Some time ago, I was asked if I would sign up for a scheme called Speakers in Schools, whereby there is a register which allows state-funded schools to ask people in public life to speak to them.   I have only been asked to speak once before to a school in Wimbledon.   This morning I was asked to speak in the Bethnal Green Academy.

I walked there.   Past the legacy of Victorian social improvement:

Past the artisan houses of the nineteenth century:

Bethnal Green Academy is what I used to know as Danesford, where my brother taught maths in the late 1970s.   Then, it was a sink school.   Now it’s been transformed.   I was impressed by the Year 12 students who were interested in the economics of the Royal Academy and why the Madonna of the Pinks cost £22M.   Then I talked to some Year 13 students and saw their art, much of it highly inventive, including technically skilled drawings, a painting of the Serpentine based on Monet, and a neo-conceptual chair.