Michael gove

Gove’s school reforms get off the ground

The arduous process of reforming our country’s education system begins today.  After two school reform bills were announced in yesterday’s Queen’s Speech, Michael Gove is writing to all English primary and secondary schools inviting them to cut loose from local authority control and become academies.  This is but stage one of the reform process: changing the system that’s already in place.  The really radical part will come after the summer recess, with the government’s plans for pupil premiums and the like. There is already much opposition to the agenda: the teachers’ union NASUWT, for instance, is laughably claiming that the drive for more academies would “disenfranchise democratically-elected local councils” (good

The Tories still need to do more to sell their school reforms

It is quite telling that David Cameron’s first newspaper article since becoming Prime Minister is for the Daily Mail, and even more telling that its central message is, “you still have a Conservative Prime Minister”.  There then follows a series of reassurances about Dave’s political motivations (“I believe the state is your servant, never your master. I believe in the common sense and decency of the British people”) and about the policies contained in the coalition agreement. One line that jumped out at me, though, is this rather inspid description of the Tories’ radical school reform agenda: “We’re also giving parents, charities and other organisations the opportunity to set up

How the coalition will work

The full coalition agreement, released this morning, is fascinating enough in itself.  Here we have a step-by-step guide for how two different parties will operate together, what they will do, and, broadly speaking, when they will do it.  And, perhaps to ease the general uncertainty surrounding this type of government, it is considerably clearer than party manifestos tend to be.  One thing you can say, at least, is that this coalition appears keen to make itself more accountable. Skimming through the actual document, there seem to be few surprises, and a good handful of reviews designed to punt difficult policy areas into the long grass.  As the Times’s Francis Elliot

Reasons for real hope amid the misplaced optimism

Today’s civil partnership between two men who look uncannily like each other will, I suspect, be remembered as a festival of misplaced optimism. Cameron overdid it a little, making out that this was his ideal outcome. It seems rude to point it out, but there were two podiums in that rose garden because he flunked the election (see Tim Montgomerie’s superlative report for details). The cost of his failure to win is having to do a deal with Nick Clegg. The country didn’t vote for a new politics: the Lib Dems did worse than last time, so polls show most voters would have preferred Cameron to have formed a minority

Who is missing?

The Cabinet is taking shape, admittedly with one or two surprises and not all of them good ones. There is still a way to go, even though action has already been taken on the NI increase. I understand that Michael Gove will be education secretary, which obviously leaves the hugely impressive David Laws to find another brief. Work and Pensions is a possibility, a job that has also been earmarked for the equally impressive Philip Hammond. There is a very obvious lack of women – Sarah Teather is highly regarded on the Lib Dem side, probably more so than her counterparts on the Tory side. I’ve heard rumours that she’s

Game on for the Labour leadership

The Coalition Cabinet remains unformed as yet – it’s rumoured that Chris Huhne is going to environment and Michael Gove and David Laws are out doing one another in the ‘I’ve no idea where I’ll be’ stakes. All the sounds are very positive but the contents of would-be ministers’ statements are careful, as doubtless final decisions are being made. The Labour leadership has its own spot on Westminster’s backdrop of delicate intrigue. Yesterday, Andy Burnham positioned himself as the candidate of sense, opposing Lib-Lab talks and acknowledging that Labour needed to reorganise itself in the aftermath of defeat. The preferred path to renewal is clearer this morning. Alan Johnson has

The government takes shape

Here are some details of the LibCon deal, and my brief comments: 1. Clegg as Deputy PM. It’s a non-job, but a senior one – it means Clegg will take PMQs in Cameron’s absence, and will defend all those nasty cuts (sharing the blame for these cuts is the main rationale for coalition). This follows the 1999 Lib-Lab deal in Scotland, where Jim Wallace was made Deputy First Minister to everyone’s surprise. 2. Laws replaces Gove in education. This has not been confirmed yet, and I will not believe it until I see it. Of all of tonight’s moves this is potentially the most concerning – especially for all those

My understanding is that Cameron will not sacrifice schools reform

During coalition talks, wild rumours can fly – and some of them can be true. That’s why Michael Gove would have stopped many a Tory heart this morning by telling Andrew Marr that he was by no means wedded to a Cabinet job and then heaped praise on David Laws. The Gove schools policy is ranked by The Spectator as reason in itself to vote Tory and by The Economist as the best single policy of the election campaign. Might it be sacrificed? The 10am radio headlines were suggesting so.  I bumped into Gove just afterwards and asked him: panic over. He had simply sought to make clear that he

A deal that would kill Gove’s agenda at birth

While both the Conservatives and LibDems support the idea of Swedish schools, a Lib-Con deal could kill the agenda stone dead. David Laws is proposing to allow local authorities to have the power to veto new schools – which would, in effect, mean no rollout. As we all know, this could strangle the Gove school agenda at birth. Local authorities, whether Labour or Tory, will hate the idea of competition in the provision of education. The local authorities and teachers’ unions are incredibly powerful, and defeated Thatcher, Adonis and Blair. They have also nobbled the LibDems to the extent that, I understand, David Laws believes that he could not get

A deeply emotive issue

Jonathan Bartley, the man who ambushed Cameron yesterday, has written a piece for the Guardian. In it, the education establishment’s counter-productive monopoly is exposed. Bartley writes: ‘Either we are for inclusion or we aren’t. To include children with special needs in mainstream schools takes commitment and a lot of work. Indeed, it requires “bias” – which has actually been lacking in the education system, despite all the talk of inclusion from Labour. There are few parents of children with special educational needs who would not want their children to attend their local school with brothers and sisters and friends, provided that the school is properly resourced, equipped and able to

The battle for the middle ground

The New Statesman has interviewed Douglas Alexander, who appeals, as Andrew Adonis has, to Liberal Democrat voters to back Labour to inaugurate what he terms a ‘New Dawn for Labour and progressive politics.’ Progressive is a vague term, but the best definition for it is reform to encourage social mobility. In this morning’s Times, former Fabian Stephen Pollard argued that only the Tories can guarantee this. For the time, Pollard says, he will vote Conservative and all because of Michael Gove’s schools reform.   ‘Mr Gove has promised that within four years of a Tory government, all parents will have the option of sending their child to an independent school

The Tories in a PR pickle

Clegg won’t join without proportional representation; Cameron says he won’t countenance such a ‘con’. Indeed, it runs deeper than that. Iain Martin has canvassed Tories from across the party and found that Cameron will get short shrift if he tries to reform the voting system at all. There is another consideration. This election has the potential to blow traditional party structure out of the water. Labour’s right will be marginalised by the unions’ grip over the party and Liberal Democrats like David Laws and Clegg (up to a point) have more in common with the One Nation Tories than they do with out and out left wingers like Kennedy and

James Forsyth

Meeting real people, the staple of campaigning

David Cameron is visiting Hampshire today, hitting both Labour and Lib Dem held seats. In a visit to Southampton University, he was confronted by a feisty Lib Dem supporting student who accused him of planning changes that would make it more difficult for working class kids like her to go to university. Cameron dealt with the question well. He said that the Tories would keep bursaries and that there simply isn’t the money to abolish tuition fees. He also pointed out that currently only 40 odd children on free school meals go to Oxford and that Tory plans to bust open the state monopoly in the provision of education would

The Tories must sell their most radical policy: the Gove schools plan

The Spectator’s endorsement of David Cameron started with his ‘free schools’ policy – and we could have ended there. We said that this is, in itself, enough reason to vote Conservative. This week’s Economist has produced one of the best explanations of this policy, and its potential.  This is important because this election campaign shows that, while the public are indeed minded to oust Gordon Brown, they’re not terribly excited by the Tory offering. The Gove schools plan is something which, if properly expressed, cannot fail to capture the imagination. In my limited experience of persuading people why they should vote, I find the schools policy always works. The Tories,

The little platoons are mobilising

There’s a great example of people power on the letters page of today’s Guardian. Last week, a bunch of the educational establishment wrote to the paper decrying the Tory plans to bust open the state monopoly in education and let parents, teachers and voluntary groups set up new schools. Today, 650-odd parent groups have written back, explaining why they want to set up their own schools and give to the many what is now preserved for the few: the right to choose a good school for their child.   There isn’t anything equal about schooling in Britiain at the moment. The vast majority of good state schools in Britain operate

A Choice Revolution

Reihan Salam has a characteristically excellent post on school choice that has some bearing on the Conservatives’ proposed reforms in England. Reihan’s talking about the US and the suggestion that Milwaukee’s voucher programme hasn’t delivered as much as one might like, but his general argument applies to this side of the atlantic too. Bottom line: choice is not enough. Or, to put it another way, choice is a beginning, not an end*. As he puts it: [C]hoice-based reform at its best creates an opportunity for educational innovators to create new models, deploy new technologies, etc. The ultimate goal is to create a flourishing educational marketplace that goes beyond the binary

The speed of schools reform

Michael Gove is always worth listening to when he speaks on schools reform – offering passionate rhetoric supported by detailed policy. But this morning he excelled himself. If you want a clear sense of what the Tories have in mind for making “opportunity more equal,” then I’d recommend you track down a copy of his presentation. I’ll try to link to it, if it appears online later. One point that jumped out at me was when Gove said a Tory government would introduce a bill “within days” of entering power, aimed at “making it harder for bureaucracies to block the creation of new schools”.  He added that he’d hope to

Closing the gap between state and independent education

I do hope that Oxford will finally be free from government claims of snobbery soon. We learn today that the proportion of state school pupils it admits has fallen from 55.4 percent to 53.9 percent – but, as the university says, this is in line with the (appallingly low) proportion of state school pupils achieving three As. The problem lies with the schools, not the universities, and it helps no one to pretend otherwise. Here’s one figure that you won’t read in the ongoing “Oxford snobbery” story: in 1969, only 38 per cent of Oxford’s places went to privately-educated children. Why? Because the private schools in those days were not

The Tories open fire on Unite

So, the Tories have declared war on Charlie Whelan and Unite – what Eric Pickles calls the “great untold story of British politics”. He was joined by no less than two more shadow frontbenchers – Michael Gove and Theresa Villiers – at a briefing attacking the union’s political influence this morning. And that’s not all: the Tories have produced a document detailing how Unite is funding Labour and opposing reform, and there’s even a new digital poster campaign to go along with it.  The gloves are well and truly off. As for what the shadow ministers actually said, Villiers highlighted Unite’s role in the BA troubles, while Gove gave a

Establishing free schools will be a difficult – but worthwhile – challenge

The small crowd of demonstrators from a group calling itself the Anti-Academies Alliance who gathered outside the Spectator conference on The Schools Revolution yesterday gave an indication of the opposition that Michael Gove and the Conservatives would face, were they to win the election and attempt the radical overhaul of which the British education system is so obviously in need. The thing that came across in our brief but passionate debate with the protestors was their opposition to independence, wherever it may raise its head in schools. Choice, to these people, is anathema. Undeterred, Gove’s speech majored on the virtues of independence. He criticised the present government for waging ‘a