The Tory drive to make teachers and carers chase after statistics has hindered rather than helped

Arguments about what kind of music is best, what will survive the test of time, miss the point

While the 2010 Equality Act seems to be discouraging prejudice, it has also come under attack for limiting freedom

We still view European history as taking off with the Renaissance and Enlightenment, but this position gets more out-of-date the more we learn

There's so many prizes today's writers aren't bothered about who wins. The purpose awards serve now is to tell readers what to read.

Instead of an outright ban on activities deemed "undesirable" - like getting off your head on booze - the state is trying to render them socially inacceptable

Now be against the political institution in its current form is apparently to be anti-peace as well as anti-European

As religious observance is on the wane, people's desire to connect at some higher level faces a quest for new forms

People expect melody and emotion from their music; but just because modern classical doesn't conform to this doesn't make it worthless

A fresher on the joys of exchanging a rigid and prescriptive curriculum for learning through free-form debate.

There's a risk that in using choirs for everything from helping fragmented communities to stress relief, we drag them down to the level of the mundane

A dearth of real engineering ambition is holding back the sector. Big, ambitious projects are needed to put us back on track.

The knowledge and understanding of subjects has no moral purpose. It may lead to discontent.

Unlike past protest movements where ideologies came into conflict, today's uprisings are raw and reject traditional political structures

Whichever the year, whoever the artists, the Turner Prize always brings us back to the same old, endlessly fascinating question: what makes great art?

Too often government tries to "fix" communities whose problems can only truly be solved from within