The Evening Standard

  • Drugs in Schools

    I have only come across a few children high on drugs in school time in all my sixteen years as a teacher in various London comprehensives. However, while drug taking in school is rare, I know many pupils take drugs away from the prying eyes of adults: often they’ve bought the drugs from a school […]

  • Exams work

    My pupil Mark is proof that exams work. With a shock of red hair and acne to match, he was a loud, brash fourteen-year-old. In his Key Stage 3 English tests, which all Year 9 pupils take in May, he scored a miserable level 4. But when I taught him the next year, he got […]

  • Letter in the Evening Standard

    I am profoundly concerned that teacher Angela Mason has been found guilty of professional misconduct for taking a secret camera into London classrooms and filming the appalling behaviour of the pupils (5 July). If any film was in the public interest, this was it. The film took care not to identify individual pupils but did […]