Michael gove

For years, words ‘skills’ and ‘crisis’ have been joined in British political discourse. It’s a problem that no one seems able to crack and on May 2nd, The Spectator is holding a conference to get to the bottom of it. Labour excelled at explaining the problem. When Gordon Brown went through his phase of ennobling bankers and asking them to decide government policy, he asked Lloyds’ Sandy Leitch to conduct the Skills Review which found that Britain does well at educating its elite, but not well with others. Germany, by contrast, has 60pc of youngsters in upper secondary education in vocational training. Half of all German pupils in vocational training spend more

Guests at The Spectator’s schools conference on  Thursday arrived via the stunning grounds of Westminster School (above), one of the best not just in the country but  the world. It was fitting setting. The great irony about the British schools debate is that while our state schools may languish at 25th place in the global rankings, our private schools are first. It’s not as if Britain can’t do teaching: we can, better than anyone. What we can’t seem to do is expand what’s good. Michael Gove’s Academies Act allowed any private school to open a state school and expand — but they have been slow to respond. Now Westminster School has teamed

Will Michael Gove’s reforms outlast him? They are perhaps this government’s single greatest accomplishment. Within three years it has gone from legislation to a nascent industry, and much of it on display at yesterday’s Spectator education conference, which the Education Secretary addressed. But towards the end, he raised an important point: how much of this agenda is due to his personal patronage? Is the school reform genie out of the bottle? He thinks so. I disagree, and explain why in my Telegraph column today. Here are my main points, with some highlights from yesterday’s conference. 1. The energy and thoroughness of the Gove reforms are remarkable, and go way beyond

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

Michael Gove’s planned national curriculum, heavily influenced by American reformer E.D. Hirsch, came under strong attack over the weekend. Critics claim that it will de-professionalise teachers. NUT activists and their allies insist that teachers will have to abandon the ideas that were prevalent when they were trained, and teach in a different way, which risks alienating and demoralising them. There are good reasons for being concerned about the de-professionalisation of teachers, but Hirsch’s curriculum for the UK is not one of them. On the contrary, his curriculum, found in books such as What Your Year 3 Child Needs to Know, is designed to encourage the renewal of teaching as a

Three years ago, Dennis Sewell wrote a Spectator piece about the real enemy awaiting Michael Gove: ‘The Blob’. Carla Millar illustrated the point (below). Today in the Mail on Sunday, the Education Secretary extends the metaphor further: ‘School reformers in the past often complained about what was called TheBlob – the network of educational gurus in and around our universities who praised each others’ research, sat on committees that drafted politically correct curricula, drew gifted young teachers away from their vocation and instead directed them towards ideologically driven theory. ‘Some wonder if past reformers were exaggerating the problem in university education departments. Thanks to the not-so-Independent 100 we can see

Michael Gove’s enemies will have savoured his defeat yesterday, and enjoyed every second of his Commons speech admitting that his pet project, the EBacc, was ‘a bridge too far’. Gove is fighting a war on many fronts — and he lost a battle. It doesn’t happen often, which is precisely why it’s memorable. I look at this in my Telegraph column today. Here are my main points: 1. The passion of Gove — and Adonis. Gove is just as passionate about the transformative power of education as Andrew Adonis and, I suspect, for the same reason. Both were born in modest circumstances: Adonis to a single father in Camden, Gove

Coalition ministers and commentators like to study Michael Gove as an example of a successful reforming politician. The Education Secretary is most definitely man not mouse, taking on some of the most vehement vested interests in our public services, and even appearing to enjoy himself while he does it. But today’s change of tack on GCSE reform shows that the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry. Actually, as the FT’s Chris Cook so eloquently explained on the Today programme, it don’t matter whether the reformed exams are called Gove-levels, EBCs, or plain old GCSEs: what is clearly most important is that the reforms call time on

The battle between Tim Loughton and the Education department rumbles on, with new foot soldiers joining the fray. The latest shot fired in the war comes from Labour’s Stephen Twigg, who has demanded an investigation into the quotes we ran on Coffee House last week from a senior DfE source which described the former minister as a ‘lazy incompetent narcissist obsessed only with self-promotion’. Twigg has written to the department’s Permanent Secretary Chris Wormald, saying the following: ‘You will be aware that both special advisers and civil servants are bound by a code of conduct, which precludes them from making personal attacks.’ In the letter, which you can read in

Coffee House readers won’t be surprised by the Independent’s report that Michael Gove has been telling friends he has no objections to profit-making schools: he explained his position on the matter at length to Fraser in December. Then, the Education Secretary said he was keen for the one profit-seeking school in this country, IES in Suffolk, to make the case to the public for more profit-seeking schools: ‘What I said to them [IES] is the same argument that Andrew Adonis has made: we’ve created the opportunity for you to demonstrate what you can do and win the argument in the public square. You have an organisation that has been criticised,