Michael Gove: an adult in a parliament of toddlers – Spectator Blogs

Michael Gove, the most important and successful Aberdonian politician since, well, since I don’t know actually, is also that rarest of things: a grown-up cabinet minister. He knows the importance of praise. Consider this passage – highlighted by John Rentoul – from a speech he gave on Child Protection this morning:

Just as the Labour Government early in its life felt that teachers needed to be told how to operate – down to the tiniest detail of what should happen in every literacy or numeracy hour – so the Labour Government towards the end of its life felt it had to produce thousands of pages of central Government prescription on social work practice. Both sets of interventions reflected a lack of trust in the frontline.

But the Labour Government – to its credit – recognised that while central prescription of what professionals do every day could, in certain circumstances, lift performance from weak to adequate it very rarely elevated it beyond that.