Tag Archives: stephen twigg

Stephen Tall

LDVideo: What are your memories of 15 years ago today, 1st May 1997?

By Stephen Tall | Tue 1st May 2012 - 8:50 pm

It’s exactly 15 years ago today that Tony Blair led New Labour to a landslide general election victory over John Major’s Tories, and Paddy Ashdown saw the Lib Dems secure the largest third party representation in the House of Commons since 1929. Here are three videos to remind you of a quite extraordinary night…

The exit poll predicts Labour’s landslide

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Posted in YouTube | Also tagged , , and | 31 Comments
Daniel Henry

Opinion: Is it time to rescue education policy from the hands of MPs?

By Daniel Henry | Thu 26th April 2012 - 5:28 pm

When Labour’s shadow minister of education, Stephen Twigg, announced his “Office for Educational Improvement” idea, it was quite well received by many of us. It pushed a lot of our buttons, not least the welcome emphasis on evidence and the idea of protecting educational policy from the whims of politicians with “transient ambitions”.

The question that crossed my mind was how this might be combined with our liberal themes of localism and democracy to improve it further. So to start a debate, here’s a suggestion:

How we might “devolve” educational policy

We could create a council to deal with educational policy. …

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged and | 15 Comments
Stephen Tall

Labour’s new approach to education: ‘Evidence, evidence, evidence’. What can the Lib Dems learn from this?

By Stephen Tall | Thu 23rd February 2012 - 9:15 am

I’m going to do something now I haven’t had cause to do in a good few months: praise a Labour policy. Here’s why.

On Tuesday night, I went along to listen to Stephen Twigg, Labour’s shadow education secretary, deliver a speech to a ProgressOnline debate on raising standards in education. (The event was in parliament’s Grimond Room, so I felt reasonably at home.) The theme was ‘Evidence, not dogma’, and Mr Twigg stayed true to the spirit of it, announcing a heavily-trailed proposal that Labour will establish an Office for Educational Improvement. You can read his speech here, and …

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , , , , and | 20 Comments
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