Pathways To Inclusion

Bribing children is so tempting. What they want, especially when they're young, is sometimes so cheap, so easy to acquire, that the temptation to offer them… stuff, in exchange for them doing the thing you want them to do, is just too great. And it’s as tempting for teachers as it is for parents, which is why it's become as common a practice in schools as it is in homes. That, and the fact that most people are unaware of the long-term costs. My four year old, like most kids, loves stories. Always has. So when we were given log-in details for Pearson’s online reading programme - ‘Bug Club’ - he loved reading the stories on there too. I didn't tell him about the 'coins' that I could see him accumulating, I wanted his intrinsic enjoyment of the reading to go on for as long as possible. It came to an end last week when he was playing in the ‘rewards’ section of the site, and realised that to ‘buy’ more virtual stickers for his ‘sticker book’ he would have to read more s...

David Lammy put this out on Twitter yesterday: “It is a tragedy that in the middle of a crisis where government competence has never been more important, we have the most incompetent government of modern times.” ( David Lammy ) I feel a bit uncomfortable labelling this government incompetent. Not because I think it’s inaccurate, far from it. He makes a very valid point. But because I think it offers the government a way out. Incompetence is something they can deal with, in theory at least. They might one day nail a decent test, track and trace system, or get to roll out a nationwide vaccination programme. Most probably, they will dispel this image of incompetence simply by replacing Johnson with Sunak before the next election. Being incompetent is something you can fix. But being ideologically on the wrong side of history could be fatal. And with so many of the hurdles they’ve fallen at in recent months, from grading exams to free school meals, it feels increasingly like they are just...