Michael gove

Should state schools be able to make a profit? We asked this of you on our Coffee House poll this week. 71 per cent of you said yes, and with good reason. Profit-seeking companies expand when demand is strong: that’s what you want good schools to do. But successful schools not seeking profit have no incentive to expand: it’s an easier life just to let the waiting list grow and jack up the fees. This month, 24 new ‘free schools’ will open – eventually able to educate 10,000 pupils. But to keep pace with the boom in primary school pupils, we’d need an extra 400 primaries alone. Will the ‘free

A fortnight ago, The Spectator asked if Cameron was fit to fight? We wondered if he had the gumption to use the political moment created by the riots to push through the radical reforms the country needs.  So, it’s only fair to note that the government has today actually done something—as opposed to just talking about—the excesses of the human rights culture. The Department for Education has stopped the implementation of new regulations that would require teachers to log every incident in which they ‘use force’ with children. These new rules would have made teachers record every time they had pulled apart two kids in a corridor or intervened to

The Department of Education is remarkably unbothered by yesterday’s Guardian splash about free schools. Why? Because they have known for months that the emails on which it was based had gone missing. Indeed, the only thing that surprised them about the story was that it did not appear three months ago in the Financial Times. Email security in Whitehall is notoriously bad. Ministers and special advisers often don’t realise that civil servants have access to their email accounts. This access provides ample opportunity for those hostile to the government’s political agenda to leak out stories. (Most ministers in both this and the last government use secret squirrel email addresses to

The Gap Year has been declared dead. It’s A-levels day today, and the annual scramble for university places has been intensified ahead of next year’s tuition fees rise. According to this morning’s Times (£), the last count had 669,956 pupils sprinting after 470,000 vacancies. An estimated 50,000 students with adequate grades will not enter higher education this year as many universities have raised entry requirements to manage increased demand. This means that competition during clearance will be even more stiff than usual, particularly as universities will offer many fewer clearing places according to various surveys. Needless to say, UCAS’ website appears to have collapsed under the weight of this unparalleled

For years, teachers have been increasingly reluctant to restrain unruly pupils — for fear of being slapped with a lawsuit. But now, it seems, the government is trying to ease those concerns. Its guidance today may not change any laws, but it does encourage schools to change their approach. Among the directions is that “schools should not have a ‘no touch’ policy”: teachers can use reasonable force to restrain pupils, remove disruptive children from the classroom or prevent them from leaving the classroom when they shouldn’t. However, the guidance does stress that there are limits on the use of force, making it clear that “it is always unlawful to use

As any CoffeeHouser knows, the Spectator enthusiastically supports Michael Gove’s education reforms. But it’s always important to listen to opposing views – so we stepped outside our offices in Westminster to talk to some of the striking teachers. Some of their points, it must be said, were a little peculiar. “It was wonderful under Balls, a golden age,” said one “we’d like to get back to that.” But others were more realistic in their concerns. For example, they criticised Michael Gove’s inconsistency: the official government policy is that modular exams will remain, but he appeared on television this weekend saying that he intended to remove modular exams by 2012. This

Activity in Whitehall becomes more fevered as the day itself approaches. Michael Gove wants to see off the NUT with as little bloodshed as possible, honouring David Cameron’s decree that ministers tread softly. To that end, he has already written to headmasters urging them to keep calm and carry on. And this morning, news emerges that Gove is asking parents and retired teachers who have passed CRB checks to fill in on Thursday to ensure that children have a constructive day at school. The Department of Education has not yet approached former members of the flagship Teach First scheme to return to school for a day; it’s probably too late

A letter is bouncing around Whitehall, and I thought CoffeeHousers might care to see a copy. It has been penned by Michael Gove, and is being dispatched to all headmasters today. It urges them to Keep Calm and Carry On during the impending strikes over teachers’ pensions. “My view,” pens the education secretary, “is that we all have a strong moral duty to pupils and parents to keep schools open, and the Government wants to help you achieve that.” You can read the full thing below. While much of this missive is dry, dry stuff — certainly drier than Gove’s usual prose — it’s also quite revealing of the government’s