Tag: government
What the complacent West must learn from Ukraine’s fight for democracy...
Twenty years ago, Bernard Trafford worked with the Council of Europe on its Education for Democracy (EDC) project designed to “prepare young people to...
Patriotism isn’t about wrapping yourself in the flag: it involves looking...
Apparently we may no longer poke fun at politicians or their furnishings, let alone the PM’s new Press Room: it’s now declared unpatriotic to...
Summer exams: the dismal efforts of ministers and the exams regulator...
I don’t want to say I told you so: but I told you so. Back in September I predicted that the GCSE and A...
Ministers are floundering into exam chaos: but it’s candidates who’ll suffer
On 30th September I published a piece on Voice of the North about next year’s (summer 2021) public exams. I predicted that, notwithstanding their...
A level meltdown exposes the malaise at the heart of government,...
The A level results fiasco is a disgrace. Yet it’s merely the latest manifestation of this government’s universal ineptness. Reflecting the PM’s fondness for...
Allowing disappointed candidates to cite mock exams to appeal their results?...
It’s nice to be proved right: but former headteacher Bernard Trafford would have preferred to be proved wrong about the A level results fiasco....
Learning to live with contradictions
It’s a topsy-turvy world nowadays. While our end of the continent is dominated by Brexit travails, everywhere else I look - near and far,...
UK politics: touching the void?
I’m not a mountaineering enthusiast, nor a fan of books or movies about it. But I've always been struck by the power of the...
JAM yesterday, JAM tomorrow: never JAM today.
As Lewis Carroll’s Red Queen explains to Alice, in Through the Looking Glass, you can have jam every other day: jam yesterday, and jam tomorrow; but never jam today.
Ahead...
Raising positive voices
My good friend and fellow blogger Keith Hann observed in a Tweet the other day that my last full blog for Voice of the...
