Daily Mail, Friday, September 6, 2019 Page 21To order a print of this Paul Thomas cartoon or one by Pugh, visit Mailpictures.newsprints.co.uk or call 020 7566 0360.PRINCE Andrew hasn’t
been on an official visit to
the US since May 2017
when he supported
another old pal, financier Michael Milken,
who was hosting a wealth creation
conference in Los Angeles. Unfortunately
Milken’s own dodgy wealth creation
resulted in a ten-year jail sentence and a
fine of nearly £500million in 1989. Andrew
hosted a Buckingham Palace dinner for
Milken in 2015. Like Epstein, he seems to
stand by friends post conviction.JO Johnson’s surprise resignation as a
Tory MP and minister wasn’t discussed en
famille, according to sister Rachel, who is
furious at descriptions of family rows over
Brexit as ‘Isis-like in intensity and silli-
ness’. She tweets: ‘I’m afraid to say this is
rubbish. I said last night at a charity do
that the family avoids the topic of Brexit,
especially at meals, as we don’t want to
gang up on the PM!’HARRY and Meghan won’t be taking
four-month-old Archie to holiday with his
great-grandmother in Balmoral. His
cousin Beatrice wasn’t too little to be
taken to Scotland to meet the Queen in
August 1988. She was four days old.PRESIDENT Trump’s Twitter response to
the latest goading by Sadiq Khan misspells
his name as ‘Sadique Kahn’ – surely infuri-
ating the London mayor more than being
called ‘nipple-height’. Kahn is a German-
ised form of Cohen, the historic name for
the Hebrew priests of the Temple of Jeru-
salem. ‘Sadique’ is French for ‘sadistic’.
Either Trump is tapping into new levels of
subtlety or confirming his cluelessness.NEWSNIGHT
anchor Emily Maitlis
fails to impress
Jacob Rees-Mogg’s
sister Annunziata,
pictured, when she
inquires about her
big brother’s
Commons lounging
antics. ‘Would you
have told him to
sit up?’, she
mischievously asks. Annunziata frostily
replies: ‘I don’t tell my family what to do
in that way... we’re all adults.’US envoy Woody Johnson, claiming Amer-
ican food safety standards are the world’s
best, tweets: ‘Our food is safe, affordable
and delicious!’ Not so, says historian Simon
Schama, replying: ‘US suffers from 14.7
per cent food-borne illnesses per year
compared to 1.5 per cent in UK. Industri-
ally produced chicken raised in barbaric
conditions; ditto beef.’ There goes the
Thanksgiving stiffie Simon!JULIE Andrews’s late husband, director
Blake Edwards, once joked that his wife
was ‘so sweet she probably has violets
between her legs’. Julie promptly sent
him a bunch of purple flowers.PRIAPIC Lucian Freud, quoted in William
Feaver’s new biography, had a novel
answer when quizzed about the arrival of
simultaneous children by different
women: ‘You ask me why are these chil-
dren all the same age? Don’t you realise I
had a bicycle?’Ephraim
Hardcastle
Email: [email protected]‘Deserted by my own brother! Can it get any worse?’
Right-wing terrorism arrests rise again
11 per cent. Schools minister
Nick Gibb said: ‘We want all
pupils to leave primary school
equipped with the knowledge
and skills that will help them to
be successful in the rest of their
education and beyond – that’s
why I’m pleased to see an
increase in pupils reaching the
very highest standards at the
end of primary school.’
÷ This week almost 9,500
schools will begin piloting the
new ‘baseline assessment’ tests
for four-year-olds, which will
eventually replace the existing
SATs that are taken by
seven-year-olds.
The tests will mean that each
pupils’ progress can be tracked
throughout their primary years- shining a light on failing or
complacent schools.
[email protected]
Now boys lag
even further
behind girls in
SATs results
By Eleanor Harding
Education Editor
GIRLS and Asian pupils are
storming even further ahead of
their peers by the time they
leave primary school, with white
boys lagging at the bottom of the
class, the latest SATs results
have revealed.
Analysis of the test results, which
are taken each spring by 11- and 12-
year-olds in reading, writing and
maths, will raise alarm at the con-
tinuing underachievement of white
working-class boys.
The data for 2019, released by the
Department for Education (DfE),
showed 70 per cent of girls reached the
expected standard in reading, writing
and maths combined, compared with 60
per cent of boys.
This represented a gender gap of ten
percentage points – up from eight per-
per cent of girls reached the
expected standard, compared
with 69 per cent of boys.
The biggest gulf is still in writ-
ing, where 85 per cent of girls
made the grade compared with
72 per cent of boys.
In maths, girls are ahead byblack pupils have been the low-
est-scoring group since 2016,
but this year they jumped up by
one percentage point. It means
white pupils, whose results
stagnated, are now joint-bottom
in terms of achievement, with
just 64 per cent of white and
black groups reaching the
expected standard.
Meanwhile, Asian pupils leapt
ahead by one percentage point,
with 69 per cent reaching the
expected standard.
Chinese pupils, who make up
less than 1 per cent of the popu-
lation, still achieve the highest
results, with 80 per cent making
the grade – a continuation of a
long-term trend.
The proportion of all pupils
reaching the higher standard –
above what is expected for their
age – has risen by one point tocentage points in 2018.
Experts have previously warned
that while many Asian families
provide a lot of support at
home, white British parents can
be less aspirational, with boys
particularly affected by the time
they head to secondary school.
Alan Smithers, professor of
education at the University of
Buckingham, said: ‘White pupils
tend to lag behind because their
families have become increas-
ingly complacent over the years
that the country will look after
them and it is up to the children
what they learn, whereas fami-
lies from poor countries know
the crucial importance of a good
education and push their chil-
dren to do their very best.
‘Those coming from Asia also
bring with them a strong learn-
ing culture.’
In the SATs reading tests, 78
‘Reaching the very
highest standards’THE number of Right-wing extremists
arrested by police under anti-terror laws
has risen to the highest level on record,
official figures show.
The total increased to 33 in the year to
the end of June, up from 28 in the previ-
ous 12 months, ten in 2016-17 and six in
2015/16. The rise coincides with anotherfall in the number of Islamist extremists
held by police.
This total peaked in the 12 months to the
end of June 2017, when 185 people with
Islamist extremist ideologies were
arrested on suspicion of a terror-related
offence. It dropped to 178 in 2017/18, and
171 in 2018/2019, according to Home Officefigures. There were 266 arrests for sus-
pected terrorism-related activity in the
past year, down from 354 in the previous
12 months, continuing a downward trend.
Of those arrested in 2018/19, 23 per cent
were released without charge – the low-
est percentage since records began after
the September 11 terror attacks in 2001.just one point – 79 per cent
compared with 78 per cent.
Professor Smithers added: ‘If
girls lagged behind boys by ten
percentage points or more there
would be outrage, but the poor
performance of boys seems to
be just accepted. It requires
urgent Government attention.’
When it comes to ethnicity,