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Mary O'Hara meets a straight-talking head who has used massage, tea and toast to change his pupils' lives
The first time I met Charlie Taylor, the straight-talking headmaster of the Willows school, a north London primary for children with severe behavioural problems, was in the autumn of 1988 at university. Despite striking differences in our backgrounds (Taylor was every inch the self-assured public school boy who slotted right in at Cambridge, while I hailed from an inner-city comprehensive in Belfast) we became good friends. He planned to go into teaching, but I assumed he would do what others from his background eventually do (he was a contemporary of David Cameron at Eton) and gravitate towards politics, the City or some other money-laced profession.
Fast forward two decades (we lost touch about 15 years ago) and he's a lauded headteacher, a consultant who has taught in and advised some of London's toughest schools, and latterly the author of two books to help parents navigate unruly behaviour, the latest of which, Divas and Door Slammers, focuses on how to deal with teenagers.
"I got into teaching â€" reluctantly â€" and then found I was interested in children who were naughty," he explains, putting his career history in context. "I got my first job in an inner-city secondary school [dealing] with all the rogues. It was a shit hole." One job led to another and, thanks mainly to a burgeoning interest in behavioural issues, Taylor began consulting for local education authorities and doing private freelance coaching with parents and children when bad behaviour was proving intractable. By 2005, he "got bored" and was ready for something new. Taylor was already working on his first book when he came across a vacancy for a head's position at the Willows. "I had no credentials, but I thought, 'fuck it, I'll just go for it'. I hadn't been a deputy head or anything like that, but I had a reasonably good reputation in the borough so I went and was interviewed. I've been there for the last five years."
He may not have been entirely qualified to run a school, but within 18 months the Willows had achieved its first outstanding rating from Ofsted, in part due to his unconventional approach. Describing the scale of the problem on arrival (the school had 36 children aged 11 and under who had been excluded by mainstream schools) he says: "Those first few months, it was like a war zone. I bought a £29.99 machine-washable suit, I got spat on so much". Most days staff had to physically restrain children who were aggressive. "Staff were getting injured and the children were getting injured. It was a complete zoo." Desperate times called for radical measures, so Taylor set about introducing a new regime. "For example, we brought in peer massage so that all the kids massage each other every day. The whole school has tea and toast every day. They stop at 10 o'clock in a very twee way and sit round a table with a china teapot."
He describes his approach as "very basic" and he focused on tackling rudimentary but fundamental gaps in the children's development, such as teaching them to welcome affection. The aim, he says, "is to put something in the tank", a reference to the fact that the majority of children arrive at the school with a host of developmental difficulties against a backdrop of "multi-generation" poverty and chaotic home lives. "[Then] they'll have something," he explains. "A little pocket of confidence and caring and love they'll be able to draw on. We have to do the cuddling bit, the family bit and also the playing bit. Some of them have got no idea how to play."
After making some "rookie" errors, mainly as he learned how to manage, the changes he implemented began to bear fruit. Taylor's experience both at the Willows and elsewhere has left him with an uncompromising view of the root of the problems he encounters. "It's poverty. I mean poverty in every sense of the word: poverty of expectations, poverty of emotions. It's the four horses of the apocalypse in terms of social deprivation."
In what turns out to be a sweeping (and disarmingly candid) interview, Taylor seamlessly segues from his own career and on to the gamut of what he regards as England's interwoven educational and social problems. He touches on everything from the failure of New Labour to address entrenched problems such as the minuscule number of youngsters on free school meals (one barometer for evaluating educational meritocracy) who get A* grades in exams, to the benefits system (he calls it "entrapping"), to why most parents could do with a bit of help adjusting to their children's adolescence.
Taylorbelieves mainstream schools aggravate problems for the most vulnerable youngsters, accusing New Labour of being "incredibly paranoid", afraid to take real risks and introduce reforms that could have improved the performance of kids at the lower end of the social scale. He also rails against politicians in general for an "obsession" with testing and league tables. The introduction of more tests and greater scrutiny weren't of themselves bad things, he suggests. "When I first started teaching, it was so sloppy and slack. Children just weren't being taught anything. It had to change." Rather, he contends that league tables and tests have done nothing to make the system fairer. As for those children least likely to perform well? They are all too often neglected by schools, he says. "I was in one school and the deputy head said, pointing at the lower achievers: 'that's the bunch. Forget that lot down there'. It's a very common [attitude]."
Finding the X factor
While the young children at his school tend to be the most difficult cases, "they've always got an X factor", Taylor says. In an echo of the Conservatives' Centre for Social Justice analyses, he regards their plight as an intrinsic consequence of social breakdown and a malfunctioning welfare system that discourages people from finding work. "It is easy for me to say. Of course it is. But I'm not insensitive. I see the damage. The [number of] long-term jobless hasn't even wavered on the dial." Blair putting "a lot of money in to Sure Start and stuff like that" helped some, but, he adds: "there was a glass bottom that they couldn't get through and there was a benefit-dependent underclass that it didn't trickle down to." So what would he do to change things? Taylor asserts that "the ideology bit" gets in the way of debate on education, but says he likes the idea of implementing a quota system requiring schools to allocate a proportion of places to children on free school meals as a way of mitigating against middle-class parents colonising the best state schools.
Like the prime minister, David Cameron, Taylor has a confounding capacity for melding ideas from the left and right of the political spectrum â€" he advocates "pouring resources" into pregnant teenagers to improve their life chances rather than vilifying them, while adding that state schools could learn a lot from public schools. "That's another incredibly political thing [to say]. Public schools are unbelievably successful. Why wouldn't you want to emulate them?"
Taylor knows that speaking his mind on what's wrong with state education will bring accusations of hubris. So would he be tempted to cash in some of his public-school privileges and move into something more lucrative or into politics? I am what I am now. I've made my bed. Who knows where I'll end up?"
Charlie Taylor: CV
Age 45
Work Headteacher of the Willows school
Before that Behaviour support teacher, freelance behaviour consultant and writer
Likes walking, fishing, cooking, pub theatre
Married with three children
• Charlie Taylor's latest book, Divas and Door Slammers, is published by Vermillion
• GCSE pass rate rises for 23rd year running
• Seven out of 10 entries to receive C grade or above
• More than one in five achieve A or A*
• Rooms with French and German fall
• Numbers taking separate science exams rise
• Click here for all the headline figures
• Confused about your results? Click here for tips from our experts Clinic
7:45 am: Good morning and welcome to this year's GCSE results live blog. All day today we'll be bringing you results from around the country, the latest news from the front line in the battle of the sexes, the political fallout, your success stories â€" whether you're a student or a teacher â€" and the Guardian's exclusive tables listing GCSE results from schools across England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Foundation and higher diploma results are also out today, and we'll be giving you details of those, too.
But it's Tuesday, you may be thinking. Aren't GCSE results usually out on a Thursday? Yes, they are. But not this year. The Joint Council for Qualifications explains why in a not-very-illuminating statement:
Earlier this year the regulators and departmental officials for England, Wales and Northern Ireland recommended that all GCSE candidates should receive their results at the same time. In light of this recommendation, it was collectively agreed that Tuesday 24 August 2010 would be the date for the publication of GCSE results. This date will enable all candidates in the UK to receive their GCSE results before returning to school or college for the autumn term
2010.
Please email me na@paul.owen guardian.co.uk with your stories and photos, send me a message on Twitter (twitter.com/PaulTOwen), Or to add a comment below.
And most importantly â€" good luck ...
7.52am:In the past year coursework assessment was excluded from the mathematics that led to the boys surpass girls in the first time since 1997. This year it fell on many topics, and to replace the work done under exam conditions. In today 's Guardian Lucy Tobin asked if this means that the boys will close the gap in these areas also .
If boys start outperforming girls at GCSE, it will also have repercussions for higher education. The Hepi report [a report from the Higher Education Policy Institute] suggested that the switch away from exam-only qualifications had led to women's dominance at university, where women now outperform men on almost every higher education indicator, and in most degree subjects. If boys start doing better at GCSE than girls, in the long term, female participation and performance in higher education could also decline.
We are also expecting to see last year's rise in science and decline in languages continue today. We will hopefully have the first results around 9.30am.
8:08 am: This year is expected to be another record year for results, with experts predicting that almost seven out of 10 papers could be awarded a C grade or higher, according to the Press Association news agency. If the A*-C pass rate rises again today, it will be the 23rd year in a row it has done so.
Last year 7.1% of entries gained an A* â€" more than double the proportion receiving the top grade when it was introduced in 1994 â€" and 67.1% received a C or above. More than a fifth (21.6%) received an A or A*.
More than 750,000 young people will receive results today.
There was some criticism of the exam system from unions this morning.
John Bangs of the National Union of Teachers said GCSEs were the best qualifications on offer, but they could be better. "I think the commitment to review qualifications in 2013 is something that should be maintained," he said.
There are concerns that the introduction of other qualifications, such as international GCSEs, could lead to a "two-tier system", he added.
Nansi Ellis of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers claimed that the exam system was in "disarray". She told the Press Association:
8.09am: In the end we did a good job on the A-level results blog last week of getting a wide spectrum of photos of celebrating students from around the country â€" girls, boys, blonde, not so blonde.
Send your pictures of today's celebrations to paul.owen@guardian.co.uk, and let's see if we can do the same again here.
In the interests of full disclosure, here's my own GCSE results picture, from 15 long years ago... As you can see, I fitted the stereotype perfectly with my cascading waves of long golden hair. Those were the days.
8.30am: Also in today's Guardian:
• Rachel Williams and Jessica Shepherd's front page storycreates the possibility of the level of students who could not get a place at university turned to training and qualifications such as BTEC HND and squeezing out students who have just received their GCSEs.
More than a quarter of students who applied to university still have no place and vacancies are fading fast, figures revealed yesterday. Some 187,488 applicants were still searching in clearing, according to the university admissions service, Ucas. At the same time last year the number was 141,130. Only 18,000 courses are thought to still have vacancies, compared with 32,000 in 2009, and at a number of universities many of the places are reserved for foreign students.
• In the EducationGuardian supplement, Estelle Morris, the former Labour education secretary, worries that the coalition's cuts will mean that the problems schools and colleges faced this year because of a lack of university places may be repeated in the years to come. Morris asks:
8.38am: If you've got your results and you feel confused about what to do next, we have an advice clinic running this afternoon from 2pm-4pm where three experts will be online to help guide you through what to do next. You can add comments and questions on there now â€" just click here.
9.12am: The BBC News channel is busy encouraging some unfortunate children to open their results live on TV. One girl in Port Talbot, south Wales, looks at hers and says happily: "I'm absolutely landed," to some confusion from the presenter. I think that means chuffed, doesn't it?
9.30am: The results are through, and are the headlines:
• The GCSE pass rate has gone up for the 23rd year running.
• Nearly seven in 10 entries (69.1%) received at least a C grade â€" up two percentage points from 2009.
• More than one in five (22.6%) entries achieved an A or A* â€" up one point from last year.
• The numbers taking French and German have droppedagain.
• The numbers taking separate science exams â€" biology, chemistry and physics â€" have risen again, although the proportion being awarded top grades has fallen.
• The English pass rate (C or above) rose this year, after dropping in 2009. Almost two-thirds (64.7%) of English entries gained at least a C grade, up from 62.7% in 2009.
• In maths, 58.4% of entries received a C (57.% in 2009). Boys outperformed girls for the second year in a row (but not by much): 58.6% of boys' entries scored C or above, compared with 58.3% for girls.
• Girls continued to do better than boys overall. More than seven in 10 (72.6%) of girls' GCSE entries gained at least a C compared with 65.4% of boys.
• The overall number of entries dipped again â€" there were more than 5.37 million, compared with 5.47 million in 2009.
9.33am: The director of the Joint Council for Qualifications, Jim Sinclair, said:
Students and their teachers can be proud of their achievements. The increased entries in biology, chemistry and physics, coupled with improved performance in English and mathematics, is very good news indeed.
9.33am: The Labour government changed the rules in 2004 so that modern languages were no longer compulsory after age 14, and since then the numbers taking the subjects have suffered a decline. Today's results show that French entries are down by 5.9%, and entries for German have dropped by 4.5% â€" although Spanish is up by 0.9%.
Some less traditional languages are also up: Chinese (up 5.2%), Portuguese (up 9.6%), and Polish (up 12%).
Despite a 11,070 drop in the numbers taking French, the language is still the most popular choice, with 177,618 students taking the exam this year. The proportion gaining a C or above had risen slightly, from 70.1% to 71.9%.
Andrew Hall, the chief executive of the AQA exam board, said today was a good day for science but "quite a sad day for languages". He said the numbers taking French at GCSE had halved since 2002 and it was the first time "in living memory" that the subject was not in the top 10 most popular subjects. Hall, who has a background in engineering, said languages were still important for business although English was spoken widely.
"You do need to be able to communicate with people in their own country in their own language," he said. Hall said the rise in Polish entries seemed to be due to a rising number of native speakers in the UK.
Ziggy Liaquat, the managing director of the Edexcel exam board, said it was disappointing to see "the decrease of languages". He said knowledge of languages was very important in the global market. "There is a conversation to be had about how we do make languages more engaging, more interesting, more relevant for young people."
9.38am: My colleague Jeevan Vasagar has written about the GCSE results here.
He predicts that the trend of girls outperforming boys in exams, which has lasted for the past two decades, could be reversed next year due to the decision to drop coursework.
The proportion of boys getting grades A* to C in maths rose again this year from 57.6% to 58.6%. The proportion of girls passing also rose, from 56.8% to 58.3%. Boys also did better than girls in biology, where the male pass rate was 93% compared with 92.7%, and in physics, where 93.9% of boys passed compared with 93.4% of girls. Economics also saw a higher pass rate for boys, though only around 3,000 candidates of either sex entered.
9.44am:My colleague Jessica Shepherd wrote about the big increase in entries for biology, physics and chemistry . Entries for chemistry and physics rose by 32%, while those for biology grew by 28%.
Jessica writes:
The rise in sciences may reflect some universities' preference for separate sciences. It also continues a trend seen last week in the A-level results, where students were said to be trying to recession-proof themselves by shunning so-called soft subjects in favour of science, economics and maths.
10.03am: Nick Gibb, the schools minister, was just speaking to BBC News and I caught most of it. He congratulated all the students receiving their GCSE results today.
It takes an enormous amount of work to achieve a good grade today. Our concern is about the attainment gap between the poorest and wealthiest areas. That's why, as a government, we want to boost the academies programme ... If you look at children who qualify for free school meals, only 3.9% have been entered for the separate sciences. So there's an example of ... lack of opportunity ... We want to make sure all children, regardless of their background, get the option to study, for example, the separate sciences.
Asked what impact the government's budget cuts would have on pupils passing GCSEs today, he said:
We're increasing the number of apprenticeships by 50,000 ... The demand this year is higher than [previous years] and that's because of the difficult state of the economy. It's always very competitive every year.
But he said the guarantee was still in place that anyone who got good enough grades would get a place "at a sixth form college or a college".
Asked if universities were looking at GCSEs as well as A-levels when considering places today, Gibb said: "That's always been the case. I don't think there's anything new this year compared to previous years."
10.12am: Some schools have started to get in touch. Philippa Jones (left), of Badminton school, an independent school in Bristol, gained 9 A*s. The school received its best GCSE results for some years today.
10:19 am: Campsmount technology college, a comprehensive in Doncaster, was almost totally destroyed by a fire in December. But today students there recorded some of their best ever results, the Press Association is reporting.
Writing on the school's website, Andy Sprakes, the headteacher, said:
Today 's GCSE results are spectacular considering our hectic time of year. 95% of students received Y11 5 *- C GCSE grades - another record year! ... For such a big success during such a disaster is an amazing achievement.
The gym, library and a number of classrooms were saved in the fire â€" which was tackled by more than 60 firefighters â€" but the rest of the school was ruined. Mobile buildings were later erected on the site as a temporary school was built. Last week the school also achieved excellent A-level results, with the average points score for the pupils increasing from 652 last year to 709 this year.
10:31 am: Christine Blower of the National Union of Teachers has called today's results "a massive vote of confidence in young people and their teachers". But she attacked the previous government's decision to drop modern languages from the list of compulsory subjects after age 14 and urged the coalition "to come up with a coherent policy for ensuring that all young people acquire at least one modern foreign language".
Blower said:
The continuing improvement in results in the sciences, and English and mathematics demonstrates the high quality and effectiveness of comprehensive education. Yet again, of real concern is the decline in the study of modern foreign languages, particularly French and German. This was reflected in last week's A-level results. I find it extraordinary that French which has for so long been core to the secondary curriculum should now have dropped out of the top 10 GCSEs taken by young people.
10.36am: The Institution of Engineering and Technology has been in touch to warn of a "technology skills gap", with "insufficient" numbers of young people studying such subjects. The IET believes this is liable to cause "damage" to the UK economy.
Paul Davis of the IET said: "If we do not see dramatic changes in the number of young people progressing to STEM [science, technology, engineering and math] courses, and then a career in the UK will struggle to deliver new technologies and infrastructure needed for "green" economy. "
10:39 am: The City of London school for girls, an independent school in the Barbican in central London, has emailed to say that 97.8% of its entries received an A or an A*. The headteacher, Diana Vernon, said: "Such results are not achieved without a considerable amount of hard work and I congratulate the girls, and their teachers, on their academic achievements."
10.50am: Click here for full details of all the GCSE results released today.
10.56am: The Institute for Directors is also worried about a skills gap â€" this time in literacy and numeracy. Far from repeating the common complaint that too many students are passing GCSEs, Miles Templesman, the IoD's director-general, says not enough are:
The fact that we have a system where we can expect little more than half of pupils to achieve the benchmark of five good GCSEs including English and maths is a fundamental problem. The government has set out a bold reform programme to introduce more competition in education; the fruits of this cannot come soon enough.
11.01am: The Harris Federation, which sponsors nine city academies in south London, has been in touch to hail impressive results in what it describes as some of south London's most challenging schools. Dan Moynihan, the federation's chief executive, said: "We've had a stunning set of results this year, with an average improvement of 10 percentage points ... Our largest improvement was at Harris Academy Falconwood, where two years ago only 17% of students got the national benchmark of five A*-C grades including English and maths. This year, that figure stands at 60%. Harris Academy South Norwood also saw a large jump, from 43% to 61%. And, within just one year of opening, results at Harris Academy Purley have gone from 33% to 47%."
11.12am: Oli Tomlinson, the headteacher of Paddington Academy in London, has emailed to celebrate his school's best ever GCSE results. The number of students achieving five or more A*-C grades including English and maths increased from 34% in 2009 to 62% today.
Meanwhile, at Barnsley Academy in South Yorkshire, the number of students achieving five or more A*-Cs including English and maths almost trebled, from 19% to 51%. Dave Berry, the headteacher, said: "We are absolutely thrilled with this improvement. Staff and students have worked exceptionally hard over the past year and today's results are proof of that."
11.20am: My colleague Martin Wainwright, the Guardian's northern editor, emails with news from Leeds.
They've done well at Leeds West Academy â€" part of the city that produced Alan Bennett, Barbara Taylor Bradford and the Beardselyesque cartoonist Phil May. The number of students gaining 5+ A*-C GCSEs has gone from 12% to 67%. The number of students with 5+ GCSEs with English and maths is up to 37% from 30% last year. So room for more progress. School principal Annette Hall says: "The commitment and effort put in by our staff and students has been phenomenal. We've turned round a culture of low expectation to one of high expectation and a belief in each individual's potential. I am particularly pleased that in our first year with English as a specialist subject, 64% of students achieved a C or above which is absolutely spectacular. Parents and the community are also seeing the change and giving us more and more support as we set high standards for all. Ultimately though it's the students who reap the rewards."
Other stuff from E-ACT, the organisation that sponsors Leeds West Academy and several other schools around the country: in London, students at schools previously reported to be the worst performing in the capital, made major progress. At Crest Boys' Academy the number achieving five GCSEs at A*-C with English and maths rose from 22% to 45%. In Birmingham, where E-ACT sponsors three academies, results were also up on last year. Heartlands Academy jumped from 40% to 48% GCSEs A*-C with English and maths.
E-ACT stands for Edutrust Academies Charitable Trust. It was initially founded by the ex-Tanzanian businessman Lord Bhatia, and has raised funds from a range of sponsors for those eight academies, so is one of the biggest multi-school sponsor organisations in the academy world. The director general is former headteacher Sir Bruce Liddington, who is also a former schools commissioner for England.
11.44am: Ed Balls, the shadow schools secretary and Labour leadership contender, has posted about today's GCSE results on his campaign website. As mentioned earlier (10.03am), Nick Gibb, the schools secretary, has guaranteed a place at college for every school leaver, this year, but Balls predicted that this guarantee would disappear for future years in George Osborne's spending review in October. Balls wrote:
The coalition has refused to match Labour's guarantee of a sixth form, college or training place for every school leaver and has slashed the youth jobs fund too. While I secured the funding to expand places for the next three years, the new education secretary has lost that battle with the chancellor. We don't yet know how big the cuts will be from next year, but this looks set to be the last summer for the school leavers guarantee before the cuts bite. Michael Gove must come clean on the scale of cuts he is planning for next year and give young people about to start a two-year course a firm assurance that their place will not be taken away after the first year.
11:52 am: My colleague Michael White asks why A-level and GCSE results are now front-page news. They never used to be, he says. What's changed?
There are two obvious responses, both essentially tied to economics rather than the inherent value of education as such or the ever-popular subplot about the merits of media studies unearthed in an alarmist report today from the right-leaning Civitas thinktank. One is that, in an ever-smarter world in which unskilled manual jobs such as digging fields or sweeping pavement shrink by the day, all but the most myopic, burger-munching parents vaguely sense that getting their kids an education is even more urgent than bequeathing them a weight problem ...
The second focus â€" not emphasised sufficiently in the acres of media anguish over dumbed down/up A-level results â€" is the very obvious point that higher education is a major export industry for post-industrial Britain, as it is even more so for the rapidly de-industrialising United States. It's worth many millions to the UK economy, plus intangibles such as networking and those creative people who come to research and stay.
12.03pm: This is a pdf of a number of interesting tables. It shows the numbers taking science and languages, and GCSE results organised by type of school, region, and gender.
12:22 pm: For anyone wondering about diplomas, all the results can be found here.
Nick Gibb, schools minister, said:
I also want to congratulate students who have achieved their foundation and higher diplomas today. There will be a place for the diploma as long as there is demand for it. It is for schools and students to decide whether it is the best qualification for them. That's why we have made it easier for schools to choose the diplomas they think are right for their students, rather than having to offer them in every subject. We want to strengthen vocational education so we will look carefully at how these qualifications are viewed by employers and universities.
1.34pm: Here's a gallery of students receiving their GCSE results.
1.51pm: Despite the increases in pupils studying physics, biology and chemistry as separate subjects, the CBI is protesting that too few pupils are taking all three science GCSEs. Richard Lambert, the business organisation's director-general, said:
Far too few students are given the option by schools to do triple science, and too few are taking it up even if it's available. Pupils, parents and teachers should know that triple science offers the best preparation for A-level science and a whole range of careers. No-one wants gifted young people to miss out on future opportunities because they leave science behind at GCSE.
The CBI said there was a large disparity between the numbers of comprehensive, grammar and private school pupils doing triple science. "Only 10% of comprehensive school pupils sit triple science GCSE ... while 57% do so in grammar schools and 33% do at private schools," a spokesperson said.
CBI has a number of recommendations to improve measures of triple science, including the recruitment of more specialized research and teaching, improving the advisory career, and automatic selection in the triple science for young people who have reached level 6 Sats for 14 years.
1.52pm: Our live chat of GCSE advice is about to start in earnest. Click here to join in. Steph Berry, assistant headteacher of Walbottle Campus, Newcastle, Paul Ashdown, principal of the Sixth Form College, Solihull, and Andy Gardner, a careers adviser at the Institute of Career Guidance, have already started answering questions.
1:57 pm: In the comments 210194sean has just asked for a shout out. He got 13 A*s, and went to Wirral grammar school for boys on Merseyside. Well done, Sean. The girls from Nonsuch high school in Cheam we featured below got the same. Can anyone beat that?
2.10pm: My colleague Jessica Shepherd has just filed an interesting story on the increasing numbers of pupils taking GCSEs before year 11.
Jessica writes:
Alan Smithers, director of the Centre for Education and Employment Research at the University of Buckingham, said the rise in the number of pupils taking the exams early suggested GCSEs were now too easy. "There is now a case for recalibrating the exams and putting in harder questions to distinguish between candidates," he said.
He said schools may also be "hot-housing" pupils, where those who are on the borderline between a C and a D grade may be submitted early for exams so that they are given several attempts at achieving a C grade. "Schools may believe that the more practice a pupil who is borderline has, the better," he said.
2:23 pm: Looks like the Camerons have had a baby girl, while on their holiday in Cornwall. Congratulations. In sixteen years perhaps her GCSE results celebrations will be all over the papers â€" although hopefully not in the same way as those of Tony Blair's son, Euan.
2.51pm:Congratulations also to the 3069 students who were awarded a diploma today.
The diploma was introduced by the previous Labour government as a potential replacement for A-levels and GCSEs. A higher diploma is worth the equivalent of seven GCSEs at grades A* to C.
The results show that around 0.6% of completed diplomas were awarded an A*, 10.3% got at least an A and 93% were awarded at least a C. The rest were given a U grade, the Press Association news agency reported.
The most popular diplomas were media, which was completed by 884 students, and engineering, which was completed by 871 students.
Ziggy Liaquat, executive director of the Board exam Edexcel, said:
What I would say is, when I talk to teachers and students, one of the things they say to me is the principle learning has real value, and is a strong part of the qualification offered. However, I think it's clear that achievement, completion rates are lower and that's a result of the complex nature of the diploma.
2:54 pm: My colleague Katy Stoddard has written a post for the Datablog breaking down all the GCSE data out today by subject, school and gender.
3:26 pm: I'll close this blog with today's best genius child story. A five-year-old from London has apparently become the youngest person every take GCSE maths. Dee Alli was five years and two months when she took the exam; the previous record-holder, Arran Fernandez, was five years 11 months when he took it. Dee, who got a C, goes to school in south London and also takes part in the privately funded Excellence in Education programme for inner-city children.
Di-\\ 'best friend Paul Imafidon, who is also a child prodigy , said:
I kept telling my friends, mathematics is not hard, just try, and try again. Boys do not always get the answers right before girls. We girls, we think more but get the answers right the first time and show our working better.
3.31pm: Thanks for all your comments and well done everyone receiving your results to day. See you in two years for your A-levels...
The 10:10 campaign aimed to persuade Britain to cut its carbon emissions by 10% in 2010. Now 3,000 businesses and 80,000 individuals have signed up â€" and there's still half a year left to go
Inside a modest office tucked down a side alley in Camden, north London, a large blackboard displays an improbable list of names in bright white chalk: Sienna Miller, London Underground, Marks & Spencer, Oxford University, the London borough of Tower Hamlets, Royal Mail, Yorkshire ambulance service, the government of Nepal. As coalitions of the willing go, it takes some beating for diversity.
Eugenie Harvey, director of the 10:10 campaign, which uses this compact, spartan two-storey workspace as its HQ, points to the list with evident pride. "All of these names recently signed up to our campaign in just one week," she says. "It's moments like that which really drive you on."
We're now halfway through 10:10, which was officially launched at Tate Modern last September by the woman who dreamed it up, Franny Armstrong, director of the apocalyptic environmental film The Age of Stupid. Supported by the Guardian, the campaign's primary goal was, and still is, to get people, organisations, companies and even governments to pledge to reduce their carbon emissions by 10% by the end of 2010 â€" an intentionally straightforward gesture, both in its simplicity and achievability. To date, 10:10 campaigns have started in a total of 40 countries including the UK, Nepal, France, Germany, Ghana and New Zealand.
Harvey says it's all about "sending signals to our leaders" that emission cuts are attainable and worth pursuing. "The campaign is about amending both behaviour and attitudes. We had a massive surge of members at the beginning, and it has been steadily rising ever since. Globally, we've had around 3,000 businesses sign up and 80,000 individuals. In the UK, around 45% of all councils have now signed up, too."
But the biggest prize to date, according to Harvey, came just three days after the formation of the new coalition government in May, when David Cameron announced that central government would commit itself to reducing its carbon emissions by 10% within 12 months.
"To those who say this is insignificant," Cameron told the audience, "remember this: the UK's public sector has a bigger carbon footprint than the entire waste industry. If we do this, we'll cut the government's energy bills by hundreds of millions of pounds."
Cameron's speech pinpointed a lesson learned by the 10:10 organisers over the last few months. "Rather than talking in terms of tonnes of carbon dioxide," Harvey says, "it is better to talk in terms of money saved. We have found there is a major glaze-over factor with 'carbon calculators'."
Yet saving money can only be part of the message, says Ed Gillespie, co-founder of Futerra, the London-based sustainability communications agency. "Concentrating on just cost savings isn't ideal: I always say that money motivations generate weak changes."
To this end, 10:10 has also concentrated on nurturing a sense of community, tapping into what Harvey calls "the malaise of western society: atomisation . . . We want to show that doing your bit alongside others, and sharing the same goals, can actually trigger a rush of endorphins that make you feel happy."
Half a year can seem like a long time in any campaign, but this is particularly true, in the current climate, for an environmental campaign. First there was the deep disappointment of the failure of the Copenhagen summit last December, then the continuing fallout from the hacked University of East Anglia emails. Harvey, though, says these episodes have had surprisingly little impact on 10:10's progress.
"Somewhat perversely, the failure at Copenhagen actually emboldened us, proving we were not redundant. Similarly, Climategate was not the nail in the coffin many people predicted. It hasn't really penetrated the public consciousness in the way some thought would happen. I think the details of Climategate were just too nerdy for most people to worry about.
"What I have noticed over the last six months or so â€" and I would say this is due to the failure at Copenhagen â€" is that funding has become harder to come by," says Harvey. "I think funding organisations had their fingers burned by Copenhagen, and now think people are not persuaded by reduction targets and policy commitments."
Harvey, of course, insists that 10:10 has been good value for money. Since it launched, she estimates it has achieved half a million tonnes of carbon dioxide in pledged reductions. Put another way, that's broadly equivalent to the annual CO2 output of 50,000 Britons. "Our costs to date have come in around £440,000 and that's mainly [staffing] costs. This works out at about 80p spent per tonne of CO2 saved."
Camden office, indeed, somewhat densely filled with dozens of volunteers, interns and staff members, such as Harvey.
Gillespie pays tribute to the success of 10:10 in "reaching out, and not just preaching to the converted". But what of the most persistent criticism â€" that the campaign only seeks a pledge to reduce emissions, rather than demanding proof that cuts have actually been made? "We're not really about naming and shaming those who don't follow through with their 10:10 commitments," Harvey says. "We're about the carrot rather than the stick. With public bodies we find that, because they are accountable and already publish detailed audits each year, this is enough to motivate them. But we also offer organisations a facility to help them assess whether they are making progress or not. Our challenge is to persuade these organisations to enact their commitments. We live by Voltaire's motto: 'Perfect is the enemy of the good.'"
And what of Harvey herself? How has she fared reducing her personal carbon footprint? "Probably the biggest impact is reducing my flying," she says. "I used to go back to Australia once a year to see my family, but I will now go back once every two years or so and stay for three months. And all staff now adhere to a strict zero-flights policy when conducting 10:10 business. We have found that some people will seek any excuse they can to avoid doing their bit, and we just can't feed the excuses machine."
Join the 10:10 campaign at 1010global.org/uk/people/join
• That article was amended on July 6, 2010. 10 original said the government, so far signed a pledge 10:10, including the administration of France, Germany, Portugal, Ghana, New Zealand and Norway.
The issue of forced contraception raises difficult questions about autonomous decision making under the Mental Capacity Act
Can the state force a mentally disabled woman to use contraception? How should a judge decide whether a woman in an abusive relationship has the capacity to make decisions about her own body? What is the role played by other people when we make a decision for ourselves?
Recent weeks have seen the first spate of judicial rulings under the landmark Mental Capacity Act. The act was adopted by parliament in 2005, and came into effect in 2007, but it is only now that the first cases are testing key provisions of the new legal world it establishes.
The disturbing case of Mrs A explores troubling questions about procreation and power in the context of mental disability and domestic violence. It raises deep and difficult questions about just what it means for individuals to make decisions for themselves.
Mrs A suffers from a significant learning disability; court papers document that her IQ is in the bottom one percentile of adults of her age.
Mrs A met Mr A in 2007; they were married in 2008. Mr A also falls in the bottom one percentile in IQ. It soon became clear that the question of children was a vexed one in the relationship. Court documents record that Mrs A told a number of acquaintances that she did not want children; it is evident that Mr A did. Their relationship also seems to have become abusive, with Mrs A regularly reporting that her husband had hit or punched her, or would shout and break household items. At times she was afraid to go home. She showed up at her college showing bruises on her arms.
Finally, the court of protection became involved. Last September, the local authority asked the court to declare that Mrs A lacked the mental capacity to determine, among other things, whether she should be administered with contraceptive devices.
The state is still in possession of those longstanding powers, but in recent years a separate question has come to centre stage. A series of court rulings in the 1990s held that all adults, including mentally disabled adults, have a right to refuse medical treatment, as long as they are possessed of the mental capacity to do so. If you have mental capacity, then you enjoy an absolute right to refuse treatment; if you are found to lack mental capacity, then the state can intervene to protect your best interests.
The new legal approach marked a shift towards a human rights perspective in mental health legislation. But it also placed a novel question before the courts: under what circumstances does an individual have the capacity to make his or her own decisions? The Mental Capacity Act established the framework under which this question is addressed.
Mr Justice Bodey backed away from this legal precipice. In the end, he concluded, the best thing for Mrs A would be to foster the very capacity she presently lacks, so that she might develop the ability to make an informed decision about the matter for herself. The best way to achieve that end, he ruled, is for Mrs A to have access to the support she requires from others. In the final sentences of his ruling, the judge expresses his decision "to rely on Mr A to honour his assurances given to the court" â€" assurances that he would not in future prevent Mrs A from having access to support services.
The ruling raises a host of disturbing questions: about the limits of state power; about the best interests of mentally disabled individuals in abusive relationships; about the reliance of a male judge on assurances given by a husband with a history of violence. But it also raises questions about the nature of autonomous decision-making itself.
As the Mental Capacity Act comes to reshape the exercise of state power, courts and social welfare officers and medical professionals will increasingly face questions about when and under what conditions an individual's expressed decision can genuinely be said to be their own. As the case of Mrs A powerfully demonstrates, the ability to make decisions for oneself is not simply a matter of intellect or cognitive power; it can rise or fall with the enabling or obstructive relationships in which one finds oneself embedded.
The charity that advises free school proposers is under fire for refusing to reveal its funding sources
A thinktank headed by a former adviser to the education secretary, Michael Gove, has been awarded £500,000 in public money by his department. The award to the New Schools Network, which was publicly announced last month, is to provide "a personalised â€" and cost-effective â€" service" to anyone interested in setting up one of the free schools which Gove has made his flagship.
The decision embeds NSN at the heart of a policy that was inspired by Sweden's independent state-funded schools, by giving it a hand in the application process. The department's website tells parents: "All proposers interested in setting up a free school must contact the New Schools Network to discuss their ideas." The guidance goes on to say that unsatisfactory forms, which need more work, will be referred back to NSN.
Although the department refers to NSN as an "established charity", it was set up only last year by former Gove aide, 25-year-old Rachel Wolf. The body is also, in Wolf's words, "helped out" by another associate of the education secretary, Dominic Cummings, who used to be Gove's special adviser. Wolf says Cummings's current involvement is "purely voluntary", and reports that her total staff, which currently numbers six, is now likely to grow to 12 to 16 people. She also points out that NSN is "strictly non-partisan", counting former aides to Tony Blair among its advisers.
For Labour, Ed Balls decries a "lack of transparency in [the] whole process", and promises to table "parliamentary questions about the award of this significant government contract". Wolf points to a letter in which the department set out its decision, explaining that it was keen to get the ball rolling immediately and wanted to use NSN because â€" in her words â€" "ours was the only organisation in the country that specialises in the sort of support and liaison work that we do".
The educational campaigner Fiona Millar, who opposes free schools, says: "The award of public money to an organisation linked to Michael Gove will inevitably raise charges of cronyism. But the more serious question is whether this secretly funded outfit is in a position to provide parents with the objective advice they need. The NSN needs to say whether it has ever received funds from organisations with a vested interest in the drive to remove education from the maintained sector. They are well-represented among its advisers and trustees."
Balls adds: "If this organisation is getting public money they must disclose their other sources of funding." Wolf answers: "Like many charities, we have donors who wish to remain anonymous", but she is happy to vouch that the organisation has never received cash from "profit-making schools companies".
According to Millar, one group of parents who are campaigning for a conventional new school â€" a maintained institution within the local authority family â€" went to the department after the election and were told to "go away and talk to the New Schools Network". "The question that raises," she adds, "is whether parents will get the choice that they want, or whether instead they will be forced to swallow undemocratic, privately run schools."
Wolf, however, says she would be happy "to provide support to campaigning parents, regardless of the type of school they might prefer", adding that NSN has already worked with one group campaigning for a maintained school.
Wolf is also quite clear that NSN "only talks to parents and others who want to talk to us". When Education Guardian pressed the department on how this could be squared with the guidance that it has been providing to parents since mid-June that "they must" talk to NSN, it eventually admitted that this guidance was "a mistake" that would now "get changed".
So consultation with NSN might not, after all, be compulsory. But it remains the department's "preferred route", which still potentially puts it in a position of influence over the new generation of schools, since it will be advising parents and teachers as they fill out the forms in which they must specify their educational aims. But speaking to Wolf, who comes across as sincerely committed to diversity, it seems obvious that she is not pushing any particular teaching philosophy.
The department points out that NSN's role is not an entirely new departure. The last government hired private companies, such as KPMG, to support academies, an acknowledgement of the fact that parents and teachers might lack the managerial skills and the contacts to set schools on an independent basis.
But in the newly harsh fiscal climate, the chancellor has made much of cutting consultancy, and one NSN insider acknowledges that "there are officials within the department who would be well placed to liaise between parents and providers". The Lib Dem peer and former Labour education secretary, Shirley Williams, commented that "it is odd for a department of government to tell people they cannot answer inquiries directly in the first instance, but must instead refer them on to somebody else".
Gove may have been moved to outsource the task because he suspects that the department tends to drag its feet over new schools. Some officials might think they have enough on their plate with existing schools; others are sceptical about whether the drive towards independent institutions will truly raise standards.
The academic evidence is mixed. Rebecca Allen, of London's Institute of Education, has recently reviewed the literature on the Swedish experience, having previously surveyed the papers on American charter schools. She has no doctrinal objection to independent state schools, arguing they are "a good way to get diversity into the system â€" if that is the aim". But she says the evidence "does not suggest any consistent effect on average test results". She also reports worrying findings on segregation, saying less-educated Swedish parents use free schools less often, while second-generation immigrants use them much more.
Gove and his team are more bullish, and Allen describes an unremittingly positive dossier of evidence that the coalition recently published as "deliberately selective". She warns: "It's dishonest to pretend to the public that the evidence is all one way."
For her part, Wolf accepts that free schools can fail if they are poorly implemented. But she insists that where things have been done properly, they have proved "transformational", especially for the poor. Perhaps that is true in some settings. It is certainly what parents will hear when they inquire about setting up a new school.
The immediacy of social media does not lend itself to the measured nature of international diplomacy
The French have an expression for it: Il a manqué une belle occasion de se taire- "He (or, in this case she) missed a good opportunity to stay silent. He said it brought to mind in connection with the case of the British Ambassador 's blog In which Francis Guy, our ambassador in Beirut, commented on the death of Lebanese religious leader, Ayatollah Mohammed Fadlallah .
Brian Whitaker has already covered the facts, and it is enough for my purpose to say that the ayatollah was an extremely controversial figure, very much loved and very much hated. An Israeli spokesman complained about the ambassador's remarks, the Foreign Office said that the opinions expressed by the ambassador were personal, and the blogpost was removed as it did not "fully represent" British policy. No winners in that round.
Melanie Phillips, on the Spectator's website, looked at some other blogs and found that the British ambassador in Jordan had expressed some views on Israel and Gaza which she describes as "vicious" (and which I would describe as not fully representing British policy). Phillips misrepresents them of course, leaving out the references to endorsement by David Cameron and William Hague of some of the views she objects to, and she ends up demanding that Hague should repudiate them.
I heard Geoffrey Boycott once say that if you find yourself doing something which annoys the Australians, you should do more of it. I feel much the same about Melanie Phillips. But there is a real problem here. Why do diplomats (and Whitaker's article quotes some examples from Americans as well as the British) feel the need to let it all hang out?
The reason is simple. The Miliband regime in the Foreign Office, obsessed with "process", "image", and to be blunt anything trendy, encouraged the idea that running a blog was a good career move. And, of course, a blog of this nature has to be a little bit spicy. Who wants to read the ambassador in South Korea"After visiting a large gathering of ambassadors were summoned to London to hear William Hague, opining, that" to hear that the new coalition government expects from the diplomatic service and helpful and fascinating "?
If he had said it was neither helpful nor fascinating he might have encouraged me to read further. Not much better is the account by the ambassador in Washington of his bet with the American ambassador in London on â€" wait for it â€" the outcome of the football match between England and the USA at the World Cup.
Old-fashioned diplomacy was too uptight for the modern age. My wife probably broke new ground, when we faced what was called a siege in Tripoli where I was ambassador in 1984, by talking most days live to the world's media. I thought, and think, she did a good job by adding a human dimension to a very difficult political entanglement.
So why not go all the way with blogs, Twitter, Facebook and no doubt umpteen other forms of social media? Before answering that, we need to consider what ambassadors are for. They are not super-journalists, or super-agony-aunts. Their job is to advise their governments on policy, for which deep understanding of the country in which they work is required, to carry out policy and on occasion to advocate and promote it publicly; and to provide a discreet and reliable channel of communication between governments.
Diplomats are laughed at for their "on the one hand, on the other hand" approach, but the problems they deal with are almost by definition controversial and many-sided. Sometimes they have to act quickly, but where possible it is better to think long and hard, and if necessary consult the ministry. As everyone knows who has used them, blogs and email are not conducive to that way of working.
The Foreign Office's own blog claims that "Our diplomats aren't using social media because it's cool, or because they think it will change the nature of diplomacy. They're using it because it helps them to do things that they couldn't already do."
To do them justice, they publish the comments, apparently, a member of the public, which disputes that - naturally immoderate use of language, which, as a former diplomat, I very much regret:
"I think the increasing use of social media at the British taxpayers' expense actually proves arrogant civil servants are not doing the jobs they are paid to do. [The FCO blog] claims that the 45 FCO civil servants currently squandering the taxpayers, money [sic] to bore anyone with the time to waste reading about their sad lives do so because it makes them more effective in their jobs. This is completely ridiculous."
Modern media, like old-fashioned media, can of course be used effectively, and that is part of an ambassador's skill. I think Frances Guy blogging on the subject of a green Queen's birthday party (that's a green birthday party, not a green Queen) got across a few points highlighting the Foreign Office and the Queen's green credentials, possibly as effectively as writing an article in a local newspaper.
But it's a pretty miserable benefit compared with the risks. Leaving aside the trivia, the issues with which ambassadors have to deal are better dealt with penseroso rather than allegro. Blogs by ambassadors were bound to end in tears. Let's hope William Hague will blow the whistle. There is a good Yorkshire saying: Hear all, see all, say now't.
The American High School Theatre Festival brings coachloads of US youngsters on to the stage at the Edinburgh festival fringe. Laura Barnett meets some of its organisers and star performers
Each summer, Edinburgh is awash with performers pursuing their dreams of stardom: mime artists and ukulele players, Russian contemporary dancers and comedians â€" and, perhaps most incongruously of all, hundreds of American high school students.
In the four years that I've been covering the festival, one fringe theatre company has always been particularly intriguing: the American High School Theatre Festival. Leaf through the densely-printed pages of this year's fringe brochure, and this name appears in confident, bold type next to a veritable smorgasbord of shows â€" among them, variously, Medea, The Mikado, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Bambi: A Life in the Woods and the tantalisingly-titled The Little Bab Snoogle-Fleejer.
My first port of call is Sarah Cook, the American High School Theatre Festival's programme director. We arrange to meet at the Church Hill theatre; this large, porticoed theatre on Edinburgh's genteel Morningside Road is the AHSTF's main performance space. It's a Tuesday morning, and a coachload of students from the Detroit country day school have just arrived for their 10.20am performance of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street â€" a new version, the fringe programme claims, set in an asylum. Round the side of the theatre, the performers â€" costumed in sackcloth, their faces smeared with dirt and white stage-paint â€" form a circle and hold hands, in a surprisingly professional bonding moment before curtain-up.
Being an ambassador at the fringe is an expensive business, however. Cook doesn't want to give me even a ballpark figure for how much it costs each child to participate in the festival â€" the figure changes each year, she says, and she doesn't want prospective future participants to read this article and be put off. But Cook does say that schools and students spend up to two years raising funds, something that Jeff Nahan, a professional theatre director and head of the Conservatory of Performing Arts at the Detroit country day school, confirms when I meet him inside the auditorium, as the five-piece school band tunes up in the pit for Sweeney Todd.
"Coming here has cost each student $5,784 (£3,621)," he says. "That's a lot of money, of course â€" but our headmaster has been very supportive with fundraising, and the kids have worked hard to raise the money." For that money, the students get their flights, two days in London, their travel up to Edinburgh (on a specially-chartered AHSTF train), and then at least 10 days in Edinburgh, with tickets to the Military Tattoo thrown in. So is it worth it? Nahan's face lights up. "Oh yes. This is about pushing kids beyond the limits of their education â€" about showing them not to be afraid of pursuing a career in the arts. Here in Edinburgh, they see people who really are making it happen."
Watching Sweeney Todd, it's clear that several of the students in Nahan's cast â€" who are all aged between 15 and 19 â€" really could stand a chance of pursuing a career as actors and singers. The young cast handle the tricksy Sondheim vocal lines with aplomb, and 19-year-old Nathan Mondry, as Sweeney, seems as confident as a Broadway old-timer.
Outside the theatre, I ask him what he's getting out of being in Edinburgh. "It's lovely to see the city's history â€" the mix of old and new," he says. "And it's a challenge to perform in front of an audience of people who don't know us." Tim Markham, 18, who alternates with Mondry in the role of Sweeney and is going to the University of Michigan this September to study acting, agrees. "It's so exciting to see what other professional actors bring to the table," he says. "And we have a lot of fun. Yesterday, after the show, we had a massive pizza party."
As the Sweeney cast are stowed into their waiting coach, the next group arrives: the York County school of the arts from Bruton high school, Virginia, who are about to perform another musical (I'm sensing a theme): Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella. While the audience â€" mainly teachers and kids from the other American high school groups, with a few local senior citizens thrown in â€" take their seats, I grab a moment with Shelly Cihak, the show's director.
Coming to Edinburgh, she says, gives the students a chance to see what it's like to put a production together on a professional scale: "We're working with an all-female technical crew, and I think it's really inspiring for them to see that women can make this their profession, too. They're getting so much out of this experience: all of them have risen above anything I could have asked of them."
For Cihak, it's the opportunity to see shows like these â€" and just to soak up the fringe atmosphere â€" that makes the distance and the hard work worthwhile. "The students can learn more about the arts just walking down the Royal Mile," she says, "than they do back home in a whole year."