The education big tent is collapsing

The pegs are definitely coming out of Michael Gove’s education big tent, although it’s not just the Secretary of State who is pulling them out. Time was when Stephen Twigg could only make strangely consensual-yet-critical humming noises at the despatch box during departmental questions. Now Tristram Hunt is able to find sufficient difference between his education policies and Gove’s to go on the attack at these sessions, and Gove can snap back about the quality – rather than complete absence – of Labour’s education policy.

At today’s education questions, Hunt attacked on Ofsted: not just the row about Sir Michael Wilshaw, but on whether academies and free schools should be subject to the same level of inspection as local authority schools. He said that the ‘education secretary has, in the words of Sir Michael, unleashed a “smear campaign” against the chief inspector’ and added:

‘Is not the truth of the matter this – that Ofsted is inspecting the Secretary of State’s free schools without fear or favour and he doesn’t like it? The chief inspector wants to inspect academy chain and he doesn’t like it.