing. Because one way or another a whiff of newness, of change, is in the air - whether of a whole government or a post-election world in which spending cuts will transform the education landscape.
Meanwhile, like an over-tired toddler refusing to accept that the party's over and it's time to go to bed, the current administration feels like it's clinging to the banisters, kicking the stairs in petulant fury.

The Schools Secretary is appalled at the materialism of our children. He should blame the parents, who can always say no
"Miley, Miley," the children screamed, pirouetting in their Ugg boots and their spangly leggings. The 16-year-old Disney star (who doesn't like vegetables, loves ketchup and is known in her other life as Hannah Montana) blew them kisses and tossed her hair extensions. The audience at the O2 arena in London went wild. Little girls had been changing into their £20 Miley T-shirts in the toilets. This Christmas my seven-year-old daughter didn't want to see the pantomime with her brothers, she wanted to go to her first pop concert.

Gilbert defends focus on raw exam data, pointing to 'myths' surrounding new inspection regime
The chief schools inspector has mounted a fierce defence of Ofsted’s controversial new regime, which she says has been misrepresented by a "catalogue of myths".
Writing in The TES today, Christine Gilbert answers critics who have decried her decision to place more emphasis on raw exam results when reaching overall judgments about schools.
"No employer is going to offer a young person a position if they haven’t got decent qualifications, no matter how strong the contextual value added (CVA) score," she writes.

It may be the season for turkeys but it was the chickens that were coming home to roost in last week’s Pre-Budget Report. "Once the recovery is secured," the Chancellor told the House in a solemn statement last week, "we must reduce the rate of growth in public spending and meet our ambitious target to halve the deficit." He may have postponed some of the pain in this latest Budget Report but threats could be found in the fine print. The FT for instance identified eight areas where blood could end up on the carpet, four of which incidentally would affect the world of education. It all makes for a tough outlook, one reflected in varying degrees in the series of Reports that came out last week, each looking at ways of working smarter and saving costs.

Publication of the primary school leagues was overshadowed this week by continuing debate over a decline in some areas and a potential boycott looming by teaching unions the NAHT and NUT. But the headline figures, provisionally published in August - 80 per cent of pupils reaching level 4 in English and 79 per cent reaching level 4 in maths - were confirmed.

Across the developed world 16-year-olds at school today are working towards a minimum of four, five or six stretching academic qualifications next summer. In countries such as Japan or Canada, the school systems have emphasised academic study for many years. In others, such as France or Germany, schools have recently raised the bar for fear of being left behind by their international competitors. In all cases, it is accepted without question that a broad core of academic achievement should be the result of students’ years in compulsory education.

It is difficult to define ethos and trying to describe what it looks like in a school context reminds me of trying to catch a kite in the wind. One can see it and know it's there and even touch it occasionally but capturing it and holding on to it is a far more difficult task. Similarly with ethos one senses it first and visitors to a school instinctively know and understand what a school is like by how it 'feels'. However there is a danger that over time we can take for granted that the ethos in our school is both shared and operating in the way we think it is.

Ofsted's work always generates considerable interest and sometimes controversy. I think this is because we report on things that matter deeply to parents and the public, and we sometimes have to give hard messages. It is our job to stand up for the interests of children, young people and adult learners. They are the people for whom robust and independent inspection matters most.

Ofsted is facing a crisis in public confidence as it comes under a series of attacks on its authority this week, with the watchdog accused of being "flawed, wasteful and failing".
The children's services inspectorate will be criticised today by service heads in every local authority in the country, headteachers' leaders and in a damning forthcoming report by MPs on the government's school accountability system.

Ed Balls today gave the clearest sign yet that he will scrap the controversial primary Sats tests, announcing major reforms that could see them phased out as soon as 2012.
The schools secretary revealed new plans to beef up a system of teacher assessments as an alternative to the pen and paper tests taken in English and maths at the end of primary school in England, commonly known as Sats. If the new process proves popular with parents and provides a sufficiently rigorous check on the performance of schools, Balls suggested that Sats could go within three years.

Rigorous research should be the main driver of education policy, according to unions, politicians and academics. Helen Ward investigates what it holds for teacher freedom
It has been a remarkable few weeks in education - agreement has broken out among politicians, academics and unions. A consensus seems to have appeared. The future is all about teachers deciding on their own classroom practice based on solid research evidence - with minimal central interference.

We know a fair bit about what might happen because there's been a steady stream of announcements over recent months about what they consider to be their key priorities. These have included: a review of the timing for Key Stage 2 tests which was announced in June; tougher entry criteria for teachers announced in July; an overhaul of league tables announced in August; a commitment to extending the academy model announced in September; and a battery of announcements about school standards, schools systems and school teachers announced as part of the Shadow Education Secretary's speech to the Party Conference in October. Nor has this been all; the ‘Swedish’ school model, for instance, has been running as a constant theme for nearly two years now while welfare reform and work-based learning were both confirmed as high priorities in the latest big education policy Paper from the Party.