Spikey little fella', that Michael Gove. He seems to be alone in running a department of state and actually achieving genuine change. Yes, it's slower than we would like but given that he's up against the massed ranks of the teachers' unions, his own civil servants and every 'edukashun' authority in the country, I think he has done splendidly. The proof, of course, comes in the fact that Ed 'Minibrains' and his utterly useless Labour party have just surrendered. Time for the' champers', I feel!
According to Guido, the suitably named Mr. Twigg, he'd never make a branch let alone a trunk, Labour's 'Edukashun' spokesman, said this:
Existing free schools will stay open, free schools in the pipeline will go ahead, but we will not have additional free schools.
This is after two and half years of virulant opposition to them. He went on to say:
What we will have is a new academies programme including parent-led academies, really good teacher-led academies like Peter Hyman’s school in East London – those sorts of things. We would want the opportunity for those schools to open.
As Dave was quick to inform the House at Question Time today, Peter Hyman's school is, er, a free school! Gove himself, with typical Jock ruthlessness, throws acid onto Labour's non-sense, non-coherent policy:
Labour’s policy on free schools is so tortured they should send in the UN to
end the suffering. On the one hand Stephen Twigg says he will end the free
school programme, but on the other he says he would set up ‘parent-led’ and
‘teacher-led academies’ – free schools under a different name. As Andrew Adonis
has said this morning, “free schools are academies without a predecessor
school”. When is a free school not a free school? When Stephen Twigg is trying
to appease the teaching unions.
Twigg has been reduced to attacking Gove's laissez-faire policy of allowing free schools to set up in areas where there is no shortage of existing schools and he accuses Gove of a gross waste of money. But as Isabel Hardman points out at The Coffee House, the reason parents might be moved to all the bother of trying to set up a free school is that the plethora of surrounding state schools are probably rubbish!
Gove has roughly another two and a half years to get his education revolution settled and fixed and I think he deserves longer. That is, perhaps, the sole reason to vote Tory at the next election.
