Any government can set out on a journey of reform – the question is whether they can stay on course upon hitting turbulence. The coalition is entering this phase now. Its flagship reforms, universal credit and free schools, are encountering difficulty. We all know about the welfare problems, but not much attention has yet fallen on the nature of Michael Gove’s impending headache. I looked at this in my Telegraph column.
There are now 174 free schools in England, and by this time next year it’ll be almost 300. Statistically, some of these are going to have problems – and this is the test for the government. If you were a venture capitalist and backed 300 businesses, how many would you expect to fail? You’d be lucky if it were as few as 30. Gove does not pretend to have invented a formula for guaranteed education success – instead, he is simply inviting teachers and school groups to set up choice in the state system, and see how they get on.
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