How to read to babies without feeling ridiculous
Alison Flood: US paediatricians are urging parents to read to children from their earliest days, which is not easy with the youngest babies
Alan Bennett launches fierce attack on private education
Writer tells audience at a Cambridge University lecture that current system is 'both wrong and a waste'
JRR Tolkien called teaching ‘exhausting and depressing’ in unseen letter
Lord of the Rings author's rediscovered message to fellow teacher talks about how frustrating he found the work
Why boarding schools produce bad leaders
The elite tradition is to send children away at a young age to be educated. But future politicians who suffer this 'privileged abandonment' often turn out as bullies or bumblers. A psychotherapist explains why
We are losing the art of reading
Andy Miller: The pleasures of reading involve patience, solitude and contemplation, but we rush to consume content effortlessly
Back to school, Mr Gove: authors choose their GCSE set texts
Michael Gove has been lambasted for meddling with the English GCSE syllabus, but is it due for an overhaul? Mary Beard, William Boyd, Hanif Kureishi, Will Self and other cultural figures choose their set texts. Which books would you pick?
From weeping warts to leprosy: the gruesome art of medical illustration
Before photography, doctors treating everything from leprosy to syphilis turned to an astonishing array of illustrations for guidance. Will Self finds a grotesque beauty in a new collection chronicling people and their poxes
Unthinkable? British Isles writing for English readers
Editorial: There is a compelling case for English pupils to face more Scottish, Welsh and Irish literature
No, we have not banned To Kill a Mockingbird
Elizabeth Truss: You might think a government saying that pupils need to study a wider range of more challenging authors would be welcomed. Instead we received a broadside
GCSE English literature row: Don’t blame Gove, blame me
Jonathan Bate: I was part of the board of experts who recommended that government broaden what has been a very narrow English literature syllabus
Angelou and Steinbeck replaced by Ishiguro and Syal in new English GCSE exams
Changes follow the government's reshaping of the English literature exam syllabus, removing the category of prose from different cultures and replacing it with modern works from Britain
AQA set texts for English GCSE plumbs new depths of cultural incoherence
Robert McCrum: AQA boss Andrew Hall says 'we can't please everyone' - but he might have done some basic homework before sitting the exam
Michael Gove hits back in row over GCSE syllabus
Education secretary claims exam boards are being asked to broaden, not narrow, the GCSE English literature curriculum
Michael Gove should not kill the Mockingbird
Anna Hartnell: Taking Harper Lee's novel off the GCSE syllabus ignores the modern British sense of identity
To Kill a Mockingbird and Of Mice and Men axed as Gove orders more Brit lit
New English literature GCSE ditches American classics for pre-20th century British authors such as Dickens and Austen