School’s back, and a fight breaks out in the Westminster playground

Nick Clegg’s speech today on education has certainly garnered him some headlines. But it has also ruffled feathers in Whitehall. A senior Department for Education source told me earlier:

“Clegg doesn’t understand that the 2010 Act means that Academies are the default mode for new schools, whether Local Authorities like them or not. His speech doesn’t change Free School policy or Academy policy generally. It was stupid of Richard Reeves to turn what should have been rare good news for the Government into a splits story, and it won’t help reverse public perceptions of Clegg as dishonest.”

The striking thing about the Deputy Prime Minister’s speech today is the emphasis that it places on the need for a role for local authorities. The Blairite education reformers, whose work Michael Gove has picked up on and accelerated, always envisaged academies as a way of freeing schools from local authority control.