Daily catch-up: Schools innovation and Operation Why Labour Lost

A very different kind of school, political operations and another Moose Allain cartoon

Pilot Whale, by the wonderful Moose Allain. Follow him on Twitter. Buy his stuff.

• Jo Facer started teaching at Michaela school last week.

All teachers say, ‘3-2-1 and slant.’ No child does anything until you say: ‘Go.’ Each lesson begins with children handing out books; this takes 10 seconds and you count it down. Every second of every lesson is used; routines are meticulous to ensure this happens and everyone uses the routines. This, for me, has been the hardest part: on top of learning 240 names (the expectation is that every teacher knows every child’s name), you’re always thinking about the systems that others have long since automated. It is hard.

Michaela, in Wembley Park, north-west London, was started by Katharine Birbalsingh. Via Sam Freedman.

• Demands to publish Margaret Beckett's report into Labour's defeat had become like those of Chilcot. "We need to know the truth." As I was told that the report is anodyne, I couldn't see why Jeremy Corbyn didn't publish it. Now it emerges that he will, next week, and the BBC has been leaked some of its findings. Labour didn't win enough votes: that sort of thing.

What the agitators really ought to be agitating to see is a different, top secret report called "2015: What Happened?" It was a "frank internal post-mortem for Labour's senior party officials", according to Philip Cowley and Dennis Kavanagh in The British General Election of 2015. They quote from it: "Anecdotally, canvassers found it difficult to navigate issues surrounding the popularity of the leader and the impact of a potential coalition with the SNP." I am told that its findings were brutal, and that it is unlikely ever to see the light of day.

• Patrick Kidd says that one of the recommendations of the Beckett report, to hold shadow cabinet meetings outside London, was not only something Gordon Brown did with the real Cabinet but it was also done with William Hague's shadow cabinet, when it was called Operation Starburst. Jon B recalled that John Birt's plan for Tony Blair, never enacted, to split the Treasury to curb Brown's power was called Operation Teddy Bear. Any more political Operations? Would a Top 10 be possible?

• And finally, thanks to Glenny Rodge ‏for this:

"My doctor says I've got to give up poorly thought out fruit-based puns.

"I was peachless when he told me."