Stephen here planning to set up a company to only poll backbench Tory MPs.

Not only does most Ed-tech not work, the best piece of educational technology ever created (the well designed printed textbook) was chased out of the classroom on a tide of digital over enthusiasm.

I feel that a discussion on “have Reform unfairly pre-determined where they intend to build their concentration camps” is possibly burying the lede.

Post your warning sign (Whitby Abbey Cemetery)

That top one there put in place by Lord Peter Wimsey.

Not now, Cthulhu.

That's the west coast mainline for you

I’ve written for @politicshome.bsky.social about yesterday’s free speech judgement against the Office for Students [disclosure: I used to work there]. Clearly things are going to have to change, but the regulator’s woes are a symptom not the cause of problems in English HE—the system is incoherent.

It is time for this nation to vindicate its historic right to Calais, Normandy and all that bit what Eleanor of Aquitaine owned, and any extra bits that look nice.

I’ve written for @politicshome.bsky.social about yesterday’s free speech judgement against the Office for Students [disclosure: I used to work there]. Clearly things are going to have to change, but the regulator’s woes are a symptom not the cause of problems in English HE—the system is incoherent.

This is objectively & provably not true (at least not in a direct causal way). The aim of history in *every* version of English NC has been to cultivate knowledge of the past AND of how historians create it. Such understanding is v valuable for citizens but as an ancillary benefit not main purpose.

NEW on Wonkhe: Director of The Post-18 Project John Blake sets out why thirty years of policy struggle has left England without the higher education system it deserves buff.ly/Mmpkv21

Last week on Wonkhe: This week on the podcast

Excellent piece from @samfr.bsky.social, drawing attn to the crisis we’re currently experiencing in HE. Sam notes “the experiment with marketisation has failed”. I’d go further: the very market tools it uses break the logic of how markets improve things: post18.co.uk/blood-debt-t...

No 4: governance. Who decides what in English higher education, how, and with what right? Brilliantly, nobody knows! No concordat. No framework. Just convention, assumption, and periodic political intervention when something goes wrong. Why patch the roof when nobody’s sure whose roof it is…?

Third in my series applying Tim Oates’s diagnostic framework to English HE: institutional forms. The franchise crisis wasn’t the system failing – it was working as designed. We need diverse institutions, but held to account for their own missions, not one-size-fits-all metrics. Full post:

AimHigher ran for seven years. £136m/year. 42 partnerships. Abolished. 3 years of nothing. Uni Connect has been cut from £60m to £20m. Teenagers get £50k debt in a system that assumes publishing data is the same as providing advice. The government has spent twenty-five years proving it isn’t.

The English uni fees and loans system was supposed to insure English higher education against Treasury penny-pinching. But despite 30 yrs of sound and fury: Per-student funding in 1997: ~£10k (today’s money). In 2025–26: ~£10k. I wrote about why here: www.linkedin.com/posts/johnda...

“Like a badly-wired plug, the English HE system operated, but the longer it did so, the more likely it would spark. The current financial state of the sector suggests that, somewhere, the fire has already begun.” My first essay for The Post-18 Project is published today.

This is kind of emoji based feedback I can get behind. @jonathansimons.bsky.social @aveek18.bsky.social @tom-richmond.com

This was a great episode, and @johndavidblake.bsky.social was right on basically every point imo

Have a listen yourself and decide who you think is right! insideyoured.buzzsprout.com/1874905/epis...

The reaction to my new podcast on a 'graduate tax' has been joyous. Just this morning, @aveek18.bsky.social said @johndavidblake.bsky.social (in favour) ''was right on basically every point", only for @mike-rat.bsky.social to declare that "of course @jonathansimons.bsky.social (against) is right".

“Nice melons you have here. You wouldn’t want them to have an accident, would you, Tony? Perhaps you might want to reconsider my offer of friendship and protection?”

In my latest podcast, @johndavidblake.bsky.social explained why he thinks the retrospective taxation of previous cohorts of university graduates is worth considering in the context of a 'graduate tax'. Listen to the full episode here: insideyoured.com

In retrospect, maybe mass literacy was a real error.

I think it is possible that there may be something quite profoundly wrong with a system in which no one apparently knew anything about how the processes they were running were supposed to work or how the outcomes might interact with, you know, reality.

The English uni fees and loans system was supposed to insure English higher education against Treasury penny-pinching. But despite 30 yrs of sound and fury: Per-student funding in 1997: ~£10k (today’s money). In 2025–26: ~£10k. I wrote about why here: www.linkedin.com/posts/johnda...

“Like a badly-wired plug, the English HE system operated, but the longer it did so, the more likely it would spark. The current financial state of the sector suggests that, somewhere, the fire has already begun.” My first essay for The Post-18 Project is published today.

Misread this as “non-human otter”, wondered what I’d missed since giving up Mass.

What would be amazing is if we could find the original slide Trump accidentally remembered from a briefing that gave him this fixation on power plants and bridges over, say, roads or port facilities or any other form of infrastructure.

Arise, arise, Riders of Théoden! Fell deeds awake: fire and slaughter! spear shall be shaken, shield be splintered, a sword-day, a red day, ere the sun rises! Ride now, ride now! Ride to Gondor!

Feels like “failed vetting” is one of those phrases that ought to end anyone’s route through a recruitment process? Like, if you have a job requiring that you vet people, successful vetting doesn’t seem to be a “nice to have”? Very much on the “Essential” list, possibly quite near the top of it?

🚨NEW PODCAST🚨 If the student loan system is the problem, is a 'graduate tax' the solution? @jonathansimons.bsky.social and @johndavidblake.bsky.social join me to explore the pros and cons of switching to an entirely new model for funding Higher Education. Listen here: insideyoured.com

This reworking of “Anything You Can I Can Do Better” is really weird.

It is true that HE and compulsory often use different assessment language, but it is HE that ought to change, but not necessarily in the way implied here. Assessment is about *reliability* and *validity* — the method needs to follow that, not precede it.

What could they possibly do to top this moment in their lives? Link: www.tiktok.com/t/ZTkDwwh5f/

Chemical Ali —> Comical Ali —> Comical Barbie.

Right now, the conversation isn’t about nuclear programs, or free and fair elections in Iran. It's about reopening a body of water that was open before this war started. Chalk that up as a win for Tehran.

I personally believe at least two of these, so obviously those ones are not ridiculous. But the rest of them are pretty strange.

"My dog keeps pissing on the carpet, perhaps he is aware of and self-consciously trying to subvert Erving Goffman's dramaturgical theory of self-presentation."

Trans: “The Iranians played us like a fiddle”

Bold choice from Haringey Council to sell billboard space on the side of their administrative building to a movie about a sex offender.

Social media may not have been a universal blessing for humankind.

Britain has imported most of its food for 300 years. We survived two world wars without being self sufficient. Why would NOW be the time to change?

Questions To Which the Answer Is "Nostradamus"

THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MAD HATTER

My proposal to save all museums: find every box of old minutes, letters, strategy documents, whatever you’ve got and sell it all for big bucks to AI companies who have run out of digitally-readable human writing to train their models on…

Jimmy Carter