Three Cheers for Michael Gove. But….
As regular readers of this Blog will know, I do not like aspects of Michael Gove’s education policy. In particular I believe there is a role for LEAs to run schools with full control of their budgets and I am not convinced of all aspects of the set up your own school idea. On the other hand I think Academies, Trust and Foundation schools bring strength to the system and allowing good schools to join rather than only those which are challenged makes sense.
There are dangers and in the end we will have some very good schools, but there will be some very bad ones too, as not all will use their independence well. It is not clear who then will be in charge of sorting things out. Neither is it clear what will happen to the schools left in the old system which do not become Academies, for whom resources are to be reduced. Nothing is ever perfect, but all things in public policy have to be workable and they have to be fair. If not there will be political damage.
What is very good news indeed is that the new Eduction Secretary’s (bravo for returning to the real name for the department rather than the folksy rigmarole of the Balls era) announcement that three education Quangos are to be shut down. Never mind their names, all of them are a badge of futility. Everyone, except the Quangos themselves, welcomed this news, which not only saves money, reduces meddling and shortens process, but also sends the message to the whole of Quangoland that the whistle is starting to blow time.
The very worst aspect of New Labour was its support of this unnecessary, expensive, inefficient and draining system of public supervision. For some reason it was intellectually unable to imagine any group of people, most of them dedicated professionals who know what to do, be allowed to get on with it, without one of these useless bodies in attendance. Let us hope all Mr Gove’s Cabinet colleagues wield axes in their patch of the forest with equal vigour. Let us also hope that their many plans are not so exposed to possible difficulty as those so far announced in Education.