The unlikely revolutionary

Behind Michael Gove’s desk stands an imposing McCarthy-era poster which says: ‘Sure I want to fight Communism — but how?’ In their less charitable moments, Tories may argue that his Department of Education is as good a place as any to start. The strength of its grip over state schools has long been the subject of political laments and Yes, Minister sketches. Confronting the educational establishment was too much for the Blair reformers and even the Thatcher government. But Gove, the least likely of political warriors, finally appears to be making progress.

‘Some things I never imagined we’d be able to accomplish alone, let alone in a coalition government, so relatively quickly,’ he says, when we meet in his office. His Academies Act has allowed most English secondary schools to be freed from government control. His next mission is to rewrite the rules for teachers’ pay, replacing the pay-by-time-served system with pay on merit. This would give head teachers the power to poach a brilliant maths teacher, for example — or sack a bad one. It all sounds perfectly reasonable, but for the teaching unions it is nothing short of a declaration of war. ‘The trade unions have regarded this as their apostles’ creed,’ says Gove. But national pay bargaining, he says, is an insult to the skill of teachers. ‘If you treat everyone as though they’re merely an interchangeable widget in a machine, then that robs the teaching profession of its sacred role.’ The National Union of Teachers disagrees, and is muttering about a nationwide strike. Gove spent 18 months leading up to this point — is he prepared? ‘I hope I am,’ he says. ‘And I don’t believe that it’s a winning argument for the trades unions to say: “We do not want to pay good teachers more.”’

It’s not his only battle.