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| Education: multifaceted Michael | |
| (35 minutes later) | |
| In Tory circles he is coming to be known as the hopeful "everyone loves to love", but many a teacher regards it as self-evident that this is a man you love to hate. And that is only the first of many Michael Gove contradictions. | In Tory circles he is coming to be known as the hopeful "everyone loves to love", but many a teacher regards it as self-evident that this is a man you love to hate. And that is only the first of many Michael Gove contradictions. |
| You can't pin the education secretary down as a Conservative wet or a Tory ultra – no minister has gone further in claiming a compassionate interest in the poor, and yet none has gone further in entertaining pulling out of the EU. In opposition, he was the urbane and tieless moderniser on the Late Review sofa; in government, he's the buttoned-up traditionalist peddling Latin, Tudor monarchs and King James Bibles. A neoconservative in foreign policy and a neoliberal at home, it can seem like he wants to pull the state out of everything except foreign countries. He wrapped his market-based schools reforms in the flag of social- democratic Sweden. And those same reforms, which he sells as creating islands of independence, academies with their own ethos and culture, are judged by some educationalists to represent the biggest ever centralisation. | You can't pin the education secretary down as a Conservative wet or a Tory ultra – no minister has gone further in claiming a compassionate interest in the poor, and yet none has gone further in entertaining pulling out of the EU. In opposition, he was the urbane and tieless moderniser on the Late Review sofa; in government, he's the buttoned-up traditionalist peddling Latin, Tudor monarchs and King James Bibles. A neoconservative in foreign policy and a neoliberal at home, it can seem like he wants to pull the state out of everything except foreign countries. He wrapped his market-based schools reforms in the flag of social- democratic Sweden. And those same reforms, which he sells as creating islands of independence, academies with their own ethos and culture, are judged by some educationalists to represent the biggest ever centralisation. |
| It is a bewildering brew, yet – for now at least – it is working for Mr Gove. He is making enemies, but enemies he can afford to have, such as invisible officials within his downsizing department. The teaching unions rage at his performance pay, but canny Michael reasoned that by picking this scrap at the same time as he is protecting the schools budget in the autumn statement, he can only come out ahead. A former journalist, he is media-savvy in a way few colleagues can match. He is unfailingly polite, but single-mindedly ruthless in packing his office with place-people. But more than anything else, he has got the wind in his sales by getting on with something. While Andrew Lansley was flashing alarming NHS organograms around, Mr Gove was writing on to the statute book legislation that has since overhauled half of England's secondaries. | It is a bewildering brew, yet – for now at least – it is working for Mr Gove. He is making enemies, but enemies he can afford to have, such as invisible officials within his downsizing department. The teaching unions rage at his performance pay, but canny Michael reasoned that by picking this scrap at the same time as he is protecting the schools budget in the autumn statement, he can only come out ahead. A former journalist, he is media-savvy in a way few colleagues can match. He is unfailingly polite, but single-mindedly ruthless in packing his office with place-people. But more than anything else, he has got the wind in his sales by getting on with something. While Andrew Lansley was flashing alarming NHS organograms around, Mr Gove was writing on to the statute book legislation that has since overhauled half of England's secondaries. |
| The important question for the country is whether the shake-up will do any good. There were some encouraging figures on failing primary schools on Thursday, though so few of these have become academies that the reforms cannot explain them. What irks Mr Gove's officials is that he seems to have little interest in the connection between reform and results. Despite his cerebral air, he was ticked off recently by the statistics watchdog for highlighting dodgy data to suggest that English schools were going to the dogs, and thus – by implication – crying out for his reforms. | The important question for the country is whether the shake-up will do any good. There were some encouraging figures on failing primary schools on Thursday, though so few of these have become academies that the reforms cannot explain them. What irks Mr Gove's officials is that he seems to have little interest in the connection between reform and results. Despite his cerebral air, he was ticked off recently by the statistics watchdog for highlighting dodgy data to suggest that English schools were going to the dogs, and thus – by implication – crying out for his reforms. |
| In the end, one would hope he'd be judged on performance, just as he proposes for teachers. But the educational consequences of Mr Gove will play out over many years; political careers wax and wane more rapidly. If that is not quite a paradox, it is at least a mismatch – and Mr Gove appears to thrive on those. | In the end, one would hope he'd be judged on performance, just as he proposes for teachers. But the educational consequences of Mr Gove will play out over many years; political careers wax and wane more rapidly. If that is not quite a paradox, it is at least a mismatch – and Mr Gove appears to thrive on those. |