Michael Gove: Unions need to do a better job

Cometh the Gove, cometh the angry trade union representative. It was inevitable that the Education Secretary would have at least one exchange with someone from one of the two largest teaching unions when he took questions from the floor at today’s Spectator education conference. Gove spoke powerfully without notes on his vision for education, and then in conversation with Andrew Neil, attacked those he believed had low expectations for certain pupils. He said:

‘There are wonderful people in teaching and I want to empower them. This is, I think, a tremendous opportunity for teachers. But there are some in the teaching profession, I’m afraid, who won’t take yes for an answer. They say we’d like more freedom – and we’d give them more freedom with academies and free schools. When they say your curriculum proposals are ridiculous well, in that case, with academies, you can create your own curriculum and with respect to continuous professional development, one of the best ways of professional development is to have your lessons observed by another teacher and to observe another teacher yourself.