Teaching creative writing
teaching english

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In this section I archive features and articles that have been published elsewhere. I contribute regularly to the national press, including The Times, The Daily Telegraph, The Guardian, and The Daily Mail.

  • Why do they do it? It’s a yobbo power trip

    Last Sunday I spotted trouble when I was returning home along the City Road in Islington, north London. At first sight the men looked harmless enough: they were white, well dressed in jeans and designer jackets, with shiny leather footwear and nice haircuts. They were not your typical hoodies at all. But I knew I…

  • Yob Nation Extract — Part 1

    The firework exploded at our feet in the grotty north London playground. Three white boys snarled with laughter from behind the hoods of their green parkas. One of them chucked another firework in our direction. It fizzled and snapped. My brother and I retreated, but my father, in a tough-guy Marks and Spencer anorak, approached…

  • The Times’ Review of ‘Yob Nation’ — Diary of a plagued society by LEO MCKINSTRY

    FEAR OF CRIME CASTS AN increasingly dark shadow over modern British society. We seem to be beset by problems such as binge-drinking, drug-taking, antisocial behaviour, aggressive mugging, and gang warfare. Many liberal commentators have argued that this perceived decline in social cohesion is an illusion, fuelled by a reactionary press and nostalgia for a mythical…

  • Unsentimental education — Book Review

    IS THERE ANYTHING new to say about public schools? Some great books have been written about them, most notably Evelyn Waugh’s hilarious and devastating satire Decline and Fall (1928) and William Golding’s fable about public school morality, Lord of the Flies (1954). These classics, and a raft of others, portrayed these revered, eltitist institutions as…

  • Finally, freedom

    The door of my classroom crashed open as I was explaining the different media techniques used on the front cover of a controversial "election issue" New Statesman. My GCSE class swung their heads around in shock. "Been kicked out again!" shouted Jon. "So I’ve come to join in your lesson!" As head of English, part…

  • A Window on the Heart of Africa

    The Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s website was not encouraging. It advised against all but essential travel to the state I was now rattling through in a beat-up Nissan taxi. I was in Bayelsa, in the Niger Delta, a remote region of Nigeria: taking hostages for ransom had occurred here. Near by, local youths had invaded…

  • Who examines the examiners?

    SHAKING HIS HEAD IN exasperation, my pupil, Nicolas Christodoulou, 16, asked if he could write an e-mail of complaint to the exam board, AQA. It was a bleak February morning and my English class had just read the “pre-release anthology” issued to all candidates studying GCSE English. The idea was for students to read the…

  • … as any teacher can tell you

    Phil Smith was the man who sorted out the yobs… and I desperately needed him. I was in my first year of teaching, and I had just encountered my most unruly class. Halfway through my lesson, the pupils began to shout obscenities at the top of their voices, they then proceeded to push all the…

  • The senior teacher made it clear: it must be my fault if the children behaved badly

    I gulped, finally I was going to tell the truth. "The thing is, I just don’t think I am coping with some of the classes," I said with my head bowed. Simon Filer, the senior manager to whom I was confessing this in an empty classroom, blinked and then tapped his pen against the desk.…

  • Class warfare

    I actually clapped my hands in agreement and sympathy as I finished watching this documentary. I had been expecting an over-sensationalised picture of classroom violence and mayhem, but instead, I watched an incisive, analytical programme which was all the more shocking because it was so rational. It was not Big Brother meets The Blackboard Jungle,…

  • Kelly gives Labour its best day this term

    Far from being the worst day in Labour’s second term – the New Statesman’s Richard Reeves described it as "the biggest domestic policy failure" of this parliament – the Education Secretary’s rejection of the Tomlinson Report makes it their best. The educational establishment’s howl of fury at Ruth Kelly’s education White Paper, published on Thursday,…

  • One rogue pupil held up my class for a year

    The way that Charles Clarke, the Education Secretary, has attempted to discipline the wayward Prince Charles makes me wonder how he would have dealt with Lancel Hendricks – one of the most difficult pupils I have ever taught. Mr Clarke is fuming because he believes that the Prince’s views about education are "old-fashioned and out…

  • Well done, Mum – you got an A

    Many parents will have barely raised an eyebrow at Prince Harry’s alleged assertion that he wrote only a "tiny, tiny bit" of his art coursework. "Helping" their children with coursework is something many parents take for granted. Look, their argument goes, I don’t want to cheat, but if everyone else has spent weeks on a…

  • Up to no good

    The lesson had been going very well until Philip Prentice, the school curriculum adviser, stalked into the room. I was in mid-flow, putting on my most impassioned American voice as I boomed out Willy Loman’s immortal words in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman: "Biff is a lazy bum!" Prentice twitched, and stared at me…

  • Don’t blame Harry!

    The suggestion that Prince Harry cheated at his A-level coursework did not surprise me. According to a tape recording produced by Sarah Forsyth, Prince Harry’s art teacher at Eton, Harry says that he only wrote a "tiny, tiny bit" of his Art coursework: the rest was apparently written by Miss Forsyth. Any experienced teacher knows…

  • The select few

    Tony Blair has laid out a five-year plan for schools that will mean the "best schools" will be able to abandon the shackles of local-authority control, and pay teachers according to the market. The Conservative party has similar proposals to allow all schools freedom from LEAs. Both parties are promising parents the chance to choose…

  • Now I know selection works

    Selection is a taboo word in the Labour Party. So much so that, in his five-year plan for schools unveiled last week, the Prime Minister explicitly forbade schools to select their pupils. But he wants to free the best schools from local authority control, allowing them to set their own wages and curricula and giving…

  • I’ve learnt my lesson

    Joan ushered me into her office. She grabbed me by the arms and told me to stand still. I looked at her in astonishment. Who was this woman? Why was she touching me in such a mumsy fashion? ‘So they’ve picked you, have they?’ she said, narrowing her eyes at me. I guessed she was…

  • The truth about audiobooks

    Blandness and apathy prevail in the world of audio books, but there is a little rebellious corner fighting for the imagination: Naxos AudioBooks. As part of the budget classical CD company Naxos, Nicolas Soames, the managing director, is able to draw upon an amazing back catalogue to provide music for each audio book. ‘ Sometimes,’…