What is it about Michael Gove…

these are proposals from the Labour Party. Originally from Ed Balls and more recently from Tristram Hunt. These are expectations from two of the most senior Labour Party politicians and from two people who have their eyes on the top job. So not just RW then is it?

You’re assuming Tristram Hunt and Ed Balls aren’t right wing…

miketually – Member
You’re assuming Tristram Hunt and Ed Balls aren’t right wing…

😀 but behind that is a serious point, which a lot of the arguments that like to portray a kind of RW/ideological bias towards all this are (IMO) unhelpful.

There is a strong central ground that has been calling for reforms and improvements in education for some period. This is nothing to do with ideology, it is pragmatism based on need. MSP can suggest that it’s RW who argue for this, I prefer to see it “as most sensible people.” Step away from Gove for one minute and look at where much of the current ideas started eg academies, free schools etc.

One of the central players was Andrew Adonis, the guy who put the flesh in labour’a education, education, education idea. Gove and possibly Hunt in time will merely be continuing a theme that started under Blair after the catastrophe of the late 20c education policies. So what is behind all of this? To quote Adonis:

As soon as I started in No. 10, I focused on one objective above all: how to reinvent the comprehensive school. Across much of England comprehensives were palpably and seriously failing. I regarded this not only as an educational crisis, but a social and economic crisis too, since the poor standard of education and socialisation among school leavers was so obviously at the heart of England’s problems at large. I saw failing comprehensive schools, many hundreds of them, as a cancer at the heart of English society. Looking back, this wasn’t an exaggeration. The typical sixteen-year-old in the 1990s was leaving a comprehensive with two or three GCSEs, and likely as not these didn’t include English and maths.

He continues…

The first half of this book tells the story of my efforts at education reform in the decade after 1998. It is largely about the evolution of academies, the new type of all-ability independent state school, with dynamic independent sponsors taking charge of their management, which the Blair government introduced to replace failing comprehensives, and which are continuing to develop under David Cameron’s coalition government.

And for the future….

England today has a part-reformed education system. It is urgent that all underperforming schools, primary as well as secondary, become academies, and I set out the case and a plan for this in Chapter 10. I support free schools, which are simply academies without a predecessor state school, and which have been central to the academy policy from the outset, and I make the case for these too as a means of tackling disadvantage, providing choice and boosting innovation.

Academies and free schools are only part of the further reform needed to build world-class schools nationwide. Education in England is still far too weak an engine of social mobility, skills and citizenship. In order to build a genuine one-nation society without the entrenched class divisions and poverty of the past, the chasm between private and state education – the elite and the mass – must be bridged….

….England needs to be up there with the leading nations of Europe and Asia in developing a ‘90 per cent’ education system: schools where at least 90 per cent of sixteen-year-olds reach a basic GCSE standard, wherever they live, whatever their background, in place of the ‘60 per cent’ education system of today. All secondary schools should have sixth forms and make academic and technical education beyond GCSE a core part of their mission. I suggest a new A-level Baccalaureate (A-Bacc), embracing the best of the International Baccalaureate (IB) and assessing a wider range of subjects and skills than existing A-levels for those on track to higher education. I also suggest a new ‘Technical Baccalaureate’ (Tech Bacc) for those not proposing to go – or go straight – to university, combining essential literacy and numeracy standards with technical qualifications, and assessed work experience, leading directly into work or apprenticeships, or to higher technical education.

So not much of what Gove preaches is new nor is it confined to the Tories. In fact, you might want to accuse him of plagiarism. So MSP both major parties “expect their needs to be met.” And frankly, whether the specific policies are right or wrong, they should be applauded for it. Education is to important to be left as it is.

Thats a lot of words just to say sixth formers should read more. WTF does any of it mean and how does it help? Its all just pissing in the wind unless more good teachers can be trained and crucially retained.

It is the background to what is going on now. And it doesn’t mention “reading more” anywhere. What is shows is a period of almost 15 years where there has been x-party consensus on the need for change and similar policies advocated to achieve the outcomes. So to isolate what is going on today from this and pretend that it is a one-party process or confined to RWers, while funny, is simple inaccurate.

Agree on the training 100%. And the NUTs response to Hunts proposals if labour get into power? “Objection”.

NUT aare a trade union. You get that, right?

Really? No missed that obviously. So safe to assume that they would want to work in the interests of their members then?

Given that Hunt is pretty unequivocal in his views (as much as Gove) we can foresee similar fights between the NUT and labour in the future.

( are they not a Trades Union – you seem to be a stickler for accuracy?)

There is a strong central ground that has been calling for reforms and improvements in education for some period. This is nothing to do with ideology, it is pragmatism based on need. MSP can suggest that it’s RW who argue for this, I prefer to see it “as most sensible people.” Step away from Gove for one minute and look at where much of the current ideas started eg academies, free schools etc.

No that’s not what I suggested at all, even though I have corrected you twice you still try to claim the same thing, I can only assume your education was blighted by a particularly bad English teacher.

I would however argue that there is a strong central ground that think education is being reformed to death, and that more ideological reforms being piled on top of the already mountainous reforms already overloading education is the last thing it needs.